friend.”
“Don’t be a fool. If I hadn’t, we’d both have spent the night in there.”
“I guess you’re right. Thank God Ruthie wasn’t there to see me when I got home. Christ!”
“Did Al tell you Connie’s isn’t there any more?”
“Yeah. Great big deal. Steak. Champagne. You know, I never expected to see you in the office.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Al said you sounded funny over the phone. I told him about the overload of Martinis. I phoned your house when I got home. No answer. I got worried about you. I called you again Saturday at least a dozen times. Then I went over there late Saturday afternoon. Your car was there, but you weren’t. I waited around. I phoned in the evening. I phoned all day yesterday and I stopped around again. What the hell, Craig?”
“I was all right.”
“I thought maybe you’d phone me, to find out how things came out. You haven’t even asked.”
“Okay. I’m asking.”
“I’m out on a thousand-dollar bail. Al is getting it set back until after my vacation. He thinks he can soften it up a little, get it cut to D. and D. without that resisting-arrest rap. Then it should be just twenty or forty bucks and costs.”
“He’s got connections.”
Chernek stared at him. “Just where the hell were you?”
“Staying with a friend.”
“What kind of a friend? You got a nice color on you. Like putty. Shack job?”
“Why don’t you just drop it, Bill?”
Chernek stood up. “The hell with you, Fitz. You make a dandy buddy on a binge.”
“What are you sore about?”
“If you can’t figure it out, skip it.”
Craig stared at him for a moment, shrugged, and said, “As long as you’re here, what luck are you having on that aluminum alloy on 770 F?”
“Write me a memo and I’ll look it up, you stuffy son of a bitch.” Bill left and slammed the door heartily behind him.
Betty came in immediately. “What’s the matter with Mr. Chernek?”
“I don’t think I know, and I don’t think I care. Will it foul up any of your plans if I go to lunch first?”
“Why, no!”
He drove far enough to find a restaurant where noplant people would be. He drove east, away from the river, and picked a roadhouse at random. He had two Bloody Marys at the bar, and then a sirloin-steak sandwich at the bar. He looked in the back bar mirror. He decided he didn’t look at all gray. Bill had been fishing.
But there seemed to be plenty of reasons why he should look gray. On the way back to her place he had found a delicatessen and had loaded up, carried a great heavy bag up her steel-tread steps.
There was no coherency about the thirty-six hours. They had started drinking and had drunk too heavily. There were curious distorted images in his mind. A playful, boisterous sharing of the huge shower stall. A time when she had him doing fiendish exercises of her own devising. He had strained and groaned and the sweat had poured from him, while she stood like a drill major, counting sharply, tolerating no deviation. He was still sore around the middle, and in his thighs and his biceps. He remembered that they had talked about going off in the car, going out into the country for a long, long walk. But when that was nearly arranged, the big thunderstorms had hit, in sequence, flashing and banging, and it suddenly became essential to her to make love at the very peak of the storm, there under the vast window. Sleeping, eating, showering, love-making, they were all jumbled and mixed in his mind, like a film from which entire sequences had been cut. She was tirelessly inventive, incorrigibly experimental, and when he remembered bits and pieces of the week end, he had that same hot-cheeked feeling of incredulity that the party guest feels when he awakens the following morning and remembers that, with drinks and persuasion, he was trapped into playing games that destroyed every last device of personal dignity. The very last straw would have been a venal boy friend behind a
“Don’t be a fool. If I hadn’t, we’d both have spent the night in there.”
“I guess you’re right. Thank God Ruthie wasn’t there to see me when I got home. Christ!”
“Did Al tell you Connie’s isn’t there any more?”
“Yeah. Great big deal. Steak. Champagne. You know, I never expected to see you in the office.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Al said you sounded funny over the phone. I told him about the overload of Martinis. I phoned your house when I got home. No answer. I got worried about you. I called you again Saturday at least a dozen times. Then I went over there late Saturday afternoon. Your car was there, but you weren’t. I waited around. I phoned in the evening. I phoned all day yesterday and I stopped around again. What the hell, Craig?”
“I was all right.”
“I thought maybe you’d phone me, to find out how things came out. You haven’t even asked.”
“Okay. I’m asking.”
“I’m out on a thousand-dollar bail. Al is getting it set back until after my vacation. He thinks he can soften it up a little, get it cut to D. and D. without that resisting-arrest rap. Then it should be just twenty or forty bucks and costs.”
“He’s got connections.”
Chernek stared at him. “Just where the hell were you?”
“Staying with a friend.”
“What kind of a friend? You got a nice color on you. Like putty. Shack job?”
“Why don’t you just drop it, Bill?”
Chernek stood up. “The hell with you, Fitz. You make a dandy buddy on a binge.”
“What are you sore about?”
“If you can’t figure it out, skip it.”
Craig stared at him for a moment, shrugged, and said, “As long as you’re here, what luck are you having on that aluminum alloy on 770 F?”
“Write me a memo and I’ll look it up, you stuffy son of a bitch.” Bill left and slammed the door heartily behind him.
Betty came in immediately. “What’s the matter with Mr. Chernek?”
“I don’t think I know, and I don’t think I care. Will it foul up any of your plans if I go to lunch first?”
“Why, no!”
He drove far enough to find a restaurant where noplant people would be. He drove east, away from the river, and picked a roadhouse at random. He had two Bloody Marys at the bar, and then a sirloin-steak sandwich at the bar. He looked in the back bar mirror. He decided he didn’t look at all gray. Bill had been fishing.
But there seemed to be plenty of reasons why he should look gray. On the way back to her place he had found a delicatessen and had loaded up, carried a great heavy bag up her steel-tread steps.
There was no coherency about the thirty-six hours. They had started drinking and had drunk too heavily. There were curious distorted images in his mind. A playful, boisterous sharing of the huge shower stall. A time when she had him doing fiendish exercises of her own devising. He had strained and groaned and the sweat had poured from him, while she stood like a drill major, counting sharply, tolerating no deviation. He was still sore around the middle, and in his thighs and his biceps. He remembered that they had talked about going off in the car, going out into the country for a long, long walk. But when that was nearly arranged, the big thunderstorms had hit, in sequence, flashing and banging, and it suddenly became essential to her to make love at the very peak of the storm, there under the vast window. Sleeping, eating, showering, love-making, they were all jumbled and mixed in his mind, like a film from which entire sequences had been cut. She was tirelessly inventive, incorrigibly experimental, and when he remembered bits and pieces of the week end, he had that same hot-cheeked feeling of incredulity that the party guest feels when he awakens the following morning and remembers that, with drinks and persuasion, he was trapped into playing games that destroyed every last device of personal dignity. The very last straw would have been a venal boy friend behind a
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