“Why, Eddie,” she said. “I been wearing them for three years now. You seen me in them lots of times on visiting days.”
“That’s right,” I said. “Lots of times.” I began walking toward the car and she caught up with me after a few steps.
“They’re tinted a little bit because my eyes are sensitive to light. That’s what the eye doctor told me. I got some astigmatism too.”
I got into the car and she went around to the driver’s side. I glanced at the shabby upholstery. “What have you been doing to keep alive?” I asked.
“Honestly, Eddie,” she said. “You’re so forgetful. I been waiting on tables for six years now at Grady’s. You ask me every time you see me.”
“That’s right,” I said. “And you tell me I’m forgetful.”
She turned the car onto the highway and leaned forward in driver concentration.
I opened the window on my side and listened to the hum of the tires on the road.
“Did they give you a job, Eddie?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said.
She waited a while. “Well, what kind of a job is it?”
I thought about it and remembered. “In a warehouse. I’m supposed to put things in piles.”
Amy drove at a conservative speed and several cars passed her. “I got a small cottage for us,” she said. “Just three rooms. Nothing like we used to have. I made all the drapes myself. Chartreuse. I wasn’t sure they’d go with the walls at first, but I took a chance and it turned out all right.”
“Yes,” I said.
“I bought a couple bottles of good whiskey,” she said. “And some beer in cans. We’ll just take off our shoes and wiggle our toes until the boys show up.”
“All right,” I said.
“I kept all your classical-type records,” she said. “I don’t have an automatic phonograph, though. You got to change the records yourself.”
I closed my eyes against the light and listened to the whistle of air against the body of the car.
I knew she was there and I smiled as I listened for her and at last opened my eyes. She leaned over me and there was the fragrance of perfume in her hair. She spoke softly to me and her hand touched my face. Her lips came closer and rested lightly on mine.
The car came to a stop and I opened my eyes. I wondered at the darkness.
“Did you have a nice nap, Eddie?” Amy asked. She turned off the motor and put the ignition keys in her pocketbook. “There it is,” she said, pointing. “That little place in the back.”
I got out of the car and walked to the front door. I waited until Amy came with the key.
Inside she kicked off her shoes and began turning on lamps. I sat down in an easy chair and listened to the flat sounds her feet made when she walked on the part of the floor that was bare.
She came back from the kitchen with a tray of canned beer, a bottle of whiskey, and glasses.
“I don’t mind if my man drinks,” she said. “Remember how you used to just sit with a bottle and listen to those records. You could really put away the stuff without showing it. You always drank like a gentleman.”
I poured some of the whiskey into a glass.
Amy punched open a can of beer and swallowed a few times. “I was true to you, Eddie,” she said. “You can ask any of the girls where I work and they’ll tell you the same thing. I even turned down dates with Mr. Grady. And he respected me for that. He said that if all women were as loyal to their men as I was this would be a better world.”
I tasted the first liquor in ten years and it was nothing to me.
“Beer is healthier,” Amy said. “But I miss the champagne. We’ll fix that, though, won’t we, Eddie?”
My eyes went to the stack of record albums on the table next to me and I picked up the Franck symphony.
The doorbell rang and Amy struggled to her feet. “Probably the boys,” she said.
Benny Eckers and Mike Kurtz came into the room with their right hands searching for mine.
I remembered them again now, and that Benny was small with a flesh-starved face of lines and seams.
“Benny’s a truck dispatcher for a gasoline company,” Amy said. “Can you imagine?”
“It’s a nervous job,” Benny said. “All kinds of time limits and responsibilities. It’s been ten months now and my parole officer is running out of gold stars.”
Kurtz filled a water glass with whiskey and buried it in his big hand. “Life has been rough,” he said. “A man my size sweats when he has to move around.”
“We been looking places over,” Benny said. “Mostly loan companies. Our idea is to hit about five or six in a week and then take off for someplace where we can spend it. We’ll make up for all those years, Eddie.”
I watched the smoke of the cigarette I was trying.
“I’d like to see Florida again,” Amy said. “All that excitement and all them people. We wouldn’t have to be alone for a minute.”
“Florida is out,” Kurtz said. “Every second guy at the tracks is a dick.”
“Kurtz is right,” Benny said. “We spend our dough in Cuba or Mexico or some of them places where they don’t care how you got it.”
I stared at the amber glow in my glass of whiskey.
Her voice was quiet music and it spoke only of things in which there was beauty. I listened to her words and marveled at the gentleness in them.
Kurtz bumped his glass against the neck of the bottle as he refilled it.
“I like them big parties,” he said. “All that fancy grub and them babes from the shows.”
I took a record to the phonograph and put it on. “You like that, Kurtz?” I asked.
“That’s what I said.” Kurtz drank and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “Big parties. That’s really living.”
“What was it like in solitary, Eddie?” Benny asked. “I was a meek con and never got a taste of it.”
“What’s to tell,” Kurtz said. “I was in a week myself for heaving a solitary plate of stew across the dining hall. The last couple of days I would of give my right arm to hear somebody talk.”
Benny’s eyes went to the electric clock. “I’m getting on my horse,” he said. “I gotta keep regular hours, being a working man and all. At least for another week or so.”
“I got to shove off too,” Kurtz said. “Think of it, Eddie. I’m a house painter.”
When they were gone, Amy went to the bedroom. “I’ll make myself more comfortable,” she said.
She came back wearing a faded blue robe and sat down heavily in her chair. Her face was red and moist with the beer she had been drinking.
She scratched the calf of one leg. “Did you do much reading, Eddie?” she asked. “I remember you were all the time reading before you went to the pen.”
“No,” I said. “I don’t have to read any more.”
“That’s good,” she said. “Gee, sometimes you were a creep. Maybe now you’ll learn how to enjoy life more.”
I put another record on the phonograph.
Amy opened a fresh can of beer. “I guess one more won’t hurt. But I don’t want to overdo it tonight, if you know what I mean. You been gone a long time and I know what you want.”
“Do you, Amy?”
“I know what boys want,” she said. She laughed and her body shook with it. “No hurry though,” she said. “We got plenty of time. I’m off tomorrow.”
When the record was finished, I put on the first movement of Smetana’s Moldau.
“You’re not going to listen to those damn records all night, are you?” Amy asked.
There would have to be music in our valley. Not the music that intrudes and must be listened to with attention, but the music that is always background.