Текст книги "Rich Man, Poor Man"

Автор книги: Irwin Shaw

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Текущая страница: 15 (всего у книги 53 страниц)

He hurried over to Buddy Westerman’s, on the next block. Luckily, there were still lights on. The Westerman house was big and old. Buddy’s mother let the River Five practice in the basement. Rudolph whistled. Buddy’s mother was a jolly, easy-going woman who liked boys and served them all milk and cake after the practice sessions, but he didn’t want to have to talk to her tonight. He took the key of the bag off the handle and locked the bag and put the key in his pocket.

After awhile, Buddy came out. “Hey,” he said, “what’s up? This time of night?”

“Listen, Buddy,” Rudolph said, “will you hold onto this for me for a couple of days?” He thrust the bag at Buddy. “It’s a present for Julie and I don’t want my old lady to see it.” Inspired lie. Everybody knew what misers the Jordaches were. Buddy also knew that Mrs. Jordache didn’t like the idea of Rudolph going around with girls.

“Okay,” Buddy said carelessly. He took the bag.

“I’ll do as much for you some day,” Rudolph said.

“Just don’t play flat on ‘Stardust.’” Buddy was the best musician in the band and that gave him the right to say things like that. “Any other little thing?”

“No.”

“By the way,” Buddy said, “I saw Julie tonight. I was passing the movie. She was going in. With a guy I didn’t know. An old guy. Twenty-two, at least. I asked her where you were and she said she didn’t know and didn’t care.”

“Pal,” Rudolph said.

“No use living your life in total ignorance,” Buddy said. “See you tomorrow.” He went in, carrying the bag.

Rudolph went down to the Ace Diner to buy the evening paper. He sat at the counter reading the sports page while drinking a glass of milk and eating two doughnuts. The Giants had won that afternoon. Other than that, Rudolph couldn’t decide whether it had been a good day or a bad day.

IV

Thomas kissed Clothilde good night. She was lying under the covers, with her hair spread on the pillow. She had turned on the lamp so that he could find his way out without bumping into anything. There was the soft glow of a smile as she touched his cheek. He opened the door without a sound and closed it behind him. The crack of light under the door disappeared as Clothilde switched off the lamp.

He went through the kitchen and out into the hallway and mounted the dark steps carefully, carrying his sweater. There was no sound from Uncle Harold’s and Tante Elsa’s bedroom. Usually, there was snoring that shook the house. Uncle Harold must be sleeping on his side tonight. Nobody had died in Saratoga. Uncle Harold had lost three pounds, drinking the waters.

Thomas climbed the narrow steps to the attic and opened the door to his room and put on the light. Uncle Harold was sitting there in striped pajamas, on the bed.

Uncle Harold smiled at him peculiarly, blinking in the light. Four of his front upper teeth were missing. He had a bridge that he took out at night.

“Good evening, Tommy,” Uncle Harold said. His speech was gappy, without the bridge.

“Hi, Uncle Harold,” Thomas said. He was conscious that his hair was mussed and that he smelled of Clothilde. He didn’t know what Uncle Harold was doing there. It was the first time he had come to the room. Thomas knew he had to be careful about what he said and how he said it.

“It is quite late, isn’t it, Tommy?” Uncle Harold said. He was keeping his voice down.

“Is it?” Thomas said. “I haven’t looked at a clock.” He stood near the door, away from Uncle Harold. The room was bare. He had few possessions. A book from the library lay on the dresser. Riders of the Purple Sage. The lady at the library had said he would like it. Uncle Harold filled the little room in his striped pajamas, making the bed sag in the middle, where he sat on it.

“It is nearly one o’clock,” Uncle Harold said. He sprayed because of the missing teeth. “For a growing boy who has to get up early and do a day’s work. A growing boy needs his sleep, Tommy.”

“I didn’t realize how late it was,” Thomas said.

“What amusements have you found to keep a young boy out till one o’clock in the morning, Tommy?”

“I was just wandering around town.”

“The bright lights,” Uncle Harold said. “The bright lights of Elysium, Ohio.”

