“Of course you can.”
“Can I?” Her eyes challenged him. “What you said. I’m not a little kid. I’m used to living a certain way, having a certain amount of freedom.”
“There are no bars on the windows, Karen.”
“I might, you know, stay out all night.”
“I think I could live with that.”
“I might even want to bring someone home with me.
“Well, I occasionally bring someone home myself. I won’t get upset if you don’t.”
“Do you really mean it?”
“I think so, yes. You have the right to live your own life, Karen. I can’t think why you shouldn’t have the right inside this house as well as out of it. What’s so funny?”
“I was picturing the four of us at breakfast. You and someone and me and someone. Do you have someone in particular?”
“Not at the moment.”
“Well, whoever she is, remind her to take her pill. You mean it, don’t you? I can stay here?”
“Oh, baby,” he said.
Seven
Sully closed the bar a little earlier than usual. The crowd was light, and on such nights he rarely remained open until the legal closing hour. While the few remaining customers finished their drinks he approached one of the waitresses and told her to stick around afterward, he wanted to talk to her. He spoke in a low voice and talked out of the side of his mouth.
“I don’t know,” she said, but he was already walking away and gave no sign of having heard her.
When everyone else had gone he took her in his arms and kissed her. She did not exactly resist but he felt the stiffness of her shoulders. She was a big South Philadelphia girl with high Slavic cheekbones and a flat forehead. He put a hand on her back between her shoulder blades and ran it slowly down to her buttocks. He drew her toward him, kissing her mouth again, and the lower part of her body first moved against him, then pushed stubbornly back against his hand.
He released her. “C’mon,” he said.
“I don’t know about this.”
He ignored her and she followed him to his office. It was a small room that contained a heavy Mosler safe, a small maple kneehole desk with matching chair, three other straight chairs, and a long, deep sofa upholstered in dark-red plush. The walls were bare except for two calendars from liquor distributors and a few dozen eight-by-ten glossy photos. Periodically a minor celebrity would present Sully with an autographed photo. He always responded with effusive thanks and a drink on the house, and later he pinned the unframed photo to his office wall and forgot about it.
He closed and locked the office door and spread a towel on the couch. The girl watched him do this, her face stolid and expressionless. “I don’t know,” she said again.
He straightened up from the couch and grinned at her. “What do you have to know? You want a drink?”
“No.” “C’mere.”
“Just like that.”
“Look, don’t stay if you don’t want to.”
“And find some place else to work, huh.”
“Did I ever say that? What the hell’s the matter with you tonight?”
“Maybe I got my monthly.”
“Not you. Your forehead breaks out when you get your period.” She flushed. “Give me credit, I notice things. You want to go, the door’s over there. But don’t give me maybe you got your monthly.”
He went over and embraced her again. When he touched her breast she began to respond and was on the point of letting herself go. Then she went rigid and he let go of her and looked at her. She wouldn’t meet his eyes.
“You enjoyed yourself the other times,” he said.
“Yeah.”
“So what’s different now?”
“What’s different is I been seeing this person.”
“So?”
“So he wouldn’t like it.”
“Tell you what. I won’t tell him if you don’t.”
“I’m seeing him later tonight. You probably know who it is.”
“I probably do, and his shift don’t end until four so you got the time.”
“That’s him.”
“Listen, he’s married himself. You think he’s saving it all for you? Because why kid yourself?”
“I don’t know. Going from you to him.”
“You even got time for a shower in between, kid.” He reached for her confidently, put one hand on her shoulder and the other between her legs. Her eyes closed and the muscles in her jaw went slack. “Just tell me this don’t do a thing for you,” he said, “and you can walk right out the door.”
“Oh, shit,” she said. “Who am I kidding?” He let her go, and she began unbuttoning her uniform.
He dropped her at her rooming house in Lambertville and drove back across the river to his own house. The lights were on in the living room and bedroom. When he put the car in the garage he saw that her little red. Alfa-Romeo was missing. He went directly to the bedroom and looked immediately in the closet. Her dresses were still there. That meant she would be back.
He switched on the television set and sat down on the bed to watch it. There was a remote-control unit, and he switched from channel to channel for fifteen minutes but couldn’t pay attention to any of it. He went downstairs and poured some applejack and sat in the living room in front of the picture window, sipping applejack and waiting.
At three o’clock he went upstairs and got into bed. When he gave up and put on the light it was not quite three thirty. He’d thought it was much later. He got up and put on pajamas and a robe and went downstairs, but after a few minutes he felt uncomfortable dressed that way and went upstairs to change back into the clothes he had worn earlier. Then he returned to the living room to wait for her.
A few nights ago he had come home to an unlit house. He had undressed silently in the darkness and got in bed beside her. He was almost asleep when she spoke his name.
He said, “Hell, I tried not to wake you.”
“I was awake.”
“You didn’t say anything.”
“No, I didn’t.” She put on the bedside lamp, “We have to talk.”
“In the morning, huh?”
“I was thinking you should see a doctor.”
“Come on, don’t give me all that in the middle of the night. I break my back all day—”
“Well, it’s either you or me, and you say it isn’t me, so who does that leave? So maybe you see a doctor, and he gives you a shot of something and it’s all right again.”
“It doesn’t work that way.”
“Look, are you a doctor? How do you know?”
“I don’t have to see a doctor. It’s a temporary thing, it happens to everybody. Look, Melanie, you get satisfaction, don’t you?”
“Yeah, but you don’t.”
“So maybe that’s my problem.”
“And it’s not my problem knowing I can’t do a thing for my own husband? That’s not my problem?”
“Jesus, how many times do I have to tell you—”
“Have you had this problem before, Sully?”
He hesitated, but only briefly. “Well, of course I have. After a certain age it happens to everybody from time to time. A youngster in his twenties, that’s all he thinks about. You get older and other things get on your mind, business and taxes and one thing or another, and on top of working hard you can’t unwind and for a while, you got a problem. That’s all there is to it. Now can we get some sleep?”
They left it at that, but he got little sleep that night. There were more questions that she had not asked but would not forget. And now he sat in the darkened living room waiting for her and wondering what he would say to her when she came home. The sky was light when her little sports car turned into the driveway, and he was still sitting there and still had thought of nothing to say.