Gentleman's Agreement by Laura Z. Hobson Page A

in both of his and then released it quickly. “You’re on the dot again,” she said.
    “Should I be fashionably late?” He laughed as he shook snow off his coat. “The other time you said that and I said that and then I was afraid you’d think I was coy or always mugging or something.” His voice was easier than she’d ever heard it, his manner surer. She watched him fold his coat and put it on a chair, his hat on top of it. He sniffed at the homely smell of cooking and looked about him. She saw him catch sight of the table, laid and waiting in one corner of the living room. His whole mood seemed suddenly to sparkle.
    “You don’t mean here?” When she nodded, he made a sound of surprise and pleasure.
    “So we can talk.” She was delighted she’d thought of it. She motioned him to the sofa and went to the bar table. “This time I’m not going to let you get going on anything else. I’ve tried all day to guess what it could be.”
    “Have you really?”
    “I kept thinking, suppose I were him, and had to find an idea for this, what would I do?” She came back with two Martinis, walking gingerly because she’d poured them too full.
    He waited, unwilling to say anything. He wanted her to go on, to offer even more testimony that his problems mattered to her. He took the glass and leaned forward to sip it before he brought it closer. She sat on the sofa beside him, in her eyes an eagerness that was all the testimony anybody could want.
    “And what would you do?”
    She wrinkled her nose and shook her head. “I’m just no good at ideas. The ones you told me seemed swell, but you threw them out and kept on hunting.”
    “You’ll see why now.” He hitched himself around. He wanted to see her face change as Minify’s had. For another moment he said nothing. “I’m going to tell everybody I’m Jewish, that’s all.”
    “Jewish? But you’re not, Phil, are you?” Instantly she added, “It wouldn’t make any difference, of course.”
    But something had appeared in her eyes.
    “You said, ‘I’m going to tell’—as if you hadn’t before but would now,” she went on, “so I just wondered. Not that it’d matter to me, one way or the other.”
    “You said that before.” He put his drink down.
    “Well, are you, Phil?”
    He almost said, “You know I’m not,” but it choked back. Some veil of a thing had shown in her eyes. He’d been watching her face every minute, greedy for the quick approval that would show there. This had been quick, but different. She wanted him not to be Jewish. She knew he was not, knew that if he were, he’d never have concealed it. But she wanted to hear him say so right out.
    “Oh, this is nonsense,” she said briskly. “I know perfectly well you’re not Jewish and I wouldn’t care if you were. It’s just interesting.”
    He reached for a cigarette. Of course she wouldn’t care, any more than he would. Or would she? If he said now, “I really am Jewish”? He’d be the same guy, the same face, the same voice, manner, tweed suit, same eyes, nose, body, but the word “Jewish” would have been said and he’d be different in her mind. In that very same vessel that contained him there’d be a something to “not-care” about.
    “Why, Phil,” she said slowly, “you’re annoyed.” She put her drink down also. “You haven’t said anything.”
    “I’m not annoyed. I’m just thinking.”
    “Don’t be so serious about it—you must know where I stand.”
    “I do, Kathy.”
    “It’s just that it caught me off balance. You know, not knowing much about you because you kept making me talk about my childhood. So for a second there—” She laughed and shook her head. “Not very bright on the uptake.”
    He smiled. He felt heavy, flattened out. With her last sentence, the creamy smooth tone had come back. The laugh was the laugh he’d heard that first night. His hand, listless on the arm of the sofa, dropped over the side. Without knowing that he did