Manhattan Love Song

Chapter Five

I didn’t bother phoning Bernice the next day but went right up there to see her a little before two. I felt unusually cheerful, as though Maxine’s visit and the revelation of the day before had cleared the air for all parties concerned. It didn’t feel as though I were double-crossing her any more to come up here — although I hadn’t told her that I was going to, just the same.

“Hello, hand-shoes,” I greeted Tenacity, “is my lady in?”

Tenacity said she was eating her lunch, and when Bernice wanted to know who it was through the door, called back with unreproved familiarity, “Wade!”

She was sitting at her vanity table when I went in, or whatever you call those low things with triple mirrors and no drawers of any kind under them, and had all her beautification implements pushed aside to make room for a little tray containing a cucumber sandwich and a glass of frothy pink stuff that I took to be a strawberry soda. She pointed the second cucumber sandwich toward me, not offering it to me but indicating me by it, and waiting until she had finished chewing and had swallowed, remarked: “I thought you’d be around today!” At the same time, there was a mischievous, bantering light in her eyes that boded well.

“Sit down,” she said, pointing the sandwich at a chaise lounge. “Be through in a minute. I never do this, but I didn’t have any breakfast this morning.”

I had made up my mind before coming not to say anything to her until she had mentioned the subject first. About Maxine’s visit, I mean. Because, for all she knew, Maxine mightn’t have even told me and I might still be in the dark about it, so I wanted to hear what she had to say first. Therefore I made casual conversation while she bit her way busily through the second sandwich and sucked up the pink stuff through two straws.

“Gee, it’s a pipe of a day today, gold dust ’round your feet. You shoulda been out hours ago. What was the matter, hangover from last night?”

“No,” she said, “I simply overslept. Tenacity never wakes me, you know, and for the first time since I’ve been living in this place, the phone didn’t ring once all morning! Don’t know what to put it to. I even had her call the operator and have it tested, I was so sure it must be out of order. Nothing the matter with it, just an off-day for me, I guess.” This while she bent her head forward over the tray and the pinkish stuff drew together at the bottom of the glass and then was gone. “Not that it worries me; some relief, let me tell you. ’Jever try answering a phone with your eyes closed and a lot of cobwebs over your mouth?” She threw her arms back over her chair and stretched, turning her wrists out, then in again and beat them idly together. “And I never yet got in the tub but what I got a call and had to hop out again. Didn’t seem like a bath at all today. Light me one too.” She straightened up in her chair once more, tumbled her hair over her eyes, and blew smoke through it. She looked like a haystack beginning to catch fire. “By the way,” she said, turning half-around toward me, “I don’t know whether you know it or not, I had a visitor yesterday.” And her eyes crinkled mischievously at me.

Here it comes, I told myself; let’s have it! And let’s hear what really went on between the two of them.

“What’s the catch?” I said innocently. “That’s no event in your young life, is it?”

“Wade,” she smiled, shaking a finger at me, “you’ve been holding out on me.”

“I have? What do you mean?”

“You see, in Europe,” she laughed, “the married men wear rings just like the women do. It has its advantages.”

“What’s it all about, Bernice?” I said genially. “Let me in on it.”

She reached across, picked up my hand, and looked at it ostentatiously, turning it this way and that. “Tell the truth, Wade,” she said then, cocking her brows at me, “are you married?”

“Yes, sure I am,” I said readily. “Why?”

“You wouldn’t fool a girl, would you?”

“I wouldn’t fool a girl like you.”

“Well, do you think that’s nice?” she asked. “Why didn’t you tell me that all along?”

I knew all this was just byplay. “ ’Cause you didn’t ask me,” I said.

“We’ll let that go,” she laughed. “Anyway, your wife was here to see me yesterday.”

“All right, I’m listening.”

She glanced over my shoulder. “Close the door,” she murmured.

When I had returned to the chaise longue once more, she went on, “Say, Charlie, my boy, does it take a stick of dynamite to jar you, or didn’t you quite get what I just said to you?”

“You say Maxine was here to see you,” I said, enjoying myself hugely.

