“Only because you don’t trust me; only because you’re afraid—”
She stroked my face. “Wouldn’t you be too — just a little — if you were in my place?”
“But Bernice,” I protested, “what are you driving at all the time? What makes you always talk like this? What’ve you done? Is it the police you’re afraid’ll come after you—”
“The police?” she said with exquisite cynicism. “You mean those men in blue who stand in the middle of the street directing traffic all day long? Oh, yes, there are police — I’d forgotten about them for a minute or two.”
“I can’t make it out at all,” I said dejectedly. “You talk in riddles.”
“I can’t say any more than I’ve said already,” she protested. “I’ve tried to explain just where I stand! I’ve done more talking already than I have any business to be doing, for my own good.”
“Yes, you always lead up to a certain point,” I cried helplessly, “and then you stop dead and put me off with ‘I can’t say any more than that, don’t ask me to explain.’ It’s happened over and over now. I’ve noticed it again and again. Why can’t you come right out with it? What’s always holding you back? I’m not just anybody at all to you any more, am I? It’s all settled that we love each other, isn’t it? Well then, why can’t you give me the lowdown, the absolute goods, on what it is you’re afraid of, on what you’d have to worry about if you left this place and came away with me? Who is it? What is it? Maybe I can help you. Don’t you trust me? Are you afraid of me, too? Why won’t you tell me?”
“All right, I’ll let you have it, then!” she said. “Yes, I love you — and if you can’t see that by now without my telling you, then maybe I’ve made a mistake in you altogether. But trust you?” She stopped and narrowed her eyes at me. “I don’t trust anybody. I met you on the street; how do I know who sent you my way?”
“That’s a swell thing to say to me,” I said bitterly. “That’s the swellest yet of all the swell things you’ve said to me since I’ve known you! Mud in my eye, all right! Every time I get through putting you all together, you fall apart again at my feet. Oh! what’s going to become of us? Why, even everyday friends trust each other before love’s even thought of. And you — and I—”
“I know the game from A to Z,” she said meditatively, “and I know all the rules of it, too. And the one that should never be broken is — ‘Don’t talk!’ Love. Why, love is no guarantee! I’ve known people to have loved as much as we have, and known each other a darn sight longer, too — and before they’re through, one has unintentionally done the other dirt — because they talked too much. And you — why. Wade, you almost love me too much for me to trust you; love and brains don’t mix.
“All right,” I said wearily, passing my hand at her, “that’s forgiven, too, like all the rest. Have your own way; keep it to yourself. Maybe you’re right not to tell me, and then again, maybe you’ll find out some day it would have been a lot better if you had. But one thing’s clearer than ever to my mind: you’ll never be exactly as I’d like you to be until I can get you all to myself, away from whatever it is that’s going on behind the scenes around here. Oh, won’t you do it, Bernice? It felt as though we were so close to it a little while ago, and now we seem to have drifted away from it again, back where we always were.”
“I want to more than you know,” she said dreamily. “Let’s do this: let’s be happy with what we have, for a little while yet. Let’s talk it over, and over, and over, whenever we’re together and there’s no one to hear us.”
“But just talking about it won’t get us anywhere,” I whined.
“But just talking about it — that’ll be something in itself. It’ll be like selling the idea to ourselves, don’t you see?” She glanced over at the clock, lit a cigarette, and called Tenacity into the room. “See if they left anything to eat in the Fridge, and bring us in a couple of little glasses of that Malaga, yes?” and turning to me when the other had left us alone again, whispered, “Don’t say anything to me in front of her — ever, do you hear? She may be all right about little things, like sneaking off to a party, but beyond that — you never can tell.”
I couldn’t help wondering for a moment if she didn’t have just a slight touch of the persecution complex, mistrusting everyone and anyone the way she seemed to. But kept it, of course, to myself.
“The first thing we’d have to think of,” she said, “would be where we’d strike out for if we left New York together—” And then broke in upon the remark herself with the rueful observation: “But you see, I’m afraid we couldn’t get enough together to take us very far.”
“Well, how far would you suggest?” I asked with ill-concealed eagerness. “Buffalo? How does that strike you?”
“That wouldn’t be a bit of good,” she said instantly. “Not any large city in the east, nor any middle-sized one. That would be almost as bad as staying right on here in New York. No, it’s got to be somewhere unexploited, like the Coast or New Orleans—”
“Unexploited?” I said blankly.
“Well, I mean—” she said, and didn’t say what she meant.
“All right,” I said happily, “then it’s either the Coast or New Orleans.”
“When the time comes,” she reminded me quietly.
“Fair enough,” I agreed. “When the time comes.”
She said with elaborate dissimulation, as Tenacity came in carrying a tray. “What do you think they call gloves in German? Hand-shoes! Isn’t that an uproar?”
“Where’d you dig that up?” I said, laughing at her rather than with her.
“Oh, I don’t know,” she admitted. “It just came to me this minute.”
Tenacity was having a belly laugh over it; she left us hitting herself repeatedly in that region and bending low, cackling, “Han’ shoes! Oh, shut me up! Han’ shoes!” I expected momentarily to see her fall on her face,
“That’ll be all over Harlem tonight,” Bernice giggled. She turned to me and resumed: “Another thing: it mightn’t be a bad idea if I started buying clothes now while the buying is still good, and get sort of a layout together. Even if nothing ever turns up, I’m that much ahead.”
“What about the place here?” I asked. “I suppose there’s a lease on it or something, isn’t there?”
“I have nothing to do with that,” she said, “I don’t even know what I’m paying here. No, I’d leave everything just the way it stands, simply walk out the door as though I were going to the corner. That’d be the only way I could get away with it. I wouldn’t even risk trying to get my trunks out; you see, they’d have to be expressed, and it’d be too easy to trace us through the labels. No, the day I do go, I’ll just take a pair of good hefty valises right along with me in the cab to the station.”
“Here’s to that day,” I said devoutly. “It can’t come too soon!” And we clicked our glasses together.
“What you could do in the meantime,” she suggested, “is scout around from this end and see if you can’t get a line on some job or other out that way, so that when the day comes—”
“Han’ shoes!” accompanied by a sputtering sound, was borne to us faintly from the bowels of the apartment.
“I’ll stop in at the station when I leave here and find out what the tickets cost,” I said, “so I can have that much laid aside ahead of time—”
“And what I want to do the first chance I get,” she said, “is go down to that safe-deposit box and get cash for what I’ve got in there. I could go into some out-of-the-way jewelry shop with it, and if any one I know sees me, pretend I’m just looking at cheap necklaces or something.”