I felt as though I’d got into the wrong pew.
The people around me were all right, I guess, but—maybe it was the way they were dressed. Nothing formal at all, but you could tell that when they wanted new clothes, they went out and bought them. They didn’t wait till they needed another suit, either. Money didn’t mean the same thing to them that it did to me. When the man beside me pulled out his wallet, it didn’t bulge, but he knew there was more where that came from, and he dropped a bill on the bar as though it didn’t matter. And it didn’t, to him.
I heard someone come up behind me. I moved my eyes an inch or two. Sherry was standing behind me. We looked at each other in the glass.
Right away it happened again. I knew then that it was always going to happen, just like this, whenever we saw each other. Because, for a while, when we were living together, it was all right; I was standing on something solid then. She could always make me feel bigger than I was, just by letting me look at her. All at once I warmed up. My whole body seemed to come alive. The whisky hadn’t done a thing yet, but now, all of a sudden, it spread out into every part of me and even my skin started to tingle.
It’s funny the way your mind slips its gears sometimes. In a split second I had it all worked out. I had twenty bucks, less the price of the drinks, and there was the Chewy outside with a tank full of gas. We were going to get in and Start driving. The fact that it wasn’t my car and eighteen-fifty was all the dough I had in the world didn’t matter a bit. Things would work out somehow.
It had always been like this; away from Sherry I could sometimes forget about her, but when I looked right at her, there was only one important thing: Sherry, Sherry, Sherry. I wanted to get close to her. I wanted to hold her as close as a man can hold a woman and keep her like that forever and ever. It made everything all right when I could do that. It wasn’t sensible; it wasn’t safe.
But that’s the way it was—the way it always was, since I first met her in San Diego. It never had changed, even after our divorce a year ago.
Chapter 3
…It happened.
I thought: Stop it!
I watched her in the mirror. I couldn’t move. I was busy. I was fighting, and I suppose I was praying. They were the same thing whenever—this—happened. Inside my chest, something had broken that was full of hot lava, and the boiling hotness was spreading out all through me, so fast that I felt I couldn’t stop it at all.
If only Sherry hadn’t looked at me the way she had—one flash of surprise and recognition, and then, so fast I couldn’t even brace myself, her face got that old look I’d tried hard to forget, white, pinched, caught.
Fear.
The instant I saw that, the hot feeling had spurted out in my chest and started to spread through me. I knew what was going to happen, but this time I knew that I wasn’t going to let it happen. Because I could stop it. I had to. I had to stop it, before the pressure reached the red line and blew. Whenever that happened, I wasn’t Nick Banning any more. I was somebody bigger and better. Not quite God Almighty. But…somebody who hit back.
I didn’t move an inch. I sat there fighting with myself. I told myself that I’d been wrong about the look on Sherry’s face. But the mirror was a blur. The lava kept on spreading inside me. I tried to stop it. I tried. I could just see my hand in front of me, flat on the bar. It hadn’t moved yet. It hadn’t curled up into a fist.
“Nick?” Sherry said, behind me. And then, “Nick!”
That saved me.
I felt the pressure start draining away.
After a while, perhaps quite a long while, I felt safe again. Actually, I knew the whole thing hadn’t taken long—not even long enough for Sherry to have noticed. It was all over, and maybe it would never happen again, now—if things worked out the way I wanted. Sherry was the one who could help me.
I was ready.
“Hello,” I said.
But she couldn’t seem to believe it. All she could say was “Nick?” again. Her voice was still soft. It was breathless, too, because she was excited, so she sounded as though she had to get the words out in a hurry.
I remembered just the way it would feel if I pulled her against me and held her hard. I wanted to. But I didn’t move. I don’t know why; maybe it was the way she was looking. It made me think that if I moved to touch her, she’d step back into nowhere. We kept staring at each other in the mirror, and presently I decided that she hadn’t noticed my—near miss.
