“What’s that?” she said.
“Come on in.”
“What’s that?”
“A knife.”
“What’s it for?”
“It’s not for anything. It’s just a knife.” He closed the blade. “Do you have the mail?”
She put an envelope on his desk. “It’s only an advertisement,” she said. “Why do you carry that thing?”
“Why not?”
“Isn’t it illegal?”
“Yes.”
She shook her head. “I think that’s silly,” she said uncertainly. “What do you need a thing like that for?”
He put the knife on the desk, not looking at her. He was angry. “What do you care?” he said.
She hurried out of the office. He looked after her and then picked up the knife and put it back in his pocket.
He didn’t much want to go out with her now. He didn’t need to.
That night, after dinner, he went into the living room of his apartment and sat down in front of the television set. Helen came to the doorway and looked in at him. “Will you clear off the table for me?” she asked.
“I’m tired tonight.”
“You always clear off the table for me.”
“Tonight I don’t want to.”
She looked at him for a few seconds more and then went back into the kitchen.
I wonder what she’d do if I showed her the knife, he thought. I wonder whether she’d be frightened.
He smiled to himself. Oddly, he liked the idea. He wanted to show her the knife, but not yet. He watched television and waited.
After a while, after she had finished washing the dishes, she came into the living room. She sat on the couch and watched the television, too, not speaking to him.
When the program ended, he stretched and lit a cigarette.
“Was everything all right today?” she asked.
“Fine. How was your day?”
She ignored his question. “You just seemed so moody tonight, I thought maybe you’d had a bad day at work.”
“I’m just tired.”
He started to tell her about the knife then, but he didn’t. He looked back at the television set.
After the news, they went to bed. While she was in the bathroom, he hid the knife in his drawer, under a stack of underwear. He undressed and took a shower. When he finished, she was in bed, almost asleep.
In the morning, he took the knife with him when he left home.
Harry Adams, his copy chief, came into his office at ten-thirty. He brought two cups of coffee in paper containers. “How about a break?” he said. He sat down and crossed his legs. “Nasty weather again today.”
“It’s cold.”
“February always seems like the longest month to me,” Adams said, “not the shortest.”
“I’m almost finished with the Alterace copy,” Talent said.
“We have plenty of time on that.”
“It’s almost finished.”
Adams lit a cigarette. “That’s not what I wanted to talk about,” he said. He smiled. “I don’t want you to take this the wrong way.”
“Take what the wrong way?”
“It’s about Laura Singleton.”
“I asked her to go out with me.”
“Not that. That’s none of my business. I mean yesterday.”
“Yesterday?”
“She was pretty upset.”
“What about?”
“Well.” Adams laughed. “You know how women are. She said you were waving a big knife around and she said you got awful nasty about it when she asked you what it was for.”
“I didn’t get nasty. I just said it wasn’t any of her business why I carried the knife. It wasn’t a big knife anyway.”
“I didn’t think it was.” Adams finished his coffee. “I didn’t mean to bring up anything about the knife. I only wanted to say that there’s no use in upsetting any of the girls. They’re hard enough to handle.” He laughed again.
“I didn’t upset her,” Talent said. “I only said for her to mind her own business.”
Adams stood up, nodding. “Well, take it easy,” he said. He dropped the coffee cup into the waste basket, starting to leave the room.
“Harry,” Talent said.
“What?”
“Would you like to see the knife?”
“I didn’t mean anything about the knife.”
Talent took it from his pocket, snapped open the blade, and put it on the desk. “There,” he said. “Sec. It’s not a very big knife.”
Adams stared at it. “No. No, it’s not very big.” He looked at it for a few more seconds and then walked out.
Talent picked up the knife and fingered the blade, wanting to laugh. With a sudden, violent gesture, he drove it into the top of his desk. It hung there, stuck three-quarters of an inch in the wood.
He told his wife that night. He stood in the kitchen, watching her prepare dinner. He took the knife from his pocket and laid it on the sink in front of her. “Look at what I bought,” he said.
“What is it?”
“A knife.” With one finger, he pressed the release and the blade flicked out. The spring made the knife quiver on the white porcelain. She made a noise in her throat and he laughed at her.
“Whatever possessed you to buy that?” she said.
He picked it up and closed it. “I wanted it,” he said. “I just wanted it so I bought it.”
She looked at it in his hand. “It’s ugly.”
“I don’t think so.”
“It is. It’s ugly.”
He opened the blade again and held the knife up, away from him, liking the way the light from the ceiling globe flashed on the steel.
“Why did you buy it?”
“I said I wanted it.”
“How much was it?”
“Not much.” He laughed. “I practically got a bargain.”
“How much?”
“I earned the money. I don’t have to make an accounting of it.”
She flushed and started to answer, but then turned back to the sink. “I still think it’s stupid,” she muttered.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Money always matters. We don’t have that much.”
He laughed again. “I wasn’t talking about the money.”
She looked up at him uncomprehendingly and flushed again, but it was not a flush of anger. Her expression was uneasy, her lips were moving, making silent little formations, and she said nothing. He leaned against the refrigerator, cleaning his fingernails with the knife. He was amused. No, not amused. He was exultant. It was not that his thoughts were triumphant. That would imply an enemy defeated. It was his emotions that were triumphant. It was a strange feeling, one that he could not remember having had ever before. He wanted to laugh, but not at Helen. He wanted to laugh because, suddenly, for the first time since adolescence, there was something else to do besides wait for tomorrow.
He threw back his head and laughed.
“What’s the matter with you?” Helen asked.
He closed the knife and put it in his pocket. “Let’s go to bed,” he said.
“What?”
“Let’s go to bed.”
“It’s dinner time.”
“Now.”
“The dinner will burn.”
“We’ll go to a restaurant.”
“No. Don’t be silly.”
He stepped toward her and, putting one arm behind her knees, scooped her into his arms.
“Don’t be silly,” she repeated.
He kissed her and laughed again.
Later, in the Italian restaurant around the corner from their apartment, they ate spaghetti and drank chianti with it, and he talked while she listened, holding her head Dropped in her hands. Her hair was hanging loose around her face and she had put on a sweater to replace the blouse he tore in the bedroom. He wore a white shirt that was rumpled and open at the collar.