Manhattan Love Song

Chapter Six

I stood there in a cubicle of white tiles that gleamed like milk, and my shoulder blades, still shiny from the dregs of last year’s tan, caught the light like copper epaulettes. Beyond that there was not much to me; a man who stood and carefully scraped his check and rinsed the blade under the faucet and was thinking: Bernice!... Bernice!... Bernice! For there had never been anything to me at all until now, but now there was this to me: that I loved her. And that made it all understandable to me; my being born, my swallowing certain quantities of food each day, my aimless roaming from one room to the next, out one door, in the other. I was given my body, and for twenty-odd years all I could find to do with it was put underwear on it once a day, park it in an enamel tub now and then, shove it in a bed at night and let the life slip out of it. I was given my hands, and the most they could do was make that little upward curve and down again, striking a match to a cigarette, when they should have been, oh, should have been, around her waist all the time. I was given my voice, and all I ever used it for was to say things like “Scramble two and a cup of Java” to Swedish waitresses, and “What are we waiting for, come on, let’s get married and get it out of our systems” to poor Maxine, with my heart in cold storage all the time. But now all this was changed; now I got a break at last. Now rooms were not empty and food was not sawdust. Now body, hands, and voice knew what to do. Now she had appeared on the scene at last. The fog had lifted and a star shone through; now all was clear to me at last. And was I glad I hadn’t given up too soon! Was I glad I hadn’t ever tried to do a leap off some bridge with bricks in my pocket! Was I glad I hadn’t patronized strange bootleggers! Was I glad I’d still been in short pants in 1918, and was I glad I’d let that gunman have that ten-dollar bill without a word of protest under the Sixth Avenue L that night! Was I glad I’d lasted till I met her, never knowing she was on the way!

Now I was pressing my face between the two ends of a towel. Then I pushed open a little gadget on the stopper of a powder flask, and five little pinpricks appeared where there hadn’t been any before. A few white grains dropped out of each pinprick when I shook, and onto my face to turn into complexion. I was through now, and I poked at the wall, and the lights fled. And with them went the gleam like milk, and the bathroom had turned blue all around me. Blue, that badge of the nineteen-twenties. A hundred years ago it was just a color; today it was a mood, the soul of a generation.

Maxine came to the door and rested her palm high up against it, near the top. She clutched a dishcloth in her other hand; there was something pathetic about her in that loincloth she called a dress, reaching from her armpits to her hips, with a little rubberized apron across the front.

“Be right with you,” I remarked absently, and passed by her and went into the bedroom. I heard her turn around and go away again. “I’m not going to call you any more,” she warned me. But I didn’t even turn my head.

I plunged my hand into a drawer that was like a nest of vivid tropical snakes. Neckties. And finally pulled out a dark-blue one with little green spearheads set far apart. I shut the drawer and never saw the rest of them again after that night. When I had tied it, I put out the lights and went in to her.

She was already seated at the table, and though one part of her would have liked very much for my food to be cold and unpalatable now that I had kept her waiting, the other part of her that wanted me to be happy no matter what the cost had made her put the dishes back on top of the stove and cover them over. She herself had already begun to eat, but she jumped up and got my portion from the stove as I sat down. Our heads were both slightly bent, as though we were two children not quite sure of our table manners as yet.

I looked at the plate before me, and my mind told my hand to take a fork and put food in my mouth, but my stomach told my hand not to, so I lit a cigarette instead.

“What’s the matter, aren’t you hungry?” Maxine said.