“Where’ll we go, Sherry?” I asked, not even turning, but keeping her eyes fixed on mine. I couldn’t help thinking that if I broke the look she wouldn’t be there in the next second. I hadn’t expected to feel this unsure, this excited. I was afraid of saying the wrong thing. Because, for both of us, a lot depended on this meeting. It had to go the right way, my way. I had to be careful.
Sherry just stood there waiting. I couldn’t guess what she was thinking. I had to speak again before she said anything.
“Well? Where’ll we go?”
She came to life with a little shake of her head.
“I can’t believe it,” she said.
“Why not? I haven’t been off the earth. We were bound to run into each other sometime. Glad to see me?” I was sorry the minute I’d said that. I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear the answer. The look on her face made me wonder. My throat got a little tight, so my next words came out in a new voice.
“Aren’t you glad to see me?” I asked.
She took a quick look along the bar. An expression came into her eyes that I remembered from away back, from the times after things started to go wrong between us. I said to myself, Easy. Take it easy. I swallowed, made the muscles in my throat loosen, and told myself that I wasn’t going to get mad. Not any more. Not around Sherry. I thought, When she starts talking again, I’ll turn around. When she’s in the middle of saying something, so she won’t run away. I watched her lips. They started to move.
“How long—”
I braced my elbow on the bar and swung the stool around toward her. I heard her voice waver just a bit when I moved. Then I was facing her. She did step back, but the tremor stopped and she kept on talking.
“How long will you be in town, Nick?”
Then I knew what the matter was. And it wasn’t too bad really, nothing I couldn’t talk her out of. She was worried about her job here, that was all. Once, back in San Diego, she’d got fired when I had a fight with her boss. But everything had been tough then, I’d been drinking too much, and one thing had piled up on top of another until…well, I wanted to forget about that. I wanted Sherry to forget about it. It was all over now.
“I’m just driving through,” I said, sliding off the stool and taking my drink along. “Let’s grab a booth, Sherry. I can’t stay long, but I thought it would be nice if we could have a drink together.”
I noticed the way she relaxed. Every line of her eased up a little.
“Oh,” she said. She glanced toward the barkeep. I don’t think she knew what she wanted to do, but I didn’t give her time to think about it. I started toward the back, carrying my glass, and that did it; she came along.
There was one empty booth at the back of the room. It was close to the juke-box, but soft Spanish music was coming out of it, and we’d be able to hear each other. We sat down, she on one side, I on the other. Sherry folded her arms on the table and gave me a long, uncertain, worried look. It still had a touch of fear in it.
I felt relaxed and good now, just being with her, just looking at her. She hadn’t changed much. The tawny, sand-colored hair was the same, loose and curly. I remembered how she used to do it up at night with pins. Not often. About twice a week she had to, to keep it curly.
Her eyes were nice. Wary, but nice. Gray or green or powder blue, depending on the lighting. And her eyebrows weren’t plucked or arched; curved some, but not much. And they were darker than her tawny hair. She penciled them a little, to make them darker. Her lipstick
was fairly light, and she never smeared her lips all over her face the way some women do.
She had on one of those full, flowery skirts and a white lacy blouse with a ruffle across the top, the sort of thing all the girls were wearing that year in the hot weather. She was tanned a little, she looked wonderful.
“You look…fine, Sherry,” I said.
She tightened her lips and bent her head down. I could see her face mirrored in the shiny black surface of the table.
“What do you want, Nick?” she asked. She had a singer’s voice, just touched with breathlessness at the end of her sentences, and she’d studied tone and pitch enough so she couldn’t help using them when she talked. When you use your voice as an instrument, it gets to be automatic—I mean she wasn’t trying consciously to do it. Listening to her voice, I knew that it was one of the big reasons why I was in Phoenix right now. It wasn’t a concert voice any more than “Barbara Allen” is “Ave Maria,” but it was a voice that stroked the back of my neck and always had.
