2
Marvin Blake was waiting impatiently at the cashier’s wicket for change from the three twenties he had shoved across the counter with his room-key when he heard his name being called loudly from behind him. He turned his head and saw Hal Jackson and Joe Wallis weaving across the lobby with their arms linked together, grinning widely and somewhat fatuously.
They were partners in an automobile agency in Moonray Beach, about thirty miles south of Sunray on the coast, and they were competitors of Marvin’s. They were both good fellows and he had known them for years, and he knew they would demand explanations from him if they realized he was checking out before the end of the convention.
They were both pretty well plastered at this early hour in the afternoon, bumping into people and making loud remarks to each other about the pretty women they passed. Not lewd remarks or really offensive. Just what they considered good clean fun, and everyone who saw their delegate badges just smiled or shrugged their shoulders and passed them off for just what they were-a couple of typical small-town businessmen winding up a four-day convention away from home.
They had already seen Marvin standing there and he knew he couldn’t avoid an encounter with them, so he was relieved when the cashier pushed back a receipted hotel bill with some one-dollar bills and silver and he was able to slide it into his pocket before they reached him, so they didn’t realize he had just paid his bill.
“Marv, old man!” Hal Jackson bellowed, pounding him on the shoulder and almost falling flat on his face in the process. “Whatcha doing here, huh? Run out of mazuma already and stocking up for the night? Trying to talk this sucker into cashing a check for you? Tell you what, Mister.” He leaned past Marvin, supporting himself with an arm about his shoulder, and blew whiskey-laden fumes in the cashier’s face. “Take a tip from me and don’t cash any checks signed Marvin Blake. A dead-beat, that’s what he is. A no-good dead-beat from Sunray Beach.”
The cashier smiled as politely as he could and pointedly looked past them at some other people waiting to check out, and Marvin pulled the two men aside and Joe Wallis suggested they all go into the bar for a drink, and where did Marv dig up that redhead he had seen him with last night?
And Hal laughed uproariously and nudged Marvin in the ribs and warned him in a loud voice: “Wait’ll we see Ellie again, by golly. Just you wait, Marv old boy. Will we give Ellie an earful?”
“That is,” put in Joe with a broad wink, “unless Marv agrees to share the redhead with his old pals tonight. How’s about it, Marv? That’s all we ask from a buddy. Just an ittsy-bittsy share. Anybody can see with half an eye that redhead’s got plenty of stuff to spread around.”
Blushing, Marvin Blake shushed them as best he could, conscious of the knowing and superior smiles of strangers around them, and he finally persuaded them to go upstairs to their fourth floor suite by telling them he had a date to meet the redhead and would bring her right up to their suite for a drink and to get acquainted.
The bellboy was waiting with his suitcase near the door, and Marvin waited until Hal and Joe disappeared inside an elevator before he tipped the boy and took his bag and slipped out of the hotel without being noticed by anyone else.
He stepped quickly into the gift shop next door and set his suitcase inside and asked the lady clerk to let him see the pair of earrings displayed in the window.
She had another pair just like them in stock, and she set them out on the counter in a square white box with cushiony velvet underneath them.
Close up, they were even prettier than they had looked in the window, and Marvin told her he’d take them and would she wrap them as a gift, please.
She said she would be pleased to, and asked if he would care to enclose a card. He hadn’t thought about that, but as soon as she mentioned it he knew Ellie would be pleased if he did, so he asked if she had one he could write on.
She had an assortment to choose from, and wanted to know if it was for an anniversary or birthday gift, or what, and Marvin felt silly when he had to admit it wasn’t any special occasion but just for his wife as a souvenir of his trip to Miami.
She gave him a plain white card with an envelope to match, and Marvin puckered up his forehead and thought hard for a moment, and then wrote firmly: “For my very best girl with love from Marvin.” He sealed it in the envelope and the saleslady wrapped the box up in green and white striped paper and tied it with a white ribbon, and he paid her for it happily.
He slid the box into his inside breast pocket and it pressed against his chest and felt warm and good there as he picked up his suitcase and strode out onto the street again. It was less than a dozen blocks to the railway station and he had lots of time to kill before his train left, so he decided to walk and save taxi fare.
Actually, when he looked at his hotel bill and the change he’d received from the cashier he had discovered that the bill was several dollars more than he had anticipated, and he tried to think back as he walked down the street with his suitcase to see how he had mentally miscalculated what the bill would be.
Three days made thirty-six dollars for the room, but he hadn’t thought to add the tax onto that. There had been three breakfasts for an average of about a dollar each, and three lunches for four-fifty or maybe five dollars. But there was only one dinner charged on the hotel bill. That was Tuesday night. But now he remembered that Tom Brent and a girl had stopped by his table at dinner and he’d ordered them a drink and had one himself to keep them company, and so that ran the dinner bill pretty high.
Oh, he was sure the hotel hadn’t made a mistake, even if the total bill was fifty-four dollars and sixteen cents, and he couldn’t help grinning as he walked along and thought how he had practically beat them out of another twelve bucks by checking out at four o’clock.
He watched out for a quiet, cheap-looking restaurant as he neared the station, and he found one that looked clean and had a menu in the window that featured Superburgers with all the fixings for 89c. He had a good meal there sitting at the counter and topping it off with a piece of apple pie and a cup of coffee which he dawdled over as long as he could make it last, and then he went on to the station and found his train waiting to be boarded, and he bought a News and got on and found a good seat in a smoker before the cars began to fill up.
My, but he felt good and sort of smug sitting there waiting for the train to pull out and take him back to Sunray Beach and to Ellie… and Sissy. The square box kept pressing against his chest under his coat so he was conscious of it, and he kept thinking about how Ellie’s face would light up when he handed it to her and she opened it up. He’d do it that night, he decided happily. He wouldn’t put it off until the next day. There would still be the box of chocolates that he could give her when he gave Sissy her present next morning, but the earrings were special.
They were for this first night.
Then the train started and he sat back comfortably in his seat and thought about all the others still back at the hotel, Hal and Joe and all the rest of them, getting drunk tonight and watching a smutty movie and waking up with Godawful hangovers the next morning, and he felt sorry for them because most of them didn’t have a wife like Ellie to go home to.
He knew Hal and Joe didn’t, for instance. He’d met both their wives at parties in the past, and had to admit to himself that if he were married to either one of them he wouldn’t feel like hurrying home either. No, sir. He knew deep down inside himself that he’d be staying in Miami until the last dog was hung and get as soused as a field hand on Saturday night and do his best to forget about the little woman waiting for him at home.
Little woman! He had to grin at that expression as he thought about Hal’s and Joe’s wives. Mrs. Jackson was tall and horse-faced. She looked years older than Hal, and a lot of people said that the only reason he ever married her was because she had money to put into the business which made up enough for him to go into partnership with Joe Wallis.
Well, he told himself indulgently, you pay for whatever you get in this world. Hal had got himself half-share in a thriving automobile agency, but he had to live with that woman to pay for it. It was difficult to imagine Hal and his wife in bed together. She’d be bony, and she wouldn’t like it, Marvin thought. She’d consider it was her duty, and she probably rationed poor old Hal to so many times a week.
Or so many times a month was more like it.
Joe Wallis’ wife was different, but just as bad, it seemed to Marvin, in her own way. Suzy, he remembered