“Sure I am,” I lied to her, “just give me time. Don’t rush me, see?” And if she pulled that old reliable one beginning; “After I went to all the trouble of cooking—” I knew I would hit her. But fortunately something distracted her attention just then, and the matter of food was allowed to drop. Above us, there was a flourish vaguely resembling music, and then the radio began to articulate one of Kern’s pieces from Sweet Adeline. A moment later the one under us had joined in and was whinnying forth the same number. “Wait a minute, I must get this!” Maxine cried, jumping up from the table, and turned on our own instrument in the next room. Then she came back to me with her eyes sparkling. It took it a moment or two to warm up; by that time the station had gone through one chorus. Just as the voice came in, ours caught up with the other two, so that some girl, who was miles away from there, was singing in three apartments at once, one above the other. Maxine had clasped her hands under her chin and was looking at me across the dishes of food; the words seemed to come out of her eyes. “Here am I — here I’ll stay — in your way — until you notice me—” I tried to turn my eyes away; hers followed mine and would not let them go. Her lower lip was quivering. Her eyes grew brighter, brighter, and suddenly were wet and glistening. She didn’t say a word; just looked at me, as though she would never get through looking at me. “Here am I — here is love — don’t pass us by.” Suddenly I couldn’t stand it any more. My eyes had tried to escape in every direction, and still she held them within her own. And didn’t say a word, a word. “Why do I try — to draw you near me? Why do I sigh — you never hear me—”

And suddenly, without my realizing at just what moment, she spoke. It came to me a second or two later, and what she had said was; “I know you are going to leave me. Something tells me — you tell me. The look in your eye — every move you make — tells me.”

I didn’t answer. Meaning: “Yes, I am going to leave you. Tonight. Right now.”

And that cursed infernal thing in there went on. “Don’t ever leave me — now that you’re here — or I’ll have no one to run to.” Damn the words, and damn the music, and damn everything connected with that show! It fitted too closely into my own life. I flung myself out of the chair and went in there and snapped it off. But above us and below us it still went on. “Why do I want the thing I cannot hope for? What do I hope for, I wish I knew.” And Maxine was still looking at me. An almost invisible silver thread lay beside her nose now, where one tear too many had lost its balance and escaped the watchfulness of her lashes. “Why was I born — to love you?” At last it stopped. The people above us had gone to a movie. The people below us had turned to a prize fight at Forty-Ninth and Eighth Avenue without leaving their chairs.

The coffee in our two cups was stone-cold; the cream she had put in it had gathered around the edges, where it met the cup, in a hollow white ring, leaving the middle black — each cup looked as though it contained a satanic fried egg with a black yolk. This last supper of ours hadn’t been a success.

“Oh, I’m so frightened,” she said sepulchrally. “What are you going to do, Wade?”

Again I didn’t answer.

Again she said, “Won’t you speak — and tell me? I’d rather know — and have it over with.”

“Why go out of your way to look for trouble?”

“Oh, I know, don’t try to tell me,” she said all in a breath. “You have something up your sleeve, I get it with every heartbeat!”

“Nothing in particular,” I answered facilely. But those were the soothing tactics of last night, of all the nights before, perhaps, but not of tonight. They wouldn’t do any more; she had to know. So instantly I belied what I had just said, and told her: “Don’t put it that way; not up my sleeve. I’m not trying to hide anything from you — I’m going to say good-bye to you tonight.”

Bernice’s face had expressed fright that afternoon; hers didn’t. It looked as though a little death had gathered between her eyes. There was not the insanity of escape, of struggle there; there was the agony of muteness, of somebody gone down in quicksand with only the eyes and forehead showing.

It didn’t matter now, I supposed, whether I said anything more. I went on speaking, nevertheless. The drawing room consoling the torture chamber. “I’ve lost my job. What’s the use of going on? Things haven’t been any too sweet between us even without that, you know that as well as I do; now they’d only be ten times worse. Why drag it out any longer? Don’t you think this is the best way?”

“I’ll do anything, anything under the sun,” she said, “anything you want me to, only not to lose you! If it’s the job — I’ll get a job, I’ll keep things going for us, Wade! If it’s Bernice, if it’s that you want to see her as often as you like, why, see her, Wade, see her all the time — don’t even live with me anymore — I won’t say a word, as long as I have you here near me sometimes. Wade, I’ll forget there’s such a thing as self-respect, I’ll forget I’m a woman even. What more can I do? Wade, Wade, make it a little easier for me!”

