“I’ll come straight up from the station.”
“If you’ll do me a favor.”
“What?”
“I will tell you when I see you tonight. But please park your car behind the house and come in the back door. I do not want to give these old gossips here anything to talk about. You must remember that I have never done this before.”
Of course she was right, he thought. She had her self-esteem to maintain. Her pride, he thought, was so childish, so sterling! Sometimes, driving through a New Hampshire mill town late in the day, he thought, you will see in some alley or driveway, down by the river, a child dressed in a tablecloth, sitting on a broken stool, waving her scepter over a kingdom of weeds and cinders and a few skinny chickens. It is the purity and the irony of their pride that touches one; and he felt that way about Mrs. Flannagan.
She let him in at the back door that night, but in the living room the scene was the same. The fire was burning, she made him a drink, and in her company he felt as if he had just worked his shoulders free of a heavy pack. But she was coy, in and out of his arms, tickling him and then tripping across the room to look at herself in the mirror. “I want my favor first,” she said.
“What is it?”
“Guess.”
“I can’t give you money. I’m not rich, you know.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t think of taking money.” She was indignant.
“Then what is it?”
“Something you wear.”
“But my watch is worthless, my cuff links are brass.”
“Something else.”
“But what?”
“I won’t tell you unless you promise to give it to me.”
He pushed her away from him then, knowing that he could easily be made a fool of. “I can’t make a promise unless I know what it is you want.”
“It’s something very small.”
“How small?”
“Tiny. Weeny.”
“Please tell me what it is.” Then he seized her in his arms, and this was the moment he felt most like himself: solemn, virile, wise, and imperturbable.
“I won’t tell you unless you promise.”
“But I can’t promise.”
“Then go away,” she said. “Go away and never, never, come back.” She was too childish to give the command much force, and yet it was not wasted on him. Could he go back to his own house, empty but for his wife, who would be grinding her ax? Go there and wait until time and chance turned up another friend?
“Please tell me.”
“Promise.”
“I promise.”
“I want,” she said, “a key to your bomb shelter.”
The demand struck at him like a sledge-hammer blow, and suddenly he felt in all his parts the enormous weight of chagrin. All his gentle speculations on her person?the mill-town girl ruling her chickens?backfired
