Rick had listened to everything she’d said, silently agreeing with her, but not wanting her to get upset about the whole thing. He even wondered if he should have told her about it at all. She did, after all, have a condition.
He smiled in the darkness. Anne was asleep already, her hands holding his own hand to her breast, clinging to it warmly. He thought again of the “condition” and the smile expanded. Ever since the beginning of her pregnancy, even when it had hardly shown at all, Anne had girlishly lowered her eyes whenever Rick raised his voice. And then, in a barely audible whisper, she would say, “Please, Rick. I have a condition.”
She did indeed have a condition, and it looked as if he had one, too. Tomorrow was another day, of course. Maybe the kids would have forgotten Small’s speech by that time. Rick doubted it. He would have to play his cards right tomorrow, because tomorrow might be a very important day. Tomorrow might be the day that made or broke him.
Thoughtfully, with the street noises far below him, with the shade rattling only slightly at the casement window, he evaluated his position.
He was still doing that on Thursday morning when he stopped in the Teachers’ Lavatory at 8:22 a.m. He had barely closed the door behind him when the voice said, “Ah, the conquering hero.”
He looked over to the urinal near the window, spotting Alan Manners.
“Hello, Manners,” he said.
“Ready to do battle today?” Manners asked.
“Ready every day,” Rick said, smiling. He had taken a lot of ribbing from the assembled teachers in the lunchroom on Tuesday and Wednesday. Oddly, Solly Klein had been the only one who hadn’t joined in the good-natured sport. Solly had simply stated, “I knew that broad would get raped,” and then let it drop. Not the other teachers. In fact, their humor had closely paralleled that of the students of Manual Trades. Rick had taken it all good-naturedly, smiling and parrying all their thrusts. But this was Thursday, and this was the day after Small had delivered his speech to the boys. Rick did not expect any kidding today, and when it came, he was a little surprised.
“You sure she didn’t try to rape both of you?” Manners asked.
“I’m sure,” Rick said, smiling.
“Some guys have all the luck,” Manners said, wagging his head. “I’d have known how to take care of that situation, all right.”
“That’s because you’re a Lover Boy,” Rick said, borrowing Solly’s terminology.
“I admit it,” Manners answered, smiling. “Have you talked with Miss Hammond yet? Or has it reached the ‘Lois’ stage by this time?”
“Is that her name?” Rick asked.
“You mean you don’t know? Brother,” Manners said.
“I haven’t spoken to her since Monday,” Rick said.
“Hero,” Manners said, “you are slipping. Now is the time to cement the friendship. Now is the time to gather in the lady’s gratitude.”
“Hell,” Rick said kiddingly, “I’m a married man.”
“But not a blind man, surely,” Manners told him. “This Hammond woman is a lot of woman, Dadier. Or had you noticed?”
“I’ve been too busy to notice much of anything,” he said honestly. He stepped back from the urinal and waited for Manners to leave the sink. Then he washed his hands and dried them on a paper towel.
“You ought to start noticing. It’s not every day a man rescues a woman’s purity.”
“Me,” Rick said, still kidding but a little annoyed by Manners’ persistence, “I rescue them every day. I’m a regular Galahad.” He paused. “You going upstairs?”
“In a minute. No sense rushing into the ring before the bell.” He sighed deeply. “Brother, will I be glad to get out of this place.”
“Even with Miss Hammond here?”
“Lois? My only regret. I can see I’m leaving her to swine.”
“Well...” Rick started.
“Have you figured on how to handle this yet. Hero?” Manners said.
“Handle what?”
“The kettle of fish. It’s a fine kettle, you will admit.”
“The kids, you mean?”
Manners shrugged. “If you insist on calling them that, yes. The ‘kids.’ ”
“I’ve done a little thinking,” Rick said, grossly underestimating the hours of lying-awake he’d put in the night before, and the concentration he had given the problem during breakfast, and on the way to school, and even now just before he’d entered the toilet.
“And what have you figured?”
Rick summed up the total of his earlier thought on the situation in a single sentence. “If I’ve got the name, I’ll have the game,” he said.
“You’re going to make like a tough guy?”
“I think so. Yes. I think that’s best.”
“Maybe so. Hero. But maybe the kids won’t like it.”
“I can’t be worrying about what they’ll like,” Rick said. “I didn’t ask to get dumped into a rape scene.”
“You think you can carry it?”
“Carry what?”
“The tough guy part. Maybe they’ll want to test you.”
“I can take care of myself,” Rick said, not really certain that he could, but resenting Manners’ intimation.
“Spoken like a true hero,” Manners said, grinning. “I shall think of you when I’m far away in some all-girls’ school.”
“Suppose you don’t...”
“I’ll get out, don’t worry,” Manners said, examining his classic profile in the mirror over the sink. “And I’ll think of you playing Humphrey Bogart back here.”
“Come on,” Rick said. “We’d better get upstairs.”
“I can see why things happen to you,” Manners said knowingly, lifting his briefcase from the window sill. “You’re too damned eager.”
“Me?” Rick said. “I’m not eager, I’m Humphrey Bogart.”
He was Humphrey Bogart all through that day. He had no trouble at all during the first three periods, even though he could sense resentment on the other side of his desk. He tried to forget the resentment, and he kept the classes pinned down with an iron fist, never once forgetting he was Humphrey Bogart. He was beginning to feel good about his part in the little rape drama. He didn’t care if every kid in the school feared him, and he didn’t care if they hated him. He was there to teach them, and since the major problem in a vocational school was making yourself heard, he was thankful for the wall of silence that stretched out in front of him. The kids, he realized, were using a sort of passive resistance on him, but their Gandhi philosophy was playing right into his hands, and he conducted his classes in an efficient and orderly manner. Yes, that old rape might very well turn out to be the best thing that could have happened to him. He made a mental note to tell Anne to stop worrying as soon as he got home, and when the bell sounded at the end of his duty period, he dropped the Humphrey Bogart role and headed straight for the teachers’ lunchroom.
Contrary to the way he’d felt in the lavatory with Manners, he was a little disappointed when the teachers showed no signs of continuing the past few days’ banter. Hell, the thing wasn’t that serious. If anything, it was helping him. But Solly Klein was holding forth about a friend of his who taught shop in a junior high school, a real cream job from the way Solly described it, and all of the teachers — with the exception of the one who lay face down on the leather lounge, who’d been lying there every day now, whose face Rick had never seen, and whom Rick suspected of being dead — listened to Solly and paid very little attention to the hero of Manual Trades. He ate his sandwiches silently, almost morosely. He’d have liked to hear their opinions on the course he was taking, but Solly monopolized the floor until the bell sounded, and Rick disgustedly went to greet 55-206.