“Give me a package of Chesterfields,” Harry said to him. He held the package under the flap of his arm and opened it at one corner, took a cigarette out and put it in his mouth, then dropped the package in his pocket and lit the cigarette.
“What shape’s your boat in, Freddy?” he asked.
“I just had her on the ways,” Freddy said. “She’s in good shape.”
“Do you want to charter her?”
“What for?”
“For a trip across.”
“Not unless they put up the value of her.”
“What’s she worth?”
“Twelve hundred dollars.”
“I’ll charter her,” Harry said. “Will you trust me on her?”
“No,” Freddy told him.
“I’ll put up the house as security.”
“I don’t want your house. I want twelve hundred bucks up.”
“All right,” Harry said.
“Bring around the money,” Freddy told him.
“When Bee-lips comes in, tell him to wait for me,” Harry said and went out.
Chapter Fourteen
Out at the house Marie and the girls were having lunch.
“Hello Daddy,” said the oldest girl. “Here’s Daddy.”
“What have you got to eat?” Harry asked.
“We’ve got a steak,” Marie said.
“Somebody said they stole your boat, Daddy.”
“They found her,” Harry said.
Marie looked at him.
“Who found her?” she asked.
“The Customs.”
“Oh, Harry,” she said, full of pity.
“Isn’t it better they found her, Daddy?” asked the second one of the girls.
“Don’t talk while you’re eating,” Harry told her. “Where’s my dinner? What you waiting for?”
“I’m bringing it.”
“I’m in a hurry,” Harry said. “You girls eat up and get out. I got to talk to your mother.”
“Can we have some money to go to the show this aft, Daddy?”
“Why don’t you go swimming. That’s free.”
“Oh, Daddy, it’s too cold to go swimming, and we want to go to the show.”
“All right,” said Harry. “All right.”
When the girls were out of the room he said to Marie, “Cut it up, will you?”
“Sure, Honey.”
She cut the meat as for a small boy.
“Thanks,” Harry said. “I’m a hell of a goddamn nuisance, ain’t I? Those girls aren’t much, are they?”
“No, Hon.”
“Funny we couldn’t get no boys.”
“That’s because you’re such a man. That way it always comes out girls.”
“I ain’t no hell of a man,” Harry said. “But listen, I’m going on a hell of a trip.”
“Tell me about the boat.”
“They saw it from a truck. A high truck.”
“Shucks.”
“Worse than that. Shit.”
“Aw, Harry, don’t talk like that in the house.”
“You talk worse than that in bed sometimes.”
“That’s different. I don’t like to hear shit at my own table.”
“Oh, shit.”
“Aw, Honey, you feel bad,” Marie said. “No,” said Harry. “I’m just thinking.”
“Well, you think it out. I got confidence in you.” “I got confidence. That’s the only thing I have got.”
“Do you want to tell me about it?”
“No. Only don’t worry no matter what you hear.”
“I won’t worry.”
“Listen, Marie. Go on up to the upstairs trap and bring me the Thompson gun and look in that wooden box with the shells and see all the clips are filled.”
“Don’t take that.”
“I got to.”
“Do you want any boxes of shells?”
“No. I can’t load any clips. I got four clips.”
“Honey, you aren’t going on that kind of a trip?”
“I’m going on a bad trip.”
“Oh, God,” she said. “Oh, God, I wish you didn’t have to do these things.”
“Go on and get it and bring it down here. Get me some coffee.”
“O.K.,” said Marie. She leaned over the table and kissed him on the mouth.
“Leave me alone,” Harry said. “I got to think.”
He sat at the table and looked at the piano, the sideboard and the radio, the picture of September Morn, and the pictures of the cupids holding bows behind their heads, the shiny, real-oak table and the shiny real-oak chairs and the curtains on the windows and he thought, What chance have I to enjoy my home? Why am I back to worse than where I started? It’ll all be gone too if I don’t play this right. The hell it will. I haven’t got sixty bucks left outside of the house, but I’ll get a stake out of this. Those damn girls. That’s all that old woman and I could get with what we’ve got. Do you suppose the boys in her went before I knew her?
“Here it is,” said Marie, carrying it by the web sling strap. “They’re all full.”
“I got to go,” Harry said. He lifted the chunky weight of the dismounted gun in its oil-stained, canvas-web case. “Put it under the front seat of the car.”
“Good-bye,” Marie said.
“Good-bye, old woman.”
“I won’t worry. But please take care of yourself.”
“Be good.”
“Aw, Harry,” she said and held him tight against her.
“Let me go. I ain’t got no time.”
He patted her on the back with his arm stump.
“You and your loggerhead flipper.” she said. “Oh, Harry. Be careful.”
“I got to go. Good-bye, old woman.”
“Good-bye, Harry.”
She watched him go out of the house, tall, wide- shouldered, flat-backed, his hips narrow, moving, still, she thought, like some kind of animal, easy and swift and not old yet, he moves so light and smooth-like, she thought, and when he got in the car she saw him blonde, with the sunburned hair, his face with the broad mongol cheek bones, and the narrow eyes, the nose broken at the bridge, the wide mouth and the round jaw, and getting in the car he grinned at her and she began to cry. “His goddamn face,” she thought. “Every time I see his goddamn face it makes me want to cry.”
Chapter Fifteen
There were three tourists at the bar at Freddy’s and Freddy was serving them. One was a very tall, thin, wide-shouldered man, in shorts, wearing thick-lensed spectacles, tanned, with small closely trimmed sandy mustache. The woman with him had her blonde curly hair cut short like a man’s, a bad complexion, and the face and build of a lady wrestler. She wore shorts, too.
“Oh, nerts to you,” she was saying to the third tourist, who had a rather swollen reddish face, a rusty-colored mustache, a white cloth hat with a green celluloid visor, and a trick of talking with a rather extraordinary movement of his lips as though he were eating something too hot for comfort.
“How charming,” said the green-visored man. “I’d never heard the expression actually used in conversation. I thought it was an obsolete phrase, something one saw in print in—er—the funny papers but never heard.”
“Nerts, nerts, double nerts to you,” said the lady wrestler lady in a sudden access of charm, giving him the benefit of her pimpled profile.
“How beautiful,” said the green-visored man.
“You put it so prettily. Isn’t it from Brooklyn originally?”
“You mustn’t mind her. She’s my wife,” the tall tourist said. “Have you two met?”
“Oh, nerts to him and double nerts to meeting him,” said the wife. “How do you do?”
“Not so badly,” the green-visored man said. “How do you do?”
“She does marvellously,” the tall one said. “You ought to see her.”