Herb the bartender went down to the girl, seeing she’d finished her drink. He asked her if she’d like another. She hesitated and then caught my glance in the backbar mirror again and turned quickly away and said, “Yes, please.” Her voice was soft, husky, almost a whisper.
I knew then that I’d better get out of there, fast. All kinds of crazy thoughts and ideas were going through my head. I drained my glass, started to get up and somebody swatted me on the back. I wheeled angrily to look into Ronny Chernow’s handsome, grinning face.
“Hi, Kip,” he said. “Living dangerously, I see. Sitting in a cozy little bar, drinking cocktails and flirting with a pretty girl! Ah, you sly old dogs, you quiet ones, you never can tell about your type.”
I got very red. I started to tell Chernow that in the first place I wasn’t flirting, in the second place I was only thirty-one years old, at least a couple of years younger than he was. But he wasn’t even looking at me. He was staring at the girl at the end of the bar and smiling at her. He was looking at her the way guys like Ronny Chernow always look at girls, as though she wasn’t wearing anything; patronizingly, as though he was thinking: You’re not too bad, Baby. Maybe I’ll give you a great big break and go after you!
But the girl wasn’t paying any attention to him. Chernow turned back to me. He took hold of my arm. “Hey, you’re not running off so soon. Have another drink with me. Or will Momma spank you if you miss that first bus home?”
What can you say to a remark like this? If you deny it, then go, you make it sound true, anyhow. I thought about the girl at the bar. She was listening to this. The loud way Chernow always talked, she couldn’t help it.
I knew what Ronnie Chernow really thought about me: I was stuffy, not a sport, a guy who never had any fun, was regimented, never varied his routine – a man on a treadmill, going like hell but never getting anywhere. I didn’t care what Chernow thought about me. But I cared what I thought. And suddenly, crazily, I wondered if he was right. I had to prove that he wasn’t.
“Okay, Ronny,” I said. “If you’re buying. I hear you’re a tight man with a buck.”
That got him. Chernow was always talking about how much money he made and spent. “Me?” he said. “What are you talking about? Why, I spend more in one—” Then he stopped and grinned, realizing I’d turned the needle around on him. “Okay, Kip,” he said.
While Herb made the second Manhattan, I looked at the clock. It was five-twenty. By now, I should have been a block away, on my way home, on the way to that five-thirty-seven Express. I knew now that I was going to miss it. It was the damnedest feeling. Maybe it was silly, but I felt a little sick and scared, apprehensive. In the five years we’d been living in Wildwood, I hadn’t missed that bus. I’d never stayed in town one night, even. Now that I realized that, it seemed a little ridiculous. At the same time I felt a slight exultation, a sort of breaking loose feeling, of strange freedom. I drained half of the Manhattan at one gulp. I looked at Ronny Chernow in the mirror behind the bar.
He was big, handsome, in a red-faced, square-jawed sort of way. His carefully tousled, boyishly curly hair made him look younger than he was. A lot of the girls in our office were crazy about him. He was the vigorous, aggressive, breezy type and he was always kidding around with the girls and always letting hints drop to other guys in the place that he’d dated a number of them and found them vulnerable.
He was the business manager of Emcee Publications and I don’t know what he made, but it must have been somewhere around ten thousand a year. But he spent and dressed as though his salary was three times that. Being single, though, with nobody else’s way to pay through life but his own, I guess he could do that.
It was hard to like the man. He was big-mouthed and overpowering. But it was just as hard not to admire him. He was everything that I was not and I thought about that, sitting here. At least Ronny Chernow had color. I was drab. His kind of life was excitement. Mine was boredom, monotony. Men like Chernow felt sorry for worms like me.
I began to rebel against that. I told myself: I’m going to have a little change. I deserve it. I’m way overdue. I’ll show this big, handsome jerk next to me that I can have fun, too. I’ll call Fran and tell her I won’t be home until late. I’ll stay here, have another drink or two and then go someplace for dinner. Later, I’ll go to the fights at the Garden.
“Ronny,” I said. “You’re a real round-town boy. Where’s a good place to have dinner? I’m staying in town tonight.”
His thick handsome brows rose as though I’d said I was going out to stick up a bank. “What!” he said. “You’re finally going to break away from Momma’s apron strings? Congratulations, kid. I’d just about given you up. Maybe you are human, after all.” He slapped me on the back again. “Where you going? Got a date?”
I began to enjoy this. I wanted it to last a little longer. I began to almost like Chernow. “Now, look,” I said and winked at him. “Have I asked you where you’re going tonight, who you’re going to be with? Does Gimbels tell Macy’s. It’s none of my business. Maybe this isn’t any of yours.”
He looked dubious but didn’t press the point. We finished our drinks and Chernow said: “Well, since you don’t have to run, let’s do this again.” He flipped his empty glass with the back of his forefinger.
I didn’t answer. I looked at the clock. It was five-thirty. I should call Fran. Somehow I dreaded that. That would be the final break with my routine. I hated to make it. Yet I had to call her. Then I remembered that she wouldn’t be expecting me until six-thirty. She wouldn’t leave to meet the bus at Wildwood until six-twenty. I still had plenty of time for that call. I watched Herb make two more drinks. Then I looked toward the glass and saw the girl at the end of the bar staring at me again. Chernow noticed, too.
“Hey!” he said. “That baby is giving you the eye. If she even half looked at me like that, I’d be down there sitting on her lap by now.”
“Well,” I said, sarcastically, “you’re the Casanova type, anyhow.”
He missed the sarcasm. “Listen,” he said. His eyes appraised me. “You could do all right, too, if you’d give yourself half a chance. You’re a good-looking guy – a little on the slim side, but not bad. You’re too timid, though. Women like aggressive guys. You gotta go after them. You—”
“Hey!” I broke in. He was beginning to embarrass me. “Not to change the subject, but did you find out from the advertising department how come we lost that second cover ad?”
“They’ve switched to the Tripub Comics group for the next six months. But they’ll be back as soon as Tri’s circulation drops and you can goose ours up again. How about getting on the ball and doing that, huh, kid?”
“Sure,” I began to burn a little. As editor of Emcee’s Comic magazine group, I was responsible for circulation. “That’s easy. Just get the old man to allow me five bucks a page more for the artists and a dollar a page more for the writers. Better art and better stories are what the kids are buying. I do the best I can on the lousy budget I got.”
“I suppose,” Chernow finished his drink, swung around on his stool. He was looking at the legs of the girl at the end of the bar. He made a whistling sound. “Man, look at those legs!” he said. “Kip, kid, if you don’t make that before you leave here, I’ll disown you . . . Well, I got to run. Have a good time, boy. Live dangerously!”