Thomas faked a yawn and stretched. He threw his sweater over the one chair of the room. “I’m sleepy now,” he said. “I better get to bed fast.”

“Tommy,” Uncle Harold said, in that wet whisper, “you have a good home here, hey?”

“Sure.”

“You eat good here, just like the family, hey?”

“I eat all right.”

“You have a good home, a good roof over your head.” The “roof” came out “woof,” through the gap.

“I’m not complaining.” Thomas kept his voice low. No sense in waking Tante Elsa and getting her in on the conference.

“You live in a nice clean house,” Uncle Harold persisted. “Everybody treats you like a member of the family. You have your own personal bicycle.”

“I’m not complaining.”

“You have a good job. You are paid a man’s wages. You are learning a trade. There will be unemployment now, millions of men coming home, but for the mechanic, there is always a job. Am I mistaken?”

“I can take care of myself,” Thomas said.

“You can take care of yourself,” Uncle Harold said. “I hope so. You are my flesh and blood. I took you in without a question, didn’t I, when your father called? You were in trouble, Tommy, in Port Philip, weren’t you, and Uncle Harold asked no questions, he and Tante Elsa took you in.”

“There was a little fuss back home,” Thomas said. “Nothing serious.”

“I ask no questions.” Magnanimously, Uncle Harold waved away all thought of interrogation. His pajamas opened. There was a view of plump, pink rolls of beer-and-sausage belly over the drawstrings of the pajama pants. “In return for this, what do I ask? Impossibilities? Gratitude? No. A little thing. That a young boy should behave himself properly, that he should be in bed at a reasonable hour. His own bed, Tommy.”

Oh, that’s it, Thomas thought. The sonofabitch knows. He didn’t say anything.

“This is a clean house, Tommy,” Uncle Harold said. “The family is respected. Your aunt is received in the best homes. You would be surprised if I told you what my credit is at the bank. I have been approached to run for the State Legislature in Columbus on the Republican ticket, even though I have not been born in this country. My two daughters have clothes … I challenge any two young ladies to dress better. They are model students. Ask me one day to show you their report cards, what their teachers say about them. They go to Sunday school every Sunday. I drive them myself. Pure young souls, sleeping like angels, right under this very room, Tommy.”

“I get the picture,” Thomas said. Let the old idiot get it over with.

“You were not wandering around town tonight till one o’clock, Tommy,” Uncle Harold said sorrowfully. “I know where you were. I was thirsty. I wanted a bottle of beer from the Frigidaire. I heard noises. Tommy, I am ashamed even to mention it. A boy your age, in the same house with my two daughters.”

“So what?” Thomas said sullenly. The idea of Uncle Harold outside Clothilde’s door nauseated him.

“So what? Is that all you have to say, Tommy? So what?”

“What do you want me to say?” He would have liked to be able to say that he loved Clothilde, that it was the best thing that had ever happened to him in his whole rotten life, that she loved him, that if he were older he would take her away from Uncle Harold’s clean, goddamn house, from his respected family, from his model, pale-blonde daughters. But, of course, he couldn’t say it. He couldn’t say anything. His tongue strangled him.

“I want you to say that you are sorry for the filthy thing that ignorant, scheming peasant has done to you,” Uncle Harold whispered. “I want you to promise you will never touch her again. In this house or anywhere else.”

“I’m not promising anything,” Thomas said.

“I’m being kind,” Uncle Harold said. “I am being delicate. I am speaking quietly, like a reasonable and forgiving man, Tommy. I do not want to make a scandal. I don’t want your Aunt Elsa to know her house has been dirtied, that her children have been exposed to … Ach, I can’t find the words, Tommy.”

“I’m not promising anything,” Thomas said.

“Okay. You are not promising anything,” Uncle Harold said. “You don’t have to promise anything. When I leave this room, I am going down to the room behind the kitchen. She will promise plenty, I assure you.”

“That’s what you think.” Even to his own ears, it sounded hollow, childish.

