He turned his face away, gripped Jean’s hand. His wife’s hand, he reminded himself. They’d stood in City Hall and been married only a few hours ago. After all the months of waiting, the months of lying in the hospital when all the other Joes were going home — or nearly all of them. Some had been there in the white-walled ward with Brennan; some were occupying enemy territory; some weren’t ever coming. Don’t forget the Joes who stayed, America, he’d thought.
And now, walking down Mount Royal he was hurrying his new wife to a little place he knew on Charles. Somehow her hand felt cold in his.
A man could walk past the Tic-Toc Club and never know it was there. A plain crystal door opening from the sidewalk gave entrance to a flight of heavily carpeted stairs. At the head of the stairway was an El and, turning there, Brennan and his dark-haired wife were in the Tic-Toc. To their left was the check room with a pert blonde. To their right were doors leading to the lounges. Ahead was the chrome and blue leather bar and beyond that the club with its small tables, soft-footed waiters, and dance floor large enough for a dozen couples of midgets perhaps.
Brennan checked his hat. The place was filled, but not jammed, not roiling with people like a beehive. Brennan and Jean filed through the bar and a waiter showed them to a table.
Brennan smiled at his wife and said, “Dance?”
“I’d love it.”
But after a moment of milling on the small floor, she clutched him hard. She was trembling a little and there might have been a stifled sob in her voice. “John, I — we’re trying too hard, darling. We’re rusty on our dancing. An old married couple!” she finally managed the laugh. “Let’s have a drink.”
“Let’s have a lot of them,” Brennan agreed. Back at their table, he was seating Jean when he felt the presence at his elbow. Brennan turned and for a moment he didn’t recognize the face. It had been an old face the last time he’d seen it; now it was ancient, heavy, hanging, topped with milk white hair. Brennan said, “Giovani!”
“Hello, John,” Giovani smiled. “Glad to see you back. Order up — it’s on the house.”
Brennan moved around to his chair. He introduced Jean; then asked, “On the house?”
Giovani’s slow smile came again, ghostly in the valleys of his face. “The Tic-Toc belongs to me now,” he said. “Hard work, and all that. They’re real things.” He hesitated a moment. “I want to give you the best tonight, John. I’m never forgetting what you did for my son, Tony. I was a poor bartender here then with a sick wife and a bewildered boy who had nobody to look after him, keep him straight. Nobody but a guy named Brennan.”
A guy named Brennan. Tony. Another life, now dead; even the embers of it held no glowing coals. “I didn’t give Tony a break to be remembered,” he said. “He was a good kid, deep down. Just like you say he was — bewildered.”
“Sure,” Giovani said, “Tony was a good kid — but it took you, Brennan, to show him the strength in your arm, then slap him on the back and help him find a job. I don’t know what the Giovanis in this world would do sometimes without the Brennans.”
“You’d get along,” Brennan said, fingering the stem of his cocktail glass. “And how is Tony?”
Grey tinged Giovani’s face. “You ain’t heard? No, I guess not. Tony is dead, Brennan. No — wait — sit still. Don’t tell me you’re sorry. I know you are; we’re sorry, all of us. But he died in Italy, Brennan, back on Anzio. I guess it was somehow right for Tony to die there in Italy — if he had to die. No — sit still. This should be a glad night for you, John.” Giovani wheeled, strode quickly to the bandstand. He signaled the drummer and the lad on the skins rattled the glasses on the tables with a crashing roll. Giovani held up his hands, smiled his wan smile that could never be quite right with his kid one of the Americans who wouldn’t be coming back.
Giovani said in the silence that rippled over the place, “Friends, all of you are my regular patrons. Giovani, he try to maka da place lika de beeg happy family,” he grinned over his Italian accent, dropped it again and went on, “Many of you will remember a certain man by sight. All of you have heard of him — if you’re residents of Baltimore. You remember that he gave every man a break, fingered criminals with a touch of magic and had his name in headlines more than once. He is as indispensible to society’s health as a dose of good old-fashioned castor oil. A cop. An ex-soldier. Our newspapers have informed us from time to time that he has won the Purple Heart, the Silver Star. You—”
Somebody in the crowd said, “Brennan? John Brennan?”
“Right.” Giovani laughed. “He’s just introduced me to his wife, and since the Tic-Toc crowd is one-a beeg happy family, I think we owe the newlyweds a toast.”
Reluctantly Brennan rose to his feet. He felt Jean’s eyes like stars upon him. Light flared up, and he was surprised at the faces he saw and remembered. Nicholson over there, a bigwig in politics. A straight guy who’d innocently been in a terrific jam once with a blackmailing dame. Nicholson waved, beaming. And at the corner table near the dance floor — Andy Mondello was scowling darkly. From the way he dressed now and the looks of the blonde with him, Mondello had been running things pretty much his way recently. A bad lad, that one.
Then somebody who was drinking that toast, some Joe at a table on the fringes of the crowd said, “Welcome home, Brennan! You’re one Johnny that ain’t putting up his gun!”
The words rumbled and rolled in his mind like gunfire in a dark cavern. He felt himself putting his knuckles on the small table, heard words tearing out of his mouth.
“And who the hell says I ain’t? You’re telling me how to run my life?”
“But Brennan—” Giovani began. “He didn’t mean—”
“I know what I’m saying,” Brennan said harshly, realizing that for a moment he hadn’t, but unable to backtrack. He glanced about at their frozen faces. His teeth went on edge. Condemning him. Calling him rat. Rat was he? How many of them could face the things he’d faced all his life? Watching him like Romans glaring at a faltering gladiator. Expecting things of him, things they couldn’t do themselves. His throat constricted.
He choked off, stood trembling. Life still existed on earth, but he wouldn’t have known it from this room. No one moved. No one breathed even, it seemed. They simply sat and stared, not knowing how to take him and he cringed a little and felt the heavy beads of sweat gathering and dropping off his nose. Then he grabbed Jean’s hand, hurried toward the check room, wanting to run, or turn and curse.
Then he heard the first sound behind him. It was one person clapping his hands, softly applauding John Brennan — Andy Mondello. Andy was standing on his feet, laughing, applauding. Then Giovani finally got the orchestra going and Brennan clutched Jean’s hand and ran down the stairs. He ran harder toward that front door than he’d ever run in his life. And Jean clutched his fingers and sobbed a little.
By eleven o’clock he was beginning to have trouble navigating, and by midnight, when he and Jean blew into the Century Club, the double bourbons he was inhaling had begun to numb him and make him feel a little sick. But it wasn’t a whiskey sickness, and he wished miserably that it were.
They’d kept running into people. Marcellene Grayson, for example. She’d come over to their table in Twenty-One. Rich, blonde, svelte, she had everything a woman could want. A serious-faced nice looking guy had been with her. Her husband. And she looked as though she deserved a guy like that now. Once she hadn’t. She’d been an excitement-crazy kid, going straight to hell, chasing around with a young punk because she thought it was fun. Maybe she’d even tampered with dope a little, Brennan never knew for sure.