I saw her rise an inch above her chair, as though to come to me, and matter-of-factly motioned her not to. “I don’t want you near me, Maxine. My love for you’s gotten away from me, there isn’t any in me any more.”

The pallor of her face literally shone across the table at me; it was awful to see any one suffer like that. I brushed my hand before my eyes to take the sight away. “Don’t, oh, please don’t look at me like that, it goes right through me! I can’t stand it. I’m going!”

I made two false moves to rise, and as though she were sending something hypnotic through the air toward me, couldn’t seem to get out of the chair at all. Finally I managed to kick it back from me with my heel, stand, and walk out of the room with rigid, forced steps, my head actually turned the other way so as not to see her.

I went into the bedroom, snapped on the light, picked up my valise from beside the wall, looked around me to see if I had left anything out. Meanwhile, not a sound from in there where she was. Not a breath, not a sigh. As though I were alone in the place.

The bureau clock said quarter to eight; it was usually a little slow, though, and until I ride down and everything—

I put out the light, went through the living room, valise in hand, and instead of going back to the kitchen, took the other door, to the little foyer. There I set the grip down a second, not knowing what I was going to call out to her by way of parting, and principally because I wanted to put my hat on properly, and that required two hands.

I had left it over the telephone, always my favorite rack, and as I lifted it off, the phone rang as though the hat had been holding it muffled all along. I chuckled whimsically and picked it up to answer it; it would be too nerve-racking to have to go down the stairs with that ringing behind me as though pleading with me to come back, and if I didn’t answer it myself, it might bring Maxine out into the foyer, stunned though she seemed to be. I had rather have her stay where she was until after I’d gotten out — I didn’t want to have to see that terrible look on her again; I would probably remember it for a long time after this as it was.

“Hello?” I said quietly.

An unmistakable negro drawl greeted me, so exaggerated, in fact, that it almost resembled the accent of a member of some black-face comedy team — Moran and Mack or Amos and Andy. He asked what number I was.

I was so certain there had been a mistake on the line that I told him without further ado, “You’ve got the wrong party.”

“Mistah Wade? You Mistah Wade?” came back engagingly.

“I am. Who’re you?”

“All right if I talk to you? Nobody c’n hear?”

“I’m busy. What do you want?”

“Well, look hea’, Mistah Wade, this Miss Bernice’ do’man — I got a message fo’ you.”

That was different! “You have?” I cried at once. “What is it?”

“Miss Bernice say for me to tell you she done change her mine—”

I got all cold around the ankles and the wrists.

“—and instead of going to the station from whea’ yo’ at, will you kinely stop by hea’ fo’ her and she’ go ’long with you.”

“Hasn’t she left yet?” I cried.

“Nossir, she’ busy, gettin’ ready right now.”

“Well, then let me talk to her herself a minute, will you?”

“She doan’ want to use the outside wire from the ’partment, for nobody, Mistah Wade, and she hasn’t got time to come all the way downstai’s hea’ and speak over this hea’ phoam. She jus’ now phoamed down the message to me husself, axin me to tell you.”

“All right,” I said. “Did she tell you what time she’d be ready?”

“She tole me you could leave any time beginning fum now, and she’ be waiting fo’ you when you get hea’.”

“All right,” I repeated a little dissatisfiedly. “Thanks a lot. I’ll be there.” But as I hung up, I couldn’t understand why, when she had been so frightened all along of Tenacity and everybody around her, almost of her very shadow, she would trust a message like that to the doorman instead of speaking to me for a minute herself. But, as he had just said, it might have been the safest way after all.

However, to go there instead of directly to the station, I would have to get a local at Seventy-Second Street, get off a station sooner, walk or taxi several blocks eastward, and then continue on down to Forty-Second Street with her. Which would take considerably more time than the other way. So I knew I’d better leave then and not hang around any more if we wanted to make the train — because Bernice might keep me waiting several minutes at her place, too.