“That’s what I know, Tommy,” Uncle Harold whispered. “She will promise anything. She’s in trouble. If I fire her, where will she go? Back to her drunken husband in Canada who’s been looking for her for two years so he can beat her to death?”

“There’re plenty of jobs. She doesn’t have to go to Canada.”

“You think so. The authority on International Law,” Uncle Harold said. “You think it’s as easy as that. You think I won’t go to the police.”

“What’ve the police got to do with it?”

“You are a child, Tommy,” Uncle Harold said. “You put it up in between a married woman’s legs like a grown man, but you have the mind of a child. She has corrupted the morals of a minor, Tommy. You are the minor. Sixteen years old. That is a crime, Tommy. A serious crime. This is a civilized country. Children are protected in this country. Even if they didn’t put her in jail, they would deport her, an undesirable alien who corrupts the morals of minors. She is not a citizen. Back to Canada she would go. It would be in the papers. Her husband would be waiting for her. Oh, yes,” Uncle Harold said. “She will promise.” He stood up. “I am sorry for you, Tommy. It is not your fault. It is in your blood. Your father was a whoremaster. I was ashamed to say hello to him in the street. And your mother, for your information, was a bastard. She was raised by the nuns. Ask her some day who her father was. Or even her mother. Get some sleep, Tommy.” He patted him comfortingly on the shoulder. “I like you. I would like to see you grow up into a good man. A credit to the family. I am doing what is best for you. Go—get some sleep.”

Uncle Harold padded out of the room, barefooted, beery mastodon in the shapeless striped pajamas, all weapons on his side.

Thomas put out the light. He lay face down on the bed. He punched the pillow, once, with all his strength.

The next morning, he went down early, to try to talk to Clothilde before breakfast. But Uncle Harold was there, at the dining-room table, reading the newspaper.

“Good morning, Tommy,” he said, looking up briefly. His teeth were back in. He sipped noisily at his coffee.

Clothilde came in with Thomas’s orange juice. She didn’t look at him. Her face was dark and closed. Uncle Harold didn’t look at Clothilde. “It is terrible what is happening in Germany,” he said. “They are raping women in Berlin. The Russians. They have been waiting for this for a hundred years. People are living in cellars. If I hadn’t met your Tante Elsa and come to this country when I was a young man, God knows where I would be now.”

Clothilde came in with Thomas’s bacon and eggs. He searched her face for a sign. There was no sign.

When he finished breakfast, Thomas stood up. He would have to get back later in the day, when the house was empty. Uncle Harold looked up from his paper. “Tell Coyne, I’ll be in at nine-thirty,” Uncle Harold said. “I have to go to the bank. And tell him I promised Mr. Duncan’s car by noon, washed.”

Thomas nodded and went out of the room as the two daughters came down, fat and pale. “My angels,” he heard Uncle Harold say as they went into the dining room and kissed him good morning.

He had his chance at four o’clock that afternoon. It was the daughters’ dentist day for their braces and Tante Elsa always took them, in the second car. Uncle Harold, he knew, was down at the showroom. Clothilde should be alone.

“I’ll be back in a half-hour,” he told Coyne. “I got to see somebody.”

Coyne wasn’t pleased, but screw him.

Clothilde was watering the lawn when he pedaled up. It was a sunny day and rainbows shimmered in the spray from the hose. The lawn wasn’t a big one and was shadowed by a linden tree. Clothilde was in a white uniform. Tante Elsa liked her maids to look like nurses. It was an advertisement of cleanliness. You could eat off the floor in my house.

Clothilde looked at Thomas once as he got off his bicycle, then continued watering the lawn.

“Clothilde,” Thomas said, “come inside. I have to talk to you.”

“I’m watering the lawn.” She turned the nozzle and the spray concentrated down to a stream, with which she soaked a bed of petunias along the front of the house.

“Look at me,” he said.

“Aren’t you supposed to be at work?” She kept turned away from him.

“Did he come down to your room last night?” Thomas said. “My uncle?”

“So?”

“Did you let him in?”

