THE red-headed woman he hadn't kissed four years ago leaned over, smiling, in Michael's last dream and kissed him. He awoke, warmly remembering the dream and the red-headed woman.
The morning sun angled past the sides of the closed Venetian blinds, framing the windows in a golden dust. Michael stretched.
Outside the room he heard the murmur of the seven million people walking through the streets and corridors of the city. Michael got up. He padded over on the carpeted floor to the window and pulled up the blinds.
The sun filled the back gardens with an early summer wealth, soft and buttery on the faded brick of the old buildings, on the dusty ivy, on the bleached, striped awnings of the small terraces filled with rattan furniture and potted plants. A little round woman, in a wide orange hat and old wide slacks that clung cheerfully to her round behind, was standing over a potted geranium on the terrace directly opposite Michael. She reached thoughtfully down and snipped off a blossom. Her hat shook sorrowfully as she looked at the mortal flower in her hand. Then she turned, middle-aged and healthy, in her city garden and walked through curtained french windows into her house, her cheerful behind shaking.
Michael grinned, pleased that it was sunny, and that the redheaded woman had finally kissed him, and that there was a fat little woman with an absurd sweet behind mourning over faded geraniums on the other side of the sunny back gardens.
He washed, dousing himself with cold water, then walked barefoot, in his pyjamas, across the carpeted floor through the living-room, to the front door. He opened it and picked up the Times.
In the polite print of the Times, which always reminded Michael of the speeches of elderly and successful corporation lawyers, the Russians were dying but holding on the front page, there were new fires along the French coast from English bombs, Egypt was reeling, somebody had discovered a new way to make rubber in seven minutes, three ships had sunk quietly into the Atlantic Ocean, the Mayor had come out against meat, married men could be expected to be called up into the Army, the Japanese were in a slight lull.
Michael closed the door. He sank on to the couch and turned away from the blood on the Volga, the drowned men of the Atlantic, the sand-blinded troops of Egypt, from the rumours of rubber and the flames in France and the restrictions on roast beef, to the sporting page. The Dodgers, steadfast – though weary and full of error – had passed through another day of war and thousandedged death, and despite some nervousness down the middle of the diamond and an attack of wildness in the eighth, had won in Pittsburgh.
The phone rang and he went into the bedroom and picked it up.
"There's a glass of orange juice in the icebox." Peggy's voice came over the wire. "I thought you'd like to know."
"Thanks," Michael said. "I noticed some dust on the books on the right-hand shelves, though, Miss Freemantle…"
"Nuts," Peggy said.
"There's a lot in what you say," Michael said, delighted with Peggy's voice, familiar and full of pleasure over the phone.
"Are they working you hard?"
"The flesh off the bones. You were taking it mighty easy when I left. Flat on your back, with all the clothes thrown off. I kissed you goodbye."
"What a nice girl you are. What did I do?"
There was a little pause and then, for a moment, Peggy's voice was sober and a little troubled. "You put your hands over your face and you mumbled, 'I won't, I won't.'…"
The little half-smile that had been playing about Michael's face died. He rubbed his ear thoughtfully. "The sleeping man betrays us unashamed morning after morning."
"You sounded frightened," Peggy said. "It frightened me."
"'I won't, I won't,'" Michael said reflectively. "I don't know what it was I wouldn't… Anyway, I'm not frightened now. The morning's bright, the Dodgers won, my girl prepared orange juice'for me…"
"What're you going to do today?" Peggy asked.
"Nothing much. Wander around. Look at the sky. Look at the girls. Drink a little. Make my will…"
"Oh, shut up!" Peggy's voice was serious.
"Sorry," Michael said.
"Are you glad I called you?" Peggy's voice was consciously a little coquettish now.
"Well, I suppose there was no way of avoiding it," Michael said languidly.
"You know what you can do."
"Peggy!"
She laughed. "Do I get dinner tonight?"
"What do you think?"
"I think I get dinner. Wear your grey suit."
"It's practically worn through at the elbows."
"Wear your grey suit. I like it."
"O.K."
"What'll I wear?" For the first moment in the conversation Peggy's voice became uncertain, little-girlish, worried. Michael laughed softly.
"What're you laughing at?" Peggy asked harshly.
"Say it again. Say 'What'll I wear?' again for me."
"Why?"
"Because it makes me laugh and remember you and makes me sorry and tender for you and all women living to hear you say, 'What'll I wear?'"
"My," said Peggy, very pleased, "you got out of the right side of the bed this morning, didn't you?"
