It never occurred to me to make my getaway bag and all, now that the coast was clear. Because somehow I didn’t look upon this as deserting her. It was almost as though I was too proud of my love for Bernice, thought too much of it, to sneak off without a word.
I looked at myself in the glass and, with that immemorial gesture of the hand on the chin, decided that a shave wouldn’t hurt me any. Although tonight wouldn’t be the first night that I was with Bernice, Lord knows, still, with every passing minute I felt more and more like a young lover ready to start off on his honeymoon. Anxious to make a good appearance, giddy with love and the attainment of an ideal, impatient, deliciously nervous, shivery like a person about to dive from a height into unknown water — I was even a little shy and diffident at the thought of facing her, as I never had been before now.
I stripped off my tie and shirt preparatory to shaving. At which point the door opened, and Maxine at last came home. “You there, Wade?” she called the length of the apartment. That, it occurred to me, was a needless question; the busily vibrating radio should have told her someone was home, and there were only two of us, so it must be me. Most women talk before they think.
“Yeh,” I said curtly.
“I had the worst time getting spaghetti,” she said, still from a distance.
“Don’t tell me they’re running short of cans!” I said hopefully.
“Every one had that kind with the cheese and tomato,” she continued absorbedly. “I had to walk blocks before I came across the kind you like, with the mushrooms.”
“I suppose I ought to feel bad, now,” I told myself unwillingly, “now that she’s put herself out to get something I like the last night I’m with her.” I had decided long ago that I was going to eat at home.
“I’ll be ready for you in a minute, now,” she promised, still trumpeting her remarks from the kitchen.
“No hurry,” I assured her. “I’m going to shave first.”
“Oh!” she called back disappointedly, “do it afterward, Wade, there won’t be time; I’ve put the can in the water already.”
But it would have taken more than a mysterious symbol of speech like that to deter me from making myself presentable for the woman I was wild about. I went ahead in the bathroom.
Chapter Six
I stood there in a cubicle of white tiles that gleamed like milk, and my shoulder blades, still shiny from the dregs of last year’s tan, caught the light like copper epaulettes. Beyond that there was not much to me; a man who stood and carefully scraped his check and rinsed the blade under the faucet and was thinking: Bernice!... Bernice!... Bernice! For there had never been anything to me at all until now, but now there was this to me: that I loved her. And that made it all understandable to me; my being born, my swallowing certain quantities of food each day, my aimless roaming from one room to the next, out one door, in the other. I was given my body, and for twenty-odd years all I could find to do with it was put underwear on it once a day, park it in an enamel tub now and then, shove it in a bed at night and let the life slip out of it. I was given my hands, and the most they could do was make that little upward curve and down again, striking a match to a cigarette, when they should have been, oh, should have been, around her waist all the time. I was given my voice, and all I ever used it for was to say things like “Scramble two and a cup of Java” to Swedish waitresses, and “What are we waiting for, come on, let’s get married and get it out of our systems” to poor Maxine, with my heart in cold storage all the time. But now all this was changed; now I got a break at last. Now rooms were not empty and food was not sawdust. Now body, hands, and voice knew what to do. Now she had appeared on the scene at last. The fog had lifted and a star shone through; now all was clear to me at last. And was I glad I hadn’t given up too soon! Was I glad I hadn’t ever tried to do a leap off some bridge with bricks in my pocket! Was I glad I hadn’t patronized strange bootleggers! Was I glad I’d still been in short pants in 1918, and was I glad I’d let that gunman have that ten-dollar bill without a word of protest under the Sixth Avenue L that night! Was I glad I’d lasted till I met her, never knowing she was on the way!
Now I was pressing my face between the two ends of a towel. Then I pushed open a little gadget on the stopper of a powder flask, and five little pinpricks appeared where there hadn’t been any before. A few white grains dropped out of each pinprick when I shook, and onto my face to turn into complexion. I was through now, and I poked at the wall, and the lights fled. And with them went the gleam like milk, and the bathroom had turned blue all around me. Blue, that badge of the nineteen-twenties. A hundred years ago it was just a color; today it was a mood, the soul of a generation.
Maxine came to the door and rested her palm high up against it, near the top. She clutched a dishcloth in her other hand; there was something pathetic about her in that loincloth she called a dress, reaching from her armpits to her hips, with a little rubberized apron across the front.
“Be right with you,” I remarked absently, and passed by her and went into the bedroom. I heard her turn around and go away again. “I’m not going to call you any more,” she warned me. But I didn’t even turn my head.
I plunged my hand into a drawer that was like a nest of vivid tropical snakes. Neckties. And finally pulled out a dark-blue one with little green spearheads set far apart. I shut the drawer and never saw the rest of them again after that night. When I had tied it, I put out the lights and went in to her.
She was already seated at the table, and though one part of her would have liked very much for my food to be cold and unpalatable now that I had kept her waiting, the other part of her that wanted me to be happy no matter what the cost had made her put the dishes back on top of the stove and cover them over. She herself had already begun to eat, but she jumped up and got my portion from the stove as I sat down. Our heads were both slightly bent, as though we were two children not quite sure of our table manners as yet.
I looked at the plate before me, and my mind told my hand to take a fork and put food in my mouth, but my stomach told my hand not to, so I lit a cigarette instead.
“What’s the matter, aren’t you hungry?” Maxine said.
“Sure I am,” I lied to her, “just give me time. Don’t rush me, see?” And if she pulled that old reliable one beginning; “After I went to all the trouble of cooking—” I knew I would hit her. But fortunately something distracted her attention just then, and the matter of food was allowed to drop. Above us, there was a flourish vaguely resembling music, and then the radio began to articulate one of Kern’s pieces from Sweet Adeline. A moment later the one under us had joined in and was whinnying forth the same number. “Wait a minute, I must get this!” Maxine cried, jumping up from the table, and turned on our own instrument in the next room. Then she came back to me with her eyes sparkling. It took it a moment or two to warm up; by that time the station had gone through one chorus. Just as the voice came in, ours caught up with the other two, so that some girl, who was miles away from there, was singing in three apartments at once, one above the other. Maxine had clasped her hands under her chin and was looking at me across the dishes of food; the words seemed to come out of her eyes. “Here am I — here I’ll stay — in your way — until you notice me—” I tried to turn my eyes away; hers followed mine and would not let them go. Her lower lip was quivering. Her eyes grew brighter, brighter, and suddenly were wet and glistening. She didn’t say a word; just looked at me, as though she would never get through looking at me. “Here am I — here is love — don’t pass us by.” Suddenly I couldn’t stand it any more. My eyes had tried to escape in every direction, and still she held them within her own. And didn’t say a word, a word. “Why do I try — to draw you near me? Why do I sigh — you never hear me—”