“It’s his house,” Clothilde said. Her voice was sullen.

“Did you promise him anything?” He knew he sounded shrill, but he couldn’t help himself.

“What difference does it make? Go back to work. People will see us.”

“Did you promise him anything?”

“I said I wouldn’t see you alone anymore,” she said flatly.

“You didn’t mean it, though,” Thomas pleaded.

“I meant it.” She fiddled with the nozzle again. The wedding ring on her finger gleamed. “We are over.”

“No, we’re not!” He wanted to grab her and shake her. “Get the hell out of this house. Get another job. I’ll move away and …”

“Don’t talk nonsense,” she said sharply. “He told you about my crime.” She mocked the word. “He will have me deported. We are not Romeo and Juliet. We are a schoolboy and a cook. Go back to work.”

“Couldn’t you say anything to him?” Thomas was desperate. He was afraid he was going to break down and cry, right there on the lawn, right in front of Clothilde.

“There is nothing to say. He is a wild man,” Clothilde said. “He is jealous. When a man is jealous you might as well talk to a wall, a tree.”

“Jealous?” Thomas said. “What do you mean?”

“He has been trying to get into my bed for two years,” Clothilde said calmly. “He comes down at night when his wife is asleep and scratches on the door like a kitten.”

“That fat bastard,” Thomas said. “I’ll be there waiting for him the next time.”

“No you won’t,” Clothilde said. “He is going to come in the next time. You might as well know.”

“You’re going to let him?”

“I’m a servant,” she said. “I lead the life of a servant. I do not want to lose my job or go to jail or go back to Canada. Forget it,” she said. “Alles kaput. It was nice for two weeks. You’re a nice boy. I’m sorry I got you into trouble.”

“All right, all right,” he shouted. “I’m never going to touch another woman again as long as—”

He was too choked to say anything more and ran over to his bicycle and rode blindly away, leaving Clothilde watering the roses. He didn’t turn around. So he didn’t see the tears on the dark, despairing face.

St. Sebastian, well supplied with arrows, he headed for the garage. The rods would come later.

Chapter 9

I

When she came out of the Eighth Street subway station she stopped for six bottles of beer and then went into the cleaner’s for Willie’s suit. It was dusk, the early dusk of November, and the air was nippy. People were wearing coats and moving quickly. A girl in slacks and a trench coat slouched in front of her, her hair covered by a scarf. The girl looked as though she had just gotten out of bed, although it was after five o’clock in the afternoon. In Greenwich Village, people might get out of bed at any time of the day or night. It was one of the charms of the neighborhood, like the fact that most of the population was young. Sometimes, when she walked through the neighborhood, among the young, she thought, “I am in my native country.”

The girl in the trench coat went into Corcoran’s Bar and Grill. Gretchen knew it well. She was known in a dozen bars of the neighborhood. A good deal of her life was spent in bars now.

She hurried toward Eleventh Street, the beer bottles heavy in the big brown-paper sack and Willie’s suit carefully folded over her arm. She hoped Willie was home. You never could know when he’d be there. She had just come from an understudy rehearsal uptown and she had to go back for the eight o’clock call. Nichols and the director had her read for the understudy’s job and had told her that she had talent. The play was a moderate success. It would almost certainly last till June. She walked across the stage in a bathing suit three times a night. The audience laughed each time, but the laughter was nervous. The author had been furious the first time he had heard the laughter, at a preview, and had wanted to cut her out of the play, but Nichols and the director had persuaded him that the laughter was good for the play. She received some peculiar letters backstage and telegrams asking her if she wanted to go out to supper and twice there were roses. She never answered anybody. Willie was always there in her dressing room after the show to watch her wash off the body make-up and get into her street clothes. When he wanted to tease her, he said, “Oh, God, why did I ever get married? I am quoting.”

His divorce was dragging along, he said.

She went into the hallway of the walkup and looked to see if there was any mail in the box. Abbott–Jordache. She had printed the little card herself.

