But he didn’t leave. He ate his eggs, and when he finished ordered another cup of coffee. He began smoking a cigarette.
At four-thirty he looked up and saw her coming in the door. She was wearing a heavy knit blue cardigan, with a big collar that came up to her ears. Her hands were jammed into her pockets; she looked sleepy. But one thing he noticed well; she was wearing more lipstick, and her hair was carefully combed. Somehow he felt nervous; she looked good.
For a moment he felt a tinge of panic. She would sit somewhere else and he would be left feeling like a fool. But she didn’t. She came, limping over toward him, sat down, and said, “Hi.”
“Hello,” he said, and then grinned. The grin, this time, was not part of the hustle. He felt it. “Waiting for a bus?”
“That’s right,” she said, settling down into the seat, her hands still in her pockets as if she were badly chilled. “Leaves at six o’clock.”
“Couldn’t sleep?” he said.
“God no.” She was becoming more expansive. “Did you ever wake up in an empty apartment at 4 A.M. and hear a Greyhound bus shifting gears outside your windows? Were you ever so wide awake that you thought you could never sleep again? Until you got out of bed, and felt like you were going to pass out?”
He grinned at her. “No.”
She shrugged her shoulders. Then she said, “My name—you may not believe this—is Sarah.”
“Eddie. What do you do for a living, Sarah?”
She laughed lightly. “By trade, I drink. Also a student, at the university. Economics. Six hours a week, Tuesdays and Thursdays.”
That did not seem right. “College student” to him meant convertibles and girls with glasses. Nor did he think of college people sitting alone at night in places like this one. They were supposed to come in groups, singing, drinking beer—things like that.
“Why economics?” he said.
She smiled. “Who knows? To get a Master’s degree maybe.”
He wasn’t sure what a Master’s degree was; but it sounded impressive enough. The girl was obviously an egghead type, which was fine. He liked brains, and he admired people who read books. He had read a few himself. “You don’t look like a college girl,” he said.
“Thanks. College girls at the university never do. We’re all emancipated types. Real emancipated.”
“I don’t mean that—whatever it means—I mean you don’t look young enough.”
“I’m not. I’m twenty-six. I had polio once, and missed five years of grade school.”
Immediately he had an image of her as a little waxy girl on a poster, the kind of cardboard gimmick that sits by a collection jar on the counter of a poolroom, next to the razor blades.
“You mean braces and crutches and wheel chairs; all that?” His voice was not being particularly sympathetic; merely interested. Seeing her that way was like a look into a strange world he had heard of but never seen, had hardly felt existed save on the posters in drugstores and poolrooms. And once he had seen a movie trailer, where they had turned on the lights and tried to hustle him for his pocket change. He remembered wondering if the sick little kids in the movie knew they were being put on the make when the man had come around to take their pictures.
“Yes,” she said, “all that. And books.”
She was quiet for a moment, and then she said, “Look, let’s have another cup of coffee. It’s still an hour until six.”
There it was, his opening. He suddenly felt nervous again, and cursed himself silently for feeling that way. “It doesn’t have to be,” he said.
She looked at him quizzically. Then she said, “I think I know what that means. Only I’m not going.”
He tried to grin. “I didn’t expect you to. I’m meeting you halfway. I’ve got a pint of Scotch in my pocket.”
Her voice immediately became cold. “And you want me just to step out in the alley, is that it?”
“No,” he said. “Hell, no. You know better than that. Right here.”
She looked at him a moment, then shrugged her shoulders noncommittally. “Can this be done?” she said. “Legally?”
“I thought you were an old hand.” He slipped the bottle out of his pocket, under his coat, down to the seat beside him. “This is done all the time.” He grinned, “By the pros.” He began cutting at the top with his thumbnail.
With the bottle open beside him and hidden by his coat, he told the waitress to bring them Cokes. Sarah made a wry face and, when the waitress was gone, said, “Scotch and Coca-Cola?”
“Just wait,” he said. “We can beat that rap too.”
When the Cokes came, in glasses, he told her to drink hers. “I detest Coca-Cola,” she said.
“Drink it,” he said. They drank them. Then he took her glass, empty except for the crushed ice, and asked her if she could drink it straight.
“If I have to,” she said.
He filled her glass almost full with Scotch, then poured a little water in it from her water glass. “Here,” he said, sliding it across the table to her. Then he began filling his own.
He had done this kind of thing before, with a gang from the poolroom; but it had always seemed a cheap thing to do—like the guffawing types who turn up half pints in the back seats of cars and then go out and pinch girls on the ass. But here, with Sarah, it did not seem that way.
At the first sip she grinned at him. “You’re a great man, Eddie,” she said. “You know how to beat the system.”
They were working on their third one and the bottle was two-thirds empty when, abruptly, the waitress descended on them.
Her voice was high and cracked; she looked and sounded as if they had delivered her a gross personal insult. “You can’t do that in here, mister.” As if she were the whole Greyhound Lines herself. “This isn’t that kind of place.”
He looked up at her, trying to make his face serious and innocent. “How’s that?”
“I said you can’t sit in here and drink whiskey like you’re doing.” She peered at him nervously now. “I never saw the like.”
“Okay,” he said, “I’m sorry.”
The woman’s voice assumed a kind of wounded ferocity. “You’re gonna have to leave, mister. The both of you.” It struck him that she had a hillbilly twang. This was amusing. “Or I’m gonna have to call a policeman in.”
He got up, finishing his drink. “Sure,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
They went outside and stood on the sidewalk in the weak light and the cold air. The bottle was back in his pocket and he felt mildly drunk and sleepy. “Well,” he said, “what next?”
She was huddled up in her sweater, standing close to him. The wind that was blowing was not summery, but cold. “What time is it?” Her voice was soft.
It was five-thirty, but he lied. “Five o’clock.” His mind worked fast. There were several ways he could play this; he was not certain which would be the best. Maybe a long shot…
Gently, he slipped the bottle into her pocket. His hand brushed against hers, and he felt the brush of it all of the way to his stomach. “Look,” he said, “you better take this and go home to bed. You’ll catch cold out here.”
She looked up at him. Her eyes were wide. Then she looked away. “Thanks,” she said, her voice very soft. She turned and began walking down the street, away from him. He watched her, watching the slight limp and the way her head was almost hidden by the big collar of her sweater. Her hands were still in her pockets, one now protectively over the bottle. Then, suddenly, she turned and began limping back, slowly. For a moment he felt as if he could not breathe.