She gave me a sympathetic knowing smile. “You bet your life. Lemme tell you a joke.”
“Sure.”
“The point isn’t so much the joke,” she said, “as the guy who told it and how the other guys took it.”
“Fire away.”
“I was working in a diner, before I got the job here, and every morning we’d get these salesmen in, same bunch of boys, come in for an hour from maybe nine to ten. Supposed to be out making sales, they’d come in and kill some time together instead. Told a lot of jokes. They loved jokes, those boys, and they’d laugh and roll around and spill their coffee and have a great old time. Except this one joke. Seems this couple went to the zoo, they went to see the big gorilla, and the wife started teasing the gorilla, sticking her tongue out at him, and wiggling her behind at him and all that stuff. And the husband kept saying, ‘Myrtle, don’t do that, you’re getting the gorilla all upset.’ But she kept on anyway, and the gorilla was getting upset, and all at once the gorilla yanked those bars apart and jumped through and grabbed Myrtle up and ran off with her. And naturally Myrtle was screaming, and her husband ran along after them, and he shouted, ‘Myrtle! Tell him you’ve got a headache!’ ”
“Ah,” I said.
“Right.” She had a very fetching, very sexy crooked grin. “None of those salesmen actually laughed at that joke. They more growled at it. They all said, ‘Yeaa-uh.’ And that, mister, is all I know about marriage.”
I said, “You don’t have a headache now, do you?”
“What? Well, look at you,” she said.
16
Somebody was shaking my shoulder. Opening my eyes I saw a breast impending close above me, and heard a knocking in the middle distance at the same time a voice said, “Somebody’s at the door.”
Voice=Sue Ann=memory=explanation of breast. Nice breast. I reached for it, and my shoulder was shaken more roughly, Sue Ann saying more urgently, “Some-body’s knocking at the room door.”
“Yes,” I said, sitting up, trying to simulate alertness. I found the perimeter of the bed — Holiday Inn beds are wonderfully large, large enough for anything — from there reached the floor without too much difficulty, rose on those shillelaghs that once were my legs, tottered across the room, and remembered just before reaching the still knock-knocking door that I was nude. So I stood behind it as I sliced it open a crack, and peered around the edge at Katharine, whose face displayed an intricate balance of annoyance and concern. Knowing at once what the problem was, I of course asked the unnecessary question: “What time is it?”
“Ten after nine.” Now that she’d seen I was still alive and capable of both walking and talking, she was becoming much less concerned and much more annoyed.
“Oh.” I tried to find my brains, so I could cudgel them. A brain without cudgel is like a cake without yeast; nevertheless I attempted to rise to the occasion, saying, “I forgot to leave a call.”
“We have to get to Kansas City,” she reminded me, “by one-thirty.”
“Right. Right. Where are you, in the restaurant?”
“I was.”
“I’ll meet you there, in five minutes.”
While Katharine said something else about the urgency of the situation — she was letting off irritation, and had every right — I glanced back toward the bed, where Sue Ann was grinning foxily at me. Women love to see a man nagged by another woman.
Sexy grin. Sexy woman. Sue Ann looked very very good. So I’d drive faster. “Make it fifteen minutes,” I said, and shut the door.
17
Katharine was very annoyed. “It’s been almost half an hour.”
“Coffee,” I said, to the hovering waitress, and sat down.
Katharine gave me a critical evaluation: “You were drinking last night.”
“I think maybe the pork chops were bad.”
“They were not. I phoned your room around eleven, and you weren’t there.”
What crap was this? After Sue Ann, who had been a lot of very uncomplicated fun, who needed a harridan taking liberties she hadn’t earned? We weren’t shacked up. “Look, lady,” I said. “You hired me to drive the cab. I didn’t hire you to cure me of my vices.”
“Yes, your vices,” she said, and all at once she wasn’t really annoyed anymore. Looking at her, it seemed to me she was actually amused. Did she know I’d been with a woman last night? How do women do that sort of thing? All at once they know.
My coffee came while I was still trying to work out a response. There was none, though, so I busied myself with milk and sugar.
Katharine, in yet a different tone, said, “Have some breakfast.”
“We’re late.”
“You need the protein.” Was that another smart crack? To the waitress she said, “Bring the gentleman a number three.” Then, to me, “Orange juice or grapefruit juice.”
“Grapefruit.” I needed the shock to my system.
“And he likes his eggs over easy.”
“No, I don’t think so,” I said. “This morning, in honor of myself, I think I better have them scrambled. Makes them easier to deal with.”
After the waitress went away, I said, “What were you phoning for, last night?”
“I wanted to know if you play chess. I have a travel set.”
“Oh. No, I don’t, not really. I fooled around with it in college, that’s all.” Then, because her earlier manner still rankled, I said, “It isn’t among my vices.”
“Now, don’t get bad-tempered,” she said. “I didn’t get mad at you when you called me look-lady.”
“Well, why should you?”
“Tom,” she said, “wait just a minute. Let’s start all over again. You’re a little hungover this morning, and I’ve been very edgy because I want to make my decision by the time we get to Kansas City, and we’re very close to having a fight.”
“I’m not starting anything,” I said, grumpily, then immediately heard my own words and regretted them. “No, forget that. You’re right, we’re both a little touchy this morning.”
“Friends?” She extended her hand across the table.
“Friends,” I agreed, and took her hand, which was smaller and more delicate than Sue Ann’s. (Flashback: Complete physical recall of Sue Ann.)
The waitress returned with my grapefruit juice, my side order of toast, and a plate containing number three: scrambled eggs and ham. I ate, more doggedly than enthusiastically, meantime thinking about one thing and another, including the idea of Katharine phoning me at eleven at night to play chess. Was that possible? Could it be I’d had my choice of two women last night? I couldn’t believe it, but I paused in my protein-harvesting to ask the question: “What made you want to play chess last night?”
An ironic smile played like heat lightning on her lips. “I’m not one of your vices either,” she said. “I was getting very nervous and depressed, that’s all, thinking about Barry and Kansas City and everything, and sometimes it helps to distract yourself with a game. That’s all there was to it, Tom.” She was looking very serious now. “I thought we understood one another, that’s why I felt I could call.”
“We do understand one another.”
“I’m not in the market for an affair,” she said. “Nor a one-night stand. Not with anybody. Don’t you think I’ve thought about it?”