Manhattan Love Song Page 9

  “It can,” I said, “I tell you it can! Other people have made their lives to be what they want them to be. Why can’t we? We’re as good as any one else, and maybe a whole lot better; we’ve got that much coming to us at least! Ah, darling, don’t back out; ah, honey, say it can be done.”

  She turned and flung her arms around me, and hid her face upon my shoulder. “It can’t be done, Wade, can’t be done!”

  “Only because you don’t want to; only because you don’t think so!”

  “It’s not for me,” she said. “Funny how you can go ahead as far as you like, but you can’t take a step backward — ever."

  “Only because you don’t trust me; only because you’re afraid—”

  She stroked my face. “Wouldn’t you be too — just a little — if you were in my place?”

  “But Bernice,” I protested, “what are you driving at all the time? What makes you always talk like this? What’ve you done? Is it the police you’re afraid’ll come after you—”

  “The police?” she said with exquisite cynicism. “You mean those men in blue who stand in the middle of the street directing traffic all day long? Oh, yes, there are police — I’d forgotten about them for a minute or two.”

  “I can’t make it out at all,” I said dejectedly. “You talk in riddles.”

  “I can’t say any more than I’ve said already,” she protested. “I’ve tried to explain just where I stand! I’ve done more talking already than I have any business to be doing, for my own good.”

  “Yes, you always lead up to a certain point,” I cried helplessly, “and then you stop dead and put me off with ‘I can’t say any more than that, don’t ask me to explain.’ It’s happened over and over now. I’ve noticed it again and again. Why can’t you come right out with it? What’s always holding you back? I’m not just anybody at all to you any more, am I? It’s all settled that we love each other, isn’t it? Well then, why can’t you give me the lowdown, the absolute goods, on what it is you’re afraid of, on what you’d have to worry about if you left this place and came away with me? Who is it? What is it? Maybe I can help you. Don’t you trust me? Are you afraid of me, too? Why won’t you tell me?”

  “All right, I’ll let you have it, then!” she said. “Yes, I love you — and if you can’t see that by now without my telling you, then maybe I’ve made a mistake in you altogether. But trust you?” She stopped and narrowed her eyes at me. “I don’t trust anybody. I met you on the street; how do I know who sent you my way?”

  “That’s a swell thing to say to me,” I said bitterly. “That’s the swellest yet of all the swell things you’ve said to me since I’ve known you! Mud in my eye, all right! Every time I get through putting you all together, you fall apart again at my feet. Oh! what’s going to become of us? Why, even everyday friends trust each other before love’s even thought of. And you — and I—”

  “I know the game from A to Z,” she said meditatively, “and I know all the rules of it, too. And the one that should never be broken is — ‘Don’t talk!’ Love. Why, love is no guarantee! I’ve known people to have loved as much as we have, and known each other a darn sight longer, too — and before they’re through, one has unintentionally done the other dirt — because they talked too much. And you — why. Wade, you almost love me too much for me to trust you; love and brains don’t mix.

  “All right,” I said wearily, passing my hand at her, “that’s forgiven, too, like all the rest. Have your own way; keep it to yourself. Maybe you’re right not to tell me, and then again, maybe you’ll find out some day it would have been a lot better if you had. But one thing’s clearer than ever to my mind: you’ll never be exactly as I’d like you to be until I can get you all to myself, away from whatever it is that’s going on behind the scenes around here. Oh, won’t you do it, Bernice? It felt as though we were so close to it a little while ago, and now we seem to have drifted away from it again, back where we always were.”

  “I want to more than you know,” she said dreamily. “Let’s do this: let’s be happy with what we have, for a little while yet. Let’s talk it over, and over, and over, whenever we’re together and there’s no one to hear us.”

  “But just talking about it won’t get us anywhere,” I whined.

