“That I shouldn’t damn you as much as I do.”
I said, “I suppose I am as responsible for the sort of person you are,
nowadays, as you are responsible for the sort I am. I never thought of
that before. There just are no villains in the piece.”
“Patty growing philosophical. Don’t. I’d rather you kissed me than
talked.”
“As you wish.” He was right. It was better to kiss him than to try to
talk to him. It might mean something to kiss him. How could I tell?
It was pleasant, too, to go to sleep with my arm slipped through his
arm. It meant as much as anything else did, certainly.
His voice waked me. “Pat, do you plan to stay all night? It really isn’t
very comfortable, for two.”
I wished that I had never married him, never kissed him, never met him,
never heard of him. Also, that I had a revolver and could shoot him.
He said, “If you like, I’ll dress and take you home.”
I said, “Thank you, I should hate to put you to such great
inconvenience.” I took my clothes, and went into his bath to dress, and
stopped to take a shower.
Standing under it, it occurred to me that I should write ads for
plumbers, because I seemed to take a shower at every crisis of my life.
Or a bath.
Dressed, I went back to get my coat. He was sitting up in bed, smoking.
“Peter, tell me, just to placate my curiosity, why do you do things like
this to me? I don’t believe you handle your other women by the same
system . . . I hear too often that you are successful.”
“Oh hell, must we go into that, Pat?”
“I’ll simplify the question. Do you love me, or do you hate me?”
“That’s no simplification, and you know it.”
Both our voices were indifferent.
“Well, Patricia, if it will do you any good to know—before I kiss you I
think of you as you used to be, and after I’ve kissed you I wonder how
many men you’ve slept with by now.”
“The other women you know aren’t exactly without pasts.”
“It doesn’t matter about them. You are handicapped by dating back to the
time when I was so full of ideals about the faith and constancy of women
that I had no room for any sense about them.
“Yet, still, Patricia, you remain . . . a little different from the
others. . . . You’d better get out. I must be tight, still, or I
wouldn’t talk so much.”
I put on my coat and picked up my gloves. I felt that this really was
the end for Peter and me. Yet I knew that I had felt that before, and it
had not been so. I put on lipstick, carefully.
“Peter, will you kiss me ‘good-bye,’ as if it were the year 1922?” (Damn
it, why did I ask that? He’ll present me a cheque for it as ghastly
sentimentality. It was . . . but I am pretty sure that this _is_ all,
for me and Peter, and I wanted to end with a friendly gesture.)
He put out his cigarette, and lighted another. “You are a young woman
whom it’s not easy to satisfy, Patricia.”
I detested him. Well, I could make him wince, too. “Why, Peter, my
lovers are always complaining that I am frigid.”
“Get to hell out of here, will you,” he said.
I went out, without turning at the door to look at him. It was snowing
hard. I said to myself, “Here am I flung out into the traditional
snowstorm, isn’t that ridiculous?” And began to laugh. I came to Sixth
Avenue, and must have turned south, instead of north, because I came to
the door of “Dave’s Blue Room” which was a large all-night restaurant. I
had been there often for sandwiches, and I knew that it was further
south than the street where Peter lived. When I got to the door, I felt
that I could not walk any farther. I thought some black coffee might be
good for me. So I went in.
Bill was sitting with three other men of his own age, eating scrambled
eggs and bacon. I supposed that they had been playing bridge somewhere.
He got up when I came in. “Come here and sit down, Patricia. What _are_
you doing wandering about alone at three o’clock?”
He introduced the three men. They regarded me a little strangely, and I
knew that I probably looked awful. I had not noticed, in Pete’s mirror.
Better make some explanation. In a minute, when I could manage my voice.
“I am _so_ glad that you happened to be here, Bill. I felt unpleasantly
conspicuous, coming in alone, but I _did_ want some coffee. I’ve been
having a rather distressing evening, as it happens.”
Bill ordered coffee, and recommended the scrambled eggs. I let him order
them, too.
“You see, I’ve been arranging with my husband, the details of our
divorce, and that sort of thing is always trying, I suppose.”
The four old men were immediately sympathetic, sufficiently so to change
the subject. They said kind jovial things to the effect that it was
delightful to have a young and pretty woman walk in upon their boredom.
I knew after a minute, and a sip of coffee, that I was not going to
faint. But I could not do anything about the scrambled eggs. Bill took
my hand, and held it hard, under the tablecloth. Well, he had known a
great deal concerning women in his time.
Bill took me home, and left me at the door, after suggesting that we see
three musical shows the next week.