"I certainly did."
"What'll I wear? The blue print or the beige suit with the cream blouse or the…"
"The blue print."
"It's so old."
"The blue print."
"All right. Hair up or down?"
"Down."
"But…"
"Down!"
"God," Peggy said. "I'll look like something you dragged out of the Harlem River. Aren't you afraid some of your friends'll see us?"
"I'll take my chances," Michael said.
"And don't drink too much…"
"Now, Peggy…"
"You'll be going around saying goodbye to all your good friends…"
"Peggy, on my life…"
"They'll pour you into the Army from a bucket. Be careful."
"I'll be careful."
"Glad I called?" Peggy sounded again like a flirtatious girl languishing behind a fan at the high-school prom.
"I'm glad you called," Michael said.
"That's all I wanted to know. Drink your orange juice." And she hung up.
Michael put the receiver down slowly, smiling, remembering Peggy. He sat for a moment, thinking of her.
Then he got up and went out through the living-room to the kitchen. He put some water on to boil and measured out three heaped spoonsful of coffee, his nose grateful for the ever-beautiful smell of the coffee imprisoned in the tin. He drank his orange-juice in long cold gulps, between getting out the bacon and the eggs and cutting the bread for toast. He hummed wordlessly as he prepared his breakfast. He liked getting his own breakfasts, private in his single house, with his pyjamas flapping about him and the floor cool under his bare feet. He put five strips of bacon in a large pan and set a small flame going under it.
The telephone rang in the bedroom.
"Oh, hell," Michael said. He moved the bacon pan off the flame and walked through the living-room, noticing, almost unconsciously, as he did again and again, what a pleasant room it was, with its high ceilings and broad windows facing each other, and the books piled into the bookcases all over the room, with the faded spectrum of the publishers' linen covers making a subtle and lovely pattern, wavering along the walls. Michael picked up the phone and said, "Hello."
"Hollywood, California, calling Mr Whitacre."
"This is Mr Whitacre."
Then Laura's voice, across the continent, still deep and artful.
"Michael? Michael, darling…"
Michael sighed a little. "Hello, Laura."
"It's seven o'clock in the morning in California," Laura said, a little accusingly. "I got up at seven in the morning to speak to you."
"Thanks," Michael said.
"I heard about it," Laura said vehemently. "I think it's awful. Making you a private."
Michael grinned. "It's not so awful. There're a lot of people in the same boat."
"Almost everybody out here," Laura said, "is at least a major."
"I know," Michael said. "Maybe that's a good reason for being a private."
"Stop being so damned special!" Laura snapped. "You'll never be able to make it. I know what your stomach's like."
"My stomach," Michael said gravely, "will just have to join the Army with the rest of me."
"You'll be sorry the day after tomorrow."
"Probably." Michael nodded.
"You'll be in the guardhouse in two days," Laura said loudly.
"A sergeant'll say something you don't like and you'll hit him. I know you."
"Listen," Michael said patiently. "Nobody hits sergeants. Not me or anybody else."
"You haven't taken an order from anybody in your whole life, Michael. I know you. That was one of the reasons it was impossible to live with you. After all, I lived with you for three years and I know you better than any…"
"Yes, Laura, darling," Michael said patiently.
"We may be divorced and all that," Laura went on rapidly, "but there's no one in the whole world I'm fonder of. You know that."
"I know that," Michael said, believing her.
"And I don't want to see you killed." She began to cry.
"I won't be killed," Michael said gently.
"And I hate to think of you being ordered about. It's wrong…"
Michael shook his head, wondering once again at the gap between the real world and a woman's version of the world.
"Don't you worry about me, Laura, darling," he said. "And it was very sweet of you to call me."
"I've decided something," Laura said firmly. "I'm not going to take any more of your money."
Michael sighed. "Have you got a job?"
"No. But I'm seeing MacDonald at MGM this afternoon, and…"
"O.K. When you work, you don't take any money. That's fine." Michael rushed past the point, not letting Laura speak. "I read in the paper you're going to get married. That true?"
"No. Maybe after the war. He's going into the Navy. He's going to work in Washington."
"Good luck," Michael murmured.
"There was an assistant director from Republic they took right into the Air Corps. First Lieutenant. He won't leave Santa Anita for the duration. Public relations. And you're going to be a private…"
"Please, Laura darling," Michael said. "This call will cost you five hundred dollars."
"You're a queer, stupid man and you always were."
"Yes, darling."
