He got out on his side of the Caddy and went up onto the front porch from the portico. At the door he dug in a pocket for a key and used it efficiently, Emerson noticed, in spite of the load of Scotch he was carrying. They went into a hall and down the hall and into a room on the right that was obviously a library. A floor lamp had been left burning at one end of the room, and there was a fire in a fireplace at the other end that created a shirting pattern of light and shadows on the floor in front of it. Avery walked down to the fireplace and dropped his hat and overcoat onto a chair and stood with his hands extended toward the fire.
“Take off your things,” he said. “Fix you a drink.”
“I think I’d better get the cab and get on back,” Emerson said. “Thanks just the same.”
“Sure. Call it for you immediately. Nasty night, however. Take the cab a while to get here. You’ll have time for a drink.”
Reluctantly, Emerson took off his coat and advanced to the fire. Avery went out of the room and was back in two minutes.
“Called the cab. Be here in twenty minutes. Rough estimate. Now for the drink. Still bourbon?”
“Yes, thanks.”
“Scotch for me. Been drinking Scotch all day. Woke up this morning and thought it would be a damn good day for it.” At a liquor cabinet he got out bottles and glasses and then turned. “No ice. Forgot about ice. I’ll go out to the kitchen for some.”
“Never mind. Not for me, I mean. I’d just as soon take it without.”
“Really? Not just being considerate?”
“No, really.”
“Good. Have mine the same.”
He poured the bourbon and the Scotch and brought the bourbon to Emerson. “Here you are. Bourbon for you. Scotch for me. Bourbon for the road. Scotch for bed.”
Emerson thought that he had something a hell of a lot better for bed than Scotch, if he could only get home to it, and he thought of it waiting for him and was very bitter. He drank some of the bourbon and hoped that the damn cab would arrive under the estimate.
“Cold house,” Avery said. “Empty house, cold house. You know what it needs, Em? This house?”
Emerson had a decided opinion on that question. He thought he knew damn well what the house needed and what Avery needed, and it was the same thing he himself needed and ought to be having and intended to have just as soon as a lousy, creeping cab could get him to it in the cursed snow.
“A woman,” he said. “You ought to get married, Avery.”
Avery laughed softly and took Scotch. “Yes. Woman. Wife. Thought you’d say that. Just asked to hear you say it. What everyone’s thinking. What everyone’s saying. Why doesn’t Avery get married? Propagate. Have kids. Last of the Laweses. Avery has no kids, no more Laweses. Wouldn’t that be a God-damn crying shame?”
Emerson didn’t know what to say, and so he said nothing and drank some more bourbon. Avery was looking at him with a queer intentness, and it made him uncomfortable. He wished to hell that Avery would quit.
“You know why I’m not married?” Avery said.
Emerson said he didn’t. He wanted to say also that he didn’t care. His indifference was not prompted by callousness, but by the thought of waiting and his urgent desire to change that condition. He could see quite plainly that Avery was a lonely guy who wanted to talk, and he was sorry for him and all that, but where in hell was the God-damn cab?
“No,” Avery said. “Of course you don’t know. Guy like you couldn’t possibly know. Probably wouldn’t believe it if you did. No insult intended. Compliment, rather. Thinks straight, feels straight. Guy like you does. Would you believe it if I told you? Why I’m not married?”
“Why not? If you said it, I’d believe it.”
“I wonder. Curious about it. Want me to tell you?”
“Well, that’s up to you, Avery.”
“Sure. So it is. Think I will. Probably because of the Scotch. Probably regret it tomorrow. Think I’ll tell you, anyhow. Just to see if you believe it. Reason is, I can’t stand women. Revolted by them. All women. Every damn woman on earth. As women, I mean. Women all right as people. That’s different. Women as women have special function. You know. Requires a man. Thought of it makes me sick. You believe that?”
Emerson believed it, all right, because there was no reason not to believe it if Avery said it was so, but he couldn’t understand it by a long shot. With a wife like Ed, whose happy lechery was a perfect complement to his own, how could he understand something like this? It seemed to him a sickness. Now he was beginning to see Avery as not only a lonely man but a sick man, and it disturbed him and embarrassed him, and he wished fervently, not for the first time that night, that it hadn’t seemed to Avery like a good day for drinking Scotch.
“I guess it would be possible to feel like that,” he said.
Avery lifted his glass and tipped it and seemed surprised to discover that there was nothing in it. He looked from the glass to the bottle on the cabinet and back to the glass and then apparently forgot all about both of them.
“Woman in this house once,” he said. “Long time ago. Beautiful woman. Most beautiful woman on earth. Loved her. Worshiped her. Greatest happiness just to look at her, listen to her voice, have her touch me. Then it all went to hell. All to hell. Reasons I won’t bore you with. Anyhow, complete reversal. Disgusted me. Absolute revulsion. Couldn’t bear to have her touch me any more, hardly to come near me. Thought of her flesh made me ill. Sickness in me, of course, kind of disease. Realize that but can’t help it. Same feeling about all women. No wife. No propagation. Last of the Laweses.”
He was surely talking about his mother, and what made it so bad, Emerson thought, was that it was really the Scotch talking. And it was saying things that would later be remembered and despised, and where, where, where was the lousy, creeping cab? Take that business about the Mexican musician and the hurried return from the Mexican holiday, for instance, and now all this stuff about love and hate and everything — it was the kind of stuff a guy didn’t want to hear, especially a guy with someone like Ed waiting, and all he could do was keep his mouth shut and sweat it out.
And then, at last, the cab was there in the drive, its horn blasting.
With a vast sense of relief, almost of precarious escape, Emerson went for his hat and coat. He really was sorry for Avery, and he felt a little guilty about running out on a guy who was lonely and was obviously dreading an empty house, but it was impossible to stay, would have been impossible even without the consideration of Ed, because of the things Avery was saying, and you knew damn well how it would be later about his remembering and regretting. Besides, to be truthful, it was pretty damn depressing.
“That’s the cab,” Emerson said. “I’d better run.”
“I hear it. Pretty good time, considering. Less than twenty minutes. I’ll see you to the door.”
“No. Don’t bother. I’ll get out all right.”
“You sure? Appreciate very much your driving me home. Wouldn’t want you to think I don’t.”
“It’s all right, Avery. It was nothing.”
“Contrary. It was a great deal. Fine act of friendship.”
“All right, Avery. Good-night.”
He let himself out the front door and ran for the cab and got in. He slumped back in the seat.
There was still business in the bar, but the dining room was deserted. He went directly through into the kitchen, which was also deserted, and up the stairs from the kitchen to the apartment. Dropping his hat and coat in the living room, he crossed over into the bedroom, and there was a small lamp burning on a table beside the bed, and sitting up in the bed was Ed with a martini, and she was wearing the blue thing, the thing like smoke that looked as if it were about to drift off her entirely.