I picked up the grip, opened the door, glanced back over my shoulder just once, and left — without another word to Maxine. What was there I could have said, anyway? The word “goodbye” wouldn’t have comforted her any.

I was down on the street now, walking toward the subway, and the place I had lived in was behind me forever. My farewell to Maxine was to think about her for a few minutes. “Had to leave without a thing being arranged between us; if she’d only been modern, instead of 1920! I suppose I should have told her about that compound-interest account in Brooklyn.” I went down the steps, dropped my nickel in, sought a bench on the platform, shoved my valise under it, and sat down to wait for the next train. It was already audible in the length of tube between the next station and this, when the turnstile cracked open a second time and Maxine joined me on the platform. She came and sat beside me on the bench. She had no hat, but she had thrown a coat over the housedress she had had on just now in the apartment.

“What do you think you’re doing?” I said quietly. “This won’t help any; you may as well go on back. I’m not afraid of a row in public, you know; that won’t stop me, if that’s what your game is.”

“I didn’t come after you to make a scene, Wade,” she answered. “I want to ride with you part of the way; five minutes more is better than nothing.”

“You’re crazy, absolutely out of your mind—” I tried to tell her, but the train came hissing and spitting in and drowned my voice.

She followed me onto the car and sat beside me. People looked at us a little curiously, but I glared at them, and they turned their eyes away. The first few stations drifted by, and she didn’t speak. I didn’t either, because I had nothing to say; our relationship had ended back there as far as I was concerned.

When she did begin to speak at last, it was tragically comic and comically tragic. For she couldn’t speak too loud, or the others in the car would hear her (and I could see she didn’t want that any more than I did), and yet she must speak loudly enough for me to hear her above the roar of the subway. And I must hear every word, for she hadn’t much time — the stations went dropping behind us like beads on a steel-and-electric rosary — and she must win me over, get me to listen, get me to turn back before I got to the end of the line, where Bernice’s domain began, where she couldn’t follow me any further. I knew that that was what had brought her after me like this — the hope that one supreme, last-minute plea would succeed where all the others had failed. I almost admired her in spite of myself, but, as though the love that was making her go through all this were meant for somebody else altogether and not for me, I was not at all interested. If she knew me as well as she thought she did, why couldn’t she see how useless it was? Bernice occupied every cell of my being, there was not a molecule left over for Maxine.

So why even listen to all that she said? I lost most of it in the noise the train was making, anyway. Just once or twice a remark stood out above all the rest, and made me simply wonder at her, simply wonder at her, and fail to understand what I had done to her to make her love me so. Not a trait in me did she neglect to appeal to, did she overlook; the good and the bad, the high and the low. One by one she sounded them out—

“Is Bernice going to give you money, Wade, until you get started again? No? Well, I can give you some, Wade. All you need. I’ll give you a whole lot if you’ll put off going a while longer—”

Poor little liar, where would she have been able to get it from? But I didn’t dare say that aloud, for fear she would think I was intrigued. And I wasn’t.

“Would you want Bernice to stop with us a while, so I could get to know her better? I’ll gladly ask her out, Wade, if you want me to. Do you think she’d come? I could take a little of the house money and go down to Atlantic City for a little while, and wait until I hear from you — shall I do that, Wade? Shall I do that for you?”

“Don’t insult me, Maxine,” I murmured close to her face. “That isn’t the way — there isn’t any way! Please go back, kid, won’t you? For old times’ sake?”

“How far are you going, Wade?”

“Very far.”

“How long are you going, Wade?”

“Forever.”

There was just one more station to pass now — because I was damned if she was going to get on the local with me at Seventy-Second Street! What was this anyway, a vaudeville show?

“Wade, if I promise to divorce you and let you go, will you stay with me just until we get the divorce?”

“No, not a day longer,” I told her simply. “I don’t care whether I marry Bernice or not. I’m happy enough just to be with her.”

“Do you hate me that much, Wade?” she said.

