When I got to the Garden it seemed odd that things looked exactly the same. It also seemed odd that though I usually told Liz a lot, about what went on in my life, to the extent that anything did, I had no intention of telling her this. I was conscious she’d draw wrong conclusions, as I certainly would have, in her place. Well? Were such conclusions wrong? And what was the right conclusion? Mr. White would surely expect something for his money, wouldn’t he?
I found out soon enough. Right on the stroke of five, here came Mr. White, and there was Jake, with his tonic, and there was I, pouring it for him at his table, quite as though nothing had happened. He sipped it, leaned back, wiped his lips with the napkin. “Well!” I said. “I’m still reeling, Mr. White. And I’m still not too terribly sure it isn’t a dream. How can I possibly thank you?”
“… The thanks I prefer that we skip.”
“But I have to thank you.”
“Please! … Please.”
He was very quiet, and held up a hand as though to cut me off. I said: “Very well, then-I can’t help it, though, if I feel deep gratitude.”
“O.K., but let’s change the subject.”
“… That’s a beautiful place you have.”
“You like it? I built it myself.” He warmed to the topic, and even more to the change of topic. “I had the architect model it after the Harbor House in Annapolis-except, of course, for the octagonal wings. They strike me as wrong, but the rest of it, the proportions, the general layout, and the size, I had him follow quite close. I think it comes off pretty well.”
I didn’t care about any octagonal wings, but it wouldn’t have been polite to say so. I let him go on in this vein for a while. When he paused, a response from me seemed called for, so I said: “It almost seems to float, rather than stand.”
“I think the white door casing and window sills are the reason for that-they match the oyster shell drive. That glittering dead white effect comes from the lime. It lightens the whole prospect, and gives that impression you speak of, of floating, rather than standing. You’re quite observant, Joan, to notice it.”
“I notice all sorts of things.”
I sounded waspish in spite of myself, and knew that my chronic weakness, a temper that wouldn’t stay put, was going to make me trouble, as usual. I heard myself say, not wanting to: “If invited to look, of course. Of course, today, I wasn’t. Wasn’t allowed to get out of the car.”
“Joan, there was a reason.”
“Why don’t you say what the reason is?”
It popped out of my mouth like a firecracker, I trying to shut myself up, not with much success. He said: “It would upset me no end to say what the reason was. Joan, you must know by now I’m quite mad about you, and-”
“Then why don’t you act like it?”
“I thought I did. Today.”
I swallowed, I did everything I could think of to make myself shut up, but no soap. I went right on. I said, glancing around and grateful to find us with no one in earshot: “So O.K., you gave me fifty thousand dollars, and I’ve said how grateful I am. But when I really try to say it, you cut me off. So what do I do now? O.K., I’d like to know, what do I do?”
“Not what you think, Joan.”
“How do you know what I think?”
“Then Joan, what do you think? Tell me.”
“If you mean, what I think of what you want me to do for my fifty thousand bucks, I don’t know, but I’m human, and I won’t be too proud, whatever it is that you want. For fifty thousand dollars I could swallow my pride. But if you want to know what I think in general, what I think you should do to prove it, how insanely you feel for me, there’s just one way, Mr. White-that I’m supposed to be too modest to speak of. Well, I’m not. If you wanted a woman for a night, you could have one for a lot less money than you just gave me-perhaps one of the other girls who work here, as I’m sure you know. If you like me enough to give me the amount you gave-why, there’s a way for a man to share that much of what he has with a woman he likes, and only one way I know that’s got any legitimacy to it.” I saw pain flit across his features again, as it had that time before, but mixed, I thought, with a sort of longing, and though I knew it wasn’t the way to go about it, I couldn’t stop myself and plunged right in. “You could ask me to marry you, that’s how-well, goddam it, why don’t you ask me?”
“I’d give anything to,” he whispered.
“Spit it out, then. Why don’t you?”
His face fell, and his next words were so quiet I could barely make them out.
“I have angina, Joan.”
I had to rummage around in my head to remember angina, what it was, and finally placed it was some kind of heart trouble, and after getting connected up I said: “I don’t get the point, Mr. White. What’s angina got to do with it?”
“With angina, marriage is out. To you or anyone. As my doctor has warned me repeatedly, I can’t … be with a woman. He’s quite certain, my heart wouldn’t stand up to the strain. Or in other words, marriage, with you, for me, would be a sentence of death. That’s the fantastic torment I live in: I’ve never met a woman I’ve wanted more, I think about you to the point of distraction, of insanity we could say, but if I do about it what any normal man wants to do, I die.”
I stood there, not really believing him, thinking it was just an excuse, something he had cooked up as an out, a reason for keeping me from hoping for more from Earl K. White III than a mere cocktail waitress should-and then, suddenly, knowing it had to be true- and I don’t know what told me. His expression, perhaps: I’d never seen a man so downcast and frustrated and ashamed. And of course he’d already given me more than I had any right to hope for, and asked for nothing in return, in fact refused what little I’d offered. And I remembered the episode where the touch of my body had left him red-faced and out of breath, and I suddenly felt compassion. I mean, a surge of pity swept over me, so I went over and touched him, putting my hand on his back and giving him a pat. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I take back what I said. I didn’t realize.”
“I told you there was a reason.”
“You did, and I accept it. It explains everything.”
He sat there and I stood there, and for a moment things were awkward, as when two people are so overwhelmed by emotion they can’t think of things to say. But then my mouth got in it again, with just one last peep over what had bothered me earlier. “Just the same,” I banged at him, in a somewhat peevish way, “you could have asked me into your house. It’s a simply beautiful house, and the least you could do was let me look at it, just once.”
“There was a reason for that, too.”
“I’m a little fed up on reasons.”
“Casanova, somewhere in his memoirs, says a woman knows only one way of expressing gratitude. If that way had occurred to you, the consequences could have been catastrophic.”
“Casanova?”
“He, of all men, ought to know.”
“You think I might have taken that way?”
“If invited in, you might have.”
“And you couldn’t have resisted?”
“No, Joan, I’m not at all sure I could. And it would have been fatal.”
He waited a moment, to let that soak in, and went on: “You’d have been left with a corpse in your arms, and a check no bank would honor-not till my estate was probated, and your chances then would have been slim, extremely slim, considering the characters of my stepchildren. And I know how badly you need the money, Joan. I wanted you to have it. So I had you sit in the car, I took no chances.”
“I see.”
“It’s a fiendish sentence to live under. I realize we haven’t known each other for very long, but there is no mistaking how you make me feel, and I know how rare it is, and if it weren’t for this thing I’d give my eyes to marry you, to be with you morning, noon, and night-all the time. But it can’t be.”