Get a Load of This

     She said to the black feet: “I know what you want. I am a woman of the world. I had to come to Havana to find out about it, but I know. I know exactly what you will do to me when you have got me alone. It won't be long now.” Then she thought hopefully: “I wonder if I shall die tonight?”

     Obviously no one will blame her for thinking and talking like this, as the accumulation of circumstances had been too much for her reason.

VIGIL

     George came in around two o'clock. He stood just inside the little room with the door open behind him.

     Alfy sat on the one chair in the room, close to the empty hearth. He sat very limply, with his hands thrust deep into his trouser pockets. He didn't look up when George came in. More than anything, he wanted to be alone. He didn't have to pretend when he was alone. George made it difficult for him. It wouldn't do to let George see that he couldn't take it. Anyway, it was getting a little too much for him to pretend any more, even with George in the room.

     George came in and shut the door. It wasn't that George wanted to stay, he didn't; but his conscience wouldn't let him go. He sat on the edge of the table and fumbled for a cigarette. The scrape of the match on the box made Alfy turn his head a little.

     He said, “You needn't bother.”

     “I guess I'll hang around. It don't seem right to go,” George said ponderously, dragging down a lungful of smoke. “It's long, ain't it?”

     Alfy moved his feet restlessly. He wanted to avoid talking about it. “Listen,” he said, “you don't have to tell me. You don't have to say anything about it. If you think for a moment, you'd know that nothing you say could be new to me.”

     George looked at him and then shifted his eyes. There was a long pause, then Alfy said, “I'm sorry, I didn't mean that.”

     “Sure, that's all right,” George said hurriedly. “I guess I wasn't thinking.”

     “That's right. You weren't thinkin'.”

     “Maybe I'd better go,” George said. He sounded so miserable that Alfy couldn't send him away.

     “No, you stay. It's all right that you stay.”

     “Well, I'd like to. I wouldn't care to be far away in case—”

     Alfy winced. This was going to be worse than he thought. He said: “No, I can see that. Yeah, I can see that all right.”

     George looked at him again uneasily. He stubbed out his cigarette and took another. He hesitated, then he offered the packet to Alfy. “You'd better smoke,” he said.

     Alfy took a cigarette out of the carton. He didn't do it easily because his hand was shaking, but George pretended he hadn't noticed. When he lit their cigarettes he was annoyed that his own hand was very unsteady.

     Alfy looked at him across the tiny flame of the match. There was a look in George's eyes that startled him. George looked away immediately, but it gave Alfy quite a shock. He realized, not without a stab of jealousy, that George was suffering just as much as he was. This discovery rather pulled him together and he slumped back in his chair to consider it.

     Well, it was understandable. George had always got on well with Margie. He'd been in and out most days since they were married. Wasn't George his best friend? It was swell of George to feel bad about it, or was it? He frowned down at his feet. This won't do, he told himself. He'd got quite enough on his mind right now. It wasn't the time to think up new worries. Maybe he was being a little too hard on George. Maybe, if he got his mind to thinking about George, it'd help him forget what was going on.

     He said with a little burst of confidence: “I don't like that croaker, George. There's something about that guy.”

     George ran his thick fingers through his hair. “Yeah?” he said. “What's the matter with him? Ain't he any good?” There was an anxious note in his voice.

     “Sure he's good. The best croaker in the town, but he ain't got any feelin'. A while back I heard him laughing.”

     “Laughin'?”

     “Yeah, and the nurse laughed too.”

     There was a long pause. Then George said, “That's a hell of a thing to do.”

     Alfy went on: “He's a cold guy. I bet nothing would move that guy.”

     George said, “He's been here an awful long time, ain't he?”

     Alfy looked at the clock on the mantelshelf. “Four hours,” he said, then, as if to give himself courage, he added: “He said it would take a while.”

     “He said that, did he?” George wiped his face with a handkerchief. “Ain't nothin' gone wrong, do you think?”

     Unconsciously he put into words what Alfy had been thinking for the past half-hour. It didn't do Alfy much good. He said, “For God's sake, must you take that line?”

     George got off the table and wandered across to the window. He leant against the wall, holding back the curtain to look into the street. “The moon's still up,” he said unevenly; “high as hell that moon is.”