A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

And long after his partner was on the phone breaking the news, and long after his partner was off the phone again and all the wheels of procedure had started to turn, he kept walking back and forth in there shouting “I got him! I got him!” High on victory, souped-up with the lovely, the lovable end to a bitter and deadly hate.

Until they had to sit him down in a chair and slip him a nip of the dead man’s Courvoisier to help him to unwind. And even then—

“I got him!...

“I got him for him!...

“I got him!”

I’m Ashamed

Every Saturday night he and Warren used to get together after supper and go downtown. Downtown was a special sort of place, a grown-up sort of place. Just like Saturday night was a special sort of night. Downtown was a Saturday night sort of place.

They’d meet on the next corner, where Hillside Avenue cut through Pomeroy Street and ran down the hill, and on into downtown. Warren lived over on one side of Hillside Avenue, and he on the other, so this meeting-place was about equidistant from both their houses and served conveniently. You had to go along Hillside Avenue to get downtown, anyway: there was no other way. At least not from up there on the Heights, the residential section, where they both lived.

Warren was usually already there waiting for him when he got there. That was because they started supper a little earlier at Warren’s house than they did at his, and therefore they got through a little earlier. The difference was not much, only about ten or fifteen minutes. Just long-standing family habits. And that being the case, the small gap between the two never had a chance to close up, be eliminated. Therefore, Warren was always there first. As he was now.

Warren was lounging with his back against a tree smoking a cigarette with an aplomb it had taken him some pains to acquire. He now had it down pat, however, and was a perfected smoker. All the earlier unevennesses of gesture, the raggednesses of manipulation, had been smoothed out now. The one remaining vestige of the ingénue (and this would go too, very shortly) was one that was not visible to the eye; he was still inwardly impressed by the act himself each time he performed it, entire matter-of-factness was yet to come. Bruce knew this because he felt that way too; they had kept pace in this as in everything else.

Warren’s spare elongated form and the young tree-trunk he had his shoulders tilted against bore an odd similarity of outline when viewed from a distance. It looked like one of those trees with a bow-shaped double trunk; one ash-gray, the other piebald tan, white and pink.

They exchanged no greeting whatever. They had parted less than an hour before, after being together the greater part of the afternoon, so there was no real reason to. Warren simply detached himself from the tree and fell into stride alongside Bruce, trailing an occasional gauzy kerchief of cigarette-smoke over his shoulder.

The night was splendid, but like the young they were, they had no time to contemplate it. Only the other young interested them. Prismatically it was mostly blues of all shades, from the indigo of the sweeping arch overhead, down the chromatic scale through the marine blue of the leafy coverage over them and of the lawns and hedges they passed, the periwinkle of their own stilt-walking shadows as they moved on past a light, the cobalt that in the daytime was the white trim of doorways and of window-frames, to finally the azure of Warren’s cigarette-smoke; all sprinkled above with crystals that were stars, and streaked below with gold and garnet stripes that were the passing to and fro of cars. And before and below them a heliotrope haze where the lights of downtown lay bedded on the depression-floor they were descending toward. It was a night as though there had never been night before, and never would be again; only this once, to show the supreme beauty of its face.

Warren’s first remark came after nearly a block of lithe, effortless striding. “How much’ll you bring with you?”

“Eight bucks,” answered Bruce. “How much’d you?”

“Three.”

“That’s eleven between us,” said Bruce arithmetically.

“How’d you get so much?” Warren asked him, impressed. “Borrow it from your father?”

“My father isn’t home, he’s entertaining a customer from out of town,” Bruce told him. “I saved it up myself.”

The conversation lagged again. They were together so constantly that there was very little, actually, for them to talk about. Warren began whistling. A new song that was starting to come on the records and over the air. Bruce joined in as soon as he had recognized it. They whistled well together, ebulliently, carefree, unself-conscious as only the young can be. Only, they didn’t know the whole song, so they had to go back each time and repeal the few bars they did know.