“You mustn’t say that. Believe me, I’m not too good for anyone.” He turned and went to the door. “Tomorrow night I’d like to take you out to dinner. To Em Page’s place. Will you go?”
“Of course.”
“I think you’ll like it there. It’s quiet and comfortable, and the food’s the best in town. I think you’ll like Em too.”
“You have mentioned this Emerson Page several times. Are you very old friends?”
“I don’t think you could quite say that. I like him, that’s all. He’s a nice, simple guy who does things.”
“I see. Well, I suppose there is a virtue in that. Doing things, I mean. Will you be home tomorrow?”
“Not until evening. Do you mind?”
“No, no. Of course not. I only wondered.”
“Are you sure there is nothing I can do for you before I leave?”
“Quite sure.”
“You look very tired. Why don’t you sleep late in the morning?”
“Perhaps I shall.”
“I believe I would, if I were you. Goodnight, now!”
“Goodnight.”
As soon as he was gone, she got up immediately and went into the bathroom and undressed and showered and put on a nightgown. Returning to the bedroom, she was aware of the presence of the piece of bottle and wondered if he had merely forgotten it or had left it deliberately. In either case she was thankful, and she poured some of the Scotch over ice and sat down again on the edge of the bed and drank the Scotch slowly.
When the glass was empty, she turned out the light and lay down on the bed in the darkness and tried to achieve complete relaxation in a way she had learned and had sometimes found effective, but now it was impossible because she kept thinking in spite of herself of the sterile Mexican nights. Parallel to revulsion and despair, which were concomitants of the nights and remembrance of the nights, was the heretical hunger grown great in abstinence, and this was the oppressive menace, the presence of passion and not the lack of it, and it was this that Avery did not understand and that she could not explain, and it was this, she thought, that would surely b; in the end, the destruction of her, who deserved it, and perhaps of him, who did not. She was exhausted, but she could not sleep, and after a while she got up and had another drink and lay back down again, and a long time after that, near daybreak, she went to sleep at last and slept heavily until noon. During the afternoon she ate nothing and drank nothing and succeeded in thinking very little, and in the evening she went with Avery to Emerson Page’s restaurant.
She liked it there, as Avery had thought she would, and she was glad she had come. From her position at a table across from Avery, she could look at an angle through an archway into the bar and see the back of a woman on a stool between the backs of two men on stools, and she could hear modulated canned music, and a drink, which she had denied herself all afternoon, was now permissible. A waitress came to take their order, and she told Avery to use his own judgment about dinner but that she would like a martini first of all, and he gave the order for the dinner and the martinis, and the waitress went off to the kitchen and returned immediately and went into the bar and returned from there with the martinis. Lisa sipped hers, which was very dry and good, and saw a man come through the archway from the bar and pause and look around and see them and make his way toward them among the intervening tables. He was an inch or two under six feet, with a compact body, and he walked with a slight limp. His face was rather dark-skinned and had a quality of boyish openness about it that made him look younger than he probably was, and she was absolutely certain, though she had never seen him before or heard him described physically, that this was Emerson Page, who was a nice, simple guy who did things. However, though her conviction of recognition was immediate and correct, it had in her mind no special significance and was accompanied by no particular emotional reaction. She watched him come with indifference.
Avery stood up and extended a hand and said, “Hello, Em. Good to see you again.”
Emerson took the hand and released it. “Good to have you back, Avery. Nice winter? I guess I don’t have to ask that, though. Congratulations.”
“Thanks. And here she is, Em. My wife Lisa. Lisa, this is Emerson Page.”
Emerson looked down at Lisa and smiled and made a minimal bow from the waist and said, “How do you do,” with an appealing suggestion of shyness, and she responded and said that she felt like she already knew him because he seemed to be the only person in Corinth Avery ever mentioned.
“It that so?” he said. “I’m flattered.”
“You have a very nice place. Avery said it was nice, and it is. I like it.”
“Thank you. I hope you come often. How do you like Corinth by now? It must seem pretty small after Midland City and Miami and Mexico City and all those places.”
“I haven’t noticed. I don’t think I will mind its being small.”
He turned back to Avery. “I was at the bar when your letter came. The one saying you were married. Roscoe and I drank a toast to your happiness.”
“Did you? That was a nice gesture, Em. I appreciate it”
Emerson lifted a hand as if he were going to put it on Avery’s arm and then halted the motion before it was completed. The hand dropped to his side.
“Well, I won’t intrude any longer. Just wanted to say hello. Has your order been taken?”
“Yes. Can’t complain about the service.”
“Good. I hope you enjoy your dinner and will consider yourselves as my guests for tonight.”
“That’s extremely generous of you.”
Emerson smiled again at Lisa, the smile suggesting the same hesitancy that had interrupted and deflected his gesture toward Avery, as if he were uncertain of its reception.
“I’m pleased to have met you, Mrs. Lawes. I wish you much happiness.”
“Thank you.”
He walked away, the limp barely apparent as his weight descended on his right leg, and Avery sat down.
“Nice guy,” he said. “Deserves a lot of credit. He was a poor kid, you know. I remember him delivering papers and parcels and things like that almost as far back as I can remember. He started this place on a shoestring and has made something of it.”
“Is he married?”
“Oh, yes. Didn’t I tell you that?”
“I don’t remember that you did.”
“His wife’s name is Edwina. He calls her Ed. Quite a pretty woman, everyone seems to think. She’ll probably be down later. They live in an apartment upstairs, and she often comes down. Perhaps you will meet her.”
The martini in her empty stomach was having an immediate and powerful effect. Shapes and sounds were softened and subdued, had lost in minutes the effect of harsh or discordant impact on her senses, and the face of Avery, across the table, was the identification of someone she knew and rather liked and who was for the time being no particular problem. The world was reduced to the dimensions of a small restaurant in a small town, and the biggest problem in the reduced world was whether there was time before dinner for another martini, or granted the time, whether it was advisable to have it.
She thought that it would possibly be wiser to have dinner before the second martini, because the first martini was really having a remarkably potent effect, and it was not at all impossible that she might, at this rate, become quickly drunk. The thought of Mrs. Avery Lawes publicly drunk on her first night out in Corinth seemed to be a very good joke that amused her considerably, and she looked down at the olive lying naked in the thin shell of her martini glass and laughed quietly at the good joke.