"Will you write me where they station you?"
"Yes."
"I'll come and visit you."
"That will be wonderful." Michael had a vision of his beautiful ex-wife in her mink coat and her almost famous face and figure, waiting outside Fort Sill, Oklahoma, with the soldiers whistling at her as they went past.
"I feel all mixed up about you." Laura was crying softly and honestly. "I always did and I always will."
"I know what you mean." Michael remembered the way Laura looked fixing her hair in front of a mirror and how she looked when dancing and during the holidays they'd had. For a moment he was moved by the distant tears, and regretted the lost years behind him, the years without war, the years without separations…
"What the hell," he said softly. "They'll probably put me in an office somewhere."
"You won't let them," she sobbed. "I know you. You won't let them."
"You don't let the Army do anything. It does what it wants and you do what it wants. The Army isn't Warner Brothers, darling."
"Promise me… promise me…" The voice rose and fell and then there was a click and the connection was cut off. Michael looked at the phone and put it down.
Finally he got up and went into the kitchen and finished cooking his breakfast. He carried the bacon and eggs and toast and coffee, black and thick, into the living-room and put it down on the wide table set in front of the great sunny window.
He turned the radio on. Brahms was being played, a piano concerto. The music poured out of the machine, round, disputatious and melancholy. He ate slowly, smearing marmalade thickly on the toast, enjoying the buttery taste of the eggs and the strong taste of the coffee, proud of his cooking, listening with pleasure to the mournful, sweet thunder of the radio.
He opened the Times at the theatrical page. It was full of rumours of endless plays and endless actors. Each morning he read the theatrical page of the Times with growing depression. Each morning the recital of baffled hope and money lost and sorrowful critical reproach of his profession made him feel a little silly and restless.
He pushed the paper aside and lit the day's first cigarette and took the last sip of coffee. He turned the radio off. It was playing Respighi by now, anyway, and Respighi left the morning air with a dying fall and left the sunlit house in fragrant silence as Michael sat at the breakfast table, smoking, staring dreamily out at the gardens and the diagonal glimpse of street and working people below. After a while, he got up and shaved and bathed.
Then he put on a pair of old flannel trousers and a soft old blue shirt, gently and beautifully faded from many launderings. Most of his clothes were already packed away, but there were still two jackets hanging in the closet. He stood there thoughtfully, trying to make up his mind for a moment, then picked the grey jacket, and put it on. It was a worn old jacket, soft and light on his shoulders.
Downstairs his car was waiting at the kerb, its paint and chromium glistening from the garage's industry. He started the motor and pushed the button for the top. The top came down slowly and majestically. Michael felt the usual touch of amusement at the grave collapsing movement.
He drove up Fifth Avenue slowly. Every time he rode up through the city on a working day, he felt once again some of the same slightly malicious pleasure he had experienced the first day he had driven in his first, brand-new car, top down, up the Avenue, at midday, looking at the working men and women thronging to their lunches, and feeling wealthy and noble and free.
Michael drove up the broad street, between the rich windows, frivolous and wealthy and elegantly suggestive in the sun.
Michael left his car at the door of Cahoon's apartment house, giving the keys to the doorman. Cahoon was going to use the car and take care of it until Michael returned. It would have been more sensible to sell the car, but Michael had a superstitious feeling that the bright little machine was a token of his gayest civilian days, long rides in the country in the springtime and careless holidays, and that he must somehow preserve it as a charm against his return.
On foot, feeling a little bereft, he walked slowly across town. The day stretched ahead of him with sudden emptiness. He went into a drug-store and called Peggy.
"After all," he said, when he heard her voice, "there's no law that says I can't see you twice in the same day."
Peggy chuckled. "I get hungry about one o'clock," she said.
"I'll buy you lunch, if that's what you want"
"That's what I want." Then, more slowly, "I'm glad you called. I have something very serious to say to you."
"All right," Michael said. "I feel pretty serious today. One o'clock."
