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

“I saw her only two days ago,” I heard him saying. “I spoke to her. I think she tried to tell me then what was going to happen, only I didn’t catch on. ‘It’s too late now for both of us,’ she said. ‘We can’t win anymore now; we’ve already lost. Get together again? Two strangers hardly knowing each other, grubbing around in the debris looking for something they once had? Two ghosts sitting in the twilight, with a bottle somewhere between them? After a while, if we didn’t swallow the bottle, the bottle would swallow us. Both of those are worse than any prison is.”

I looked up at him and I complained. “I hurt all over.”

But he couldn’t help me. He wasn’t a bandage.

I stood up finally and turned to the door, and he said, “Where are you going?” and he tried to hold me back.

“Home. I’m going home.”

“You can’t. You know that, Cleve. There isn’t any home anymore for you. Stay here in the office awhile first. Lie down on the couch. I’ll take you with me when I leave. I’ll put you in a hotel for a week or two, pay all the expenses, see that you’re taken care of until the worst is over.”

“No. I’m going home. Home.”

And when he tried to hold me, I shrugged him off. And when he tried to do it again, I swerved violently, flinging his hands off.

“I’m going home. Don’t stop me.”

“Or come up with me for a week to my place. We live in Bronxville. I have two kids, but we’ll keep them away from you — you won’t hear them. You don’t even have to have your meals with us.”

“No,” I said doggedly. “I’m going home.”

“But you haven’t any anymore, Cleve.”

“Everyone has — someplace.”

The last thing he said to me was, “You’ll die, left on your own. I hate to see you die, Cleve. It seems such a waste; you loved so well and so hard!”

“Don’t worry,” I assured him gravely. “Don’t worry about me, Steve. I have to meet someone. I’m going out tonight. I’m late for it now.”

And I closed the door behind me. And he didn’t try to come after me, because he knew every man must find his own peace, his own answers. There is a point beyond which no man can accompany another, without intrusion. And no man must do that. It’s not allowable. That’s about all we’re given, our privacy.

As I went hustling down the corridor (which had become very short again now), I heard a curious sound from inside where I’d left him. It sounded like a whack. I think he must have swung his fist around, punching into some leather chair with all his might. I wondered why he’d do a thing like that, what its meaning was. But I didn’t have time to figure it out.

In the second taxi, the one that took me away from there, the driver did have his radio going this time. Unlike the one coming over, the one that Sutphen had asked me about, this one was only playing music — I guess to take the edge off the traffic sounds the cabby lived in all day long.

It was burbling away there. I didn’t pay much attention until suddenly I seemed to hear the words.

Peace and rest at length have come
All the day’s long toil is past
And each heart is whispering ‘Home,
Home at last.’

“That’s right, “I thought. “that’s where I’m going now. “I spoke to the driver. “Stop at the next flower shop you come to,” I told him. “I think there’s one just up ahead.”

I bought some yellow roses, barely opened, just past the bud stage, and those little things that look like yellow pom-poms. He wrapped them for me like I hope he would for festive giving — first in tissue, then in smooth lustrous green, then folded flat across the top and stapled into a cone. When I came back to the cab with them. I felt like her young lover all over again.

I rang. I wanted her to come to the door. I wanted to make a big splash with the flowers, shake them out, spread them in front of her face, and say, “A guy sent these to you, lady, with his love.” But she didn’t come, so I put my key in it instead and went in on my own.

I didn’t see her, so I knew she must be in the bathroom, doing something to her hair or things like they do. I’d often found her in there when I came home nights like this.

I called her name. “Jannie, I’m back,” like that. I didn’t hear her answer, but that was all right. I guess she couldn’t at the moment. Maybe shampoo was running down her forehead. I knew she’d heard me, because she had the door open in there.

(“How’d it go?” she asked me. I could almost hear her.)

“Arrh,” I said with habitual distraction. “Same old treadmill, same old grind. Want me to fix you a drink?”

(I could almost hear her. “Not too strong, though—”)

I built us two Martinis from the serving pantry and the case I’d brought from the club; we hadn’t run through it yet. One tiger’s milk, the other weak as tears.

First I was going to take hers in to her, but I didn’t. The bathroom is no place to drink a drink or toast a toast — all that soap around.