“I don’t hate you at all, Maxine,” I answered truthfully. “I like you tonight, like you more than I have the whole past year.” I looked at her pityingly and touched her hand for a minute. She sort of shivered. “I like you an awful lot. Don’t you think you can find somebody else after a little while, and get me off your mind?”

“But I don’t want to,” she said innocently.

“Well, will you promise me something?”

“Yes, Wade,” she said unqualifiedly.

“I’m going to leave you at the next station; will you promise you won’t do anything damn foolish — oh, you know what I mean!”

“I’ll promise if you want me to, Wade,” she replied surprisingly, “but I wasn’t going to, anyway. Because I know this isn’t forever; one of these days — you will, won’t you, come back?”

The doors slid open, and I reached for my valise and pulled it out from under my legs. She reached down and helped me with a corner of it that had got wedged in under the seat.

“Good-bye, Max. Try to forgive me, will you?”

“I’m going on down to Forty-Second Street,” she explained limply, “because if I get off here, I’ll have to pay an extra nickel to cross to the uptown side.”

That reminded me, although I was out of the train already. I ran to the window opposite her and pounded on it to attract her attention. Every one else in the car looked around at me, but she had picked up a newspaper some one threw away and was holding it open before her face, as though she were reading it. I guess she was crying behind it, though. The train carried her away. I had wanted to tell her about that compound-interest account over in Brooklyn.

I had just time to light a cigarette and get one drag out of it before my local came in. I had meant to watch from the express window and see just where we passed it, to find out how long I would have to wait, but Maxine had kept my mind occupied. I carried the lighted cigarette in with me anyway — I was so nervous by now I needed it badly — and smoked it secretively out of the little opening between the two cars. Still, it would have been a rotten thing to get arrested then, that close to train time.

I got out at the Circle instead of Fiftieth, telling myself it would save time if I walked four blocks down, instead of five up. Which was undeniable, if you took into consideration the two or three additional minutes it would have taken the train to reach the next station. I walked to her place instead of taking a cab, because it was still early, and because I wanted to see just how nearly ready she was before ordering a taxi and keeping it waiting at the door. It wouldn’t take the doorman a minute to do that for us, anyhow, once we had her grips ready at the door.

“I’ll leave this with you a minute,” I greeted him as I entered, transferring my valise into his kid-gloved and rather reluctant (I noticed) hand.

“Yessir,” he said snobbishly, “it’s Miss Pascal you want to see, isn’t it?” He spoke a purer English than I did myself, evidently had gone to college.

I didn’t like his airs, so I answered bellicosely: “You ought to know it is by now; you were the one telephoned me yourself a little while ago to come up here!”

“Nossir, not I,” he said urbanely, “you must be mistaken.”

This business of contradicting didn’t make me like him any better. “I ought to know!” I said. “Are you trying to tell me I’m crazy?” And I gave him a threatening look.

He bore up very well under it; his poise was the last straw — I had taken a decided dislike to him by now. “I didn’t say anything about you’re being crazy, sir; I said I didn’t telephone you, that was all.”

“You didn’t give me a ring at quarter of eight to the minute and let me know—?” I insisted aggressively.

“Quarter to eight?” he interrupted suavely, with a sort of a Harvard smile transplanted to his iodine-colored face. “Oh, that explains it. I only just went on duty a few minutes before you came in here. It must have been the relief man.”

“Is he a colored fellow too?”

“The same as I,” he said arrogantly.

“Well, that must be it, then,” I remarked lamely, and turned to the elevator.

“Shall I announce you, sir?” he continued. “It’s Mr. Wade, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it’s Wade, if you insist,” I sighed weariedly, “but Miss Pascal expects me more than she ever expected any one in her life.”

”I see, sir,” he remarked ironically, and didn’t move toward the switchboard at the back. Evidently, not knowing that we were going away, he had a mistaken impression that this was simply another of our “do-not-disturb” rendezvous.

