Bessie Bright had a husband named Louis, who always had money, never was in hock, lived twice as well as the Dumbs, and all because she paid cash, kept things, gave the stores no trouble, and got the breaks. I made it clear that Dora Dumb could not trade at Dillon, Inc. That was to be an exclusive place, reserved to Bessie Bright and her friends. And the point I was trying to put over was, that if you took the Dillon Variety Budget Dinner, you got a different meal every night in the month, but with no daily order to fool with, no mind-changing at the last minute, no Dora Dumb nonsense, we could put it on the table cheaper than Bessie could cook it, so cheap as a matter of fact, and with so little work, that Bessie needn’t keep a maid, and Louis, Jr. could have that car. I got pretty well along with it, at least in my mind. Then I went over to New Orleans and lined up my dough. I picked the biggest bank on Canal Street, went in, sat down with the cashier, and told him I wanted the name of a million dollars, “available for investment purposes.” That hit him funny, as I expected it would, and we took it easy a few minutes, he being respectful to the uniform, but plenty shy of the idea. After a few minutes he said: “Major Dillon, I’m sure the investment you have in mind is a sound one, at least to your satisfaction, and well, you know, O.K. But I can’t be sending you to anybody to—”
“Nobody’s asking you to.”
“That’s what you said.”
“I asked you for a name. I didn’t ask you for a reference, anything of the kind. Naturally I’ll leave you out of it.”
“Yes, but even so—”
“Tell you what we’ll do.” I took a quarter out of my pocket, laid it down on his blotter. “There’s a two-bit piece, with the eagle on one side and George Washington on the other. Now you get yourself called outside, to have a drink at that far water cooler. Before you go, you write a name on a slip of paper, this scratch pad here. When you come back it’s gone, and I am. If I don’t land the million dollars, you keep the two bits, and it’s a comical little story for you when you’ve had a couple of these Sazerac cocktails they make down here. But if you land him, you pay me. Of course, I may use your bank to handle my money — that depends on how the million dollars feels. But it could turn out that way. Just a long shot, but worth two bits, I’d say, as a gamble.”
He laughed again, wrote something on the scratch pad, went out. It was just one word, when I got on the street with it, a French name I’ll call Douvain. Twenty minutes later I’d found out who Douvain was, and that afternoon I was in his office. I didn’t talk much, or try to close a deal, or anything crazy, or big. I spoke my piece in five or six minutes, told my idea, said I hoped to interest him if he’d reserve time for me whenever convenient. I made it clear I wanted a great deal of money, “at least a million dollars — if you don’t think in figures that big, say so and I’ll blow.” When I had it said, I shut up and sat there, letting him look me over. I guess it helped, what I’d learned standing reveille in the Army, to hold it an hour if I had to, without twitching my nose or coughing or scratching my leg, but I didn’t make any vaudeville show out of it, giving an imitation of a statue of Lincoln, anything like that. I just let him study me, and looked out at the street, up on the wall at the signed pictures of four or five presidents, and at his bookcases. In about five minutes he picked up the telephone, told his operator to get his home. He spoke in French, to his wife, and it seemed to me, from the basic I’d studied in camp, he was talking about me, and about dinner. When he hung up he said: “Major, you take me by surprise. I hadn’t expected to go into the restaurant business — or the polar storage business — or the farm business — or the advertising business — I’m a little confused which business you have in mind for me. But I have a feeling — some peculiar feeling of confidence you communicate to me. So I have spoken with my wife, and we shall be very glad if you can come to our home tonight, for dinner. Yes? At seven thirty?”
He spoke with a slight Creole accent, and didn’t say seven thirty but “seven sirty.” I didn’t know it then, but I’d caught him on his weakness when I began talking food. I said yes, went on back to the Roosevelt and had myself pressed and shaved and shined and powdered till I didn’t know myself, and showed up at his mansion on St. Charles Avenue at seven thirty sharp, for one of those dinner-coat things, with cocktails and lobsters and wine. By ten o’clock, I knew I was in, even if it was all in the French language. A girl played, and I sang the only French song I knew — “Bonjour, Suzon,” a thing Miss Eleanor had taught me for an encore. I went out of there with my future set.
As I walked to my car, it was one of those autumn nights they have no place in the world but Louisiana, soft, balmy, and clear, so the air has something in it that sets you nuts. I inhaled it, and as I looked up, there in a magnolia tree was the moth.
All that night it kept sweeping over me, the memory of what Hannah had said, that what had tripped me wasn’t only the breaks I’d got. It was something else, the romantic in me, that had kicked the beans into the fire twice, once in Baltimore when I’d thrown up the hotel and everything else for a girl that hadn’t even taken the ribbons off her hair yet, and again in California for the memory of her. And I faced it out with myself then, once more, lying awake in the Roosevelt Hoteclass="underline" What was I going to do, leave that ghost to haunt me, and maybe louse me once more, or what? It was no trouble to remember what she looked like. I had dreamed about her, every few months, from the night I had left her, and always she looked the same, sunburned and blue-eyed and light-haired, and always twelve years old. I began to ask myself if I should go back to Maryland, or wherever she was, and get it over with. Either I’d still be in love with her, and maybe we could begin where we left off, or I’d be cured with one look, and that would be that. I asked myself if it was all imagination, if I was just being a fool, if I should go to sleep and forget her. But that night in the car, more than twelve years before, driving to hell and gone all over the face of the map, wasn’t my imagination, and being thrown out of Seven-Star wasn’t, either. I slept, of course, after a while, and saw Douvain the next day, and checked over my finances with him, as to whether I was in any personal need, as he wouldn’t be able to take up anything in detail until after the first of the year, which was two or three months away. It pleased him I was well enough heeled, at least for a major in the Army, as I still had quite a lot of the California money, several thousand as a matter of fact. He asked me questions about that and I told him the truth, anyhow that I’d been kicked out on “a difference of opinion about matrimony.” He laughed, as a Frenchman would. I had him solid, but somewhere in my belly I was uneasy. I left New Orleans after lunch, and for the night holed up at the Cherokee in Tallahassee. I got going early, and made the De Soto, in Savannah, in time for late lunch.