  “But just talking about it — that’ll be something in itself. It’ll be like selling the idea to ourselves, don’t you see?” She glanced over at the clock, lit a cigarette, and called Tenacity into the room. “See if they left anything to eat in the Fridge, and bring us in a couple of little glasses of that Malaga, yes?” and turning to me when the other had left us alone again, whispered, “Don’t say anything to me in front of her — ever, do you hear? She may be all right about little things, like sneaking off to a party, but beyond that — you never can tell.”

  I couldn’t help wondering for a moment if she didn’t have just a slight touch of the persecution complex, mistrusting everyone and anyone the way she seemed to. But kept it, of course, to myself.

  “The first thing we’d have to think of,” she said, “would be where we’d strike out for if we left New York together—” And then broke in upon the remark herself with the rueful observation: “But you see, I’m afraid we couldn’t get enough together to take us very far.”

  “Well, how far would you suggest?” I asked with ill-concealed eagerness. “Buffalo? How does that strike you?”

  “That wouldn’t be a bit of good,” she said instantly. “Not any large city in the east, nor any middle-sized one. That would be almost as bad as staying right on here in New York. No, it’s got to be somewhere unexploited, like the Coast or New Orleans—”

  “Unexploited?” I said blankly.

  “Well, I mean—” she said, and didn’t say what she meant.

  “All right,” I said happily, “then it’s either the Coast or New Orleans.”

  “When the time comes,” she reminded me quietly.

  “Fair enough,” I agreed. “When the time comes.”

  She said with elaborate dissimulation, as Tenacity came in carrying a tray. “What do you think they call gloves in German? Hand-shoes! Isn’t that an uproar?”

  “Where’d you dig that up?” I said, laughing at her rather than with her.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she admitted. “It just came to me this minute.”

  Tenacity was having a belly laugh over it; she left us hitting herself repeatedly in that region and bending low, cackling, “Han’ shoes! Oh, shut me up! Han’ shoes!” I expected momentarily to see her fall on her face,

  “That’ll be all over Harlem tonight,” Bernice giggled. She turned to me and resumed: “Another thing: it mightn’t be a bad idea if I started buying clothes now while the buying is still good, and get sort of a layout together. Even if nothing ever turns up, I’m that much ahead.”

  “What about the place here?” I asked. “I suppose there’s a lease on it or something, isn’t there?”

  “I have nothing to do with that,” she said, “I don’t even know what I’m paying here. No, I’d leave everything just the way it stands, simply walk out the door as though I were going to the corner. That’d be the only way I could get away with it. I wouldn’t even risk trying to get my trunks out; you see, they’d have to be expressed, and it’d be too easy to trace us through the labels. No, the day I do go, I’ll just take a pair of good hefty valises right along with me in the cab to the station.”

  “Here’s to that day,” I said devoutly. “It can’t come too soon!” And we clicked our glasses together.

  “What you could do in the meantime,” she suggested, “is scout around from this end and see if you can’t get a line on some job or other out that way, so that when the day comes—”

  “Han’ shoes!” accompanied by a sputtering sound, was borne to us faintly from the bowels of the apartment.

  “I’ll stop in at the station when I leave here and find out what the tickets cost,” I said, “so I can have that much laid aside ahead of time—�
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  “And what I want to do the first chance I get,” she said, “is go down to that safe-deposit box and get cash for what I’ve got in there. I could go into some out-of-the-way jewelry shop with it, and if any one I know sees me, pretend I’m just looking at cheap necklaces or something.”

  “Han’ shoes and feet shoes!”

  “Oh, shut up,” she remarked under her breath. “Maybe it’d be better if I passed it on to you and let you sell it for me,” she added.

  “I thought you said you didn’t trust me,” I said, trying to look injured.

  “Oh, Wade, darling, I didn’t mean in that way!” she cried remorsefully. “What I meant a little while ago was that there were some things I couldn’t tell anybody, not even you, just as a matter of self-preservation.” She got up and shoved the door closed with the tip of her shoe, just in time to silence another spasm of “Han’ shoes!”