She opened the downstairs door with her key and ran up the three flights of stairs. She was always in a hurry, once she got into the house. She opened the door of the apartment, a little breathless from the stairs. The door opened directly on the living room. “Willie …” she was calling. There were only two small rooms, so there was no real reason to call out. She found excuses to say his name.

Rudolph was sitting on the tattered couch, a glass of beer in his hand.

“Oh,” Gretchen said.

Rudolph stood up. “Hello, Gretchen,” he said. He put down his glass and kissed her cheek, over the bag full of beer bottles and Willie’s suit.

“Rudy,” she said, getting rid of the bag and dropping the suit over the back of a chair, “what’re you doing here?”

“I rang the bell,” Rudolph said, “and your friend let me in.”

“Your friend is getting dressed,” Willie called from the next room. He often sat around in his bathrobe all day. The apartment was so small that you heard everything that was said in either of the rooms. A little kitchenette was concealed by a screen from the living room. “I’ll be right out,” Willie said from the bedroom. “I blow you a kiss.”

“I’m so glad to see you.” Gretchen took off her coat and hugged Rudolph hard. She stepped back to look at him. When she had been seeing him every day she hadn’t realized how handsome he was, dark, straight, a button-down blue shirt and the blazer she had given him for his birthday. Those sad, clear, greenish eyes.

“Is it possible you’ve grown? In just a couple of months?”

“Almost six months,” he said. Was there an accusation there?

“Come on,” she said. “Sit down.” She pulled him down on the couch next to her. There was a little leather overnight bag near the door. It didn’t belong to Willie or her, but she had a feeling that she had seen it someplace before.

“Tell me about everything,” she said. “What’s happening at home? Oh, God, it’s good to see you, Rudy.” Still, her voice didn’t sound completely natural to her. If she had known he was coming she’d have warned him about Willie. After all, he was only seventeen, Rudolph, and just to come barging in innocently and discover that his sister was living with a man … Abbott–Jordache.

“Nothing much is happening at home,” Rudolph said. If he was embarrassed, he didn’t show it. She could take lessons in control from Rudy. He sipped at his beer. “I am bearing the brunt of everybody’s love, now that I’m the only one left.”

Gretchen laughed. It was silly to worry. She hadn’t realized how grown-up he was.

“How’s Mom?” Gretchen asked.

“Still reading Gone With the Wind,” Rudolph said. “She’s been sick. She says the doctor says it’s phlebitis.”

Messages of cheer and comfort from the family hearth, Gretchen thought. “Who takes care of the store?” she asked.

“A Mrs. Cudahy,” Rudolph said. “A widow. She costs thirty dollars a week.”

“Pa must love that,” Gretchen said.

“He isn’t too happy.”

“How is he?”

“To tell the truth,” Rudolph said, “I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s actually sicker than Ma. He hasn’t been out in the yard to hit the bag in months and I don’t think he’s been out on the river since you left.”

“What is it?” Gretchen was surprised to find out that she was really concerned.

“I don’t know,” Rudolph said. “He just moves that way. You know Pa. He never says anything.”

“Do they talk about me?” Gretchen asked carefully..

“Not a word.”

“And Thomas?”

“Gone and forgotten,” Rudolph said. “I never did find out what happened. He never writes, of course.”

“Our family,” Gretchen said. They sat in silence, honoring the clan Jordache for a moment. “Well …” Gretchen shook herself. “How do you like our place?” She gestured to indicate the apartment, which she and Willie had rented furnished. The furniture looked as though it had come out of somebody’s attic, but Gretchen had bought some plants and tacked some prints and travel posters on the walls. An Indian in a sombrero in front of a pueblo. Visit New Mexico.

“It’s very nice,” Rudolph said gravely.

“It’s awfully tacky,” Gretchen said. “But it has one supreme advantage. It’s not Port Philip.”

“I understand what you mean,” Rudolph said. She wished he didn’t look so serious. She wondered what had brought him down to see her.

“How’s that pretty girl,” she asked. Her voice was falsely bright. “Julie?”

“Julie,” Rudolph said. “We have our ups and downs.”

