I was about to pass Hans Wagner’s place, and I slowed my steps thinking that just possibly Lamb might be there. Hans lived alone there and Lamb wouldn’t, of course, be there unless a crowd had gone to Hans’s from the inn or somewhere. I stopped to listen and there wasn’t a sound, so the crowd wasn’t there. I went on.
The road branched; there were several ways from here and I might miss her. I took the shortest route, the one she’d be most likely to take if she came directly home from town. It went past Carter Brent’s place, but that was dark. There was a light on at Sylvia’s place, though, and guitar music. I knocked on the door and while I was waiting I realized that it was the phonograph and not a live guitarist. It was Segovia playing Bach, the Chaconne from the D-Minor Partita, one of my favorites. Very beautiful, very fine-boned and delicate, like Lamb.
Sylvia came to the door and answered my question. No, she hadn’t seen Lamb. And no, she hadn’t been at the inn, or anywhere. She’d been home all afternoon and evening, but did I want to drop in for a drink? I was tempted—more by Segovia than by the drink—but I thanked her and went on.
I should have turned around and gone back home instead, because for no reason I was getting into one of my black moods. I was illogically annoyed because I didn’t know where Lamb was; if I found her now I’d probably quarrel with her, and I hate quarreling. Not that we do, often. We’re each pretty tolerant and understanding—of little things, at least. And Lamb’s not having come home yet was still a little thing.
But I could hear the blaring jukebox when I was still a long way from the inn and it didn’t lighten my mood any. I could see in the window now and Lamb wasn’t there, not at the bar. But there were still the booths, and besides, someone might know where she was. There were two couples at the bar. I knew them; Charlie and Eve Chandler and Dick Bristow with a girl from Los Angeles whom I’d met but whose name I couldn’t remember. And one fellow, stag, who looked as though he was trying to look like a movie scout from Hollywood. Maybe he really was one.
I went in and, thank God, the jukebox stopped just as I went through the door. I went over to the bar, glancing at the line of booths; Lamb wasn’t there.
I said, “Hi,” to the four of them that I knew, and to the stag if he wanted to take it to cover him, and to Harry, behind the bar. “Has Lamb been here?” I asked Harry.
“Nope, haven’t seen her, Wayne. Not since six; that’s when I came on. Want a drink?”
I didn’t, particularly, but I didn’t want it to look as though I’d come solely for Lamb, so I ordered one.
“How’s the painting coming?” Charlie Chandler asked me.
He didn’t mean any particular painting and he wouldn’t have known anything about it if he had. Charlie runs the local bookstore and—amazingly—he can tell the difference between Thomas Wolfe and a comic book, but he couldn’t tell the difference between an El Greco and an Al Capp. Don’t misunderstand me on that; I like Al Capp.
So I said, “Fine,” as one always says to a meaningless question, and took a swallow of the drink that Harry had put in front of me. I paid for it and wondered how long I’d have to stay in order to make it not too obvious that I’d come only to look for Lamb.
For some reason, conversation died. If anybody had been talking to anybody before I came in, he wasn’t now. I glanced at Eve and she was making wet circles on the mahogany of the bar with the bottom of a martini goblet. The olive stirred restlessly in the bottom and I knew suddenly that was the color, the exact color I’d wanted to mix an hour or two ago just before I’d decided not to try to paint. The color of an olive moist with gin and vermouth. Just right for the main sweep of the biggest hill, shading darker to the right, lighter to the left. I stared at the color and memorized it so I’d have it tomorrow. Maybe I’d even try it tonight when I got back home; I had it now, daylight or no. It was right; it was the color that had to be there. I felt good; the black mood that had threatened to come on was gone.
But where was Lamb? If she wasn’t home yet when I got back, would I be able to paint? Or would I start worrying about her, without reason? Would I get that tightness in the pit of my stomach?
I saw that my glass was empty. I’d drunk too fast. Now I might as well have another one, or it would be too obvious why I’d come. And I didn’t want people—not even people like these—to think I was jealous of Lamb and worried about her. Lamb and I trusted each other implicitly. I was curious as to where she was and I wanted her back, but that was all. I wasn’t suspicious of where she might be. They wouldn’t realize that.
I said, “Harry, give me a martini.” I’d had so few drinks that it wouldn’t hurt me to mix them, and I wanted to study that color, intimately and at close hand. It was going to be the central color motif; everything would revolve around it.
Harry handed me the martini. It tasted good. I swished around the olive and it wasn’t quite the color I wanted, a little too much in the brown, but I still had the idea. And I still wanted to work on it tonight, if I could find Lamb. If she was there, I could work; I could get the planes of color in, and tomorrow I could mode them, shade them.
But unless I’d missed her, unless she was already home or on her way there, it wasn’t too good a chance. We knew dozens of people; I couldn’t try every place she might possibly be. But there was one other fairly good chance, Mike’s Club, a mile down the road, out of town on the other side. She’d hardly have gone there unless she was with someone who had a car, but that could have happened. I could phone there and find out.
I finished my martini and nibbled the olive and then turned around to walk over to the phone booth. The wavy-haired man who looked as though he might be from Hollywood was just walking back toward the bar from the jukebox and it was making preliminary scratching noises. He’d dropped a coin into it and it started to play something loud and brassy. A polka, and a particularly noisy and obnoxious one. I felt like hitting him one in the nose, but I couldn’t even catch his eye as he strolled back and took his stool again at the bar. And anyway, he wouldn’t have known what I was hitting him for. But the phone booth was just past the jukebox and I wouldn’t hear a word, or be heard, if I phoned Mike’s.
A record takes about three minutes, and I stood one minute of it and that was enough. I wanted to make that call and get out of there, so I walked toward the booth and I reached around the jukebox and pulled the plug out of the wall. Quietly, not violently at all. But the sudden silence was violent, so violent that I could hear, as though she’d screamed them, the last few words of what Eve Chandler had been saying to Charlie Chandler. Her voice pitched barely to carry above the din of brass—but she might as well have used a public address system once I’d pulled the jukebox’s plug.
“… may be at Hans’s.” Bitten off suddenly, as if she’d intended to say more.
Her eyes met mine and hers looked frightened.
I looked back at Eve Chandler. I didn’t pay any attention to Golden Boy from Hollywood; if he wanted to make anything of the fact that I’d ruined his dime, that was his business and he could start it. I went into the phone booth and pulled the door shut. If that jukebox started again before I’d finished my call, it would be my business, and I could start it. The jukebox didn’t start again.