“Yes, Maxine,” she said. “And let me tell you she’s a darn nice kid, too.”

I made a face. “You can have her.”

“I don’t want her,” she said, but she was a little more serious now, “and how would you like it if I told you I don’t want you either?”

“Not very well,” I admitted, “so don’t.”

“She’s a damn nice kid, Wade,” and there was no mistaking the fact that she had stopped being playful. “I don’t see how you’ve got the heart to do anything like that to her; it would be an awfully low trick.”

I sat up tensely all at once. “What would?”

“Leave her in the soup like that.”

“You mean, what we’ve been thinking — what we’ve been figuring on? Bernice, you’re kidding me! you’re not going to leave me flat now, are you?”

She pointed her cigarette right at my heart, and it was as though she held a long spear in her hand instead of a Chesterfield when I heard what she was saying. “Get me, my used-to-be. I’m not bighearted. Maxine isn’t worrying me a bit; it’s myself that’s worrying me. Do you think I’d take a chance on you after the way I see you’re ready to sidetrack her? Not me! Why, it wouldn’t be eight months, instead of eight years, before you’d pull the same thing on me. She’s got the law on her side, and I wouldn’t even have that — nothing but my hips until the day you got tired of them—”

My face, I guess, was all gray by this time. “Bernice, darling, you don’t know what you’re saying. Don’t, will you! Don’t go back on me! Always, always, it’s because you don’t trust — won’t trust! Haven’t you even got confidence in the one that loves you? Won’t you give human nature the benefit of the doubt one time out of a hundred? Can’t you see, as a woman, that you’ve got me where you want me, that I’ll eat out of your hand until the end of my days? What more do you want? Have I stopped for a minute and thought that you might fall for some good-looking guy when we’re on the Coast, and leave me flat if he happened to be able to offer you more than I could? And isn’t that much more likely to happen? Oh, Bernice, if I can trust you,” I groaned, “with the odds against you the way they are, why can’t you trust me just a little, honey?”

“No soap,” she said inflexibly. “I’d rather hurt you now than get hurt myself later. Hold yourself together a minute; just stop and look at it my way. I’m supposed to throw over everything I have, everything I’ll ever have as far as I know, and make tracks with you. Which isn’t a mere nothing in itself, no matter which way you look at it. But wait! there’s more to it. If I do that, I’m quitting a game that can’t be quit. Do you understand, can’t be quit. Do you want to know what that means? That I’m marked. No explanations accepted. The day I walk out of here with my arm on yours and my satchel in my hand, there’s no turning back. I can’t show my face anywhere in the east from that day on. I’d be marked, I tell you. And if you don’t happen to know what I mean by that — I mean out of bounds, marked for the ax.” She let that sink in for a minute, though as usual I thought she was exaggerating to impress me, and was too wrought-up myself to pay much attention anyway. “And what do I do it for?” she went on. “What do I get for it? What’s the percentage? So that a year from now, maybe, I can wait on tables in a West Coast cafeteria? Or show Filipinos how to fox-trot? I guess not!”

“So you think I’d do that to you,” I said miserably. “So you think that’s the kind I am.”

“I’m not sure you would,” she said, “but I’m not sure enough you wouldn’t, either, to make the thing a safe bet as far as I’m concerned. No, Maxine was a godsend, she snapped me out of it in time. I’ll wait a little while longer before I cut my own throat.”

“So you’re dead sure that we’re through?” I answered.

“Have I said a word about our being through?” she corrected. “Do I act as though I was ready to give you up? No— what’s through and out is this idea of our going away together. That’s off the list; I’m playing safe, that’s all. But that doesn’t change the way I feel toward you. It couldn’t. The only thing is we’ll have to go on the way we are, I can’t see any other way. I’ll stick around here and take my orders from the phone, the way I—”

“Oh, yeah?” I said furiously. “You dope things out pretty much to suit yourself, don’t you! This is out, and that goes, and heigh-ho the merry-o! Well, you’ve got another guess coming. It’s all or nothing, now. I can’t go on like this, sneaking in your back door all the time, suffering the tortures of hell when I’m not with you. I lost my job this week on account of you. Either we clear out together like we planned to all along — or else we’re through once and for all; it’s good-bye, starting in right now! Is that plain enough?”

