He stood for a moment, and while he was standing the doors opened behind him, and Pat entered. Her face was pale.
“Come sit down,” he said, leading her to a booth and feeling, inside him, a terrible sweep of hope; he was in a state of tension, and as he helped her take off her coat his hands shook.
“You’re worked up, aren’t you?” she said, touching his wrist.
“No,” he said seating himself across from her. “Just about to go out of my mind.”
“Do you expect much out of this? Don’t expect much; for my sake, please don’t make something out of this. I just want to sit here and have something to drink.”
The waitress appeared.
“What do you want?” Jim asked the woman across from him.
“Just order me something I can finish.” She placed her hands together before her, touching her purse. What she wanted was Scotch or bourbon and not a mixed drink, a sweet drink. Too many sweet drinks made her sick, and he remembered mornings when he had fed her tomato juice and soft-boiled eggs and dry toast until she was able to get out of bed and onto her feet.
After he had ordered, he said to her, “Remember that New Year’s Day we drove over to Sausalito to that joint out over the water, you lost your shoe; you sat down on the curb and wouldn’t get into the car.”
She said, “I think I should call Hubble and tell him if Bob shows up to come over here.”
“Don’t play coy,” he said.
“I’m not.” The drinks arrived, and she picked up hers. “Do you think I am? Do you think I’m a tease?”
“No,” he said. “I am.”
“Because of the other night?” He drank his own drink.
“It only made things worse. But it’s as bad for me as it is for you . . . I feel terrible, I really wish I could die.” Already most of her drink was gone: when she was in a crisis, she drank, and this was a crisis for both of them.
At each booth was a ceramic ashtray, as large as a pipe tray, and gray. He inspected the one by his elbow. While he was holding it, he realized that Pat was on her feet.
“I’m going to go phone. Order me another.” She walked off, gliding forward without individual steps Her coat was over her arm; the fall of it blended with her carriage, her upright posture. She lifted her chin and straightened the lines of her neck. At the same time, she seemed to know exactly where her feet were; he could not imagine her stumbling.
“Get him?” he asked, when she returned.
“Still no answer.” She picked up her fresh drink.
“He’s probably reading Looney Luke plugs.”
After she had gone deep into her second drink, she said, “I want to show you something. It’s a present.” Opening her purse, she lifted forth a small tissue-paper package. “For Bob. I got it in Chinatown.” She unwrapped a deity figure which he had seen many, many times. “It’s a god. It brings luck . . .” She ran a nail across the stomach of the deity. “What do you think of it?”
He had to tell her it was trash.
“Oh,” she said. “Well, what do you think of this? Or maybe I shouldn’t show it to you.” Another package was visible, but she put her hand over it, concealing it.
“I’d like to see it,” he said.
With great deliberation, she unwrapped the package. “A bracelet,” he said, taking it.
“Silver. Handmade.” She reached for it, and he wound it around her wrist: the bracelet slipped to the table. It was massive. He helped fasten it for her.
“Thanks,” she said. “See the jade?” Dull stones were set in the silver fret and scroll-work.
“It’s Indian,” he said. “India?” she said doubtfully. “American Indian. Probably Navajo.”
“What do you think of it?”
“You know I’m not much on that sort of stuff. Too heavy, too much bulk. I like those thin hoops you used to wear.” Reaching up, he touched her ear. “Those earrings.”
“They should have told me it wasn’t Chinese,” she said. “It was a Chinese store; the man was a Chinese.” She finished her drink, and he thought that she was beginning to get that fixed look; her features were becoming rigid. She had worked hard all day, and she was too tired to cope with the situation between them. Too much, he thought. For both of them. His old tenderness sprang to life inside him, his feeling for her; he knew how unhappy she was, sitting here, across from him. She could not leave and, for her, remaining was unbearable. So she was drinking.
“Let’s go,” he said, rising. He put her coat around her, handed her her purse, and with his hands on her shoulders persuaded her to get to her feet.
“Where?” she said. In her fatigue and confusion, she was malleable; she wanted him to take charge. “I should be over at the station. Suppose he comes and I’m not there?”
“All right,” he said, “we’ll go back there.”
They left the Roundhouse and recrossed Geary Street. As they passed his parked car, he saw that a second ticket was stuck under the windshield wiper. The hell with it.
Upstairs in the station, he switched on the Best amplifier and turntable. From the studio, Hubble watched, smoking his pipe, as he fiddled with wires. Pat had withdrawn into a corner, taking no part in what he was doing. Re plugged in a jack, closed a toggle switch, and as the tubes of the Bogen amplifier reddened, he rasped his finger against the diamond needle of the transcription arm.
From the speaker, a gross fw-wfh-fw-wfh sounded, an enormous tumult. This was quality equipment; over the years he had helped assemble it.
When he looked for Pat, she was gone.
The door of the broadcast studio opened, and Frank Hubble said, “What’s going on, pal?”
“Nothing.”
“You going to hold forth here?”
“No,” he said. Over the years, he had come here and used the station’s playback equipment; in a sense it was his.
Hubble said, “Of course it’s fine by me. Like old times. But I’ll be locking up at twelve. And you don’t have a key anymore.”
He started to go through his pockets, and then he remembered that of course he didn’t have a key; he had given it to Haynes. Without answering, he went searching for Pat.
The door to the roof was open, and he stepped outside, onto the rickety wooden catwalk. Pat stood leaning with her elbows on the railing, smoking a cigarette and gazing across the roof at the lights and traffic of the street below.
“I wanted to clear my head,” she said.
“Did you have that much to drink?”
“Yes.” She lifted her face. “Before I came up here, before I ran into you . . . I was already over at the Roundhouse.”
“How many?”
“I don’t know.”
“You look all right,” he said, his fingers on her neck, at the line of her chin.
She said, “I feel as if I’m walking along a long drainpipe. One of those pipes we used to crawl through when we were kids. Bent over . . .” She drew away from him. “You were going to play records for me, weren’t you? Like we used to before we were married.”
“May I?” he said.
“Do you have to? I just want to stand out here. I don’t think Bob’s coming. Please—you go ahead on in. I’ll stay out here. Please?”
Going back in, he took an album from the record cabinet, an old Victor 78 r.p.m. set of the Sibelius Symphony No.7. Hubble had returned to the broadcast studio; he was reading a commercial into the boom mike. His voice was audible from the wall monitor, and Jim shut it off.