I got out of the car, the door closed behind me, and I rang her bell. I cocked my head toward the panel and could hear the radio humming away inside. “Eat an apple every day, get to bed by three, take good care of y’self, you belong to me!” She didn’t come to let me in; evidently she was in the bedroom putting the finishing touches to her packing and hadn’t heard me ring through the noise the Ford was making. So I rang again and drummed lightly on the door with my nails, and rang again, and then again. She must have heard that; I had nearly pushed the mother-of-pearl button out of its socket.

But she didn’t come to the door. I rang until I was blue in the face, and the ball of my thumb went white with the long-sustained pressure I exerted on it. Still she didn’t come to the door. I moved back a pace or two, dug my hands into my pockets, and gazed at the door reproachfully as though it were doing this of its own accord. Then I remembered that I still had her key in my pocket. I had made it the excuse, once, for coming back to see her, but when I had gone away that day I had taken it with me again.

So I fished it out and dug it into the lock, and turned it, and tried the knob, and the door remained more firmly shut than ever. Then I turned it back the other way again, and that opened it. So I saw that it had been open all along, and I had simply locked it myself just now. I could have gone in long ago, instead of standing out there like a fool, but what was she doing, anyway, not to have heard me ringing away?

None of the lights were on in the living room, but the dial of the merrymaking radio over in the corner blinked across the dim room at me like a little gold star. And the lights were on in her bedroom and the door had been left ajar. “Bernice,” I called in to her, “hurry it up, will you! It isn’t early any more!” And I followed this admonition in there personally, pushed the bedroom door out of my way — and stopped. There was no one in there. She wasn’t in there.

I crossed the room and looked into the closet — not to see if she was there, but to see how much of her packing she had accomplished. Evidently she had carried it through to completion. Most of the rods were empty, and the few dresses and shoes remaining were lying haphazardly on the floor. Even my untrained eye could tell by that that they had been consigned to the discard. I prodded them idly with my foot and then turned back to the room itself again.

Our glasses were still standing around, the tray she had eaten her lunch from was still there, the striped-brocade chaise longue still flaunted the stain she had made on it when she spilled her drink that time, the very violet satin kimono she had been wearing all afternoon was still lying where I remembered seeing it fall when she threw it off — half over the side of the bed and half on the floor. She was leaving it behind because it had got stained too, I suppose. Only because I had been in the room as often as I had could I tell beyond the shadow of a doubt that everything was completely set for her getaway. Otherwise, it was even less disorderly than I had seen it looking many times before now — on awakening in the mornings for instance. But the fullest perfume bottle of the three was gone from the dressing table, and that photograph she used to have under the mirror looking like a cross between a prizefighter and a Mexican movie star had been torn once across and once up-and-down, and the four resulting pieces neatly piled one on top of the other and dropped into an empty drawer sticking out of its frame like a set of buckteeth. A couple of little touches like this were enough to tell me she was all in readiness to vacate. But then where the hell was she herself?

I knew by now that she was not in the apartment at all, but just to give myself something to do for a second or two, I stuck my head in the two remaining places — serving pantry and bathroom. In one, the gin and vermouth bottles were still side by side on the edge of the vanishing breadboard where I had balanced them when I poured out those last two; in the other, there were just a lot of tiles and dazzling light that was hard on the eyes.

Now it was beginning to trouble me a little; a moment ago it had been just perplexing. I would have phoned down to the doorman and asked him if he had seen her go out, only I knew that he hadn’t; he must have thought she was still up here or he wouldn’t have been so ready to announce me a while ago. But then he had only come on duty a few minutes before I had got here; the other man would have been the one to ask, and he had gone home now — or wherever doormen went when they were through dooring. But then, anyway, he was the very one had telephoned her message to me.