He hung up, smiling. He walked out into the sunlight and headed downtown, towards his lawyer's office, thinking about Peggy. He knew what the serious talk she wanted to have at lunch would be about. They had known each other for about two years, rich, warm years, a little desperate because day by day the war came closer and closer. Marriage in this bloody year was a cloudy and heartbreaking business. Marry and die, graves and widows; the husband-soldier carrying his wife's photograph in his pack like an extra hundred pounds of lead; the single man mourning furiously in the screaming jungle night for the forsworn moment, the honourable ceremony; the blinded veteran listening for his wife's chained footstep…
He felt silly sitting in the panelled room across the desk from his lawyer, reading through his will. Outside the window, high up in the tall building, the city shone in the everyday sunlight, the brick towers rearing into the soft blue haze, the streams of smoke from the boats on the river, the same city, looking exactly as it had always looked, and here he was, with his glasses on, reading, "… one-third of the aforementioned estate to my former wife, Miss Laura Roberts. In the event of her marriage, this bequest is voided and the amount reserved in her interest will be joined to the residual amount left in the name of the executor and divided in this manner…"
He felt so healthy and whole and the language was so portentous and ugly. He looked across at Piper, his lawyer. Piper was growing bald and had a pudgy, pale complexion. Piper was signing a batch of papers, his pudgy mouth pursed, happily making money, happily confident that with his three children and his recurrent arthritis he was never going to war. Michael regretted that he had not written out the will himself, in his own hand, in his own language. It was somehow shameful to be represented to the future in the dry and money-sly words of a bald lawyer who would never hear a gun fired anywhere. A will should be a short, eloquent, personal document that reflected the life of the man who signed it and whose last possessions and last wishes were being memorialized in it. "To my mother for the love I bear her, and for the agony she has endured and will later endure in my name and the name of my brothers…
"To my ex-wife, whom I humbly forgive and who will, I hope, forgive me in the same spirit of remembrance of our good days together…
"To my father, who has lived a hard and tragic life, and who has behaved so bravely in his daily war, and whom, I hope, I shall see once more before he dies…"
But Piper had covered eleven typewritten pages, full of whereases, and in the events of, and now if Michael died, he would be known to the future as a long list of many-syllabled, modifying clauses, and cautious businessman's devices.
Perhaps later, Michael thought, if I really think I am going to be killed, I shall write another one, better than this. He signed the four copies.
Piper pressed the buzzer on his desk and two secretaries came in. One was a notary and carried her seal with her. She stamped the papers methodically, and they both signed as witnesses. Again Michael had the reeling it was all wrong, that this should be done by good friends who had known him a long time and who would feel bereaved if he died.
Michael looked at the date on the calendar. The thirteenth. He was not a superstitious man, but perhaps this was carrying it too far.
The secretaries went out, and Piper stood up. They shook hands, and Piper said, "I will keep an eye on things and I will mail you a monthly report on what you have earned and what I have spent."
Sleeper's play, in which Cahoon had given him a five per cent interest, was doing very well, and it would undoubtedly sell to the movies, and there would be money coming in from it for two years. "I will be the richest private," Michael said, "in the American Army."
"I still think," Piper said, "that you ought to let me invest it for you."
"No, thank you," said Michael. He had gone over that again and again with Piper, and Piper still couldn't understand. Piper had some very good steel stocks himself and wanted Michael to buy some, too. But Michael had a stubborn, although vague and slightly shamefaced, opposition to making money out of money, of profiting by the labour of other men. He had tried once to explain it to Piper, but the lawyer was too sensible for talk like that, and now Michael merely smiled and shook his head. Piper put out his hand. "Good luck," he said. "I'm sure the war will be over very soon."
"Of course," said Michael. "Thanks."
He left quickly, glad to get out of the lawyer's office. He always felt trapped and restless when talking to lawyers or doing any business with them, and the feeling was even worse today.
He rang for the lift. It was full of secretaries on the way to lunch, and there was a smell of powder, and the eager, released bubble of voices. As the lift swooped down the forty storeys, he wondered, again, how these young, bright, lively people could endure being locked in among the typewriters, the books, the Pipers, the notaries' seals and the legal language all their lives. As he walked north along Fifth Avenue, towards the restaurant where he was to meet Peggy, he felt relieved. Now he was through with all his official business. For this afternoon, and all the night, until six-thirty the next morning when he had to report to his draft board, life was 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, "they have no trouble getting it in Rome."
The waiter's face quivered, and Michael could almost hear him saying unhappily to himself, "Ah, here is another one who is blaming me for Mussolini. This war, oh, this sickness of a war."
"Yes, Sir," the waiter said, smiling, "it is possible that you are right." He backed away, trying to disclaim, by the tortured small movements of his hands and the sorrowful upper lip, that he had any responsibility for the Italian Army, the Italian Fleet, the Italian Air Force.
"Well?" Peggy said loudly.
Michael sipped his brandy slowly, in silence.
"O.K.," said Peggy. "I catch on."
