I made a face. “You can have her.”
“I don’t want her,” she said, but she was a little more serious now, “and how would you like it if I told you I don’t want you either?”
“Not very well,” I admitted, “so don’t.”
“She’s a damn nice kid, Wade,” and there was no mistaking the fact that she had stopped being playful. “I don’t see how you’ve got the heart to do anything like that to her; it would be an awfully low trick.”
I sat up tensely all at once. “What would?”
“Leave her in the soup like that.”
“You mean, what we’ve been thinking — what we’ve been figuring on? Bernice, you’re kidding me! you’re not going to leave me flat now, are you?”
She pointed her cigarette right at my heart, and it was as though she held a long spear in her hand instead of a Chesterfield when I heard what she was saying. “Get me, my used-to-be. I’m not bighearted. Maxine isn’t worrying me a bit; it’s myself that’s worrying me. Do you think I’d take a chance on you after the way I see you’re ready to sidetrack her? Not me! Why, it wouldn’t be eight months, instead of eight years, before you’d pull the same thing on me. She’s got the law on her side, and I wouldn’t even have that — nothing but my hips until the day you got tired of them—”
My face, I guess, was all gray by this time. “Bernice, darling, you don’t know what you’re saying. Don’t, will you! Don’t go back on me! Always, always, it’s because you don’t trust — won’t trust! Haven’t you even got confidence in the one that loves you? Won’t you give human nature the benefit of the doubt one time out of a hundred? Can’t you see, as a woman, that you’ve got me where you want me, that I’ll eat out of your hand until the end of my days? What more do you want? Have I stopped for a minute and thought that you might fall for some good-looking guy when we’re on the Coast, and leave me flat if he happened to be able to offer you more than I could? And isn’t that much more likely to happen? Oh, Bernice, if I can trust you,” I groaned, “with the odds against you the way they are, why can’t you trust me just a little, honey?”
“No soap,” she said inflexibly. “I’d rather hurt you now than get hurt myself later. Hold yourself together a minute; just stop and look at it my way. I’m supposed to throw over everything I have, everything I’ll ever have as far as I know, and make tracks with you. Which isn’t a mere nothing in itself, no matter which way you look at it. But wait! there’s more to it. If I do that, I’m quitting a game that can’t be quit. Do you understand, can’t be quit. Do you want to know what that means? That I’m marked. No explanations accepted. The day I walk out of here with my arm on yours and my satchel in my hand, there’s no turning back. I can’t show my face anywhere in the east from that day on. I’d be marked, I tell you. And if you don’t happen to know what I mean by that — I mean out of bounds, marked for the ax.” She let that sink in for a minute, though as usual I thought she was exaggerating to impress me, and was too wrought-up myself to pay much attention anyway. “And what do I do it for?” she went on. “What do I get for it? What’s the percentage? So that a year from now, maybe, I can wait on tables in a West Coast cafeteria? Or show Filipinos how to fox-trot? I guess not!”
“So you think I’d do that to you,” I said miserably. “So you think that’s the kind I am.”
“I’m not sure you would,” she said, “but I’m not sure enough you wouldn’t, either, to make the thing a safe bet as far as I’m concerned. No, Maxine was a godsend, she snapped me out of it in time. I’ll wait a little while longer before I cut my own throat.”
“So you’re dead sure that we’re through?” I answered.
“Have I said a word about our being through?” she corrected. “Do I act as though I was ready to give you up? No— what’s through and out is this idea of our going away together. That’s off the list; I’m playing safe, that’s all. But that doesn’t change the way I feel toward you. It couldn’t. The only thing is we’ll have to go on the way we are, I can’t see any other way. I’ll stick around here and take my orders from the phone, the way I—”
“Oh, yeah?” I said furiously. “You dope things out pretty much to suit yourself, don’t you! This is out, and that goes, and heigh-ho the merry-o! Well, you’ve got another guess coming. It’s all or nothing, now. I can’t go on like this, sneaking in your back door all the time, suffering the tortures of hell when I’m not with you. I lost my job this week on account of you. Either we clear out together like we planned to all along — or else we’re through once and for all; it’s good-bye, starting in right now! Is that plain enough?”
I leaped up from the chaise longue with a brave show of willpower and stood looking at her. “You heard me! Which is it going to be — yes or no?”
She tried to put a restraining hand on my coat sleeve. “Now, wait a minute! Don’t get all hot and both—”
“Wait, nothing!” I exclaimed, brushing her hand off. “You’ve kibitzed around with me long enough. You’re driving me mad! Are you coming away with me like we planned — or aren’t you? That’s all I want to know, that’s all you’ve got to tell me.”
“You know where I stand,” she said surlily, breathing on her nails and brushing them against her palm. “Do I have to repeat? I just got through telling you!”
“Good-bye,” I said bitterly. “I’m through. I’ll get you out of my head if I have to kill myself!”
“You’ll come back,” she said, still polishing her nails and not even looking up. “This isn’t the first time you’ve pulled this stunt on me—”
I got to the door, the room door; I even got it open. Oh, I could have gone on down to the street. I could have gone quite away and stayed away a day or two whole days, like when I found the money in her handbag. But in the end, didn’t it all amount to the same thing — the door, the street, a day, two days, and then I’d be back again. Sure I’d be back. Or I wasn’t Wade, and she wasn’t Bernice.
So I shortened the whole process by turning back right then and there, right where I stood, at the door of her room, and dropping back on the chaise longue that was still warm from me just now, turned my back to her and sobbed hotly into my cupped hands.
Having gained her point, she could afford to be magnanimous, was over beside me then in no time at all, down on her knees with her arms knotted around my neck, drawing my face down to hers again and again. “Men don’t cry,” she remonstrated gently.
“It’s all right, Bernice,” I said after awhile, “don’t feel sorry for me. It’ll be all the same to me from now on; I’ve just gone down for the third time.”
“Wade, I love you so. And New York isn’t the worst town there is. We’ll have such swell times together! Let’s let the rest of it go hang. We’ll see each other all the time. And by each living under separate roofs, we’ll be that much better off — we won’t have a chance to get tired of each other like we would the other way—”
“You’re right,” I told her submissively. “You’re always right. I told you once you were always right—”
She left me only to go to the door and open it, and then was back again beside me. “Tenacity!” And when the mahogany face had poked its way in, “Fix us up a couple of long ones. Long and strong. We’re having a celebration in here.”