I went back to the bedroom again, lit a cigarette, sat myself worriedly down on the chaise longue, and told myself aloud that I would be a — well, something not very creditable to my mother. A disquieting suspicion settled on me, and then on top of that another that was more than disquieting, that was terrifying, paralyzing. One was that she had gone ahead to the station the way we had originally planned it and was waiting for me there — in which case, with me here and she at that end, the train would be gone by the time we located each other. But how was I supposed to know that? Hadn’t she told me herself to stop by here and call for her! And the worse thought was that she might have gone on to the station and might not be waiting there for me — in other words, might have taken an earlier train herself and given me the slip. “But she wouldn’t do a thing like that to me!” I wailed to myself. I knew, just the same, that if she wanted to badly enough, she could and would. And maybe had. She had had a persecution complex of one sort or another all along, I reminded myself, didn’t trust me any more than she did any one else; she had told me so to my face not once but several times. The very words rang in my ears: “I met you on the street; how do I know who sent you my way?” What more likely than that she had got leery of me too at the last minute and had made up her mind to play safe and go by herself?

Or else had become conscience-stricken at the eleventh hour at the thought of what she would be doing to Maxine, and decided to leave me behind to her. Or else had just been having a little indoor sport all these weeks, and in the end had gone off with somebody else entirely, letting me hold the bag. This last pleasurable theory was the worst of the lot. It produced a feeling something like taking a red-hot bath with a sunburned back — and scrubbing with a currycomb. But, I told myself, writhing there, what definite proof have you that such couldn’t be the case? What do you really know about her private life, after all? She’s kept you in the dark from beginning to end — told you never to ask for her on the wire if a man’s voice answered, pulled you down emergency staircases with her to keep you from seeing who called on her, cried about something like a child with the colic the night you brought her away from Jerry’s party, gone into convulsions of fear because you told another girl that she was corresponding with someone in Detroit. The whole thing smells fishy from beginning to end. Maybe that Marion person had reason to get jealous, at that; maybe there was more truth in it than you know; maybe there was something between her and this Sonny Boy individual, and maybe that’s where she’s gone right now — to Detroit to be with him!

And then a glance at the long, wide vanity table — which was only a couple of feet away from where I was sitting — but a glance below it instead of above it as heretofore, sent all my suspicions and torments buzzing away from me like a cloud of mosquitoes when some one has lighted a punk-stick. Three pieces of her baggage were standing there side by side, all latched and strapped and ready to be carried downstairs — a big valise, a much smaller one, and a round, shiny, patent-leather thing, looking like a drum, that was probably a hat- or shoe-box.

I could have jumped up in the air and yelled with surprised relief, felt like kissing the neat little “B.P.” marked on each one. I told myself how low I was to have even doubted her for a minute, much less credited her with all kinds of tortuous machinations the way I had. “You have everything going just the way you want it to.” I upbraided myself disgustedly, “and instead of being satisfied, you have to go out of your way and look for trouble!” She had probably only just stepped outside for a minute, to get something to eat most likely. Although — I had never known her not to have it sent up from the drugstore downstairs, and tonight in particular, when she claimed she was too busy even to come down and speak to me on the phone, you’d think she would have — oh, well, some other reason then; she would be back in a minute; she had even left the apartment door unlocked.

I shifted to a more relaxed posture on the chaise longue, raised one knee to scratch my calf, put it down again, lighted another cigarette for lack of something better to do — my second since I had come in here. Thought I’d cut down on them once the two of us were settled out there; no sense in lighting one every five minutes the way I did nowa — I had been there longer than that, though; had been there about ten or twelve minutes now, I guessed. I looked over at the clock and — that thing must be wrong! Was that ten past nine, or had it stopped at quarter to two that afternoon and stayed that way? I got up and took a closer look. More than ten past, twelve past — and I had been up there half an hour! If she didn’t get back inside of the next five minutes we were just going to make that train by the skin of our teeth — if at all! Until we got the bags downstairs, and by the time we got down to Forty-Second Street through all the traffic! I started pacing back and forth. Wished she’d hurry, what was she doing, wished she’d hurry! The radio in there was beginning to get on my nerves; it had played nothing but one dance tune after another ever since I had been up there. I liked quieter pieces — and I didn’t like music of any kind with my timetables, what was more.

I strode in there to turn it off, put up the room light, which she had left off when she went out, and — there she was!