"I just don't see the sense," Michael said, "of getting married now."
"You're absolutely right," Peggy said. "It's just that I'm tired of seeing single men get killed."
"Peggy." Michael covered her hand softly with his. "This isn't at all like you."
"Perhaps it is," said Peggy. "Perhaps all the other times weren't like me. Don't think," she said coldly, "you're going to come back in five years with all your medals and find me waiting for you, with a welcoming smile on my face."
"O.K.," Michael said wearily. "Let's not talk about it."
"I'm going to talk about it," Peggy said.
"O.K.," said Michael. "Talk about it."
He could see her fighting back tears as her face dissolved and softened. "I was going to be very gay," she said, her voice trembling. "Going to war? Let's have a drink… I would've managed, too, but that damned sailor… The trouble is, I'm going to forget you. There was another man, in Austria, and I thought I'd remember him till the day I died. He was probably a better man than you, too, braver and more gentle, and a cousin of his wrote to me last year from Switzerland that they'd killed him in Vienna. I was going to the theatre with you the night I got the letter, and first I thought, 'I can't go out tonight,' but then you were at the door and I looked at you and I didn't really remember the other man at all. He was dead, but I didn't remember very much about him, although at one time I asked him to marry me, too. I seem to have terrible luck in that department, don't I?"
"Stop it," Michael whispered, "please, Peggy, stop it."
But Peggy went on, the mist of tears barely held back in the deep remembering eyes. "I'm silly," she said. "I'd probably have forgotten him even if we had been married, and I'd probably forget you, if you stayed away long enough. Probably just a superstition on my part. I guess I feel if you're married and it's there, all settled and official, to come home to, you'll come home. Ridiculous… His name was Joseph. He had no home, nothing. So, naturally, they killed him." She stood up abruptly. "Wait for me outside," she said. "I'll be right down."
She fled out of the small, dark room with the little bar near the window and the old-fashioned maps of the wine sections of France hung around the smoky walls. Michael left some money on the table for the bill, and a big tip to try to make up to the Italian waiter for being rude to him, and walked slowly out into the street.
He stood in front of the restaurant, thoughtfully smoking a cigarette. No, he thought finally, no. She's wrong. I'm not going to carry that burden, too, or let her carry it, either. If she was going to forget him, that was merely another price you paid for the war, another form of casualty. It was not entered on the profit-and-loss balances of men killed and wounded and treasure destroyed, but it was just as surely a casualty. It was hopeless and crippling to try to fight it.
Peggy came out. Her hair shone in the sun as though she had combed it violently upstairs, and her face was composed and smiling.
"Forgive me," she said, touching his arm. "I'm just as surprised by it as you are."
"That's all right," Michael said. "I'm no prize today myself."
"I didn't mean a word of what I said. You believe that, don't you?"
"Of course," said Michael.
"Some other time," Peggy said, "I'll tell you about the man in Vienna. It's an interesting story. Especially for a soldier."
"Sure," said Michael politely. "I'd love to hear it."
"And now," Peggy looked up the street and waved to a taxicab that was slowly coming down from Lexington Avenue, "I think I'd better go back to work for the rest of the afternoon. Don't you?"
"There's no need…"
Peggy smiled at him. "I think it's a good idea," she said.
"Then tonight, we'll meet as though we never had lunch today at all. I'd prefer it that way. You can find plenty of things to do this afternoon, can't you?"
"Of course," Michael said.
"Have a good time, darling." She kissed him lightly. "And wear your grey suit tonight." She got into the cab without looking back and the car drove off. Michael watched it turn the corner and then he walked slowly west on the shady side of the street.
He had put off thinking about Peggy, half consciously, half unconsciously. There were so many other things to think about. The war made a miser out of a man, he saved all his emotions for it. But that was no excuse, either. He still wanted to postpone thinking about her. He knew himself too well to imagine that for two, three, four years he could remain faithful to a photograph, a letter a month, a memory… And he didn't want to make any claims on her. They were two sensible, forthright, candid people, and here was a problem that millions of people all around them were facing one way or another, and they couldn't handle it any better than the youngest, the most naive, the most illiterate backwoodsman come down from his hills to pick up a rifle, leaving his Cora Sue behind him… He knew that they wouldn't talk about it any more, either that night or any night before the end of the war, but he knew that in the nights of memory and recapitulation ahead of him, on continents he had never travelled before, he would suffer as he thought of this early summer afternoon and a voice would cry within him, "Why didn't you do it? Why not? Why not?"