“Let the decent people look out for themselves,” Brennan said. “Dammit, I’ve told you I’m tired. I’m sick of fighting for decent people! I’m through—washed up. Who the hell are the decent people to depend on me to look after them?”
“Just people,” the girl on the couch told him softly.
Brennan almost snarled at her, “Not you too, Jean!” Then, “Sorry—look, MacLaren, I’ve never known anything but fighting. As soon as I was old enough and had sense enough to pass a civil service exam, I been fighting. First on the force—then to make the world safe for decent people. All right! I’ve made it safe! Now I’m tired. Who are you and Joe Doaks to tell me, ‘Here, Brennan! Here’s a gun, Brennan. Keep on fighting, Brennan. Make us safe.’ What gives anybody the right to put the finger on me—me?—and say, ‘Finish your job! Keep us safe!’”
“Nothing,” MacLaren agreed, “gives anybody that right—except you, John. But as long as this world stands the right guys are going to have to keep swatting back the ears of the wrong guys. To hold them back. Safety and freedom are like gold—you got to keep ’em polished.”
Brennan sat down heavily and reached for a cigarette. His hands were trembling. “Then a let Joe polish a while!”
“But a lot of Joes can’t,” MacLaren said quietly. “They try, but a lot of them are like Donnavan. He polished his life right out of his body, Brennan, fighting the wrong Joes here while you were trimming them over there. That job over there is done now, but Donnavan is still dead. We’ve drawn a blank on Donnavan’s kill—but you could get the guys who killed Donnavan. And the wrong Joes who are going to hurt a lot of other people, every day, every year. You can do it because you’re Brennan. I guess that’s the answer to your question, John. The way you got born. The way your brain thinks and your body moves. Some men are born with music in their fingers. For every one of those a hundred are born who try but fail. Just like a hundred Donnavans are killed trying to stop the wrong Joes while only one Brennan is born.” Cigar smoke gushed from MacLaren’s heavy mouth. “So it ain’t a job you can pick up or turn down, Brennan. It’s something you got born to do!”
“Like hell,” Brennan said harshly. “If I got born for it, then I’m dead and come to life again. I tell you I’m through, MacLaren! I’m going to Chicago and sell insurance, and be one of the right Joes the Brennans are keeping safe!”
The silence hung a long while this time. MacLaren and Brennan looked at each other; then Brennan looked away, and MacLaren said heavily, “Well, here’s hoping you have a good time living with yourself.”
Brennan bared his teeth to snarl back, but the other picked up his hat, went out the door, and a few moments later Brennan heard the hum of the elevator.
He felt the slim, soft hand glide into his. He turned on the couch and looked into hazel eyes. He could read nothing there. “You’ll like it okay, Jean? Being the wife of an insurance salesman?”
She laid her head on his shoulder so that her lips touched his neck lightly just above his shirt collar. “I’ve waited too long to want anything except to be John Brennan’s wife,” she said, and if there was a hint of a hollowness in her voice. Brennan made himself not notice it.
“Swell,” he breathed, “we’ll set ’em on fire.” But the heartiness in his voice was almost like laughter in a tomb. Sweat beaded his brow, his upper lip, though the apartment was cool. The words of MacLaren were running around in his brain—Donnavan dead—the right Joes… Damn MacLaren anyway! Why did the old fool have to come here tonight, Brennan’s homecoming night?
“Baby,” he told Jean, the suddenness of his voice startling her. “We’re forgetting. This is a special night, a hell of a special night. Which club do we hit first?”
Coming out on the street was like walking into an oven. They strolled down Mount Royal, passing the patch of grass and benches the city fathers called a park. Young couples—and a few older ones, too—occupied the benches, lost in worlds of their own. Right Joes, Brennan thought. Like gold, he thought, polish safety and freedom—born for it.
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.