I leaped up from the chaise longue with a brave show of willpower and stood looking at her. “You heard me! Which is it going to be — yes or no?”

She tried to put a restraining hand on my coat sleeve. “Now, wait a minute! Don’t get all hot and both—”

“Wait, nothing!” I exclaimed, brushing her hand off. “You’ve kibitzed around with me long enough. You’re driving me mad! Are you coming away with me like we planned — or aren’t you? That’s all I want to know, that’s all you’ve got to tell me.”

“You know where I stand,” she said surlily, breathing on her nails and brushing them against her palm. “Do I have to repeat? I just got through telling you!”

“Good-bye,” I said bitterly. “I’m through. I’ll get you out of my head if I have to kill myself!”

“You’ll come back,” she said, still polishing her nails and not even looking up. “This isn’t the first time you’ve pulled this stunt on me—”

I got to the door, the room door; I even got it open. Oh, I could have gone on down to the street. I could have gone quite away and stayed away a day or two whole days, like when I found the money in her handbag. But in the end, didn’t it all amount to the same thing — the door, the street, a day, two days, and then I’d be back again. Sure I’d be back. Or I wasn’t Wade, and she wasn’t Bernice.

So I shortened the whole process by turning back right then and there, right where I stood, at the door of her room, and dropping back on the chaise longue that was still warm from me just now, turned my back to her and sobbed hotly into my cupped hands.

Having gained her point, she could afford to be magnanimous, was over beside me then in no time at all, down on her knees with her arms knotted around my neck, drawing my face down to hers again and again. “Men don’t cry,” she remonstrated gently.

“It’s all right, Bernice,” I said after awhile, “don’t feel sorry for me. It’ll be all the same to me from now on; I’ve just gone down for the third time.”

“Wade, I love you so. And New York isn’t the worst town there is. We’ll have such swell times together! Let’s let the rest of it go hang. We’ll see each other all the time. And by each living under separate roofs, we’ll be that much better off — we won’t have a chance to get tired of each other like we would the other way—”

“You’re right,” I told her submissively. “You’re always right. I told you once you were always right—”

She left me only to go to the door and open it, and then was back again beside me. “Tenacity!” And when the mahogany face had poked its way in, “Fix us up a couple of long ones. Long and strong. We’re having a celebration in here.”

And while the trip westward, and the bungalow on some sunny Los Angeles street, and the Chevrolet, and all the rest of it faded slowly away like the sun was fading outside the windows, she lighted my cigarettes for me between her lips, had the radio going softly, kept passing her hand over my face as though she wanted to learn its outline by heart, and made it seem to me that I had given up nothing and gained everything in having her near me like this, having her love me like this. What more could any one want?

Tenacity brought in two more “long ones” without being told to, around four o’clock. She looked at us, shook her head sympathetically, and carried the empty glasses out with her.

Bernice tasted hers, and blew her breath out as though to cool her mouth. “They’re strong, all right. It’s funny, I can never trust her to do my mixing for me.”

“But you told her to make ’em strong,” I reminded her.

“Yes, that was to begin with, but you should taper them off — she ought to know that by now. I guess the reason I notice it so,” she said, putting her glass down, “is, these are the first drinks I’ve had all week. And today’s Friday.”

“We had some wine together when I was up here Wednesday,” I recalled.

“Yes, but not hard drinks. I haven’t had a hard one since the night we were up at Jerry’s and Marion’s. Let’s see, that was last Saturday. That’ll be a week ago tomorrow.”

“Oh, by the way,” I said. “I forgot to tell you. I ran into Marion yesterday, outside of Gray’s Drugstore.”

“Jerry with her?” she asked idly.

