“We’ve been good partners, Joe. You think so?”
“I think so, Chester.”
“I needed you. You came along just right.”
“We needed each other, Chester. It was right for both of us.”
“Yeah. I guess so. We’ve never said much to each other, though. There are lots of things we could have said that we never did.”
“Just with the drum and the piano.”
“That’s right. The drum and the piano. You hear what the drum was saying tonight, Joe? Tonight and last night?”
“I heard it.”
“The piano didn’t answer, Joe. It didn’t say a word back. Just changed the subject.”
“There wasn’t anything to say.”
“Yeah. I guess not. Nothing to say.” Chester dropped his cigarette on the bare floor and stepped on it, reducing his little miracle to a dead butt. “Maybe we’re more than partners, Joe. Maybe we’re friends.”
“We’re friends, Chester.”
“Funny how it begins and goes on, isn’t it? What makes and keeps two guys friends, Joe?”
“I don’t know. It’s hard to say.”
“Probably it helps if each of them pretty much minds his own business.”
“Probably.”
“Sure. That’s what I’ve been thinking. Well, be careful. Be real careful. I think I’ll be going along now, Joe. Goodnight.”
“Goodnight, Chester.”
Chester went out and back to the alley, and Joe went out after him and up to the bar where Yancy was.
“How’s everything, Yancy?” he said.
“No complaints,” Yancy said. “I’ll have rye and water.”
“You sure? No Martini?”
“You heard me. Rye and water.”
“I had a notion you’d switched to Martinis. Funny how I got such a notion.”
“Very funny, Yancy. I’ll laugh later.”
“You needn’t bother. Truth is, I don’t think it was funny myself.” Yancy poured rye and added water and set it out. “I got a message. I’m supposed to tell you something.”
“All right. Tell me.”
“She can’t come. Something happened. I’d have told you sooner, but you were late getting in and I didn’t have the chance.”
“What was it happened?”
“I don’t know. Something to prevent her coming. She said she was sorry, and she sounded like she really was. She said to tell you she’d come as soon as she could. Tomorrow, maybe.”
“She telephoned?”
“That’s right. Between six and seven. Nearer six, I think. She sounded all right, just like she was sorry.”
“Thanks, Yancy.”
He drank some of the good strong rye and water and sat looking into what was left. Behind him was the sound of the last dogs in the litter of the night. Between now and daylight were five long hours. In five hours a man could count perhaps twenty-two thousand heart beats.
All right, he thought, all right. There was a night and a part of a night in the room, and there was most of a day and a night on Long island, and there was a night and a day and a night and a day in Connecticut, and now there’s the finish, the end, nothing more. Whatever there was and however long it lasted, it was more and longer than you thought it would be or had any reason to expect it to be, and so you had now better have your rye and water and go home and to bed, and if you can forget it in the little time that’s left for forgetting, that’s something else you had better do, and if you can’t forget it, you can at least remember it and her with kindness and pleasure and pity, for she will probably need kindness and pity and the remembrance of pleasure far more in the end than you will ever need them.
In the depths of the golden rye and water, she raised her face and looked up at him sadly from under her hair on the heavy side, and he lifted the glass and emptied it of the rye and water and her.
“You still here?” Yancy said.
“I may be here for quite a while. What’s the matter, Yancy? You need the space?”
“I didn’t mean that. I meant you looked gone. Like part of you had walked off and left the rest of you.”
“I was thinking.”
“Well, that’s a bad habit to get into. A guy gets along pretty well until he starts thinking too much about things, and then he’s in for trouble. Trouble with himself, I mean, which can sometimes be the worst kind of trouble there is. I read a poem about that once. According to this poem a guy can survive pretty well on a diet of liquor, love and fights and stuff like that, but the minute he starts thinking he’s a sick bastard.”
“Is that the way the poem went?”
“Well, not exactly. That’s just the general idea.”
“I didn’t know you read poetry, Yancy.”
“Of course you didn’t. You didn’t even know I could read. You thought I was just an ignorant, illiterate slob.”
“Not me, Yancy. I’ve always had the greatest respect for you. I value your friendship and solicit your counsel.”
“Oh, sure, sure. Funny boy. What if I told you to go to hell?”
“You won’t.”
“That’s right. I won’t. Where I’ll tell you to go is home, but you won’t be in any more hurry to go there than the other place. You got no brains to speak of, that’s the thing about you.”
“Sometimes, Yancy, one place is much like another.”
“Yeah. I know that myself. You want another rye?”
“Yes.”
“I thought you would. I was only doing my duty to my lousy conscience. You going to play requests tonight?”
“I don’t think so. I don’t feel like it.”
“I know you don’t feel like it. You didn’t feel like it earlier with Chester, far as that goes. You were working.”
“It’s uncanny how you know things, Yancy. You must have some kind of special power or something. It makes a guy feel uneasy.”
“Well, I know when something’s fun and when it’s work, and playing the piano used to be fun for Joe Doyle, at least part of the time, but now it’s all work and when anything gets that way, all work, it’s no good any longer and ought to be stopped. Why don’t you quit, Joe?”
“Maybe I ought to quit eating and paying rent, too.”
“There are other ways to eat and pay rent. There are other places to go than a lousy club every night, and there are other things to do than play piano for a lot of God-damn tramps and lushes with nothing better to do than get maudlin over some cheap little tune that stirs up some cheap little memory.”
“I admire you when you’re eloquent, Yancy. You’re real impressive.”
“Okay. I ought to know better than to try. Maybe you’ll think about it, though. Maybe you’ll think about all the other things there are to do.”
“I know there are other things to do, if you know how. I don’t know how. All I know is how to play the piano, and I don’t know that a tenth as well as I wanted to and tried to.”
“Forget I said anything. I tell you I ought to know better, and then I try again before I can even get my mouth shut, and what I learn from the effort is that I ought to know better. It’s your business. If you want the last thing you see to be a bloodshot eye and the last breath you breathe to be a lungful of second-hand cigarette smoke, it’s your business.”
“Thanks, Yancy. What you say brings us to an interesting question, and it happens to be a question, believe it or not, that I’ve done quite a bit of thinking about at one time or another. The question is, Yancy, what do you do with what’s left of a life when only a little’s left. When I was a kid in high school I took a course in public speaking. We got up and talked about things. One of the things we talked about was this particular question of what we would do if we only had so long to live. Only a little while. I remember some of the things that were said, including what I said, and it was all foolishness. Everyone was running around in his little talk doing the little thing he liked the very best, and that just isn’t the way it is, when the time comes. No, Yancy, they’re doing pretty much what they were doing yesterday and the day before and the day before. They’re doing what they’ve always done and know how to do. They’re playing the piano, Yancy, the same as me.”