“Would you like something to eat?”
“Don’t trouble. Why don’t you go on back to bed?”
“It’s no bother. I wasn’t asleep anyway.”
They sat down together in a few moments’ time at the little oilcloth-topped kitchen table, he to eat, she to watch him. He was wearing a robe over his pajamas, now.
“This is sort of fun, coming back late and eating in the kitchen like this.”
She smiled politely. As you would to a stranger at your table, who expresses appreciation.
“The walk gave me an appetite,” he explained. “They held it way out at a place called Mr. and Mrs. Webster’s. Outside town. Like a roadside restaurant. Combination farmhouse and eating place.”
He was chewing enjoyably on a sandwich.
“The interurban trolley is supposed to stop close by there — I rode out on one — but I stood there waiting and waiting and no sign of one. Finally I gave it up and started walking toward town on foot.”
“You didn’t walk all the way in?” she protested.
“No. One caught up with me after about twenty minutes, and luckily I was able to stop it from where I was. So I jumped on and rode in the rest of the way from there.”
“But some of the others had cars, didn’t they? Why didn’t you come back with one of them?”
“I didn’t want to ask any favors,” he said laconically. “Nobody else seemed ready to leave yet, and I was, so I just walked on out without a word. Besides, I wouldn’t have trusted their driving; some of them were in a pretty bad way by that time. Arms slung about each other’s shoulders, harmonizing; you know the stage.”
When he’d finished, he lit a cigarette, took a reflective puff.
“This isn’t such a bad town after all, it is?” he suddenly remarked, apropos of nothing.
She sighed.
He saw that she wasn’t going to answer. “Anyway, right now it seems all right. I wish you could have seen the stars out there just now, when I came in.” He blew a long, slow jet of smoke upward. “Peace of mind’s a wonderful thing.”
“Is it?” was all she said.
He tried to take her hand in his. It had moved by that time, just a moment ahead.
“What’s been the matter between us lately?” he said softly. “There’s such a distance—”
“I’d better wash off this plate and glass...”
He took them away from her, moved them out of reach.
“I kiss you, but — you aren’t there. Just your face.”
His eyes got a little brighter; dropping them for a moment, he put out his interfering cigarette with a few neat little taps.
She drew her wrapper a little closer together just above her breast, held it that way with fingers for fastening.
He raised his eyes to her again, from the extinguished cigarette. Hers went down, as by a counterweight. He reached out for her with both arms and drew her toward him. “Come here, closer to me,” he said with smoldering laziness.
And drawing her down upon his knees, he enfolded her and put his lips to hers, in a prolonged kiss, that at last swept her head all the way over and back, out beyond the encircling rim of his supporting arm, his own pressed hungrily close to it.
“Now who loves you?” he breathed, when he had released her at last. “Who loves you now?”
Her face had become suffused with embarrassed color, and she tried to hide it by turning it away.
“Don’t turn away,” he said with throaty languor. “We’re not single. What’s wrong with a husband kissing his wife?”
He turned her face back toward him. He kissed her again, even more lengthily, even more ardently.
Then suddenly, piercing its way through the humming already filling their ears, a sharper, clearer ringing knifed its way to their attention. They could only gaze into one another’s eyes, comatose, for a moment, without being able to understand what it was.
It came again, from somewhere beyond the darkened next room, stabbing its way throughout the stilled apartment, like shards of broken glass.
She pried herself from him, jumped to her feet with alacrity, as though she were only too eager to take advantage of the interruption. “Wait. The telephone. Don’t you hear it?”
“Damn,” he said languidly under his breath, trying to regain his hold on her. “Let it go. It’ll ring itself out.”
It sounded again. She escaped from him, went outside to it.
She remained out there by it for some time. It was not a wrong number. He could tell that she knew the person by the inflection she gave her voice after the very opening remark. He could, of course, hear every word she said, because of the total absence of any other sounds throughout the night-bound flat. Her remarks were somewhat disjointed, as any conversation is bound to be when only one-half of it at a time can be heard.
“Yes, he did. Some time ago...
“No, not very long. About half an hour...
“Why, I don’t know. Shall I find out? Wait, I’ll ask him...
“No, that’s all right. He’s not asleep yet...”
He had, however, gone into the bedroom by now, without waiting for her any longer in the kitchen.
She came to the bedroom doorway inquiringly. The light was on her side, he had left it dark in there. “Press?” she said, peering into the dimness.
He was already in bed, in a sitting position, knees reared in front of him.
“It’s Mr. Wises wife. Press. She’s on the phone out there. He hasn’t come home yet, and she’s worried. She wants to know if he left when you did.”
He was not only patently uninterested, but, perhaps because a mood had been destroyed, somewhat querulous. And, above all, extremely sleepy. He spoke through a yawn. “I left alone. He was still there when I came away. And plenty boozed.” He raked his hair, collapsed onto his back, and let his knees deflate after him, more slowly. “Anyway, what does she bother us about it for? I didn’t go there with him. Why doesn’t she try some of the others?”
“She says she already has, she’s tried them all, we were the last ones left. Nobody seems to have come home with him. She’s beside herself, the poor woman.”
“Well, what is he, anyway?” he growled blurredly. “A grown man or a child in rompers? Get rid of her and come to bed. I’m dead tired.” He allowed his head to roll suddenly sideward.
When she returned, only moments later, he was already unfeignedly asleep, lips slightly parted, breath sandpapery, with that limpness of the entire body that only nature in its unconsciousness can bestow, that cannot be simulated. The deep, the dreamless sleep, of a mind at ease, of a conscience without flaw. Peace of mind.
24
He gave a peculiar convulsive start. Almost a cringing away of his whole body, a scuttling, lengthwise across the bed. Away from that touch upon his shoulder, that leaden hand of retribution that seemed to have fallen in his
A rolling, a floundering, as if blindly seeking to escape even before his eyes were open. A warding-off, a suddenly arrested flight spasm.
“Press,” she said, withdrawing her light-fingered touch. “I didn’t mean to frighten you. It’s only me. You’ll be late. You’ll be terribly late.”
His eyes had opened now. “It felt so crushingly heavy,” he said, glancing at her thin, supple hand.
“It’s twenty after already,” she urged.
He joined her outside, at the table, in a few moments. He was perfectly normal, now, perfectly casual, just as on any other day.
“Some day,” he commented, noting its splendor through the window. “I feel sorry for anyone that’s not here to see i...” He didn’t finish that, as though it had just been a random thought anyway.
“Well,” she said, “then they’re someplace else, to enjoy it there. Everyone is someplace.”