“No, she was alone; she was going to a show, I think. She stopped a minute and spoke to me. I couldn’t remember for the life of me who she—”

She picked up her glass again and went ahead with it where she had left off, remarking, “She’s the sweetheart of one of the big shots here in town. She’s in pretty thick with — well, all sorts of people that I know.”

“All I know is, she’s completely sold out on some guy in Detroit called Sonny Boy,” I laughed.

“Not so loud,” she warned me, half-jokingly, but with a glance at the door. “It isn’t good to know him anymore. One time he was a big shot here himself. Then he ran away to Detroit. Now he’s on the outs with the New York crowd—”

“And jealous as all hell,” I went on, contemplating the contents of my glass. “Always asking me if you’re getting letters from him in Detroit.” I took a long drink. “I didn’t know how else to get rid of her,” I resumed, “so I kidded the life out of her, told her sure, two and three times a week regularly. She got so sore, she couldn’t see straight, didn’t even go to her show—”

Over the rim of my glass I happened to raise my eyes to her; I couldn’t understand, lowered it out of the way in a hurry. The lap and the whole front of the pale-violet satin kimono she had on went deep purple all at once with the puddle of liquor soaking into it. The glass glanced off her kneecap, bounced clear of the chaise longue, and sang out from the floor, miraculously unbroken. But it was her face, her face! A mask of white fright pulled taut from ear to ear, where her prettiness had been only a second ago; then slowly relaxing again, like elastic, into a more recognizable semblance of her. Her eyes had been unbearable for a minute, the pupils rolling insanely upward and disappearing under the upper lids. They came down again and stared hauntedly out at me. And her voice, when she found it, was furry as with an inner strangulation.

“You’ve signed my death warrant!” she rasped.

“Bernice!” I cried in alarm. “What is it? Here, swallow some of this—!” But as I passed my glass toward her, she shot up from where she had been sitting and ran halfway across the room toward the door, then stopped abruptly and looked dazedly all about her, as though not knowing which way to turn. I was terribly frightened myself by now, not knowing what to make of it, thinking she must have either gone temporarily insane or else was undergoing a sudden spasm of violent physical illness. It was awful to see the way she clutched herself through the satin kimono, now on the arms, now under the ribs, as though at a loss what to do next. I caught her in my arms where she stood finally — for she brought to mind a pathetic little trapped animal that wouldn’t let any one near it — and forced almost all the liquor I had left in my glass down her throat. She gagged and retched on it, but it brought her back a little, brought a smarting moisture to her eyes and dimmed that berserk look they’d had in them for a minute or two.

“God, what a fright you gave me!” I said, clinging to her.

“Oh,” she kept moaning, “they’ll get me for it! They’ll get me for it! My time is up, all right! That was the one thing you shouldn’t have said—”

“Wait a minute,” I said, “until I call Tenacity — maybe she can help me with you.”

“No, no, no!” she exclaimed, “don’t let her in here—!”

I led her back to the chaise longue and seated her on it by main force. She clung with one hand to my sleeve, as though afraid I would leave her, and with the other kept pounding me lightly on the chest, distractedly emphasizing what she was saying. “Oh, what am I going to do, Wade? Help me! What am I going to do? They’re going to get me as sure as you’re born! She was the last one you should have told that to — my God, if it had only been Jerry, any one else — but Marion! She’s in thick with the big muck-a-mucks; it’ll get back to them in no time—!”

“But Bernice, darling!” I pleaded. “I was only kidding her along. If it’s not true, what can she do to you, what are you so afraid about—”

“What can’t she do!” she gasped. “One word from her, and — she’s the sweetie of — oh, don’t you understand? What chance have I got! She won’t come up here and try to pull my hair — if that was all there would be to it, I’d gladly lie down flat on my back and let her kick my teeth out. She’ll let one word drop where it’ll do the most good and — do you think they’ll let me explain? I know too much; they won’t take any chances!”

I tried to soothe her by stroking the backs of her hands; she drew them away from me suddenly and cried: “I wish I’d never known you! After I’ve watched my step so carefully all these years, you have to come along — and get me in a spot!”

