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

They found this pseudo-German bierstube. Or possibly it was authentic, but it overdid itself being Teutonic. The waitresses all wore dirndls and laced bodices and had flaxen braids, whether real or fastened-on, hanging to their waists in front. The place was packed at that hour, but they managed to get one of the plank tables set into benched partitions along the walls by slipping in almost as the last occupants were extricating themselves.

The first glass of beer became two, the two became three, the three four. First there was the uphill climb toward courage. Then when courage had been attained in a topaze-amber glow, it became a matter of hating to shatter the ambrosial mood they were sharing together, eyes meeting eyes, smile meeting smile, hand meeting hand in tender rapport across the table.

In one way it had a good effect, in one way a bad. It took away the jagged edges of her fear, all right. Made it easier to tell him, easier to say. But on the other hand, it lulled her, made it seem less urgent, less crucial, whether she told him at once and got it over with, or waited a little while longer. Or even didn’t tell him at all.

His smile at her was uninterrupted, never leaving his face, and if it was a little fatuous, it was nevertheless honest, and warm and sweet as freshly given cow’s milk. Some of his syllables were becoming a little mushy around their edges now and then.

He gave no other signs than that.

She knew she couldn’t wait any longer, or what she had to tell him might not only not be adequately told, it might not even be fully understood. But first, as one last reflex, she decided to retouch her face, to give herself that much better a chance, to make herself look that much better when his suddenly knowing eyes sought her out about to pass their judgment.

She raised the flap of her handbag, which had a mirror glued to the underside of it, and brought out a lipstick. But she was nervous with the imminence of the long-deferred moment now at hand, and her fingers weren’t steady. In trying to unscrew the cap, the little cylinder slipped from her grasp, fell to the table, and started to roll. Her hand went after it, but not quickly enough. It went over the edge, dropped to the floor, and rolled some more down there, out of sight.

He jumped right up, went around to the open, outer side of the banquette, and crouched down under it, to see if he could get it for her.

She heard him strike a match and saw its submerged glow coming from below.

Then she heard him say, “I see it. It’s right by your foot. Don’t move, or you’ll step on it,” and he blew the match out.

He must have extended one aim out before him to reach for it. In doing so he unwittingly stretched one leg still further out in back of him, so that it lay across the aisle.

At this moment one of the hefty Brünnhildes came bustling along with a trayful of empty schooners on her way back to the bar drain-board with them. Her toe stubbed into his leg, and she started to go sprawling forward, her waitress’ instinct causing her to hold onto the tray for dear life to the very last. It struck Don on the rump, the only part of him that wasn’t protected by the overhang of the table, with a calamitous impact. It was lightweight, some sort of composition, but evidently resilient, for it continued to reverberate for moments afterward. The schooners went rolling all around like ninepins, but they were so sturdily made not one of them broke. The girl went down to one side of Don and tray, but managed to stay up on one elbow.

Heads turned all over the room, but since Don couldn’t be seen by most of them from where they were, they thought the girl was the solo participant in the accident and they went back to their own concerns.

The girl was the first one to pick herself up. Too fearful of the anger and recrimination that she was sure were coming to show any anger herself, she scrabbled about on the floor re-collecting the schooners. She stood them aside. Then she began to apologize and placate Don even before he was well out of his unlucky lair.

“Och, gentleman, I’m so sorry. I couldn’t help. I didn’t see you down there, was under my face the tray.” And all the while, though no beer had been spilled, she kept making little half-furtive, half-ingratiating dabs and passes at him, as though to dry him off.

He rose to his feet very slowly, unnaturally so. Absently, in a far-away manner, as though his thoughts were on some other time and place.