He got into his car and started it up. A moment later he had started out from the curb and was driving away from the house.
For an hour or so he drove aimlessly, and then he found himself on US 95. Presently he turned in the direction of Montario. Why not? he asked himself.
When he reached Montario he took the familiar route to Peg Googer’s house. As he parked he noticed no sign of lights. Naturally, he said to himself. The time was three or four o’clock in the morning. He got out of the car and walked up the path to the porch. For some time he knocked. Nobody answered. So he walked around the side of the house and rapped on what he knew from experience to be her bedroom window.
The back door opened. Peg, wrapped up in a white robe, whispered, “My god, it’s Bruce Stevens.” She fluttered uneasily. “What’s the matter? Forget your coat again?”
He said, “How about letting me stay the rest of tonight? I just got back from Seattle.”
“Oh no,” she said, blocking the door. “You have a wife now. Or did that slip your mind?”
“I’m too tired to drive to Boise,” he said. He pushed past her and into the house. When she had managed to lock the door and pursue him he had already begun hanging up his coat in the bedroom closet. All he wanted was sleep; he paid no attention to her as she stood clamoring at him. As soon as he had gotten his clothes off he threw himself into the bed and pulled the covers up over him.
“And where am I supposed to go?” Peg demanded, a little hysterically.
He shut his eyes and said nothing.
“I’ll sleep in the other room,” she said. She gathered up her clothes, and the bottles on the vanity table, and left the room. When she returned she said, “What’s all that in your car? Did you pack up all your things and move out? I’m so curious.” She hung around the bed, waiting for an answer. “If you’re going to sleep here you better tell me. I think it’s against the law or something, isn’t it? Now that you’re a married man. Is Susan going to come looking for you?”
“No,” he said.
“Don’t go to sleep,” she said merrily. “I want to talk to you.” She switched on the lamp by the bed. “You really are beat. You look as if you haven’t shaved for a month. Have you been on one of those lost weekends?”
He said nothing. Finally Peg shut off the light and left the room.
“Good night,” she said, from the hall. “I have to get up early and go to work tomorrow, so I probably won’t see you. There’s eggs and pork sausage in the refrigerator. Lock up the house when you leave. You are leaving, aren’t you?” She hovered about once more.
“Yes,” he said.
Finally she shut the door, and he at last was able to go to sleep.
At noon the next day he got out of bed, bathed, shaved, dressed, ate breakfast in Peg’s kitchen, and then drove back to Boise.
He found Susan down at her R & J Mimeographing Service office, sitting behind one of the desks with a great batch of papers before her. Seeing him she at once put down her cigarette and said in a low voice, “Hi.”
“Hi,” he said.
“I’m sorry we had a fight,” she said. She sat with her chin in her hands, rubbing her forehead and staring down hollow-eyed. “Bruce,” she said, “this is the end of this place. I just hope it isn’t the end of us.”
“I hope so, too,” he said, going over and drawing up a chair so that he could sit beside her. He put his arms around her and kissed her; her mouth was dry and only barely responsive.
She said, “If you want to try to fool somebody else into buying those machines—” Her eyes filled with tears. “It’s my fault. I’m responsible.”
“Why?” he said.
Under her eyes dark heavy pouches had formed, and, he saw, her throat was wrinkled with despair. “After all,” she said in a wavering voice, “I was your teacher. I helped form your morals.”
At that he had to smile. “Is it such a moral lapse?” he said. “What do you do when somebody hands you a counterfeit bill? Don’t you pass it on to the next fellow?”
She said, “No.”
“Really?” It appeared to him that she was saying it only for the record. “Everybody passes them on,” he said.
“Don’t you see?” she said. “That’s the difference between us. You think I’m kidding.”
“I don’t think you’re kidding,” he said. “But I think that in practice—” He changed what he had intended to say. “Theory is one thing,” he said. “We have to get rid of them. Isn’t that right? We can’t absorb the loss. A big place, like C.B.B., could absorb the loss and never know it. They take a certain percentage of losses every year; they buy into bum deals and they expect to. They make thousands of deals a year and by the law of averages, some of them have to go wrong.”
She nodded, following what he was telling her.
“But,” he said, “with us it’s different.”
“Everybody in the business world feels like you,” she said. “Don’t they? It’s just another world from me, Bruce. It has nothing to do with right or wrong; I just know I can’t do something like that. We’re stuck with them, or maybe somebody else can do something with them, but you have to tell them what they’re getting. I meant what I said. If you drive down to Reno I’ll phone him; I remember his name. Ed van Scharf or von Scharf.” She showed him a notebook. On a page she had written the name down, and the phone number of the discount house.
“Can I stay at the house tonight?” he said presently.
“Of course you can,” she said, caressing his arm and shoulder and staring at him with intensity, as if, he thought, she were searching for some sign. Something to tell her what to do. “You could have last night. You didn’t have to leave. Where did you go?”
“I slept in the car,” he said.
“You don’t ever have to do that. I didn’t go back to bed; I stayed up until morning, thinking. I shouldn’t have upbraided you about your having worked for a discount house. But it is true, Bruce. Your training and outlook are different from mine. I called Fancourt and he’s coming by after I close, around six. I want to tell him the situation. I know there’s nothing he can do, but I want to make sure.”
“It’s a good idea,” he said, although he saw no use in it.
“And then I’m giving up this place,” she said. “It’s taught me a lesson. Out of the three thousand we just owe one half. We can get enough out of this to pay the loan easily and have a good deal left over. It might even be that Zoe would want to buy it. I think I’ll ask around five thousand for it. I just want to get it off my hands and get out of here. And then when that’s done, we’ll look around and see what we want to do.” She smiled at him hopefully.
“You don’t want to make one try to dump the machines?”
Hesitating, she said, “I—don’t think we can.”
“We can,” he said.
“You don’t know that, Bruce.”
Getting to his feet he said, “I’ll go up to the house and get the ten you took inside.”
“And then what?”
“Even if you sell this place,” he said, “we still have to do something with the machines.”
“Are you going to drive down to Reno?”
“Yes,” he said. “Unless something else comes up.”
“When you get back, I hope to have sold this place.” She said it in such a way that he believed her. She meant it. If she could, she undoubtedly would. But, he thought, it can’t be done that quick. It would take some time. And some doing.
“Can I draw fifty bucks for expenses?” he asked her. He had used up all the money he had.