“It’s as much your fault as mine,” I defended myself. “If I had known what was what, if I had known who I was talking to there on the street! I sat in this very room with you only the day before yesterday,” I reminded her, “and told you it might be a whole lot better if you let me in on what you were up against, gave me some idea. But no, you couldn’t trust me, had to keep everything dark — well, it sure worked out beautiful your way. Maybe next time you’ll have a little more confi—”

“Next time?” she cried, jumping up again. “There isn’t any next time in this for me, don’t you understand! That’s why I’m so cokey over the whole thing! Wait!” she said, running her hand along the side of her face and on up through her hair. “I’ve just got one chance left! If she hasn’t spoken to anybody yet, maybe I can square myself with her. But if she’s already given ’way on me, then there’s nothing left to be done. I’m washed out! Tenacity!” she shouted wildly, “Tenacity! Come in here, damn it!”

Tenacity appeared in the doorway with remarkable abruptness, in fact almost instantaneously, as though she had been listening to the whole tantrum from beginning to end. The scared look on her face was a perfect match for ours.

“Quick! Get Jerry’s place on the phone for me — the number’s on the pad there. I’m too excited to find it! I want to talk to Marion Scalero. Nobody else.”

“I don’t have to find it. I know the number of Jerry’s place,” the awestricken Tenacity said.

“Well, get it for me; don’t stand there, you fool!” Bernice barked.

Tenacity collapsed onto the telephone bench as though she had had a heart attack and picked up the instrument with trembling fingers. “Marion Scalero, understand!” Bernice reminded her, and to me, wringing her hands in an agony of impatience, “She can have anything I’ve got! Oh, if I can only get around her in some way—!”

Tenacity having stated her number, we both held our breaths, listening and waiting. Bernice edged closer to her, ready to take the instrument from her.

Suddenly Tenacity put the phone down and turned to Bernice. “Their number’s been disconnected.”

She stamped her foot. “Don’t tell me that! It can’t be! We were up there only Saturday—”

“That’s what the chief operator just said to me,” Tenacity insisted.

“They may have moved out since then,” I observed.

“Look in the directory under apartment houses,” she instructed Tenacity exasperatedly, “and call up the building they live in; maybe they can tell us what’s happened. Only hurry it up, will you, hurry it up!”

I strolled over to the window meanwhile and started to look idly down into the street. “Keep away from there!” Bernice said to me sharply. “Don’t show yourself at the window, you never can tell who’s watching!”

I withdrew leisurely, a little bored with all this melodrama, and went into the serving pantry to get some more gin and vermouth, which it seemed to me she needed more than she ever had in all the time I had known her. I came back, holding one in each hand, just in time to hear Tenacity saying, “They were dispossessed Monday morning on account of all the noise up there Sa’day night; they didn’t leave any address with the superintendent.”

Bernice literally snorted with dismay and began to screw up her face once more into that horrible mask of panic. “Here, try this.” I quickly forestalled her, afraid she was going to lose her head again. She drank, sketchily and drippingly, and brushing her hand quickly past her lips, said: “Wade, there’s only one thing left for me to do now—” And giving me a meaning glance, she turned to look at Tenacity. “Wait a minute, don’t say anything!” she murmured.

Tenacity was still sitting at the telephone, staring from one to the other of us with her thick lips dropping open.

“You can go home now, you’re through for today,” Bernice said to her briskly. And throwing open a drawer, she took out some money and put it in her hand without counting it.

Dismay burst its way through Tenacity’s opaque features. “Ain’t you gonna need me no more?” she piped thinly.

“Oh, sure, you come back about nine in the morning, like you always do,” Bernice assured her hypocritically. “This is just so I won’t forget what I owe you. Now hurry up and go, will you!” And she actually went to the door and held it open for her, impatience expressed in every line of her body.

Tenacity got to her feet, moved across the room toward the door, and through it — and was instantly effaced by the shutting of the panel, which Bernice effected almost before her skirts were out of the way. “Now!” she exhaled, leaning her back against the door for a moment as though to gather fresh energy from it.