I never pretended there was anything wonderful about Sherry, except for me. Plenty of girls are pretty enough and have good voices and nice eyes and are comfortable to be around. Only, with Sherry, the mixture happened to be made up just right, exactly right. That was the way I felt about her. I wanted to say so, but I didn’t; it was too soon.
Instead, I said carefully, “I want to buy you a drink. That’s all I want. Is it too much?”
She didn’t answer directly. She still watched the table top.
“You’re just driving through Phoenix?”
“That’s what I said.”
Then she looked up at me.
“I don’t want any more trouble, Nick,” she said.
It was hard for a second. But I waited till my throat loosened up. I laughed.
“You haven’t seen me for a year,” I said. “A lot’s happened. I’m a Boy Scout now. As good-natured as…well, maybe not a dove. But look.” I laid both hands, palms down, on the table. “See? No scars.”
My sleeve had pulled up a little, and I saw she was looking at the old, healed, white scar above my wrist. I flattened that hand down hard to keep it from shaking. I’d made a mistake. I’d reminded her.
She reached out and ran her finger along that scar. It was hard to keep from moving when she touched me.
She didn’t say a thing. She drew her hand back and looked at me, questioningly, I thought.
I felt a warning tightness and warmth inside my chest. But this time I was ready. I turned it off again. Because it was Sherry I was talking to. Just the same, a dim worry floated across my mind. I wasn’t taking things as easy as I’d thought I would. If somebody else—not Sherry—were sitting across from me this way, perhaps…no, forget it.
“Are you always going to hold that against me?” I asked. “Everything was fouled up then, and you know it. I had to—to do something. Well. I put my fist through that window. But I didn’t hurt you, did I?”
Only I could see that now she was remembering the other times, the times when I had hit somebody—not Sherry, never Sherry, but some bastard or other who stepped on my toes when the pressure had been boiling up inside of me for too long. I couldn’t feel that it had ever been my fault. A man can stand being pushed around just so long, and then something’s got to blow. But I couldn’t say that to Sherry. That wasn’t the line to take with her.
“It doesn’t matter any more now, though, does it?” I asked her. “We’re divorced. It’s over.”
She said quickly, “That’s right, Nick. It’s over. You’re—you’re not staying over in Phoenix tonight, are you?”
I was glad to get out of that one. A hand came across the table and set a tall glass down in front of Sherry. I looked up. It was the bartender. He pointed at my glass, which was still half full.
“Not yet,” I said, reaching in my pocket. I touched the car key and some small change, but no wad of bills. I stopped moving for a second. Then I dug deeper. God damn it, was everything going to start going wrong again?
Sherry said, “Nick isn’t—” then she paused and finished up in the familiar breathless rush, “isn’t a customer, Ed. He’s an old friend. Don’t take his money, not even for real drinks.”
A good and wonderful feeling rushed through me as hot and strong as if a shot of whisky had just hit my stomach. Better. Stronger. Because I’d won. She was going to give in. At least, I’d won this first round. She wasn’t going to get up and leave, and she wasn’t going to throw me out. I was an old friend. Not an ex-husband. But still, an old friend.
The bartender was saying something.
“I don’t have to take his money. He left me plenty. Look what was on the bar when he walked off.” He opened his hand and spilled the bills and silver on the table.
“Thanks,” I said. “I guess I wasn’t noticing.”
“Behind the bar it’s different,” he told me. “You notice a lot of things.”
Sherry spoke, rather fast.
“Ed, I want you to meet Nick Banning. Nick, this is Ed Gavotte.”
“Glad to know you,” I said, getting up as much as I could and shaking hands. He had a big, pulpy grip that fitted his face—heavy and puffy, with that buttery look heavy-set blonds get. His mouth was a little loose and his blue eyes showed the whites in the wrong places, but his breath explained that without any guesswork.
“It’s a pleasure, Nick,” Gavotte said. He had a smooth, high-pitched voice. “Going to be around long?”
“Not long. I’m on my way east.”
“Stick around for a while,” he suggested. “For a friend of Sherry, the drinks are on the house, any time. Here.” He picked up my glass. “Don’t drink that crap. I’ll bring you something from under the counter.”