Willie came into the room combing his hair. He wasn’t wearing a jacket. She had seen him only some five hours earlier, but if they had been alone she would have enfolded him as if they were meeting again after an absence of years. Willie kissed Gretchen quickly, leaning over the couch. Rudolph stood up politely. “Sit down, sit down, Rudy,” Willie said. “I’m not your superior officer.”

Briefly, Gretchen regretted Willie was so short.

“Ah,” Willie said, seeing the beer and the pressed suit, “I told her the day I saw her for the first time that she would make some man a good wife and mother. Is it cold?”

“Uhuh.”

Willie busied himself opening a bottle. “Rudy?”

“This will do me for awhile,” Rudolph said, sitting down again.

Willie poured the beer in a glass that had been used and still had a rim of foam around it. He drank a lot of beer, Willie. “We can speak frankly,” Willie said, grinning. “I have explained everything to Rudy. I have told him that we are only technically living in sin. I’ve told him I have asked for your hand in marriage and that you’ve rejected me, although not for long.”

This was true. He had asked her to marry him again and again. Quite often she was sure that he meant it.

“Did you tell him you were married?” she asked. She was anxious to have Rudy leave with no questions unanswered.

“I did,” Willie said. “I hide nothing from brothers of women I love. My marriage was a whim of youth, a passing cloud, no bigger than a man’s hand. Rudy is an intelligent young man. He understands. He will go far. He will dance at our wedding. He will support us in our old age.”

For once, Willie’s jokes made her uneasy. Although she had told him about Rudolph and Thomas and her parents, this was the first time he had had to cope with the actual presence of her family and she was worried that it was setting his nerves on edge.

Rudolph said nothing.

“What’re you doing in New York, Rudy?” she said, to cover up for Willie.

“I got a ride down,” Rudolph said. Plainly, he had something to say to her and he didn’t feel like saying it in front of Willie. “It’s a half-holiday at school.”

“How’s it going at school?” After she had said it she was afraid it sounded condescending, the sort of thing you say to other people’s children because you don’t know what else to talk about.

“Okay.” Rudolph dismissed school.

“Rudy,” Willie said, “what would you think of me as a brother-in-law?”

Rudolph looked at him soberly. Considering green eyes. “I don’t know you,” he said.

“That’s it, Rudy, don’t give anything away. That’s my big trouble. I’m too open. I wear my heart on my tongue.” Willie poured himself some more beer. He couldn’t stay in one place. By contrast, Rudy seemed settled, sure of himself, judging. “I told Rudy I’d take him to see your show tonight,” Willie said. “The toast of New York.”

“It’s a silly show,” Gretchen said. She didn’t like the idea of her brother watching her practically nude in front of a thousand people. “Wait till I play Saint Joan.”

“I’m busy anyway,” Rudolph said.

“I invited him to supper after the show, too,” Willie said. “He pleads a prior engagement. See what you can do with him. I like him. I am tied to him by profound bonds.”

“Some other night, thank you,” Rudolph said. “Gretchen, there’s something for you in that bag.” He indicated the little overnight bag. “I was asked to deliver it to you.”

“What is it?” Gretchen asked. “Who’s it from?”

“Somebody called Boylan,” Rudolph said.

“Oh.” Gretchen touched Willie’s arm. “I think I’d like a beer, too, Willie.” She got up and went over to the bag. “A present. Isn’t that nice?” She picked the bag up and put it on a table and opened it. When she saw what was in the bag, she knew that she had known all along. She held the dress up against her. “I didn’t remember that it was so red,” she said calmly.

“Holy man,” Willie said.

Rudolph was watching them closely, first one, then the other.

“A memento of my depraved youth,” Gretchen said. She patted Rudolph’s arm. “That’s all right, Rudy,” she said. “Willie knows about Mr. Boylan. Everything.”

“I will shoot him down like a dog,” Willie said. “On sight. I’m sorry I turned in my B-17.”

“Should I keep it, Willie?” Gretchen asked doubtfully.

