“Is Shirl awake yet?” Andy asked, shucking out of his coat and dropping heavily into a chair.
Sol was silent a moment, then he said slowly, “She’s not here.”
Andy yawned. “It’s pretty early to go out. Why?”
“Not today, Andy.” Sol stirred the soup with his back turned. “She went out yesterday, a couple of hours after you did. She’s not back yet—”
“You mean she was out all the time during the riots — and last night too? What did you do?” He sat upright, his bone-weariness forgotten.
“What could I do? Go out and get myself trampled to death like the rest of the old fogies? I bet she’s all right, she probably saw all the trouble and decided to stay with friends instead of coming back here.”
“What friends? What are you talking about? I have to go find her.”
“Sit!” Sol ordered. “What can you do out there? Have some soup and get some sleep, that’s the best thing you can do. She’ll be okay. I know it,” he added reluctantly.
“What do you know, Sol?” Andy took him by the shoulders, half turning him from the stove.
“Don’t handle the merchandise!” Sol shouted, pushing the hand away. Then, in a quieter voice: “All I know is she just didn’t go out of here for nothing, she had a reason. She had her old coat on, but I could see what looked like a real nifty dress underneath. And nylon stockings. A fortune on her legs. And when she said so long I saw she had lots of makeup on.”
“Sol — what are you trying to say?”
“I’m not trying — I’m saying. She was dressed for visiting, not for shopping, like she was on the way out to see someone. Her old man, maybe, she could be visiting him.”
“Why should she want to see him?”
“You tell me? You two had a fight, didn’t you? Maybe she went away for a while to cool off.”
“A fight… I guess so.” Andy dropped back into the chair, squeezing his forehead between his palms. Had it only been last night? No, the night before last It seemed a hundred years since they had had that stupid argument. He looked up with sudden fear. “She didn’t take her things — anything with her?” he asked.
“Just a little bag,” Sol said, and put a steaming bowl on the table in front of Andy. “Eat up. I’ll pour one for myself.” Then, “She’ll be back.”
Andy was almost too tired to argue — and what could be said? He spooned the soup automatically, then realized as he tasted it that he was very hungry. He ate with his elbow on the table, his free hand supporting his head.
“You should have heard the speeches in the Senate yesterday,” Sol said. “Funniest show on earth. They’re trying to push this Emergency Bill through — some emergency, it’s only been a hundred years in the making — and you should hear them talking all around the little points and not mentioning the big ones.” His voice settled into a rich Southern accent. “Faced by dire straits, we propose a survey of all the ee-mense riches of this the greatest ee-luvial basin, the delta, suh, of the mightiest of rivers, the Mississippi. Dikes and drains, suh, science, suh, and you will have here the richest farmlands in the Western World!” Sol blew on his soup angrily. “ ‘Dikes’ is right — another finger in the dike. They’ve been over this ground a thousand times before. But does anyone mention out loud the sole and only reason for the Emergency Bill? They do not. After all these years they’re too chicken to come right out and tell the truth, so they got it hidden away in one of the little riders tacked onto the bottom.”
“What are you talking about?” Andy asked, only half listening.
“Birth control, that’s what. They are finally getting around to legalizing clinics that will be open to anyone — married or not — and making it a law that all mothers must be supplied with birth-control information. Boy, are we going to hear some howling when the bluenoses find out about that!”
“Not now, Sol, I’m tired. Did Shirl say anything about when she would be back?”
“Just what I told you…” He stopped and listened to the sound of footsteps coming down the hall. They stopped — and there was a light knocking on the door.
Andy was there first, twisting at the knob, tearing the door open.
“Shirl!” he said. “Are you an right?”
“Yes, sure — I’m fine.”
He held her to him, tightly, almost cutting off her breath. “With the riots — I didn’t know what to think,” he said. “I just came in a little while ago myself. Where have you been? What happened?”
“I just wanted to get out for a while, that’s all.” She wrinkled her nose. “What’s that funny smell?”
He stepped away from her, anger welling up through the fatigue. “I caught some of my own puke gas and heaved up. It’s hard to get off. What do you mean that you wanted to get out for a while?”
“Let me get my coat off.”
Andy followed her into the other room and closed the door behind them. She was taking a pair of high-heeled shoes out of the bag she carried and putting them into the closet. “Well?” he said.
“Just that, it’s not complicated. I was feeling trapped in here, with the shortages and the cold and everything, and never seeing you, and I felt bad about the fight we had. Nothing seemed to be going right. So I thought if I dressed up and went to one of the restaurants where I used to go, just have a cup of kofee or something, I might feel better. A morale booster, you know.” She looked up at his cold face, then glanced quickly away.
“Then what happened?” he asked.
“I’m not in the witness box, Andy. Why the accusing tone?”
He turned his back and looked out the window. “I’m not accusing you of anything, but — you were out all night. How do you expect me to feel?”
“Well, you know how bad it was yesterday, I was afraid to come back. I was up at Curley’s—”
“The meateasy?”
“Yes, but if you don’t eat anything it’s not expensive. It’s just the food that costs. I met some people I knew and we talked, they were going to a party and invited me and I went along. We were watching the news about the riots on TV and no one wanted to get out, so the party just went on and on. That’s about all, a lot of people stayed overnight and so did I.” She slipped off her dress and hung it up, then put on wool slacks and a heavy sweater.
“Is that all you did, just spend the night?”
“Andy, you’re tired. Why don’t you get some sleep? We can talk about this some other time.”
“I want to talk about it now.”
“Please, there’s nothing more to be said…”
“Yes there is. Whose apartment was it?”
“No one you know. He’s not a friend of Mike’s, just someone I used to see at parties.”
“He?” The silence stretched tight, until Andy’s question snapped it. “Did you spend the night with him?”
“Do you really want to know?”
“Of course I want to know. What do you think I’m asking you for? You slept with him, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
The calmness of her voice, the suddenness of her answer stopped him, as though he had asked the question hoping to get another answer. He groped for the words to express what he felt and, finally, all he could ask was “Why?”
“Why?” This single word opened her lips and spilled out the cold anger. “Why? What other choice did I have? I had dinner and drinks and I had to pay for it. What else do I have to pay with?”
“Stop it, Shirl, you’re being…”
“I’m being what? Truthful? Would you let me stay here if I didn’t sleep with you?”
“That’s different!”