“Han’ shoes and feet shoes!”
“Oh, shut up,” she remarked under her breath. “Maybe it’d be better if I passed it on to you and let you sell it for me,” she added.
“I thought you said you didn’t trust me,” I said, trying to look injured.
“Oh, Wade, darling, I didn’t mean in that way!” she cried remorsefully. “What I meant a little while ago was that there were some things I couldn’t tell anybody, not even you, just as a matter of self-preservation.” She got up and shoved the door closed with the tip of her shoe, just in time to silence another spasm of “Han’ shoes!”
When I left, she came not only to the door, but crossed the corridor to the elevator door with me, and only the arrival of the car put a stop to our kisses. “Don’t give our little scheme away to any one,” she murmured low as the white signal light over us went out. “Gee, darling, didn’t we have a happy afternoon!”
We flew back into one another’s arms like two birds attacking each other in midair, and couldn’t let go.
“When we’re together we won’t ever have to part.”
“Gee, just think — ’Frisco or Los Angeles, to call our lives our own!”
“I could be waiting for you like this and say, ‘Come on in, Wade, the supper’s waiting.’ ”
“You’re the swellest thing ever happened in this world since Adam and Eve first found out what to do with their spare time.”
“I only hope we’re not two suckers,” she said, “kidding ourselves along.”
Tenacity stuck her head out and whispered, “They’re asking for you on the wire—”
“Wake me up, I’ve been dreaming,” Bernice smiled at me sadly as she went in and closed the door. I went down in the elevator.
Home like a bullet, and the wheels as they ground around under me did nothing but sing, “Some day soon now, some day soon.” I almost missed my station, listening to that encouraging song, but a last-minute bolt from the strap I had been standing under got me out of the car just as the doors were closing. When I came up on the street again, the light had changed color, as though the sun had put a lot of rouge on before going down for the evening. Shadows were mauve on the sidewalk, and the world had a carnival air.
I opened our door, and Maxine came to meet me from a chair she had placed to one side of the window, which had enabled her to look down without being seen from below. “What was she doing that for?” I wondered vaguely.
She seemed to have one of her quiet moods on. “What was doing?” she asked me, without kissing me.
“What do you mean, what was doing?”
“I mean, how are things getting on?” she said.
“Oh, no different from any other time,” I said offhandedly.
“Did you see Stewart today?” she asked then.
“He’s there all the time,” I replied, opening The Sun.
“I didn’t ask you that, Wade,” she insisted. “I asked you if you saw him today, if you spoke to him.”
“What’s this all about, anyway!” I shouted suddenly. “I’m trying to read something in here — and you—”
She sat down opposite me and folded her hands in her lap, the very picture of docility. “I knew you’d lie to me,” she murmured.
So I let the paper toboggan to my feet and gave her my undivided attention, at last. “Come again?” I said politely.
“I’m the one would like to know what this is all about,” she told me dejectedly, “not you. I don’t want to row with you; you know I don’t. But why do you pretend to me you were at the office today, when you know you weren’t? You don’t think that makes it any easier for me, do you?”
“Makes what any easier for you?” I said embarrassedly.
“They called up today and wanted to know why you weren’t there. I suppose now you’ll blame me for it. If you’d’ve told me ahead of time, I would’ve gladly fibbed for you and told them you were sick or something. But I was so taken back myself, I didn’t know what to answer. They said you weren’t there all day yesterday, and the day before you only came in for a minute and went right out again without saying anything—” She stopped for breath. I needed some too, although I hadn’t been saying a blessed word. “And they said for the past few weeks now this has been going on steadily, you’ve stayed away without any explanation at all, at the rate of once every two or three days. They said they’re not going to stand for it any more.” She turned her eyes away from me at this point, as though she was the one to be ashamed, not I. “Wade, you’ve lost your job.”
I gave a convulsive little start. “Did they say that too?”
“Imagine how I felt,” she went on, “hearing a thing like that over the phone, from some one I’d never seen before in my life! I said, ‘I’m sure he can explain; haven’t you spoken to him about it?’ They told me they were sure you could explain too, but that they weren’t really interested any more in hearing what you had to say; and would I please tell you when you came in that your check was being mailed to you at the close of business today, and you’d get it by the first mail in the morning. And then whoever it was had the cheek to say to me, ‘He does come home sometimes, doesn’t he, ma’am?’ and I heard him snicker to himself. I’ve been crying all afternoon,” she concluded in a barely audible voice.
“Their bark is worse than their bite,” I remarked after a proper interval of meditation. “I’ll stop in tomorrow morning and talk to Stewart, hear what he says about it. And if not, there are plenty of other jobs. Don’t let it break your heart.” And thought to myself, “What’s the difference if I’m canned now? I would have chucked it over myself anyway in a month or two more — whenever she’s ready. It’s all to the good — and I can make up the difference in money in one way or another between now and then.” What I really was pondering in those few minutes was what to tell Maxine I had been doing with my time when I wasn’t at the office.
“It’s too bad it had to happen,” she mused. “You’ve been staying out on me at nights often enough lately, but I never thought you’d go this far and let your work go hang.”
“It is too bad,” I agreed sociably, “but it’s done now, so what’s the good of talking about it.”
“Of course, as a mere wife,” she said, “I don’t suppose I have any right to ask what you were doing with yourself when you weren’t at the office. Any more,” she added ironically, “than I had any right to ask what you were doing with yourself the several nights that you didn’t sleep at home lately. We’ll let that go; sufficient unto the day is the evil therefore.”
“Thereof,” I corrected learnedly.
“Well, this isn’t a schoolroom.”
“Oh, no? Well, that’s what it’s felt like to me for the past half-hour.”
“Too bad,” she commented. “Poor abused man!”
“For God’s sake,” I said, “stop fidgeting with the bottom of your skirt, will you! Can’t you keep your hands quiet? I’m so nervous I could jump through the ceiling!”
“Wade,” she said, “have you been seeing some one? Who is it you’ve been seeing? ’Cause I know you haven’t got many men friends, they wouldn’t take up so much of your time—”
I thought of the previous Saturday, and answered, “I know I haven’t; I found that out too.”
“You don’t want to answer,” she said to herself, and had a gust of crying and sobbing.