“Steve! Wait a minute. Please. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Believe me. This might be terribly important to — both of us.”
“I’m waiting, sugar.”
“Where are you right now? Where are you phoning from? A bar?”
“Yes.” He chuckled. “What do you know. Don’t know the name.”
“Well, go find out the name and address and tell me. I’ll wait.”
He walked out of the booth and asked the bored bartender. “The Tidy Inn. Four-teen-twelve Lincoln, mister.”
He told Gloria. “Steve,” she said, “will you wait right there? Please. Wait for me.”
“Sure. A pleasure, Miss Hess. A pleasure indeed.”
“Don’t drink any more, Steve. And phone your home. Tell them you’ll be late.”
“We’re having a late date, eh?”
“Yes, Steve. A late date. A very late date.” She hung up. He shrugged and went back to the bar and ordered another drink. Then he phoned Mrs. Chandler.
“This is Mr. Dalvin, Miz Chandler. Don’t wait up for me.”
“What!”
“Can you stay there after dinner? Like a sitter?”
“Well, I—”
“Fine. You be a sitter, then. Little bonus for sitting, Mrs. Chandler. A little sweetening.”
“Are you all right? Mr. Dalvin! Are you well?”
He grinned and hung up and said, “Old Chandler.” He finished his drink and rapped on the bar with his cast for a refill.
The bartender said, “That’s six, mate. You think you can handle seven? We give a full ounce and a half.”
“I’ll try it on for size, mate.”
But the first sip nauseated him, tickling his gag reflex. He saw a punch-board behind the bar, demanded it, and began doggedly to punch out the little slips of paper. When Gloria arrived he stood up and bowed elaborately and presented her with the flashy costume-jewelry pendant he had won on the punch-board. “For you, dear girl,” he said pompously. He smiled at her. She wore an apricot-colored cotton dress with a full skirt. It left her shoulders bare, and the short sleeves were laced up the outside with black yarn.
“You did have more, didn’t you?”
“Only because I’m weak. A formless thing, without character.”
“Come on,” she said tautly, anger showing in the shape of her mouth. He grandly waved his change toward the bartender and followed her out. She took him around the corner to an elderly gray coupe.
He got in, pulled the door shut. “And where would we be off to?”
“Someplace that has black coffee.”
“Milady has a severe tone of voice. Milady feels abused, mayhap?”
“Just be still until you’ve had coffee, please.”
She drove out of town, heading east. He slumped back in the seat and put his hands over his eyes, his feeling of gaiety suddenly gone.
“Are you going to be sick?”
“No. Not physically. Mentally, perhaps. You ever been in a barrel? You ever been in a barrel with the lid nailed on? Then they float you downstream and over the falls, Gloria. With fireworks and press releases.”
“You said Mr. Prade told you to stay away from me. Did he give a reason?”
“Sure. Said you were playmate of one Dr. Dressner. Private property. Hands off, please. Dressner might take umbrance. That’s not right. Umbrage. Picture of doctor taking umbrage. Comes in a small yellow bottle. Reinforced umbrage. Contains sodium.”
“Did you believe him?”
“Does that matter?”
“Not particularly.”
“Okay. I didn’t believe him. Don’t know why. Sounds logical enough. Valley Vale. Place of evil. Every doctor has a pretty playmate. But you see, you wrinkled your nose at me.”
“I what?”
“That day. By my house. You wrinkled your nose at me. No nose-wrinkler is a doctor’s playmate. Stands to reason, you couldn’t be a doctor’s hobby.”
She laughed. It was a very nice laugh. “Oh, Steve! You’re—”
“Delightful. Everybody considers me delightful. Lew and Ricky and Irene and some mysterious female known only as Reds. Did you know none of Lew’s friends have last names? That seems convenient. Makes it easy to fill out forms.” He stared out the window. “Where we going, hey?”
“To Veldon. Thirty miles. It’s safer, Steve.”
“Aha! Who’s after us? We bring the gats? Is this the bulletproof job?”
“Just relax, Steve. Sit closer to the window. You’ll get more air. You’ll feel better.”
“What time is it?”
“A little after six.”
“You are spectacularly beautiful, Gloria.”
“Breath-taking,” she said, a bit grimly.
“No, I mean that,” he said with the solemn determination born of alcohol. “You are genuinely beautiful. Couldn’t get you out of my head. Called you to talk to you. Wanted to talk over my woes. My sorrows.”
“Don’t start talking yet.”
“So! You think I can’t talk co-coherently. There shall be no flaw in either my logic or my diction. But my emotions are flawed. You have kids that are hostages to fortune. Whoever said that was too smart for his own good. Hostages, all right. You do good, they do good. When you’re only parent left, you got to do better than good. It’s a trap. Y’know my little girl approved. Definitely approved. Wanted me to tie a can to Old Chandler and bring you into the household. Sounds funny. Would if I could. Can I be proposing? Guess I am. Want to help me raise a couple of kids, Gloria? Nice kids. I know — prejudiced parent and all that. But they’re nice. Ellen was nice. The boy’s like her, and Diana is just like me. Stubborn as a mule team.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying.”
He said stiffly, “I was under the impression that I was asking you if you’d care to be married to me. I am a young man — not too young, come to think of it — but a relatively young man with a great future ahead of me. Soon I shall be making twenty thousand crooked dollars a year.
“I have thirty of my original thirty-two teeth. I sing in a mildly pleasant baritone, know how to broil outdoor steak, and — ah, I want to say the right things to you. Not all this — stuff. I’m drunk, Gloria. Terrible drunk. Falling-down drunk.”
“Just a few minutes more, Steve.”
She stopped at a restaurant-roadhouse a few miles on the Coleburne side of the town of Veldon. They sat in the back in a maple booth, and he had coffee, very hot, very black. Two large cups. She watched him with her dark eyes, sitting across from him with that look of aliveness, of vibrancy. He could hear thunder growling along the horizon. The evening air was thick and musty.
“Better?” she asked.
“A little. I guess I’ve been sort of a chore. Grateful to you for rescuing me. I might have been damn fool enough to try to drive my car.”
“Now you’d better tell me, Steve. What trouble are you in?”
“It will be dull.”
“Go on. Tell me. I want to hear.”
He told her. She interrupted him often with questions, made him go back over points he had covered, made him bring in all the details.
“So,” he finished, “there you have it. Damned if I do, and damned if I don’t. Prade steers me toward the easiest way, and he calls it the only way, and I guess he’s right. He has an eye for the angles. I fell into his lap, and it didn’t take him long to find a way to use me.” He had a dull headache. The back of the hand in the cast itched.
“Want to hear my troubles, Steve?”
“Okay. A fair exchange.”
“Did you ever read about that committee they set up at the state capital a few years back? To investigate the rackets?”