“I didn’t know I had a choice. I tried to buy a pair of shoes, late this afternoon, they told me I needed a goddamn ration ticket. I told ’em I was at Guadalcanal fighting to preserve their way of life, and they suggested I go back there and ask for a ration book.”
He laughed. “I bet you took that well.”
“Funny thing is, I did. I started out bad, and was shouting, the guy was shouting back, and then I just sort of faded away. Wandered back out on the street.”
“Well, you’d just come back from that ghastly scene at the Carey apartment…”
“That was part of it. But I can’t handle this place.”
He narrowed his eyes. “What place?”
“This place. The real world. You know, I thought when I got back here it would be the same.”
“And it changed on you.”
“Not really, not in any important way. That’s the trouble. I came back, and it was the same trivial everyday life waiting for me, my job, credit checks and insurance adjusting and divorce surveillance, and is that what we’re the fuck fighting for?”
“Maybe. Maybe it’s enough.”
“And then there’s the killing. The Outfit or whoever, they’re still at it, I mean here we are fighting for democracy over there and over here people are pouring whiskey on people and setting them on fire, and cutting them up and…”
He grabbed my arm, squeezed. Apparently it had been shaking, my arm.
“Nate.”
“I’m… I’m sorry.”
“Here,” he said. He handed me a handkerchief.
Apparently I’d been crying. I wiped my face with it.
“Goddamnit, I’m sorry, Eliot.”
Then the head waiter was standing next to me, and I figured I was finally getting thrown out of the joint.
I was wrong.
“Miss Rand would like to see you backstage, sir,” he said. Politely. Only the faintest trace of distaste.
I asked him how to get there and he pointed to a door to the right of where the orchestra was playing.
“Eliot, come with me,” I said.
“No. This should be a private reunion.”
“I’m not up to it. You come along.”
Reluctantly, he rose, and we moved along the edge of the crowded dance floor where couples, old men and young women mostly, were clutching each other to “Be Careful, It’s My Heart.” We went up some stairs and in a hallway we found a door with a gold star; not a service flag, either. I knocked.
She opened the door and smiled at me, looking just a little older, but not much; her blue eyes, the bluest light blue eyes in the world, stood out startlingly, partly due to the long theatrical lashes, partly due to God. She had on a silk robe, not unlike Estelle’s but blue, yawning open a little to reveal creamy talcumed breasts; no doubt she was naked underneath it, like Estelle, albeit in better condition.
Then she saw Eliot, and her eyes just barely revealed her disappointment that I wasn’t alone, but her smile stayed, and stayed sincere, and she was shaking Eliot’s hand without my having introduced her, saying, “Eliot Ness-this is a real treat. I knew you and Nate were friends, but somehow it never seemed real to me till this very moment.”
She cinched the belt ’round her robe tighter, and gestured for us to step in. It was a small, neat dressing room with a large lightbulb-framed makeup mirror, a few chairs and a hinged dressing screen.
“Where do you keep your feathers?” Eliot asked, with a cute wry little smile. He always did well with the ladies, by the way. Except in marriage.
“That’s the prop man’s department,” she said, with her own cute little wry smile. “Union rules, you know.”
“Nate knows all about the Stagehands Union.”
Sally didn’t get the joke. “Really?” she said, looking at me, a bit confused.
“Inside joke,” I said. “You were wonderful tonight.”
“Thank you,” she said. Her smile tried to stay polite but I could sense the ice forming. “You might’ve told a girl you were coming.”
I shrugged. “Last minute. Eliot showed up and invited me out for supper…”
“And,” Eliot said, saving me, “I’d noticed you were appearing in town, and knew you two were old pals, so I hauled him down here. He, uh…he only got back just this morning.”
She stood near me, looked at me carefully. Touched my face. “I can see that. You dear. You poor, poor dear.”
There was no sarcasm in it.
I swallowed. “Please, Sally. I…please.”
She turned to Eliot and said, “Could we have a moment alone, please? I don’t mean to be rude, Mr. Ness.”
“It’s Eliot, and don’t be silly,” he said, and was gone.
“You’re still mad at me,” she said.
“I don’t remember being mad at all.”
“Do you remember not returning my phone calls the last two times I was in town?”
“That was years ago.”
“I haven’t seen you since…when was it?”
“Nineteen forty?”
“November 1939,” she said. “That night I bribed my way into your apartment. That gangster… Little New York…he showed up and you pulled a gun on him. Do you remember that?”
“Sure,” I said.
“Do you remember how sweet that night was?”
I couldn’t look at her. Her blue eyes were just too goddamn blue for me to look at them. “It was a swell night, Sally.”
“I wish you’d call me Helen.”
“There’s no going back.”
“What do you mean?”
“It was too long ago. There’s no going back.”
“Nate, I know it was wrong of me to just leave you a note like that. I should’ve stuck around, or called you the next day, but it was a bad time for me-I was bankrupt, I was working my ass off getting my business life back together, and my personal life just got lost in the shuffle, and…”
“That’s not it.”
“What is it, then?”
“There’s no going back,” I said. “Excuse me.”
I opened the door; Eliot was standing out there, leaning against the far wall. “We better go,” I said.
“If you want,” he said.
“Sally, you look great,” I said, my back to her. “It was great seeing you again.”
I went back to the table. Eliot trailed after, in a few minutes.
“Where have you been?” I said, and it sounded nasty. I hadn’t meant it to, really, but it did.
“Talking to a fine lady,” he said, angry with me but holding himself back. “She thinks a lot of you, and you should’ve treated her better.”
“What did you talk about, anyway?”
Very tightly he said, “She’s concerned about you. Why, I don’t know. But she asked me a few questions, and I answered them. Why, is your civilian status a military secret?”
“Hell,” I said, getting up, “my life’s an open book.”
And I got up and walked outside. Stood on the corner and listened to the El roar by. I could smell the lake.
Eliot joined me, after paying the bill. He looked sad, not angry. I felt sheepish.
“Sorry,” I said.
“Forget it. You want to get another beer someplace?”
“No.”
“Want a lift someplace? I got a car, at the hotel garage. Better still, I got an E sticker.”
I laughed shortly. “You and every politician in town, I’ll wager.”
“For a guy just back from overseas,” he said, “you’re catching on fast.”
“This isn’t my first time in Chicago.”
“No? Then maybe you could recommend someplace else we could have a beer. What do you say?”
I said, finally, yes, and we walked to Barney’s Cocktail Lounge, where Barney’s brother Ben hugged me, even though we’d never been friends, really. I was the closest thing he could get to his brother, so I made do for a surrogate hugee. He’d talked to Barney long-distance in Hollywood just today. Barney indeed would be home soon, but Ben didn’t know when exactly.
The bar closed at one o’clock-another wartime sacrifice, but as a wise man once said, if you can’t get soused by one you ain’t trying-and Eliot and I stumbled out onto the street, and he set out toward his hotel, the LaSalle, and I walked home.