As he fed the parking meter he felt a jubilation out of all proportion to the circumstances. The drugstore was a place where miracles could happen. They walked down to a small booth beyond the counter, and the starch of her uniform rustled as she slid quickly into the booth. He sat opposite her. She smiled at him, and all the coolness was gone, all the deep warmth of her broke through, somehow enclosing the two of them in a small private place, apart from the bustle around them.
“Steve, I want to—”
“Let’s get the scene set, Gloria. I had my first date when I was fifteen. I detested females. But I finally took a gal to a movie. We went to a drugstore afterward. I sat there telling myself I was bored, and all of a sudden I started looking at her. Seven billion butterflies I had, all of a sudden. You know what? Right now I’m full up to here with more butterflies.”
The waitress took their coffee order, and when she was gone Gloria looked at him severely. “Steve, you’ve got to stop that. Let me set the scene. I helped Dr. Dressner set a man’s broken hand. He’s a very pleasant and very persuasive man, and so I let him talk me into a coffee break, because it will give me a chance to tell him in a pleasanter way that I can’t go out with him.”
Steve had to wait until the waitress slid the coffee deftly in front of each of them. He was afraid of the answers to the questions he had to ask.
“Tell me this, Gloria. Are you married?”
“No, Steve.”
“Engaged?”
“No.”
He felt miraculously better. “Hate men?”
“Please, Steve. You’ll just have to accept what I say. I don’t date. I have perfectly good reasons.” She lifted the coffee cup, watched him over the rim as she sipped.
He stared soberly at her. “I have a hunch there isn’t much time. I won’t get too many chances to talk to you unless I say exactly what I mean, right now. This isn’t a pass. I have the feeling we’re very right for each other. I don’t know why. It just — happened.”
“Please don’t,” she said.
He leaned forward a bit and looked into her eyes. He said softly, “Okay, I’ve got legions of big, muscular butterflies, all flapping around. I look at you and I get a Saturday-morning feeling. A holiday feeling. Keep looking right at me, Gloria, and tell me that you haven’t got at least one tired, anemic, beat-up little butterfly trying to get up off the ground.”
She looked at him, and he saw her face whiten a bit, her eyes grow larger. “Darn you, Steve,” she whispered. “Darn you!” And she was gone, quickly, with a rustle of starched white. He paid the check and got out onto the sidewalk just in time to see the little car roll down the street and turn smoothly at the corner.
He felt pleasantly cheerful all afternoon, in spite of the throbbing of his hand, and he was in a good humor when he turned into his driveway at five-thirty. Diana was across the street with her friend. Paulie was off on the new bike. Mrs. Chandler was preparing dinner. He stood at the kitchen window with a highball made of the Prade Scotch, amusedly aware of the climate of disapproval that seemed to come from Mrs. Chandler in great cold waves. She informed him tartly that the children had been over at the Prade house again, right in the house, swilling Cokes and gobbling candy.
“I don’t think I care much for that,” Steve said.
“How are you going to stop it? They got that bicycle and that doll. What do you expect?” She sniffed and said, with enormous contempt, “Uncle Lew! Great heavens!”
Steve grinned in spite of his annoyance. “Uncle Lew, eh?”
She turned toward him, wiping her hands on her apron. “Children just don’t understand these things, Mr. Dalvin. They don’t know how to tell the bad ones. It’s all over the neighborhood we’re close friends with them or something. People snickering. I don’t know as I ought to help out here anymore.”
He frowned at her, worried. “Oh, come now, Mrs. Chandler. It’s not that serious.”
“It’s something for a body to think about.”
“I’ll just tell the kids not to go over there.”
She sniffed and said, almost inaudibly, “Hope it will work.”
At dinner he waited until the children were through and wanted to be excused. Then he said, “Paulie. Diana. I always try to give you reasons for orders. This time I’m giving you an order without reasons. Mr. Prade’s yard and his house are out of bounds. Don’t go over there.”
They agreed to obey, but very grudgingly. It made debris of exciting plans, Uncle Lew had talked about taking Paulie to a Saturday doubleheader. Irene had been going to help Diana make a new dress for the big doll.
But he repeated the order in that special tone of voice that eliminated all grumbling. It was a tone he seldom used. They closed their faces in the enigmatic way children have and marched out, making him feel like a heel.
After dinner, when the children were in bed and asleep and Mrs. Chandler had cleaned up and gone home, Steve went out into the lingering August dusk. Insects shrilled in the grass, and the air was dew damp. The distant heavy sound of the city drifted into the subdivision, borne on the night air.
He shrugged off the worry about the children and began to think pleasantly of Gloria. It had been fatuous to assume that she found him attractive, and dangerous to put it to the test, but it had worked out. It had given her an awareness of him that had not been there before. He would phone her soon, tomorrow, in fact. Or tonight? He grinned at the night, turned on his heel and went back into the house. He put his hand on the phone, then changed his mind. Just because you feel like an adolescent in love is no reason to act like one. A little mature restraint, please, Mr. D. He went back outside, wondering why on earth a girl with so much character in her face was employed out at that Valley Vale outfit. It seemed—
“Stevie?”
He turned sharply and saw the stocky silhouette of Lew Prade on the other side of the hedge. “Hi. You startled me.”
“I see you wandering around. I was sitting on the porch, thinking. I figure I got to talk to you, Stevie.”
“What’s on your mind?”
He saw the glow of the cigar slowly lifted to the man’s lips, heard the little pih-thoo sound as Lew spat out a fleck of tobacco. “The way you say that, Stevie. Cold. That’s the way I talk to a guy I expect wants a lend of some money.”
“I didn’t mean it to sound that way.”
“I was sitting on the porch. I’m thinking I can let the guy go along and he doesn’t have to know. It’s all set, so he doesn’t have to know. But maybe he’d rather know.”
There was a prickle of warning at the back of Steve’s neck. “Know what?”
“That Marty, Steve. He never come out of it. He died yesterday.”
The whole vast night stopped. The night ceased to breathe. The trees were frozen against a dark-gray sky. “No!” Steve whispered.
“Doc explained it. There was some brain damage, he says. It didn’t show up on the X-ray. Made a clot or something. That was a hell of a punch, man. Like hitting somebody with a club.”
Steve’s knees were shaking. “I... I ought to tell the police.”
“It’s a little late for that. It was in the paper this morning. But you wouldn’t recognize it. Chester Novecki his name was. Where the Marty started, I don’t know. You can look it up. Doc handled the certificate. Result of injuries caused by a fall. Tomorrow they bury him, and I send flowers. He didn’t have no family.”