  When I left, she came not only to the door, but crossed the corridor to the elevator door with me, and only the arrival of the car put a stop to our kisses. “Don’t give our little scheme away to any one,” she murmured low as the white signal light over us went out. “Gee, darling, didn’t we have a happy afternoon!”

  We flew back into one another’s arms like two birds attacking each other in midair, and couldn’t let go.

  “When we’re together we won’t ever have to part.”

  “Gee, just think — ’Frisco or Los Angeles, to call our lives our own!”

  “I could be waiting for you like this and say, ‘Come on in, Wade, the supper’s waiting.’ ”

  “You’re the swellest thing ever happened in this world since Adam and Eve first found out what to do with their spare time.”

  “I only hope we’re not two suckers,” she said, “kidding ourselves along.”

  Tenacity stuck her head out and whispered, “They’re asking for you on the wire—”

  “Wake me up, I’ve been dreaming,” Bernice smiled at me sadly as she went in and closed the door. I went down in the elevator.

  Home like a bullet, and the wheels as they ground around under me did nothing but sing, “Some day soon now, some day soon.” I almost missed my station, listening to that encouraging song, but a last-minute bolt from the strap I had been standing under got me out of the car just as the doors were closing. When I came up on the street again, the light had changed color, as though the sun had put a lot of rouge on before going down for the evening. Shadows were mauve on the sidewalk, and the world had a carnival air.

  I opened our door, and Maxine came to meet me from a chair she had placed to one side of the window, which had enabled her to look down without being seen from below. “What was she doing that for?” I wondered vaguely.

  She seemed to have one of her quiet moods on. “What was doing?” she asked me, without kissing me.

  “What do you mean, what was doing?”

  “I mean, how are things getting on?” she said.

  “Oh, no different from any other time,” I said offhandedly.

  “Did you see Stewart today?” she asked then.

  “He’s there all the time,” I replied, opening The Sun.

  “I didn’t ask you that, Wade,” she insisted. “I asked you if you saw him today, if you spoke to him.”

  “What’s this all about, anyway!” I shouted suddenly. “I’m trying to read something in here — and you—”

  She sat down opposite me and folded her hands in her lap, the very picture of docility. “I knew you’d lie to me,” she murmured.

  So I let the paper toboggan to my feet and gave her my undivided attention, at last. “Come again?” I said politely.

  “I’m the one would like to know what this is all about,” she told me dejectedly, “not you. I don’t want to row with you; you know I don’t. But why do you pretend to me you were at the office today, when you know you weren’t? You don’t think that makes it any easier for me, do you?”

  “Makes what any easier for you?” I said embarrassedly.

  “They called up today and wanted to know why you weren’t there. I suppose now you’ll blame me for it. If you’d’ve told me ahead of time, I would’ve gladly fibbed for you and told them you were sick or something. But I was so taken back myself, I didn’t know what to answer. They said you weren’t there all day yesterday, and the day before you only came in for a minute and went right out again without saying anything—” She stopped for breath. I needed some too, although I hadn’t been saying a blessed word. “And they said for the past few weeks now this has been going on steadily, you’ve stayed away without any explanation at all, at the rate of once every two or three days. They said they’re not going to stand for it any more.” She turned her eyes away from me at this point, as though she was the one to be ashamed, not I. “Wade, you’ve lost your job.”

  I gave a convulsive little start. “Did they say that too?”

  “Imagine how I felt,” she went on, “hearing a thing like that over the phone, from some one I’d never seen before in my life! I said, ‘I’m sure he can explain; haven’t you spoken to him about it?’ They told me they were sure you could explain too, but that they weren’t really interested any more in hearing what you had to say; and would I please tell you when you came in that your check was being mailed to you at the close of business today, and you’d get it by the first mail in the morning. And then whoever it was had the cheek to say to me, ‘He does come home sometimes, doesn’t he, ma’am?’ and I heard him snicker to himself. I’ve been crying all afternoon,” she concluded in a barely audible voice.