“Good boy,” Sherry said, and Gavotte grinned at her loosely.
“You bet I am,” he said. “So’s Nick here. I can tell. Some boys aren’t good. I can tell that, too. Like I say, when a fella tends bar for years he gets so he can spot people right off. Even if he didn’t hear things. Some people aren’t welcome in my place. But Nick’s a good boy, and I’m going to get him a good drink.”
He waited a second, watching Sherry, and suddenly looked puzzled. Then he moved away. Sherry watched him go.
“Cigarette?” I said. “Thanks, Nick.”
We lit up and I moved the ash tray to the center of the table. We waited till a kid in a flowered shirt had pushed some buttons in the juke-box and gone back to the bar. Meantime we pretended not to be watching each other.
“Who’s he?” I asked.
“Ed?”
I waited.
“He owns the place.”
“What’s he doing behind the bar, then?”
“Trying to get rich. A tavern like this isn’t any gold mine, when you know the setup. I ought to know; I’ve worked in enough of them.” She tapped her cigarette on the tray. “Nick, nobody here knows I’ve been married.”
“I won’t say anything.”
“Thanks.” It wasn’t the word; it was the way she said it, in that soft, breathless way of hers. I looked at her left hand. She wasn’t wearing any rings.
“No,” she said. “Next time I’ll…”
“Be more careful?”
“That’s right. I’ll be a lot more careful. I don’t take chances any more.”
“Nobody wants to take chances,” I said. “Things just work out that way, sometimes.”
Gavotte came back and put a highball in front of me. He took a small florist’s box from under his arm and laid it before Sherry. She glanced up at him quickly, and it seemed to me that some kind of signal passed between them. Gavotte was leaning forward, his loose mouth drawn up and pursed, and his eyebrows drawn together so that his puffy face was oddly distressed. He didn’t say anything and neither did Sherry; they just looked at each other and kept on looking.
To break it up, I rattled the change on the table before I took a bill and he
ld it toward Gavotte.
He said quickly, “This just came, Sherry,” and turned to me. The eyebrows stayed unhappy, but the mouth loosened up and grinned. “What’s that for?” he asked, pushing my hand back. “We give ’em away in Phoenix.”
“Thanks,” I said, but he was gone. When I looked at Sherry again, the florist’s box had disappeared.
She lifted her glass toward me, and I picked up mine.
“What should it be, Nick? Luck?”
“I’ve had luck,” I said. “Both kinds.”
“Well…”
I looked at her across the top of the glass, lifted it a little, and moved it to my lips, watching her. She set her drink down suddenly, with a small, sharp crack. The juke-box changed a record and began to play “La Cumparsita.”
She opened her mouth, but before she could speak, I said. “Doing any singing now, Sherry?”
“Not much. I told you I was being sensible now, didn’t I? Not taking chances? I’ve found out one thing—how to take it easy. I don’t swim without water wings any more.”
“Got any?”
“I’m working on a pair,” she said. “I’m taking singing lessons again. That’s part of it.”
“I thought you’d been through all that.”
“This is special stuff. Not just singing. I’m learning how to sell my voice too. I’ve got to be able to do that. I’m not Lily Pons. All I’ve got is a fair voice, but”—she nodded in a confident, pleased way—“I’ve got it all figured out, Nick. This time I’ve got a pretty good chance.”
I looked around the tavern and back at her. She shook her head quickly.
“Oh, you don’t have to be good to sing in a place like this,” she said. “I’m doing this to earn money for the lessons I need—and to eat. But there’s a Chicago agent who’ll handle me.”
“What kind of agent? I mean, aren’t there a lot of phonies—”
“He isn’t,” Sherry said. “I made sure of that first thing. I checked up. He handles nothing but top acts. He won’t touch an unknown, except once in a while, when he thinks there’s really a chance. Well, he thinks I’ve got a chance, Nick.”
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