Lalie’s marriage to Karl Brauer, a Reading lawyer, was quick and ostentatious, to make everyone forget about George Lockwood. The Fenstermachers did not even send George Lockwood a post-nuptial announcement of the marriage, but he read about it in the Reading Eagle and two Philadelphia newspapers. The Eagle provided the Karl Brauers’ home address on North Fifth Street, and George Lockwood paid a call one morning when he returned from his wedding trip. “I wish to see Mrs. Brauer,” he told the maid.
“Mrs. Brauer, or Mr. Brauer? If you want him, he’s at the office down Penn Street.”
“No, this is a matter that concerns Mrs. Brauer.”
“I’ll tell her. Just step inside.”
In a few minutes Lalie came downstairs. “Good morning, Mrs. Brauer,” he said quickly, for the benefit of the maid. “I’m from Wanamakers.”
She was startled, but the maid, hovering in the hall, could not see her face. “Oh, from Wanamakers. Well, come in here and we can talk.”
He followed her into the front parlor, a long narrow room that had only one entrance. “Did you bring the samples?” she said.
“I have them here in my pocket,” he said.
She lowered her voice. “Are you out of your head? Make it quick, whatever you want to say, and don’t ever come here again.”
“I won’t stay long.”
“You got married,” she said.
“Yes, just the same as you. I got married. And I wish I hadn’t. Not only for my sake, but for hers.”
“Why tell me your troubles?”
“You’re part of my troubles. I want you.”
“You’re too late for that, George. I’m a married woman now and with a good husband.”
“I have a good wife, but I still want you. And I’ve found out what I want to know. You still want me.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Go away,” she said.
“It’s too soon to go away. I’m supposed to be showing you some samples.”
“You must be out of your head.”
“In certain ways I am. The blue will cost a little more than the green, Mrs. Brauer.”
“The blue is more expensive? I didn’t know that. She’s on her way to the basement now, but you go, hear?”
“I’ll go, but I’ll be back.”
“I won’t let you in. I’ll leave word, you’re not to be let in.”
“Stop this talk, Lalie! We’re not children, and I’m serious. I’m leaving now, but I’m not giving up. When you’re ready to meet me, send me a note to the Gibbsville Club.”
“Meet you? Meet you where?”
“Anywhere. Here, when Brauer goes away. He has to go away sometime.”
“Here? In this house? That woman has a room here, she never goes out.”
“Discharge her and hire somebody that goes home at night.”
“Go away, George. You’ve gone clean out of your mind. Karl would kill the two of us. He loves me.”
“Don’t you think I love you?”
“No! No! If you did you’d leave me alone.”
“If I don’t hear from you in two weeks I’m coming back.”
“Please, George. Don’t ever come back.”
He left her and walked quickly down Fifth Street to the Square, exulting in her weakness and the restoration of his confidence. In eight days there was a note from her: “Nine o’clock Thursday night. Alley gate back of house. Do not come by 5th Street.—L.”
There was still some daylight at nine o’clock, and he thought as he made his way to her house that it would have been wiser to enter the house from the tree-darkened street than from an alley where there would be no trees. But he obeyed her instructions, such as they were, and boldly opened the gate in the alley fence, walked up the brick path toward the back porch, and, not to his surprise, as he put a foot on the porch step the door swung open. Now, however, he was in for a surprise: the timid, nervously excited girl he expected on this first rendezvous was all in his imagination. Lalie closed the door and embraced him, held her mouth up to be kissed, and clung to him for a moment in a way that guaranteed that this would not be one of their frustrate raptures of the past. Once she had made up her mind to meet him in these circumstances, she had committed herself to the full. “We go upstairs,” she said, her first words, and she led him by the hand.
The bed was turned down, there was light from a gas fixture on the wall. She pulled open his cravat and undid the top buttons of his white linen waistcoat. “I can do that much more quickly than you can,” he said.
“Do it, then,” she said. She sat in a straight chair and watched him. “Almost as much clothes as a woman. I’m nearer ready than you are.”
“I kind of guessed that,” he said.
“Now me,” she said, and stood up and unbuttoned her gingham dress, all she was wearing. They embraced again, and he was made frantic by her directness, the pressures of her fingers. “I think we better get in,” she said. She lay in the bed and cupped her breasts in her hands, as though she were aiming them at him. “Be like a baby,” she said.
“I was going to,” he said.
She put her hands on the top of his head for a little while, and then some thought, some limit of nervous control, made her abandon tender sensuality. “You. Give it to me. Get in, get in,” she said. He moved quickly, but he was barely inside her when she screeched. The words were not words, unless they were German, and his own orgasm was not much later than hers, but he had a distant thought and it was how lucky they had been not to attempt complete lovemaking in the Fenstermacher parlor in Lebanon. Climax did not end it for her. She now kissed him, his mouth, his eyes, his hands, his body, with loving tenderness. “Oh, I love you so, I love you so much,” she said.
“I love you, Lalie,” he said, and it was true.
They lay in peace for a while. “I’ve never seen you with your hair down,” he said. “It’s very pretty.”
“It covers my boobies. You don’t have any hair. Karl is like he was wearing a coat.” She smiled.
“What are you thinking?”
“You got me ready for Karl, but then Karl got me ready for you.”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
“You don’t want to talk about Karl so you don’t have to talk about her.”
“Why do we have to talk about them?”
“She isn’t enough for you, say?”
“Don’t talk about them, Lalie.”
“You’re chealous of Karl.”
“Yes.”
“Me too, of her,” she said. “All over him is black hair, even his back. But he isn’t enough for me, either, George. He loves me, but he hates me.”
“Why does he hate you? Someone else besides me?”
“No, no, no, no. Never. Only you. I tell him, have patience. Have patience. Downstairs he wants to do it and I go upstairs with him, but if I’m not ready right away, he can’t.”
“Well, he seems to have.”
“Oh, we do it. But I have to be in bed first. If I’m in bed, he comes home from work and sometimes he’ll do it with his clothes on. Just take it out and put it in me. I tell him have patience, everybody’s different. It’s because he’s like a bull, and he wants to be a bull. The men ask him when he’s going to have a baby, and he comes home angry. He wants to blame me, but he knows he can’t blame me, and that’s why he hates me often. If the men would shut up.”