I was wearing a pair of tennis shoes, slacks, and an athletic undershirt. When Henry Ashbury came in, he was bundled up in a bathrobe. He slipped it off and stood with nothing on but some boxer’s tights.
He looked like hell.
“Well,” he said, “here we are.”
He looked down at his watermelon paunch. “I suppose I’ve got to do something about this.” He walked over to the weight-lifting machine and began tugging away at the weights and puffing and blowing. After a minute he stepped aside and nodded toward them. “Do you want a workout?” he asked.
“No,” I said.
“Neither do I, but I’ve got to.”
“Why don’t you try sitting up straighter — get a better posture?”
“I sit down because I want to be comfortable. I’m most comfortable when I’m slumped down in a chair.”
“Go ahead and exercise, then,” I said.
He flashed me a quick glance and acted as though he was going to say something, but didn’t. He went back to the weight-lifting machine and did some more work. Then he went over and weighed himself on the scales.
He walked over to the canvas mat and said, “Do you think you could show me some of that stuff the Jap was showing you last night?”
I met his eyes and said, “No.”
He laughed and put on the bathrobe. After that we sat down and talked politics until it was time to take a shower and dress for breakfast.
After breakfast Ashbury went to the office. Along about eleven o’clock I met Alta, who had just got up for breakfast. She’d evidently heard all about me. “Come on in and keep me company while I eat,” she said. “I want to talk with you.”
It looked like a good chance to get acquainted. I went in and went through the routine of seating her at the table. I sat opposite her, and had a cup of coffee with cream and sugar while she had black coffee, three pieces of Ry-Krisp, and a cigarette. If I could have had a figure like hers by eating that sort of breakfast, I’d have done it myself.
“Well?” she asked.
I remembered what Henry Ashbury had said about being myself, and not trying to force things. “Well, what?”
She laughed. “You’re the new physical instructor?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t look as though you were much of a boxer.”
I didn’t say anything.
“My stepmother tells me it’s not weight but speed. She says you’re so fast that you’re like a streak of lightning. I must see you work out some day.”
“I’m training your father. He isn’t doing any boxing.”
She eyed me critically and said, “I can see why you go in for jujitsu. That must be interesting.”
“It is.”
“They say you’re so good that it takes the best of the Japanese to give you any sort of a match.”
“That’s not exactly true.”
“But you do wrestle with the Japanese?”
“Some.”
“Didn’t Dad see you throwing a big Japanese wrestler last night?”
I said, “Can’t we talk about something else besides me?”
“What, for instance?”
“You.”
She shook her head. “I’m never an interesting subject of conversation at this time in the morning... Do you like to walk?”
“No.”
“I do. I’m going to take a long brisk walk.”
Instructions had been most explicit. I was to get acquainted with Alta Ashbury, win her confidence, let her feel that I was capable of whipping my weight in wildcats, and get her to open up and tell me what was bothering her. In order to do that, I had to make hay while the sun was shining.
I took a long brisk walk.
I didn’t learn anything on the first part of the walk except that she certainly had a swell figure, that her eyes were warm and brown and had a trick of laughing every time her lips smiled. She had the endurance of a marathon runner, a love of fresh air, and a scorn for most of the conventions. After a while, we sat under some trees. I didn’t talk. She did. She hated fortune hunters and men who “had a line.” She was inclined to think marriage was the bunk, and that her father was a fool for letting himself get roped into it, that she hated her stepmother, that her stepbrother was the apple of Mrs. Ashbury’s eyes, and that she thought the apple was full of wormholes.
I felt that was pretty good for one afternoon. I got back in time to ditch her and duck around the corner to where Bertha Cool was waiting. She took me up to the Jap. Hashita showed me a few more grips and holds, and made me do a lot more practicing. By the time I got done with him, the walk, the exercise of the day before, and the tumbles I’d taken made me feel as though I’d just lost a ten-round bout to a steam roller.
I explained to Bertha that Ashbury was wise, so it wasn’t going to be necessary to keep up the jujitsu lessons. Bertha said she’d paid for them, and I’d take them or she’d know the reason why. I warned her about continuing to take me back and forth to the house, and told her since Ashbury was paying for it, I’d better get a cab. She told me she was fully capable of running the business end of things, and got me back in time for dinner.
It was a lousy dinner. The food was good, but there was too much service. I had to sit straight as a ramrod and pretend to be interested in a lot of things Mrs. Ashbury was saying. Robert Tindle posed as the tired businessman. Henry Ashbury shoved in grub with the preoccupied manner of one who hadn’t the slightest idea of what he’s eating.
Alta Ashbury was going out to a dance about ten o’clock. She took an hour after dinner to sit out on a glassed-in sun porch and talk.
There was a half-moon. The air was warm and balmy, and something was worrying her. She didn’t say what it was, but I could see she wanted companionship.
I didn’t want to talk. So I just sat there and kept quiet. Once when I saw her hand tighten into a little fist, and she seemed all tense and nervous, I reached my hand out, put it over hers, gave it a little squeeze, said, “Take it easy,” and then, as she relaxed, took my hand away.
She looked up at me quickly, as though she weren’t accustomed to having men remove their hands from hers.
I didn’t say anything more.
A little before ten she went up to dress for the dance. I’d found out that she liked tennis and horseback riding, that she didn’t care for badminton, that she liked swimming, that if it weren’t for good old dad she’d pull out and leave the house flat on its foundations, that she thought her stepmother was poisoning her father’s disposition, and that someone should give her stepmother back to the Indians. I hadn’t said anything one way or another.
The next morning Ashbury started to lift weights, found his muscles were sore, said there was no use going at the thing too damn fast, put on his big lap robe, came over and sat down beside me on the canvas mat, and smoked a cigar. He wanted to know what I’d found out.
I told him nothing. He said, “Alta’s fallen for you. You’re good.”
We had breakfast, and about eleven o’clock Alta Ashbury showed up. Mrs. Ashbury always had breakfast in bed.
When we took our walk that afternoon, Alta told me more about her stepmother. Mrs. Ashbury had high blood pressure, and the doctor said she mustn’t be excited. The doctor was standing in with her, gave in to her, wheedled her and petted her. She thought her dad should kick Bernard Carter out of the house. She didn’t know what there was about me that made her talk so much, unless it was because I was so understanding, and because she was so worried about her dad she could cry.
She warned me that if Mrs. Ashbury ever wanted anything, no matter how unreasonable, I wasn’t to cross her at all, because, as surely as I did, the doctor would make an examination, find her blood pressure had gone up, blame the whole thing on me, and I’d go out on my ear. I gathered she didn’t want me to go out on my ear.