"I'll try," Sylvia would say. "I'll do my best." She found herself echoing the direct way in which he spoke. "When I got on the train bound for Charleston, I thought-"
"Wait. Stop." Ernie held up a hand. He was a big man, burly like a prizefighter, and the scars above his eyebrows and on his cheeks argued he'd been in his share of scraps, whether in the ring or just in one saloon or another. "Don't tell me what you thought. Tell me what you did."
"Why don't you want to know what I thought?" Sylvia asked. "That's why I did what I did."
"Tell me what you did," Ernie insisted. "I'll write that. People will read it. Then they'll know what you did. And they'll know why, too."
Sylvia frowned. "Why will they know that?"
Ernie was a handsome man, but normally one with a slightly sullen expression. When he smiled, it was like the sun coming out. "Why? Because I'm good," he said.
That smile by itself was almost enough to lay Sylvia's doubts to rest. She'd had room in her life for precious few romantic thoughts since the Ericsson sank, but Ernie's smile coaxed some out from wherever they'd been hiding all these years. She knew that was foolishness and nothing else but. How could she help knowing it, when he was five or ten years younger than she was?
He listened. She didn't think she'd ever had anyone listen so closely to what she said. She knew George hadn't when he was still alive. She'd loved him, and she was sure he'd loved her, too. But he hadn't listened like that-nor, as she had to admit to herself, had she listened to him so. Paying such close attention hadn't occurred to either one of them.
Ernie not only listened, he took detailed notes. Sometimes he lugged a portable typewriter to her flat. The battered leather of its case said he'd lugged it to a lot of different places, most of them worse than Boston not far from the harbor. He typed in quick, short, savage bursts, pausing between them to stare at the ceiling and gnaw on the stem of his pipe.
In one of those pauses between bursts, Sylvia said, "The way the keys clatter, it sounds like a machine gun going off."
The pipe stopped twitching in his mouth. It swung toward her, as if it were a weapon itself. "No," he said, his voice suddenly harsh and flat. "You don't know what you're talking about. Thank God you don't know what you're talking about."
"I'm sorry," she whispered.
"I drove an ambulance," he said, at least as much to himself as to her. "Sometimes I was up near the front. Sometimes I had to fight myself. I know what machine guns sound like. Oh, yes. I know. But I was on the safe side of the St. Lawrence"-he laughed-"when I got shot. An aeroplane shot up a train full of soldiers. Poor, stupid bastards. They never even found out what it was about before they got shot." He shrugged. "Maybe that was what it was about, that and nothing more. I went to help them, to take them away. A hospital was close by. Another aeroplane came over. It shot up all of us. I got hit."
Ernie went back to typing then. The next time Sylvia thought of making some unasked-for comment, she kept it to herself instead.
He delivered the finished manuscript on a day when winter finally seemed ready to give way to spring. Thrusting it at her, he said, "Here. Read this. It is supposed to be yours. You should know what is in it."
He flung himself down on the sofa, plainly intending to wait till she read it. It wasn't very thick. Sylvia sat down in the chair by the sofa and went through it. Even before she got halfway, she looked up at him and said, "I understand why I did what I did better now than I did when I did it."
She wondered if that made any sense at all. It must have, for he gave her a brusque nod. "I told you," he said. "I'm good."
"Yes." She nodded back. "You are." She went back to reading. When she looked up, another forty-five minutes had gone by and she was finished. "You make me sound better and smarter than I am."
That made him frown. "You should sound the way you are. How do I fix it?"
He was serious. Sylvia laughed and shook her head. "Don't. I like it." Ernie still looked discontented. She laughed again. "I like you, too." She'd never said that before.
"Thanks," he said, and put the manuscript back into a tidy pile and imprisoned it with rubber bands. "I enjoyed working with you. I think the book will be all right." By the way he sounded, the second was more important than the first.
Even so, when he headed for the door Sylvia planted herself in front of him, put her arms around him, and gave him a kiss. It was the first time she'd kissed a man, the first time she'd wanted to kiss a man, since she'd kissed George good-bye for the last time during the war.
Ernie kissed her back, too, hard enough to leave her lips feeling bruised. He squeezed her against him, then all at once shoved her away. "It's no good," he said. "It's no damn good at all."
"Why not?" Sylvia said. "It's been so long…" Knowing desire had been a delicious surprise. Knowing it, having it stirred, and now having it thwarted seemed more than she could bear.
"Why not, sweetheart? I'll tell you why not," the writer answered. "I got shot in Quebec. You know that. You don't know where. I got shot right there. Not enough left to do a woman any good. Not enough left to do me any good, either."
"Oh," Sylvia said. That didn't seem nearly strong enough. "Oh, hell."
He looked at her and nodded. "Why this is hell, nor am I out of it." The words weren't quite in his usual style. Maybe he was quoting from something, but Sylvia didn't recognize it. He bared his teeth in what seemed more snarl than smile. "I'm sorry, sweetheart."
" You're sorry?" Sylvia exclaimed. "You poor man!"
That was the wrong thing to say. She realized it as soon as the words were out of her mouth, which was, of course, too late. Ernie set his jaw and glared. No, he wasn't one to take pity-he'd despise it for weakness, maybe Sylvia's, more likely his own. "Shouldn't have messed with you," he said. "My own stupid fault. I forget every once in a while. Then it tries to wag. Like a goddamn boxer dog wagging his little docked tail. But a boxer can hump your leg. I can't even do that." He kissed her again, even harder and rougher than before. Then he walked straight out the door. Over his shoulder, he threw back a last handful of words: "Take care of yourself, kiddo."
The door slammed. Sylvia burst into tears. "Oh, hell, " she said again. "Oh, hell. Oh, hell. Oh, hell." She was sure she would never see him again.
She was sure, but she was wrong. One day a couple of weeks later, he waved to her as she came out of her block of flats. She'd never known she could feel joy and fear in the same heartbeat. "Ernie!" she called. "What is it?"
"You have your money in a bank," he said. That wasn't at all what she'd expected. "Which bank is it?"
"Plymouth and Boston Bank and Trust," she answered automatically. "Why?"
"I thought I remembered that," Ernie said. "I saw the passbook on your coffee table. Take the money out. Take it all out. Take it out right away. The bank is going to fail. It will fail very soon."
Fear of a different sort shot through her. "God bless you," she whispered. "You're sure?"
"No, of course not," he snapped. "I came here because I was guessing. Why else would I come here?"
Sylvia flushed. "I was going somewhere else, but I'll head over there right now. Thank you, Ernie."
His face softened, just for a moment. "You're welcome. Writers find things out. I know someone who works for the bank. Who worked for the bank, I mean. He saw the writing on the wall. He quit. He said anywhere else in the world was better than to be there right now." He paused and nodded to Sylvia. "Nice to think I can do something for you, anyhow." Touching a finger to the brim of his sharp new fedora, Ernie hurried away. The crowd on the street swallowed him up.