  “Their bark is worse than their bite,” I remarked after a proper interval of meditation. “I’ll stop in tomorrow morning and talk to Stewart, hear what he says about it. And if not, there are plenty of other jobs. Don’t let it break your heart.” And thought to myself, “What’s the difference if I’m canned now? I would have chucked it over myself anyway in a month or two more — whenever she’s ready. It’s all to the good — and I can make up the difference in money in one way or another between now and then.” What I really was pondering in those few minutes was what to tell Maxine I had been doing with my time when I wasn’t at the office.

  “It’s too bad it had to happen,” she mused. “You’ve been staying out on me at nights often enough lately, but I never thought you’d go this far and let your work go hang.”

  “It is too bad,” I agreed sociably, “but it’s done now, so what’s the good of talking about it.”

  “Of course, as a mere wife,” she said, “I don’t suppose I have any right to ask what you were doing with yourself when you weren’t at the office. Any more,” she added ironically, “than I had any right to ask what you were doing with yourself the several nights that you didn’t sleep at home lately. We’ll let that go; sufficient unto the day is the evil therefore.”

  “Thereof,” I corrected learnedly.

  “Well, this isn’t a schoolroom.”

  “Oh, no? Well, that’s what it’s felt like to me for the past half-hour.”

  “Too bad,” she commented. “Poor abused man!”

  “For God’s sake,” I said, “stop fidgeting with the bottom of your skirt, will you! Can’t you keep your hands quiet? I’m so nervous I could jump through the ceiling!”

  “Wade,” she said, “have you been seeing some one? Who is it you’ve been seeing? ’Cause I know you haven’t got many men friends, they wouldn’t take up so much of your time—”

  I thought of the previous Saturday, and answered, “I know I haven’t; I found that out too.”

  “You don’t want to answer,” she said to herself, and had a gust of crying and sobbing.

  I waited until she was good and through, then I said: “Are you all through now? Good! Well, since your heart’s so set on checking-up on me, I’ll tell you exactly how I spent yesterday and the day before—”

  She turned and gave me a look as though she was afraid of what I was going to say next, almost would rather not hear it. But
I noticed that she didn’t stop me from going ahead, just the same.

  So then I gave her an elaborate, ironically elaborate résumé covering the eight working hours of those two days, sixteen hours in all. Not a detail was overlooked; I took her with me step by step on those long, aimless, tortured walks I had taken, back and forth across the town, that resembled so closely a distracted man pacing to and fro in a room. And when I interrupted myself to recall that I had had an orange juice at Fifty-Fourth Street and Broadway, or that I had bought The Sun at the downstairs stand in the Pennsylvania subway station, she didn’t dare resent the irony implied in my giving her such details. The account was exhaustive; exhaustive and exhausting. I almost mentioned each time I had sought a washroom. Three incidents, and only three, were not exposed to her: my one interrogation of Bernice’s doorman on Monday and my two repetitions of it on Tuesday.

  But, womanlike, she still seemed dissatisfied when I was through, seemed to be looking for a motive in all this. As though I had overreached myself in giving her more details than were necessary and yet at the same time withholding the key to the situation. “But why couldn’t you stand the thought of sticking in the office all day? Why were you so distracted? What was the matter with you? You haven’t told me that yet. What was on your mind? What made you chase all over town like a chicken with its head cut off, without knowing where you were going at all?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, “couldn’t tell you if I tried. And that’s that. Take it or leave it. I’m no psychologist.”

  “And was it the same thing with you today?”

  “Identically,” I said shortly.

  Then she began to lean toward credulity. “Wade, maybe you’ve been working too hard. I’m worried about you. Maybe you should see a doctor—”

  “And maybe I should see the Golden Gate with my Bernice,” I thought feelingly.

  “Mrs. Greenbaum told me that after they have the fur sales in August her husband always gets in such a state he has to go to Bear Mountain for a week—”