“Of course. Unless it fits Boylan better than it fits you.”

Gretchen put the dress down. “How come he got you to deliver it?” she asked Rudolph.

“I happened to meet him,” Rudolph said. “I see him from time to time. I didn’t give him your address, so he asked me …”

“Tell him I’m most grateful,” Gretchen said. “Tell him I’ll think of him when I wear it.”

“You can tell him yourself, if you want,” Rudolph said. “He drove me down. He’s in a bar on Eighth Street, waiting for me now.”

“Why don’t we all go and have a drink with the bugger?” Willie said.

“I don’t want to have a drink with him,” Gretchen said.

“Should I tell him that?” Rudolph asked.

“Yes.”

Rudolph stood up. “I’d better go,” he said. “I told him I’d be right back.”

Gretchen stood, too. “Don’t forget the bag,” she said.

“He said for you to keep it.”

“I don’t want it.” Gretchen handed the smart little leather bag to her brother. He seemed reluctant to take it. “Rudy,” she said curiously, “do you see much of Boylan?”

“A couple of times a week.”

“You like him?”

“I’m not sure,” Rudy said. “He’s teaching me a lot.”

“Be careful,” she said.

“Don’t worry.” Rudolph put out his hand to Willie. “Goodbye,” he said. “Thanks for the beer.”

Willie shook his hand warmly. “Now you know where we are,” he said, “come and see us. I mean it.”

“I will,” Rudolph said.

Gretchen kissed him. “I hate to see you run off like this.”

“I’ll come down to New York soon,” Rudolph said. “I promise.”

Gretchen opened the door for him. He seemed to want to say something more, but finally he just waved, a small troubled movement of his hand, and went down the stairs, carrying the bag. Gretchen closed the door slowly.

“He’s nice, your brother,” Willie said. “I wish I looked like that.”

“You look good enough,” Gretchen said. She kissed him. “I haven’t kissed you for ages.”

“Six long hours,” Willie said. They kissed again.

“Six long hours,” she said, smiling. “Please be home every time I come home.”

“I’ll make a point of it,” Willie said. He picked up the red dress and examined it critically. “Your brother’s awfully grownup for a kid that age.”

“Too, maybe.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I don’t know.” She took a sip of beer. “He figures things out too carefully.” She thought of her father’s unlikely generosity toward Rudolph, of her mother’s standing at night over an ironing board doing Rudolph’s shirts. “He collects on his intelligence.”

“Good for him,” Willie said. “I wish I could collect on mine.”

“What did you two talk about before I came?” she asked.

“We praised you.”

“Okay, okay, aside from that?”

“He asked me about my work. I guess he wondered what his sister’s feller was doing home in the middle of the afternoon while his sister was out earning her daily bread. I hope I put his fears to rest.”

Willie had a job on a new magazine that a friend of his had just started. It was a magazine devoted to radio and a lot of Willie’s work consisted of listening to daytime programs and he preferred listening to them at home rather than in the little cramped office of the magazine. He was making ninety dollars a week and with her sixty they got along well enough, although they usually found themselves broke by the end of the week, because Willie liked to eat out in restaurants and stay up late in bars.

“Did you tell him you were a playwright, too?” Gretchen said.

“No. I’ll leave him to find that out for himself. Some day.”

Willie hadn’t shown her his play yet. He only had an act and a half done and he was going to rewrite that completely.

Willie draped the dress against his front and walked like a model, with an exaggerated swing of the hips. “Sometimes I wonder what sort of a girl I would have made. What do you think?”

“No,” she said.

“Try it on. Let’s see what it looks like.” He gave her the dress. She took it and went into the bedroom because there was a full-length mirror there on the back of a closet door. She had made the bed neatly before leaving the house, but the bedcover was mussed. Willie had taken a nap after lunch. They had been living together only a little over two months but she had amassed a private treasury of Willie’s habits. His clothes were strewn all over the room. His corset was lying on the floor near the window. Gretchen smiled as she took off her sweater and skirt. She found Willie’s childish disorder endearing. She liked picking up after him.