“What’s the one thing you said was left for you to do?” I asked eagerly, going to her. I already knew, though — something told me.

“I’m going with you, if you’ll still let me,” she said.

“My baby!” I cried gleefully.

She caught at my shoulders and shook me anxiously. “Can you do it, though? Can you make it? It’s got to be right away — not next week, not even tomorrow. I’ve got to get out of here by tonight, I tell you!”

“It’s a cinch, nothing to it!” I said elatedly. “There’s a train for Chicago at about nine-thirty, and we can take the Santa Fé from there tomorrow morning—”

She began to pull dresses out of a closet, then stopped to throw off her violet satin kimono right before me. “No time for modesty right now!” she gasped. “When was it you say you saw her — yesterday?”

“About one in the afternoon.”

“Well, the damage’s been done long ago — there’s not a minute to lose — if I want to see thirty!

“Wade, do something, will you!” she cried, in the act of twisting a dress that had just dropped over her shoulders this way and that around her waist. “Don’t stand there watching me — do you think I’m kidding you, or what?”

“Well, I’m waiting for you,” I said. “We’ll leave here together.”

“How can we?” she wailed, snapping a row of little hooks closed over her ribs with the agility of someone playing a musical instrument. “I’ve got to throw some things into a valise, and it’s twenty-five to five now! The banks closed an hour and a half ago — and you’ll need some money, won’t you! What are you going to do?”

“Gee, you’re right!” I yelled. “I never thought of that! I can get in if the manager’s still there — otherwise I’m sunk!” And I bolted for the door. “I’ll pick you up here in less than an hour.”

“No, don’t come back!” she called after me. “I’ll meet you at the station at train time. I’ll be through before you most likely, and I don’t want to wait alone here in the apartment. But for God’s sake, see that you get there!”

“Grand Central — lower level — eight-thirty or quarter to nine!” I babbled wildly, half tearing the door from its hinges.

In the foyer I was fleetingly aware of Tenacity’s presence in the background, standing before the mirror pretending to put on her hat or something. “Mister Wade,” she said querulously, “is Miss Bernice fixing to fire me, or what—?”

“Look it up in the almanac,” I said roughly, and was gone.

I jumped into the first taxi I came across — this was no time to count pennies — and made a beeline for the Corn Exchange, my branch. It would be much further away from where Bernice lived than two or three of the other branches!

I had no time to be happy that we were going away together at long last; there was too much to do first. I could be happy later on, on the train. But how glad I was (I told myself) that she was high-strung, neurotic, or whatever you want to call it, and imagined all sorts of dreadful things would happen to her if she stayed in New York after I made no more than a casual remark to some girl who was somebody’s sweetie; how lucky for me. Otherwise I never would have got her to go with me. Too vivid an imagination and perhaps too much liquor and too little sleep over too long a period of time had accomplished what no amount of love and devotion could have.

But at the moment there were other things I was just as glad about, too. I was glad I had struck up an acquaintance with that insipid trombonist in the jazz band at the Pier the first summer Maxine and I were down in Atlantic City seven years ago, never dreaming that he would outgrow his insipidity, discard his trombone with his white flannel trousers, and become first a teller in a bank and then the manager of that bank — or at least, of the branch I dealt with. Otherwise, what chance would I have had of withdrawing money from a three-o’clock bank at quarter to five in the afternoon?

When we got there, the doors were closed, but I rang the bell and motioned frantically to the watchman through the glass. He motioned back to me that the bank was closed (as though I didn’t know that!), that it was too late, to go away, or something to that effect.

I thought I was sunk for a minute, and felt myself beginning to wobble, like a concertina left standing on end. But I went back to motioning again, with the added device of shouting through the glass and getting it all misty with my hot breath.

He finally indicated a side entrance, met me there, unlocked it, and thrust his head out.

“Mr. Plattner go home yet?” I demanded breathlessly. If he had, curtains!

“Who are you?” he said.

I gave him the name and said, “Ask him if I can come in and speak to him for a minute.”

He locked up, went away, stayed away, came back, and unlocked once more.

