“I do look healthy, don’t I, George?”
“Wonderful.”
“There can’t be anything wrong if I look so healthy.”
Harold came back with Hazel, who was wearing her pearl choker and her black crepe dress, an outfit she reserved for sober and important functions. She looked warm and strained, and when she walked she took mincing little steps because her feet hurt; flesh bulged from her new patent-leather pumps like rising dough.
“I tried to get you on the phone,” she said to George. “Willie told me you weren’t there. You just up and blew, didn’t say a word to anybody, just blew. That’s no way to run a business, George.”
“I’ll make a note of that. Thanks loads.”
“Whenever you’re in the wrong you always sound like that.”
“Like what?”
“You know like what. Whenever you make a mistake you get sore. Isn’t that right, Harold?”
“You leave Harold out of it,” Josephine said sharply. “Harold and me, we mind our own business. Live and let live.”
“All right, all right, skip it.” Hazel dabbed at her moist forehead with the back of her hand. “My God, it’s hot. Come on out and I’ll show you the yard.”
“I saw it,” George said. “It looks fine.”
“Cost me eleven bucks. I need some air.” She opened the screen door and went outside on the porch. George followed her, feeling a little hurt that she wasn’t in a friendlier mood. “The place looks pretty good, eh?”
“Just great.”
“You don’t sound very enthusiastic. Maybe you don’t realize how a nice yard increases the value of a home.”
“Sure, sure I do,” George said. “It increases it plenty.”
“You can’t tell. After all, some day I might want to sell the place, I might get married.”
“I guess you might.”
She leaned against the porch railing, easing a little of the weight off her feet. “I suppose Harold and Josephine told you I have company?”
“Yes.”
“You remember Arthur Cooke that I used to work for.”
“Sure.”
“He’s very refined.”
“Hazel—”
“Doesn’t drink or smoke and always dresses in the best of taste.”
“I’m sorry to bust in on you like this.”
“That’s all right. He was just leaving anyway. He’s a very busy and important man, he—”
“Look, Haze, I don’t mean to change the subject or anything, but I’m in kind of a hurry. I’ve got someone waiting for me in the car.”
Hazel raised her eyebrows. “So?”
“She’s not feeling very well, and I thought if you had a little brandy or one of those pills you used to take when you got upset, the ones the doctor gave you—”
“I’ve got a quart of warm beer and some aspirin,” Hazel said curtly. “Who is it, the new girlfriend?”
“Yes.”
“Why bring her here?”
“Well, we were passing by and I figured I’d drop in and get her a pill or something to calm her down.” He scowled at a point in the darkness where a mockingbird sat trying to stir up his sleepy friends, hi there! hi there! “She’s so darned unhappy, Hazel.”
“I should give one half of one per cent of a good goddamn whether she’s unhappy.”
“All right, all right. I’ll shove off.”
“You can have the beer and the aspirin.”
“No thanks. Sorry to have bothered you.”
He went down the porch steps, stumbling slightly on the last one where the wood had been undermined by termites and sagged in the middle.
“Well, don’t go away mad,” Hazel said.
“I’m not mad.”
“Not much you aren’t.”
“I am not mad.” He scuffed the coco mat at the bottom of the steps with his shoe. “The thing is I want to do what’s right, only I don’t know how. She’s just a kid, she needs help. I get the feeling that she’s on the edge of something, something bad.” He kicked at the mat again, more violently this time, as if it were an obstacle that had to be kicked away. But the mat didn’t budge. It had been there for a long time and was so heavy with the dirt of years that during the rainy winters weeds sprouted in it and grew two or three inches high.
“I know what she’s on the edge of,” Hazel said. “And it’s not so bad.”
George looked at her hopefully, and for a moment Hazel wished that she didn’t have to say what she had every intention of saying both for George’s own good and for her own personal satisfaction.
“It’s not so bad,” she repeated. “Hooking you and cutting herself in on your share of the Beachcomber.”
“You’ve got the wrong idea, as far as Ruby’s concerned anyway. She’s not interested in me.” In an unconscious gesture, he put his left hand to his head and smoothed back his hair, as if to reassure himself that he still had hair left, that he wasn’t quite so old as some people might think. He remembered what Ruby had said when he’d gone to Mrs. Freeman’s to give her the back pay she hadn’t stopped to collect: “You don’t look a day over forty—”
“To her I’m a nothing.” He cleared his throat. “A big fat nothing.”
“I don’t believe it,” Hazel said, sounding a little angry, as if Ruby, by repudiating George, was casting an aspersion on Hazel herself. “Maybe she’s just playing hard to get.”
“You think so, Hazel? Honest?”
“I said, maybe.”
“Could you tell if you met her?”
“I don’t know. How should I know?”
“I mean, suppose I brought her in and you talked to her, sort of sounded her out a little?... Then maybe I could find out if I had a chance, and if I haven’t, well, that’s that, I’ll chalk it down to experience. Would you do it, Hazel, just talk to her?”
“Why should I?”
“No reason, I guess. Except — well, suppose you find out she’s not interested, then you wouldn’t have to worry so much about me getting married again.”
“I am not worried about your getting married again,” Hazel said, in a very calm, reasonable tone. “It’s who you marry that concerns me. It beats me why you can’t find some nice sensible widow with a little cash or some real estate.”
“You already said that, a hundred times.”
“Isn’t it true a hundred times?”
“Sure, sure. But—”
“There’s always a but.” She shifted her weight impatiently. The porch railing squawked a protest, and from his new position on the television antenna next door the tireless mockingbird answered, oh my, oh my, oh my. “The world would be O.K. if it wasn’t for the buts.”
“Haze—”
“All right, all right. I’ll talk to her. Bring her in the house.”
There was a slight edge to her voice, but George was too pleased to notice it. He had great faith in Hazel’s ability to handle people, to make them feel at home and get them talking about themselves. It was exactly what Ruby needed, an older woman to confide in. Perhaps — who could tell? — they might even become friends.
George was an incurable optimist. Like an alcoholic who needs only one drink to set him off, George needed only one happy thought, and the happy thought was that Hazel and Ruby should become real pals, lunching together, shopping together, telephoning each other at all hours. Each passing second made the idea more irresistibly logicaclass="underline" Ruby and Hazel, Damon and Pythias.
Oh my, said the mockingbird. Oh my, oh my.
“You’ll be crazy about her,” George said warmly. “She’s shy, kind of hard to know at first, but once you get underneath the surface you’ll see how sweet she is.”