changed. He was in the next afternoon, after the one I’ve just told about, still grim, but with no repetition of his hysterical outbreak. He ordered, then sat looking straight ahead, saying nothing at all. However, I wasn’t too bashful to speak. “In the first place,” I told him, beginning right in the middle without any small talk at all, “you can get rid of that snoop, that spy.”
“I don’t have any snoop.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. White, you have one.”
“You doubt my word?”
“You want a straight answer to that?”
“I demand a straight answer to it.”
“I not only doubt your word, I call you a goddam liar. You do have a snoop, and if you want to know how I know I go by that look in your eye. So spit it out, Mr. White. You do have a snoop, don’t you?”
“I have a man, O.K. But not to
“A snoop is a snoop is a snoop.”
“This was a man that works for me, a man from down in the office, that I asked to keep an eye on you-not to spy, that’s the truth, simply to see that nothing happened to you after leaving here at night. That was all, I swear it was.”
I let him stew a bit before I relented: “Then O.K. I believe you.”
Because I knew he was telling the truth, or at least thought he was. I went on: “But in return for taking your word, taking your word on him, I must have your word it’s the end, that he won’t stake me out anymore, that you take him off my neck. What do you say to that?”
“… Joan, if you insist, I say O.K., of course. But-”
“I don’t need protection. Thanks to your great generosity, I have my own car now. I don’t ride with Liz anymore, I go straight home, let myself in with my key, and if I need the police can call them. Do I have your word you’re taking that tail off my back?”
“Joan, I’ve already said it.”
“Then O.K., let’s get on to the next matter.”
He looked up in surprise, and I went right on, boring in: “About you and I, getting married. On that, you said you asked nothing better, and would go through with it gladly, except that your doctor forbade it, as a sure sentence of death. O.K., Mr. White, but whose life is it? Your doctor’s?”
“… What do you mean, Joan? That it’s up to me to die to prove how I feel about you?”
“No, Mr. White, it’s not.
“What do you mean, a way out?”
“Way in, perhaps I should say. Mr. White, sex isn’t everything. There’s no reason at all that you couldn’t marry me, stay in your bedroom, and let me stay in mine. That way, you’d have me with you always, if I mean what you say I do to you, and I’d have you with me always, and I do confess that would mean quite a lot. In addition to which, I could quit this job serving drinks, which has been a godsend to me, but which I confess I could do without. And most important of all to me, I could have my son back, and give him the growing up a boy dreams of, in that beautiful house, playing on that beautiful grass, and rolling his tricycle on that beautiful drive. What use is all that house and those grounds with just you living there by yourself? You’ve told me how lonely you are, how much more you like it here where we can talk and be together. For god’s sake, Earl, why should a man like you have to come to a bar for companionship? Or in other words, once again to make plain what I mean: Who’s running your life?”
“I’d love to have you helping me run it.”
“O.K., then. What do you say to what I just now said?”
“I say I’ll think it over.”
“It’s what I want you to do.”
It was two or three weeks after that, I would say in mid-September, so it was coming on for fall, before he came up with his answer-if you could call it that. He came in, ordered, and then, in the most casual way, said: “I think I’m going to say yes-but I must go to New York first.”
“New York? You mean, now?”
“I thought to leave tomorrow.”
“For how long?”
“Oh-better part of a month. Maybe more.”
There was something peculiar about it, and I asked: “What’s in New York? Why must you go up there?”
“Lawyer. He’s spending some time up there, working on a business deal for me, an important one.”
“And what does he have to do with you and me?”
“About such a marriage as ours, such a marriage as ours would be, there are quite a few legal angles. I’m not sure I know what they are, except in a general way. I think I should talk to him. And I need to be there to see to the deal as well.”
“I see. I see.”
“You could talk to a lawyer too.”
“That might be a good idea.”
I left him, did one or two things at the bar, and thought over what he had said. Then I went back and told him: “It’s really the best way, I agree. You go now, have your month in New York, and if you forget me, O.K. I have other chances, don’t worry.”
“…
“I told you go-then we’ll know where we stand.”
15
So he went, and for a time, things were very humdrum, we could even say a bit flat. I missed him coming to the bar each night; at least I missed his nineteen-dollar tips. Things went on I suppose for two or three weeks, into the early fall. It was the tail end of September by then, and I’d switched back from my summer hot pants to the velveteen trunks and pantyhose, which I’d just gotten on one afternoon when the bell rang, and when I opened the door it was Tom. I hadn’t seen him since that night, and no doubt acted cool. “… Oh?” I said. “Tom? What can I do for you?”
“Joan,” he half stammered, “I have to talk to you.”
“What about?”
“I think you know, and I won’t enjoy it, I promise you. Just the same, I won’t talk on your doorstep.”
“Then-come in, please.”
I brought him into the living room, and asked him: “How would I know what you’ve come about?”
“You haven’t seen this?”
I noticed for the first time he had a paper under his arm, which he unrolled and waved around. “I don’t take the afternoon paper,” I told him. “What’s in it to concern me? What is this anyway?”
He handed it over, and on page one, not the main story but big enough to make it onto the front page, was one about Mr. Lacey, the man whose bail bond I’d signed. It said:
LACEY CASE CALLED:
NO LACEY
— or something like that. The story simply said that when the case of James Lacey, indicted municipal engineer, was called for trial that morning, “Mr. Lacey didn’t make the required appearance.” It then went on to say that “Melvin T. Lackman, Mr. Lacey’s attorney, told the court Mr. Lacey hadn’t arrived at his office as scheduled to accompany him to the trial, and that he had no information on where Mr. Lacey was. The court, in the person of Judge T. D. Enos, ordered a bench warrant issued for Mr. Lacey’s arrest.” That was all, except for a picture of Mr. Lacey, looking as I remembered him, only younger and not so fat. My stomach began telling me this was bad news, but I still wasn’t quite caught up. I asked: “Well? Where do I come in?”
“Joan, you signed his bail bond, that’s where.”
“You mean, I lose my house? It gets taken and sold to pay the bond?”
“On that, I don’t know yet-I’m as caught by surprise as you are, and know as little about it. Where I do know