“We gotta be careful, these days, y’know,” he said, by way of invitation to enter.

I found Fred in his office, the whole place very solemn-looking under green-shaded lights. I’d come in like this after-hours once or twice before, but that was because we were going to have dinner together or something. And that had been the first year he had the job, not lately. But at least my barging in now wasn’t an utter innovation. “Hello, Wade,” he said, shaking hands with me across a glass desktop. “Where you been keeping yourself all these years?”

I didn’t tell him that, but instead I told him I wanted to close out my account.

“Kind of late in the day, isn’t it?” he mentioned. “Tomorrow suit you just as well?”

“I’m taking the nine-thirty train to Chicago with my bundle of happiness,” I told him, “and I haven’t a nickel in my pocket.”

“Oh, you’re taking Maxine with you?” he said interestedly.

“Maxine doesn’t spell happiness for me any more,” I told him point-blank. “Do this thing for me, will you, Fred?” And I said to myself: “If he gets moral all of a sudden and tries to talk to me like a father, I’m gonna throw the inkwell right in his eye — even if I get held up for damages!”

But he didn’t say a word, just looked at me attentively for a minute, then asked me if I had my passbook with me, and told me to write out a check for the full amount. I had the check written almost before he was through speaking, but I told him I didn’t have my passbook with me. They had a duplicate there, though, so that didn’t make much difference; he told me to mail the other one in the first chance I got. He okayed the check, and then I thought I might as well kill two birds with one stone, so I showed him the other one I’d gotten from my late firm earlier in the week, which luckily I hadn’t deposited yet over in Brooklyn as I had planned to, and he okayed that too. Then he shook hands with me, wished me a lot of luck, and said, “Let me hear from you some day, Wade.”

I went outside to the cashier’s window and cashed the two checks — the cashier still being there, fortunately, and being occupied in separating dollar bills that had gotten wrinkled from dollar bills that hadn’t gotten wrinkled, or something like that. The watchman let me out the side entrance, and I found my taxi driver pacing back and forth, aged with worry and impatience. I looked at the bank clock through the window — it was just five, to the minute. As long as I wasn’t going to meet Bernice until eight-thirty, there seemed to be no reason why I should ride all the way home in a taxi when the subway “gets you there just as quickly too.” So I paid him off and bade him Godspeed — or the modern equivalent of it, which is a fifty-cent tip.

I went over to the station next and got the tickets — which made the wad of money I’d gotten at the bank much less conspicuous to carry around with me. I glanced across to the other side of the big, vaulted place, echoing with hundreds of footsteps all at one time, and picking out a certain spot under a light, said:

“There’s where she’ll be standing three hours from now. I can see her now, so neat, so sweet, so all-around complete, with her big valise beside her on the ground and one little foot pointed out ahead of the other. Waiting for me, lucky stiff!” And I tipped my hat to the empty place against the wall and half closed my eyes for a minute, with reverence and ecstasy.

I realized there was no chance of getting at the compound-interest account I had over in Brooklyn any more; even if the bank had been open, you have to take a blood test and let yourself be fingerprinted to get money out of one of those accounts. So there was nothing left to do now but go home. I wasn’t going home because I wanted to say good-bye to Maxine — I could’ve done that over the telephone from here just as well. I was going because I wasn’t in awe of her enough to go all the way to California without my shirts and socks and handkerchiefs. And since there was still nearly three hours’ time left and nothing else to do, why not go home, take a bird’s-eye inventory of my things, and pack a grip? I got on the subway and went.

In the act of putting the key in the door, I stopped and looked down at it, held in the flat of my hand. “Last time I’ll be using it,” I said thoughtfully. “I’ll take it off the ring on my way out and leave it in the door.” I opened the door and went in.

Maxine wasn’t in yet. “The breaks!” I chuckled to myself. “I can get all my packing done calmly and systematically, without having her yell blue murder over my left shoulder all the while.”

