“I said, ‘Every night?’ ”
“Every night what?”
She certainly was not making it easy for him. “Do you prepare supper every night? Or do you occasionally get a night off?”
“Oh, I get nights off,” Claire said.
“Maybe you’d enjoy dinner out some night?”
“With you, do you mean?”
“Well, yes. Yes, that’s what I had in mind.”
Claire Townsend looked at him long and hard. At last, she said, “No, I don’t think so. I’m sorry. Thanks. I couldn’t.”
“Well... uh...” Quite suddenly, Kling felt like a horse’s ass. “I... uh... guess I’ll be going then. Thanks for the cognac. It was very nice.”
“Yes,” she said, and he remembered her discussing people who were there and yet not there, and he knew exactly what she meant, because she was not there at all. She was somewhere far away, and he wished he knew where. With sudden, desperate longing, he wished he knew where she was because, curiously, he wanted to be there with her.
“Goodbye,” he said.
She smiled in answer and closed the door behind him...
He could remember.
He sat alone now in the furnished room that was his home. The windows were open. October lay just outside, alive with the sounds of the nighttime city. He sat in a hard straight-backed chair and looked out past the curtains, gently stirring in a breeze far too mild for October. He looked beyond the curtains, and through the window, and into the city itself, into the lighted window slashes in the distance, and a klieg light going against the velvet sky, and an airplane blinking red and green, all the light of the city streets and the city buildings and the air above the city, all the lights, alive.
He could remember the SPRY sign...
Their first date was going badly. They had spent the afternoon together, and now they sat in a restaurant high atop one of the city’s better-known hotels, and they looked through the huge windows that faced the river — and across the river there was a sign.
The sign first said: SPRY.
Then it said: SPRY FOR FRYING.
Then it said: SPRY FOR BAKING.
Then it said again: SPRY.
“What’ll you drink?” Kling asked.
“A whiskey sour, I think,” Claire said.
“No cognac?”
“Later maybe.”
The waiter came over to the table. “Something to drink, sir?” he asked.
“A whiskey sour and a martini.”
“Lemon peel, sir?”
“Olive,” Kling said.
“Thank you, sir. Would you care to see a menu now?”
“We’ll wait until after we’ve had our drinks, thank you. All right, Claire?”
“Yes, fine,” she said.
They sat in silence. Kling looked through the windows.
SPRY FOR FRYING.
“Claire?”
“Yes?”
SPRY FOR BAKING.
“It’s been a bust, hasn’t it?”
“Please, Bert.”
“The rain... and that lousy movie. I didn’t want it to be this way. I wanted—”
“I knew this would happen, Bert. I tried to tell you, didn’t I? Didn’t I try to warn you off? Didn’t I tell you I was the dullest girl in the world? Why did you insist, Bert? Now you make me feel like a... like a—”
“I don’t want you to feel any way,” he said. “I was only going to suggest that we... we start afresh. From now. Forgetting everything that’s... that’s happened.”
“Oh, what’s the use?”
“Claire,” he said evenly, “what the hell’s the matter with you?”
“Nothing.”
“Where do you go when you retreat?”
“What?”
“Where do you—”
“I didn’t think it showed. I’m sorry.”
“It shows,” Kling said. “Who was he?”
Claire looked up sharply. “You’re a better detective than I realized.”
“It doesn’t take much detection,” he said. There was a sad undertone to his voice, as if her confirmation of his suspicions had suddenly taken all the fight out of him. “I don’t mind your carrying a torch. Lots of girls—”
“It’s not that,” she interrupted.
“Lots of girls do,” he continued. “A guy drops them cold, or else it just peters out the way romances sometimes—”
“It’s not that!” she said sharply, and when he looked across the table at her, her eyes were filmed with tears.
“Hey, listen, I—”
“Please, Bert, I don’t want to—”
“But you said it was a guy. You said—”
“All right,” she answered. “All right, Bert.” She bit down on her lip. “All right, there was a guy. And I was in love with him. I was seventeen — just like Jeannie Paige — and he was nineteen. We hit it off right away... Do you know how such things happen, Bert? It happened that way with us. We made a lot of plans, big plans. We were young, and we were strong, and we were in love.”
“I... I don’t understand,” he said.
“He was killed in Korea.”
Across the river, the sign blared: SPRY FOR FRYING.
The tears. The bitter tears, starting slowly at first, forcing their way past clenched eyelids, trickling silently down her cheeks. Her shoulders began to heave, and she sat as still as a stone, her hands clasped in her lap, her shoulders heaving, sobbing silently while the tears coursed down her face. He had never seen such honest misery before. He turned his face away. He did not want to watch her. She sobbed steadily for several moments, and then the tears stopped as suddenly as they had begun, leaving her face looking as clean as a city street after a sudden summer storm.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Don’t be.”
“I should have cried a long time ago.”
“Yes.”
The waiter brought the drinks. Kling lifted his glass. “To a new beginning,” he said.
Claire studied him. It took her a long time to reach for the drink before her. Finally her hand closed around the glass. She lifted it and touched the rim of Kling’s glass. “To a new beginning,” she said. She threw off the drink quickly.
She looked across at him as if she were seeing him for the first time. The tears had put a sparkle into her eyes. “It... it may take time, Bert,” she said. Her voice came from a long way off.
“I’ve got all the time in the world,” he said. And then, almost afraid she would laugh at him, he added, “All I’ve been doing is killing time, Claire, waiting for you to come along.”
She seemed ready to cry again. He reached across the table and covered her hand with his. “You’re... you’re very good, Bert,” she said, her voice growing thin, the way a voice does before it collapses into tears. “You’re good, and kind, and gentle, and you’re quite beautiful, do you know that? I... I think you’re very beautiful.”
“You should see me when my hair is combed,” he said, smiling, squeezing her hand.
“I’m not joking,” she said. “You always think I’m joking, and you really shouldn’t, because I’m... I’m a serious girl.”
“I know.”
“Bert,” she said. “Bert.” And she put her other hand over his, so that three hands formed a pyramid on the table. Her face grew very serious. “Thank you, Bert. Thank you so very, very much.”
He didn’t know what to say. He felt embarrassed and stupid and happy and very big. He felt about eighty feet tall.
She leaned forward suddenly and kissed him, a quick sudden kiss that fleetingly touched his mouth and then was gone. She sat back again, seeming very unsure of herself, seeming like a frightened little girl at her first party. “You... you must be patient,” she said.
“I will,” he promised.
The waiter suddenly appeared. The waiter was smiling. He coughed discreetly. “I thought,” he said gently, “perhaps a little candlelight at the table, sir? The lady will look even more lovely by candlelight.”