He shrugged.
A door slammed viciously. She had ducked into the bedroom where her clothes would be. He picked up his glasses from the table and put them on.
There was nothing to keep me here. I started to leave.
“Just a minute, Johnny. I trust you’re not sore.”
I turned. “What do you expect me to be?”
“After all, you had no prior claim on her.” Oscar smiled smugly. “We both saw her at the same time.”
He stood lean and slightly stooped and considerably older than I, and dully I wondered why everything came so easily to him – even this.
“Next time,” I said, “remember to lock the door.”
“I didn’t especially plan this. I asked her out to dinner. My intention was chiefly business. Chiefly, I say, for I must confess she had – ah – impressed me last night.”
This was his high-hat manner, the great man talking down to a lesser being. Some day, I thought wearily, I’d beat him up and then he’d kill me, unless I killed him first.
“You understand,” he was drawling, “that I was far from convinced that our problem with her would be solved by giving her two thousand dollars. I had to learn more about her. After dinner we came up here for a drink.” That smug smile again. “One thing led to another. You know how it is.”
I knew how it was – how I’d hoped it would be with me. And I knew that he had never for one single moment made the mistake of acting the little gentleman with her.
I had forgotten about the money in my pocket. I took it out and dropped it on the table.
“Georgie and Tiny weren’t keen about contributing,” I told him. “There’s just this thousand. You’ve earned the right to worry about the balance.”
“I doubt that it will be necessary to give her anything now. You see, I’ll be paying all her bills. She’s moving in with me.”
“How nice,” I said between my teeth. “I’ll be out of there as soon as I pack my bags.”
His head was bent over the money. “Take your time,” he said as he counted it into two piles. “I still have to tell Stella. Any time tomorrow will do.” He pushed one pile across the table. “Here’s yours.”
So I had my five hundred bucks back, and that was all I had. Before I was quite out of the apartment, Oscar, in his eagerness, was already going into the bedroom where Abby was.
I went out quietly.
That night I slept in a hotel. I stayed in bed most of the morning, smoking cigarettes and looking up at the ceiling. Then I shaved and dressed and had lunch and went to Oscar’s apartment for my clothes.
I found Stella all packed and about to leave. She was alone in the apartment. I could guess where Oscar was.
“Hello, Johnny,” she said. “I’m leaving for good.”
She wasn’t as upset as I’d expected. She was sitting in the living room with her legs crossed and taking a final drink of Oscar’s liquor.
“I know,” I said. “When’s she moving in?”
“Tonight, I guess.” She looked into her glass. “You know, the minute she walked into this room the other night I had a feeling. Something in the way Oscar looked at her.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
She shrugged. “I’m not sure I am. He was too damn bossy.”
I went into the guest bedroom and packed my two bags. When I came out, Stella was still there.
“Johnny,” she said, “have you any plans?”
“No.”
“I called up a woman I know. She owns a rooming house off Columbus Avenue. She says she has a nice furnished apartment to let on the second floor, with kitchenette and bath. She says the room is large and airy and nicely furnished. A young married couple just moved out.”
“Are you taking it?”
“I think I will.” She uncrossed her knees and pulled her skirt over them. “Two people can be very comfortable.”
I looked at her sitting there rather primly with eyes lowered – a placid, cozy, cuddly woman with a bosom made for a man to rest his weary head on. She wasn’t Abby, but Abby was a ruined dream, and Stella was real.
“You and me?” I murmured.
“If you want to, Johnny.”
I picked up my bags. “Well, why not?” I said.
Stella was very nice. We weren’t in love with each other, but we liked each other and got along, which was more than could be said of a lot of couples living together.
We weren’t settled a week in the rooming house near Columbus Avenue when Oscar phoned. Stella answered and spoke to him. I dipped the newspaper I was reading and listened to her say we’d be glad to come over for a drink that evening.
I said, “Wait a minute.”
She waved me silent and told Oscar we’d be there by nine. When she hung up, she dropped on my lap, cuddling the way only she could.
“Honey, I want to go just to show I don’t care for him any more and am not jealous of that Abby. You’re sweeter than he ever was. Why shouldn’t we all still be friends?”
“All right,” I said.
Oscar answered the doorbell when we got there. Heartily he shook Stella’s hand and then mine and said Abby was in the kitchen and would be out in a minute. Stella went into the kitchen to give Abby a hand and Oscar, with a hand on my shoulder, took me into the living room.
Georgie and Tiny were there. Georgie hadn’t brought his wife, of course; he kept her strictly away from this kind of social circle. They were drinking cocktails, even Tiny who was mostly a beer man.
“Looks like a caper reunion,” I commented dryly. “Except that there’s one missing. Though I guess we could consider that his widow represents him.”
There was an uncomfortable silence. Then Oscar said pleasantly, “Here, sour-puss, maybe this will cheer you up,” and thrust a cocktail at me.
I took it and sipped.
Then Abby came in, bearing a plate of chopped liver in one hand and a plate of crackers in the other. She had a warm smile for me – the impersonal greeting of a gracious hostess. Stella came behind her with potato chips and pretzels, and all of a sudden Stella’s jiggling irritated me no end.
Abby hadn’t changed. There was no reason why I had expected she would. She still made me think of golden fields and cool streams, as she had the first time I’d laid eyes on her.
I refilled my glass from the cocktail shaker and walked to a window and looked out at the Hudson River sparkling under the sinking sun.
“Now that was the way to handle her,” Georgie said. He had come up beside me; he was stuffing into his mouth a cracker smeared with liver. “Better than paying her off. Not only saves us dough. This way we’re sure of her.”
“That’s not why he did it.”
“Guess not. Who needs a reason to want a looker like that in his bed? But the result’s the same. And you got yourself Stella, so everybody’s happy.”
Everybody was happy and everybody was gay and got gayer as the whiskey flowed. But I wasn’t happy and the more I drank the less gay I acted. Long ago I’d learned that there was nowhere a man could be lonelier than at a party. I’d known it would be a mistake to come, and it was.
Suddenly Georgie’s face turned green and he made a dash for the bathroom. Oscar sneered that he’d never been able to hold his liquor and Tiny grumbled that the only drink fit for humans was beer and I pulled Stella aside and told her I wanted to go home.
She was not only willing; she was anxious. “Fact is, I don’t feel so good,” she said. “I need air.”
We said our goodbyes except to Georgie whom we could hear having a bad time in the bathroom. An empty hack approached when we reached the sidewalk and I whistled. In the hack, she clung to me, shivering, and complained, “My throat’s burning like I swallowed fire. My God, his whiskey wasn’t that bad!”