"What do you think?"
"I think I get dinner. Wear your grey suit."
"It's practically worn through at the elbows."
"Wear your grey suit. I like it."
"O.K."
"What'll I wear?" For the first moment in the conversation Peggy's voice became uncertain, little-girlish, worried. Michael laughed softly.
"What're you laughing at?" Peggy asked harshly.
"Say it again. Say 'What'll I wear?' again for me."
"Why?"
"Because it makes me laugh and remember you and makes me sorry and tender for you and all women living to hear you say, 'What'll I wear?'"
"My," said Peggy, very pleased, "you got out of the right side of the bed this morning, didn't you?"
"I certainly did."
"What'll I wear? The blue print or the beige suit with the cream blouse or the…"
"The blue print."
"It's so old."
"The blue print."
"All right. Hair up or down?"
"Down."
"But…"
"Down!"
"God," Peggy said. "I'll look like something you dragged out of the Harlem River. Aren't you afraid some of your friends'll see us?"
"I'll take my chances," Michael said.
"And don't drink too much…"
"Now, Peggy…"
"You'll be going around saying goodbye to all your good friends…"
"Peggy, on my life…"
"They'll pour you into the Army from a bucket. Be careful."
"I'll be careful."
"Glad I called?" Peggy sounded again like a flirtatious girl languishing behind a fan at the high-school prom.
"I'm glad you called," Michael said.
"That's all I wanted to know. Drink your orange juice." And she hung up.
Michael put the receiver down slowly, smiling, remembering Peggy. He sat for a moment, thinking of her.
Then he got up and went out through the living-room to the kitchen. He put some water on to boil and measured out three heaped spoonsful of coffee, his nose grateful for the ever-beautiful smell of the coffee imprisoned in the tin. He drank his orange-juice in long cold gulps, between getting out the bacon and the eggs and cutting the bread for toast. He hummed wordlessly as he prepared his breakfast. He liked getting his own breakfasts, private in his single house, with his pyjamas flapping about him and the floor cool under his bare feet. He put five strips of bacon in a large pan and set a small flame going under it.
The telephone rang in the bedroom.
"Oh, hell," Michael said. He moved the bacon pan off the flame and walked through the living-room, noticing, almost unconsciously, as he did again and again, what a pleasant room it was, with its high ceilings and broad windows facing each other, and the books piled into the bookcases all over the room, with the faded spectrum of the publishers' linen covers making a subtle and lovely pattern, wavering along the walls. Michael picked up the phone and said, "Hello."
"Hollywood, California, calling Mr Whitacre."
"This is Mr Whitacre."
Then Laura's voice, across the continent, still deep and artful.
"Michael? Michael, darling…"
Michael sighed a little. "Hello, Laura."
"It's seven o'clock in the morning in California," Laura said, a little accusingly. "I got up at seven in the morning to speak to you."
"Thanks," Michael said.
"I heard about it," Laura said vehemently. "I think it's awful. Making you a private."
Michael grinned. "It's not so awful. There're a lot of people in the same boat."
"Almost everybody out here," Laura said, "is at least a major."
"I know," Michael said. "Maybe that's a good reason for being a private."
"Stop being so damned special!" Laura snapped. "You'll never be able to make it. I know what your stomach's like."
"My stomach," Michael said gravely, "will just have to join the Army with the rest of me."
"You'll be sorry the day after tomorrow."
"Probably." Michael nodded.
"You'll be in the guardhouse in two days," Laura said loudly.
"A sergeant'll say something you don't like and you'll hit him. I know you."
"Listen," Michael said patiently. "Nobody hits sergeants. Not me or anybody else."
"You haven't taken an order from anybody in your whole life, Michael. I know you. That was one of the reasons it was impossible to live with you. After all, I lived with you for three years and I know you better than any…"
"Yes, Laura, darling," Michael said patiently.
"We may be divorced and all that," Laura went on rapidly, "but there's no one in the whole world I'm fonder of. You know that."
"I know that," Michael said, believing her.
"And I don't want to see you killed." She began to cry.
"I won't be killed," Michael said gently.
"And I hate to think of you being ordered about. It's wrong…"
Michael shook his head, wondering once again at the gap between the real world and a woman's version of the world.
"Don't you worry about me, Laura, darling," he said. "And it was very sweet of you to call me."
"I've decided something," Laura said firmly. "I'm not going to take any more of your money."
Michael sighed. "Have you got a job?"
"No. But I'm seeing MacDonald at MGM this afternoon, and…"
"O.K. When you work, you don't take any money. That's fine." Michael rushed past the point, not letting Laura speak. "I read in the paper you're going to get married. That true?"
"No. Maybe after the war. He's going into the Navy. He's going to work in Washington."
"Good luck," Michael murmured.
"There was an assistant director from Republic they took right into the Air Corps. First Lieutenant. He won't leave Santa Anita for the duration. Public relations. And you're going to be a private…"
"Please, Laura darling," Michael said. "This call will cost you five hundred dollars."
"You're a queer, stupid man and you always were."
"Yes, darling."
"Will you write me where they station you?"
"Yes."
"I'll come and visit you."
"That will be wonderful." Michael had a vision of his beautiful ex-wife in her mink coat and her almost famous face and figure, waiting outside Fort Sill, Oklahoma, with the soldiers whistling at her as they went past.
"I feel all mixed up about you." Laura was crying softly and honestly. "I always did and I always will."
"I know what you mean." Michael remembered the way Laura looked fixing her hair in front of a mirror and how she looked when dancing and during the holidays they'd had. For a moment he was moved by the distant tears, and regretted the lost years behind him, the years without war, the years without separations…
"What the hell," he said softly. "They'll probably put me in an office somewhere."
"You won't let them," she sobbed. "I know you. You won't let them."
"You don't let the Army do anything. It does what it wants and you do what it wants. The Army isn't Warner Brothers, darling."
"Promise me… promise me…" The voice rose and fell and then there was a click and the connection was cut off. Michael looked at the phone and put it down.
Finally he got up and went into the kitchen and finished cooking his breakfast. He carried the bacon and eggs and toast and coffee, black and thick, into the living-room and put it down on the wide table set in front of the great sunny window.
He turned the radio on. Brahms was being played, a piano concerto. The music poured out of the machine, round, disputatious and melancholy. He ate slowly, smearing marmalade thickly on the toast, enjoying the buttery taste of the eggs and the strong taste of the coffee, proud of his cooking, listening with pleasure to the mournful, sweet thunder of the radio.
He opened the Times at the theatrical page. It was full of rumours of endless plays and endless actors. Each morning he read the theatrical page of the Times with growing depression. Each morning the recital of baffled hope and money lost and sorrowful critical reproach of his profession made him feel a little silly and restless.