The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever Page B

didn’t get an infection.” He shook his head at this miracle. “When the mouse comes, I’ll send her up.” He wandered out of the room, trailing the length of bloody bandage after him.
    Evarts’ eyes were burning with fatigue. He was so tired that if he had rested his head against anything, he would have fallen asleep. He heard the doorbell ring and the butler greet Susan Hewitt. She ran up the stairs and into the drawing room.
    She was young, and she came into the room as if it were her home and she had just come back from school. She was light, her features were delicate and very small, and her fair hair was brushed simply and had begun to darken, of its own course, and was streaked softly with brown, like the grain in pine wood. “I’m so happy to meet you, Evarts,” she said. “I want to tell you that I love your play.” How she could have read his play, Evarts did not know, but he was too confused by her beauty to worry or to speak. His mouth was dry. It might have been the antic pace of the last days, it might have been his loss of sleep—he didn’t know—but he felt as though he had fallen in love.
    “You remind me of a girl I used to know,” he said. “She worked in a lunch wagon outside South Bend. Never worked in a lunch wagon outside South Bend, did you?”
    “No,” she said.
    “It isn’t only that,” he said. “You remind me of all of it. I mean the night drives. I used to be a night bus driver. That’s what you remind me of. The stars, I mean, and the grade crossings, and the cattle lined up along the fences. And the girls in the lunch counters. They always looked so pretty. But you never worked in a lunch counter.”
    “No,” she said.
    “You can have my play,” he said. “I mean, I think you’re right for the part. Sam Farley can have the play. Everything.”
    “Thank you, Evarts,” she said.
    “Will you do me a favor?” he asked.
    “What?”
    “Oh, I know it’s foolish,” he said. He got up and walked around the room. “But there’s nobody here, nobody will know about it. I hate to ask you.”
    “What do you want?”
    “Will you let me lift you?” he said. “Just let me lift you. Just let me see how light you are.”
    “All right,” she said. “Do you want me to take off my coat?”
    “Yes, yes, yes,” he said. “Take off your coat.”
    She stood. She let her coat fall to the sofa.
    “Can I do it now?” he said.
    “Yes.”
    He put his hands under her arms. He raised her off the floor and then put her down gently. “Oh, you’re so light!” he shouted. “You’re so light, you’re so fragile, you don’t weigh any more than a suitcase. Why, I could carry you, I could carry you anywhere, I could carry you from one end of New York to the other.” He got his hat and coat and ran out of the house.
    EVARTS FELT BEWILDERED and exhausted when he returned to the Mentone. Bitsey was in the room with Mildred-Rose and Alice. He kept asking questions about Mama Finelli. He wanted to know where she lived and what her telephone number was. Evarts lost his temper at the bellboy and told him to go away. He lay down on the bed and fell asleep while Alice and Mildred-Rose were asking him questions. When he woke, an hour later, he felt much better. They went to the Automat and then to Radio City Music Hall, and they got to bed early, so that Evarts could work on his play in the morning. He couldn’t sleep.
    After breakfast, Alice and Mildred-Rose left Evarts alone in the room and he tried to work. He couldn’t work, but it wasn’t the telephone that troubled him that day. The difficulty that blocked his play was deep, and as he smoked and stared at the brick wall, he recognized it. He was in love with Susan Hewitt. This might have been an incentive to work, but he had left his creative strength in Indiana. He shut his eyes and tried to recall the strong, dissolute voice of Mama Finelli, but before he could realize a word, it would be lost in the noise from the