“Yes.”
Nolan slapped the rim of the steering wheel with a big hand and laughed out loud; and then he patted her shoulder.
“Let’s forget about Mark Brewster, kid. I’ll take care of him tomorrow. Tonight we’ll have fun. You’ll like the Lavellis, I know.”
The Lavellis lived in a small, conventionally furnished apartment in West Philadelphia. Mike was a tall rangy man in his late thirties, with black hair and a lively bouncing manner. His wife, Carolyn, was blonde and plain, a little stouter than was becoming to her, but with gentle eyes and a warm honest smile.
The living room seemed even smaller with four people in it, but the smallness wasn’t oppressive. It was durably and unimaginatively furnished, Linda thought, but Mike’s heartiness, and his wife’s obvious pleasure in him and her home, made the physical framework unimportant.
Linda and Carolyn had one cocktail, Barny and Mike two; then they went into the dining room. There was a centerpiece of artificial violets on the table, and mats adorned with fat cabbage roses under each plate, and paper napkins in sterling-plated napkin rings. Everything was obviously as festive as Carolyn could make it, and the main course was spaghetti with a pungent meat and cheese sauce that had probably taken her all day to prepare. She promised to give Linda the recipe for the sauce, which she said was a specialty of her grandmother’s, who had learned to make it in Palermo.
After coffee and Spumoni, there was some good-natured kidding about who should do the dishes. Mike flatly refused to help, on the grounds that once a husband started something like that he was stuck with it for the rest of his life. Carolyn protested when Linda began clearing the table, but she seemed grateful for the help. Mike and Nolan went back to the living room with their cigars.
Nolan sat down where he could watch Linda moving about in the dining room and kitchen. He thought she had never looked prettier, as she tidied things up with efficient speed, and chatted smilingly with Mike’s wife. She was a hell of a lot prettier than Mike’s wife, he thought. Nolan had wanted to help with the dishes, but he hadn’t quite known how to suggest it; and now the chance was gone. It would have been fine to work with Linda, kidding her maybe about how she could make him do anything, even dishes, and just talking about things in general.
Mike passed more drinks around later and switched on the television set. He turned to the channel that presented the fights from Saint Nicholas Arena in New York, and for fifteen or twenty minutes they watched a pair of inept heavyweights maul each other with little effect.
“Ah, you could take both those bums,” Mike said to Nolan. “If you’re still in shape, that is.”
“I’m in pretty good shape,” Nolan said, grinning, pleased that Linda had heard his comment.
Nolan was sitting behind her and slightly to the right, and he could watch her profile in the faint fight from the television screen. She seemed to be enjoying herself, he decided. Well, why shouldn’t she? Mike and Carolyn were a great pair, and his friends.
This was what he wanted, he realized almost solemnly. Just to sit around peacefully and normally with Linda. It could work out, he told himself fiercely. It was working out. All he needed to do was look around to see that. Here were his friends and Linda, all enjoying themselves after a good dinner, and all liking each other and getting along fine. There was no reason it shouldn’t work out for him, like it did for most people. After all, he was no freak. He was just like everybody else, wasn’t he? He could get a place of his own, and have friends in for dinner, and have Linda there with him. It was all possible.
They left after the fight because Linda had to get back for her next show. Mike stood in the doorway with his arm about his wife’s waist as they went down the stairs, and everyone called out something about getting together soon. The words mingled together pleasantly, warmly, indistinctly.
“I knew you’d like them,” Nolan said happily, as they headed for town. “Mike’s a great guy. We were buddies for a long time.”
He drove in a relaxed and contented silence for another few blocks, and, then, slowing for a stop light, he saw a small ring of people clustered at the front of a candy store; and inside this human ring two youngsters were battling wildly with each other.
“That looks like a better fight than the one we saw on television,” he said jokingly to Linda.
“Why don’t some of those men stop it?” Linda said.
“Well, sometimes it’s better to let them get it out of their systems.”
“That’s nonsense. Why don’t you stop them, Barny?”
He glanced at her, surprised at the anger in her voice. “You want me to stop them fighting?”
“Yes, of course. They’re just babies.”
Nolan scratched his head. Then he shrugged and turned off the ignition. “Maybe you’re right at that. No point letting the little monkeys kill each other.”
He climbed from the car and walked up to the circle of men surrounding the fighting boys. Pushing his way through the crowd, he caught the kids by the shoulders and pulled them apart. They were about fourteen, as sturdily built as fire plugs, and both of them were bleeding from the mouth.
“Relax, you tough guys,” he said. “You’re going to hurt each other if you keep this up.”
The two boys glared at each other, panting hard, but Nolan saw they weren’t eager to continue fighting. That was the way with a lot of kids’ battles, he thought irrelevantly.
One of the men in the crowd tapped Nolan on the shoulder and said, “Look, Mac, why don’t you take a try at minding your own business? The kids were settling their argument by a fair clean fight, and they got a right to finish it.”
Nolan turned, keeping his body between the two boys. The man who had spoken to him had a cigar in the corner of his mouth, and was strongly and solidly built. He was about twenty-five, needed a shave and was wearing a sweat shirt and denim trousers. Nolan felt the stirrings of explosive anger. He knew this type; they were always ready to insure kids, “a clean fair fight.” Instead of stopping the bickering, they would hustle the kids into a street or alley, form a circle around them, and make them fight until one had to quit. Nolan remembered a dozen street-fights he’d been in just because some older men had wanted a little diversion or excitement.
“The fight’s over, friend,” he said to the big young man in the sweat shirt. “So go find something else to do for the evening.”
“Yeah, who says so?”
Nolan’s anger was deep and savage now, but, oddly, it was directed at everything that created situations like this, instead of at the young punk. Ordinarily, Nolan would have been delighted to crowd the punk into some overt action, and then work off his rage by knocking him senseless. But now he felt strangely sorry for the young man, as he felt strangely sorry for the kids. “You’d better drift along,” he said, in a milder voice. “I don’t want any trouble with you.”
Two men on the edge of the crowd moved away. One of them muttered, “I told you he was a cop. I told you so right off.”
The young man in the sweat shirt heard this and looked uncertainly over his shoulder, then back at Nolan. He wet his lips, shrugged. “Well, if you’re a cop I guess you can stop the fight.”
“I didn’t say I was a cop,” Nolan said. “I said the fight was over, and I told you to run along. So beat it.”
The young man wet his lips again, and then, seeing that Nolan’s feet were spread and his right fist in a position to come up fast, he muttered something under his breath and pushed out of the crowd. He walked quickly away without looking back.
Nolan squatted down between the two youngsters, who were staring at him with awkward respect.