Seed on the Wind

That he agreed to. They got the bags to the street and found a taxi, and after Pete had run back to the room for a book he had forgotten he helped her in and got in after her. She sat up straight on her side, her hands folded in her lap, and he after his custom sprawled in the other corner, his legs stretched out with his feet resting on the bags. The taxi sped along, and neither spoke. Lora thought she had never seen a cab go so fast; they were already more than halfway, almost to State Street. Pete broke the silence.

“I never bought you those flowers,” he said suddenly.

“No,” said Lora.

“Well, it’s too late now. That’s the closest I’ve ever been to a sentimental jag. I even decided it should be roses.”

Silence again. She was wondering whether he would kiss her goodbye, and whether she wanted him to. The idea bewildered and embarrassed her, for they had never kissed except in passion. He wouldn’t, she decided; and on that instant felt his hand on hers. His fingers rather; he had reached over and with his fingers was awkwardly stroking the back of her hand as it lay on her lap. Her head dropped, and she could see the moving uncertain clumsy fingers; she wanted to look at him but couldn’t; and all at once she knew she was going to cry. She could feel it in her throat and high up on her cheeks, inside, and back of her eyeballs, inside of her head. At the same time she was overwhelmed by the conviction that to cry now, in front of him, these last two minutes, would be a calamity and an everlasting shame. Damn him, oh damn him, for touching her hand like that! That he had no right to do. Then she was aware that she had violently jerked her own hand away, he had retrieved his own, and the crisis was past.

The taxi had stopped in front of the railway station; the driver had opened the door; porters were standing there expectantly. Pete got out and lifted out the bags, waving the porters off, then he turned back and stuck his head in the door.

“You’re going right back home? To the room, I mean?”

Lora nodded. Home, yes.

“All right. Don’t believe anything anyone tells you and for god’s sake keep off of street-cars. When you read of a Canadian soldier shooting his colonel in the back because he was too stupid to live, that will be me.”

He flipped his hand at her and turned and picked up the bags.

“The soldier, I mean!” he called, grinning, and strode off toward the entrance to the station.

Lora gave the address to the driver. All the way home she sat up straight, her hands with the fingers intertwined pulled against her abdomen. He hadn’t kissed her; she might have known he wouldn’t; and that was as it should be. Pete was Pete. He wasn’t a lover going off to war, or a man running away from a girl with his baby in her; he wasn’t anything like that, he was Pete.

The room was a mess. Dirty dishes were everywhere, the bed was chaos, there were glaring vacancies where Pete’s things had lain and hung, a piece of thick fried cold greasy bacon was square in the middle of the floor. Lora did not even pick up the piece of bacon; she sat on the edge of the bed with her hat in her hand surveying the dismal scene. She would get her things out of here tomorrow, she decided; today even, for it wouldn’t be much of a job, most of her belongings were still at the apartment the rent of which she had continued to share with Cecelia. Explanations were due there too and could no longer be postponed; Cecelia was going to be a problem. Other problems too — plenty of them! What a mess. The room, that is. The first thing to do was to clean this up and get out of here — forget it ever was, for assuredly it would never be again. Sighing, she put the hat down on the bed and got to her feet, and as she did so her eye was caught by an object lying on her pillow. She went closer to look, and found it was two objects: a wrist watch with a leather strap, and a piece of paper with writing on it.

The watch she recognized at once; it was one that she and Pete had seen some weeks before in a jeweler’s window, and she had admired it; had said, in fact, that it was just the sort of watch she was going to have someday. The writing on the paper was in Pete’s irregular hand:

To a brave little woman — ha ha — with most sincere wishes for an early miscarriage — or, if she prefers, a painless parturition — Pete.

Well, she thought, I suppose he must have put that there when he came back in to get that book. It’s the very same watch...

She sat down again on the edge of the bed, and cried at last.

XIV