So I dropped my hat over the telephone, stripped off my coat and vest and draped them over a chair, and rubbed my hands briskly together in token of anticipation. Then I took a minute off to turn the radio on, and as I left it, I was unconsciously mimicking the brazen noises it gave out. “Shouldn’t,” I reproved myself, and stopped. “I’m leaving her tonight.”

I went into the bedroom, and the evening sun made the walls of it look like the inside of a wicker box that has been full of crushed strawberries. I threw open all the drawers of the bureau one after the other — bang! slap! bang! — and then I pulled my valise out of the closet and opened it on the floor. I hadn’t used it since the last trip to Atlantic City, the summer before. There was still an old bathing shirt rolled up in the corner of it. I got it out of the way and flung it unceremoniously into a far comer.

Then I began to pile shirts in like one of those three-decker sandwiches, colored ones on bottom and on top and white ones in the middle, where they wouldn’t get dirty so quickly. When the shirt angle was through, my other suit came to mind — at the dry cleaner’s, two blocks away. The other suit. “Too bad,” I sighed. “Have to get a new one out there; I’m not going out after it now any more, save my strength for the trip.”

The socks I packed last, after everything else had gone in, because I knew by experience they could be rolled up in balls and wedged far down into the corners of the thing. The neckties I left out altogether, because there was no way of folding them or anything, and they kept sticking out all over like thirsty tongues each time I shut the lid down on them. So I tossed them all back where they came from. “Get new ones,” I said recklessly. “Starting a new life, so I’ll get everything new to match it!” I locked the valise at last and stood it up against the wall, where I wouldn’t trip over it. Then I pushed all the drawers back in again, and tried not to look at Maxine’s silky, fluffy things, left all to themselves now that mine were gone.

It was quarter to six by the time I was through, and she hadn’t come yet. “Wouldn’t it be just like a movie show,” I thought grimly, “if she didn’t get back on time and I had to leave her a note!”

And ridiculous, fantastic, or insane as it may sound, I found myself growing actually impatient and fretful over her lateness, as though my going away depended upon her being there to say good-bye to. “Just tonight she has to be late!” I caught myself saying with a scowl, “Every other night she’s always around here hours before I get home! I suppose she’s standing chewing the rag over the counter with the A and P manager’s wife—”

It never occurred to me to make my getaway bag and all, now that the coast was clear. Because somehow I didn’t look upon this as deserting her. It was almost as though I was too proud of my love for Bernice, thought too much of it, to sneak off without a word.

I looked at myself in the glass and, with that immemorial gesture of the hand on the chin, decided that a shave wouldn’t hurt me any. Although tonight wouldn’t be the first night that I was with Bernice, Lord knows, still, with every passing minute I felt more and more like a young lover ready to start off on his honeymoon. Anxious to make a good appearance, giddy with love and the attainment of an ideal, impatient, deliciously nervous, shivery like a person about to dive from a height into unknown water — I was even a little shy and diffident at the thought of facing her, as I never had been before now.

I stripped off my tie and shirt preparatory to shaving. At which point the door opened, and Maxine at last came home. “You there, Wade?” she called the length of the apartment. That, it occurred to me, was a needless question; the busily vibrating radio should have told her someone was home, and there were only two of us, so it must be me. Most women talk before they think.

“Yeh,” I said curtly.

“I had the worst time getting spaghetti,” she said, still from a distance.

“Don’t tell me they’re running short of cans!” I said hopefully.

“Every one had that kind with the cheese and tomato,” she continued absorbedly. “I had to walk blocks before I came across the kind you like, with the mushrooms.”

“I suppose I ought to feel bad, now,” I told myself unwillingly, “now that she’s put herself out to get something I like the last night I’m with her.” I had decided long ago that I was going to eat at home.

“I’ll be ready for you in a minute, now,” she promised, still trumpeting her remarks from the kitchen.

“No hurry,” I assured her. “I’m going to shave first.”

“Oh!” she called back disappointedly, “do it afterward, Wade, there won’t be time; I’ve put the can in the water already.”

But it would have taken more than a mysterious symbol of speech like that to deter me from making myself presentable for the woman I was wild about. I went ahead in the bathroom.