“Don’t let it run on too long,” Cappello advised him, releasing Peter for lunch a few minutes early — at five to twelve. “We have a lot to do this afternoon, old buddy.”
“I’ll be back in an hour,” Peter promised, shaking Cappello’s hand before he left, sorry that they wasted so much time between them.
After the fanfare of his invitation, Herbie was uncommunicative during lunch; he chawed his steak, sipped his beer, basked (a vacationist) in the sun of some secret knowledge, his gnarled eagle face made stolid by the burdens of wisdom.
Confronted by his brother’s silence, Peter felt constrained to talk between bites of hamburger, above the noise of other conversations. “Lois and I are together again,” he said.
Herbie just grunted. “Why’d you run off like that the other day?” he said, shaking his head ruefully. “Huh? What’s the matter with you?”
Peter loaded his mouth with French fries. “I didn’t run off,” he muttered. “I just saw no point in staying.”
“Come on. You ran off like a nervous turtle with a rocket up his ass. What were you afraid of, for God’s sake? What?”
Peter choked on his food, trying to get out an answer. Herbie had no right to lecture him as though he were still a kid. He coughed until flames came to his eyes. “Look …” he said finally.
“Ah, forget it,” Herbie said, waving his fork magnanimously. “I don’t care, but I feel responsible for you. Kid, I’d like to know — what’s your opinion of Gloria?”
“She’s okay,” he said, slugging down his lukewarm coffee, but when he thought about it, the question struck a nerve, pained him unexpectedly; he remembered the look on her face as she came toward him, that dour smile of promise. “She’s okay,” he said again, meaning it hopefully.
“Okay? She’s a great girl,” Herbie said, his mind on something else. “Yeah. And she likes you.” Herbie nervously turned in his chair, looking for something, squirming, counting the house — a man with a near-sighted eye out, a prospective investor in all concerns. “I have a kind of proposition for you,” Herbie said, craning his neck to see what might be seen. “An exchange of favors.”
Peter finished his coffee, was ready to leave. Curious — his brother’s guest — he followed Herbie’s glance on a tour of the restaurant, table-hopping: nothing to see, not many attractive women, anyway; a few — a nice solid old girl of about forty sitting by herself — nice. She returned his stare, smirked; he retreated. What was it all about?
“Peter, listen hard,” Herbie said, half rising, “any time you need something — money, advice — you can come to me. You know that. When I’m in on a good thing, a deal, you can count on a piece of it for yourself — it goes without saying. This time I need a favor, nothing I wouldn’t do for you if our positions were reversed.” In one motion, he turned to look at the door and bolted from his chair. “There she is. Take care of her for me, huh? I got to run, Pete, before she sees me. Be a good guy”—slipping a bill under Peter’s plate, a ten — “I’ll call …” In the middle of a word he was off, twisting through the crowd toward the back of the restaurant.
“Herbie …” Peter leaped up to follow, hesitated, picked up the ten and turned, which proved to be a mistake; Gloria was bearing down on him. Run, he told himself, run for your life, his spirit following Herbie out the back door, the rest of him standing still. The wall clock showed five to one. Even if he left immediately, and ran the whole distance back, he would be a few minutes late. Run. He turned to look again, the vanity of knowing. Smiling grimly, she waved; trapped, he waited. Why not? Though anxious to get back to work for Cappello’s sake (for his job’s sake), he was glad to see Gloria again — a twinge of lust under the collar.
The eloquence of her discontent! Dressed to kill, her breasts prodding her tight orange coat like concealed weapons, she moved irresistibly in a straight line, waiters bending out of her way like trampled flowers. Peter waited as though in front of a tank, resolute, fascinated, scared to death. And Cappello was waiting for him, his face on the wall the face of a clock.
“So he’s left you to pay the check,” she said, looking through him.
He shrugged. “I’d like to talk to you, Gloria, but I have to get back to work.”
“Good-bye,” she barked, turning her back, her hair — surprise — a new season. Winter-black. He liked it better before: mouse-brown, but her own.
Outside the restaurant, lingering, he wondered out loud — an afterthought — if Gloria had had lunch.
Lunch? She had only contempt for lunch. Outraged, she told him about Herbie and Doreen sneaking out of the apartment behind her back, taking all their stuff, leaving her there alone with the Goodwill furniture, for the crows.
Peter listened, nodded, unable to care. In a hurry to get away, he babbled his concern, ashamed of not caring.
She walked along with him, spilling out her grievances, puffing fiercely on a cigarette, a sullen witch.
They passed Cardinal Ties, his reflection on sale, Gloria among the dust of last year’s faded styles.
“This is it,” he said. “I’d better go up before they fire me. See ya.” He waved good-bye.
She buzzed on, oblivious. He stayed, not listening; as she raged, grievance begetting grievance, her voice got louder. “It’ll be all right,” he consoled her. She kept on. He suffered the notice — the superior smiles — of passers-by, his face protesting his innocence as if anyone cared. When he looked at his watch, usually five minutes slow, he saw that he was a half-hour late.
“I really hate to be such a bother,” she was saying, tapping her foot, “but you’re his brother, you know what he’s like. All I want is what’s coming to me, which is to be treated like a person, a human being.”
Peter glanced at his watch again, trying to hold time back with his will, the minutes spilling away as she talked. She was holding his arm, the raven hair a wig of grief.
It was too late to go to work: they went to Herbie’s (now Gloria’s) place to have a drink, to continue their talk without the pressure of interruption.
Uninterrupted — “September Song” on the phonograph, a few beers under the belt — there was nothing to talk about; they spent the afternoon in consultation on a lopsided, broken-springed double bed, a dying moth their audience. Her love a kind of vengeance, his a matter of course. Small pleasure, small regret! What had he expected? He remembered nostalgically the vague half-smile of his dream, but even though he searched, he didn’t see it again. It was a loss, that dour smile — that cracked, open bud. If he missed anything — and how could he know at the time? — he missed that.
When he thought it time to go, he climbed off the bed to find his pants. Gloria asleep.
“You can stay awhile,” she crooned from a corner of the bed, her eyes still closed, her tangled raven hair glistening dully like fresh paint.
“I have to go,” Peter said, having trouble finding the leg holes in his pants. The small squarish room, quaint with flowered wallpaper and peeling basket chairs, had the sweet, rubbery smell of rotting fruit.
“You don’t have to go,” she said in her movie-siren voice, “if you don’t want to go.” She sprawled across the bed, lazy and heavy — a big cat playing possum in the sun, the inner nerves tense, ready for the kill.
Pants and shirt on, he searched under the bed for his socks and shoes among worms of dust, entrails of old magazines. “I really have to get home,” he said, recalling Lois in a shock of guilt. “My wife will — ”
“What wife? You told me … What do you mean? … You said you were split up.” She sat up, sullen, a benighted raven, deceived again.