free of all claims on him. The civil authorities had relinquished him and the military authorities had not yet taken him up. It was one o'clock now. Seventeen and a half hours, unanchored, between one life and the next.
He felt lightfooted and free and he looked fondly about him at the sunny wide street and the hurrying people, like a plantation owner with a good breakfast under his belt strolling over the wide lawns of his estate and looking out over the stretching rich acres of his property. Fifth Avenue was his lawn, the city his estate, the shop windows were his granaries, the Park his greenhouse, the theatres his workshop, all well looked after, busy, in their proper order…
He turned down the two steps to the entrance of the little French restaurant. Through the window he could see Peggy already sitting at the bar.
The restaurant was crowded and they sat at the bar next to a slightly drunken sailor with bright red hair. Always, when he met Peggy like this, Michael spent the first two or three minutes silently looking at her, enjoying the quiet eagerness of her face, with its broad brow and arched eyes, admiring the simple, straight way she did her hair and the pleasant way she wore her clothes. All the best things about the city seemed somehow to have an echo and reflection in the tall, straight, dependable girl… And now, when Michael thought about the city, it was inextricably mixed in his mind with the streets he had walked with her, the houses they had entered, the plays they had seen together, the galleries they had gone to, the bars they had sat at late in the winter afternoons. Looking at her, her cheeks flushed with her walk, her eyes bright with pleasure at seeing him, her long competent hands searching out to touch his sleeve, it was impossible to believe that that eagerness or pleasure would ever wane, that there ever would be a time he would return here and not find her, unchanged, unchanging…
He looked at her and all the sad, grotesque thoughts that had dogged him uptown from his lawyer's office left him. He smiled gravely at her and touched her hand and slid on to the stool beside her.
'What are you doing this afternoon?' he said.
'Waiting.'
'Waiting for what?'
'Waiting to be asked.'
'All right,' Michael said. 'You're asked. An old-fashioned,' he said to the bartender. He turned back to Peggy. 'Man I know,' he said, 'hasn't a thing to do until six-thirty tomorrow morning.'
'What will I tell the people at my office?'
'Tell them,' he said gravely, 'you are involved in a troop movement.'
'I don't know,' Peggy said. 'My boss is against the war.'
'Tell him the troops are against the war, too.'
'Maybe I won't tell him anything,' said Peggy.
'I will call him,' Michael said, 'and tell him that when you were last seen you were floating towards Washington Square in a bourbon old-fashioned.'
'He doesn't drink.'
'Your boss,' said Michael, 'is a dangerous alien.'
They clicked glasses gently. Then Michael noticed that the red-headed sailor was leaning against him, peering at Peggy.
'Exactly,' said the sailor.
'If you please,' Michael said, feeling free to speak harshly to men in uniform now, 'this lady and I are having a private party.'
'Exactly,' said the sailor. He patted Michael's shoulder and Michael remembered the hungry sergeant staring at Laura at lunch-time in Hollywood the day after the beginning of the war.
'Exactly,' the sailor repeated. 'I admire you. You have the right idea. Don't kiss the girls in the town square and go off to fight the war. Stay home and lay them. Exactly.'
'Now, see here,' said Michael.
'Excuse me,' said the sailor. He put some money down on the bar and put on his cap, very straight and white on top of his red hair. 'It just slipped out. Exactly. I am on my way to Erie, Pennsylvania.' He walked out of the bar, very erect.
Michael watched him walk out. He couldn't help smiling, and when he turned back to Peggy he was still smiling. 'The Armed Services,' he began, 'makes confidants of every…' Then he saw she was crying. She sat straight on the high stool in her pretty brown dress and the tears were welling slowly and gravely down her cheeks. She didn't put up her hands to touch them or wipe them off.
'Peggy,' Michael said quietly, gratefully noticing that the bartender was ostentatiously working with his head ducked at the other end of the bar. Probably, Michael thought, as he put out his hand to touch Peggy, bartenders get used to seeing a great many tears these days and develop a technique.
'I'm sorry,' Peggy said. 'I started to laugh but this is the way it came out.'
Then the head-waiter came over in a little Italian flurry, and said, 'Your table now, Mr Whitacre.'
Michael carried the drinks and followed Peggy and the waiter to a table against the wall. By the time they sat down Peggy had stopped crying, but all the eagerness was gone out of her face. Michael had never seen her face looking like that.
They ate the first part of their meal in silence. Michael waited for Peggy to recover. This was not like her at all. He had never seen her cry before. He had always thought of her as a girl who faced whatever happened to her with quiet stoicism. She had never complained about anything or fallen into the irrational emotional fevers he had more or less come to expect from the female sex, and he had developed no technique for soothing her or rescuing her from depression. He looked at her from time to time as they ate, but her face was bent over her food.
'I'm sorry,' she said, finally, as they were drinking their coffee, and her voice was surprisingly harsh. 'I'm sorry for the way I behaved. I know I should be gay and offhand and kiss the brave young soldier off. 'Go get your head shot off, darling, I'll be waiting with a martini in my hand.''
'Peggy,' Michael said, 'shut up.'
'Wear my glove on your arm,' Peggy said, 'as you do KP.'
'What's the matter, Peggy?' Michael asked foolishly, because he knew what the matter was.
'It's just that I'm so fond of wars,' said Peggy flatly. 'Crazy about wars.' She laughed. 'It would be awful if people were having a war and someone I knew wasn't being shot in it.'
Michael sighed. He felt weary now, and helpless, but he couldn't help realizing that he wouldn't have liked it if Peggy was one of those patriotic women who jumped happily into the idea of the war, as into the arrangement for a wedding.
'What do you want, Peggy?' he said, thinking of the Army waiting implacably for him at six-thirty the next morning, thinking of the other armies on both sides of the world waiting to kill him. 'What do you want from me?'
'Nothing,' said Peggy. 'You've given me two precious years of your time. What more could a girl want? Now go off and let them blow you up. I'll hang a gold star outside the ladies' room of the Stork Club.'
The waiter was standing over them. 'Anything else?' he asked, smiling with an Italian fondness for prosperous lovers who ate expensive lunches.
'Brandy for me,' said Michael. 'Peggy?'
'Nothing thanks,' Peggy said. 'I'm perfectly happy.'
The waiter backed off. If he hadn't caught the boat at Naples, in 1920, Michael thought, he'd probably be in Libya today, rather than on 56th Street.
'Do you want to know what I want to do this afternoon?' Peggy asked harshly.
'Yes.'
'I want to go some place and get married.' She stared across the small, wine-stained table at him, angry and challenging. The girl at the next table, a full blonde in a red dress, was saying to the beaming white-haired man she was lunching with, 'You must introduce me to your wife some day, Mr Cawpowder. I'm sure she's absolutely charming.'
'Did you hear me?' Peggy demanded.
'I heard you.'
The waiter came over to the table and put the small glass down. 'Only three more bottles left,' he said. 'It is impossible to get any brandy these days.'
Michael glanced up at the waiter. Unreasonably, he disliked the dark, friendly, stupid face. 'I'll bet,' he said,
