“No, no,” he said irritably. “It’s all off; they won’t be there. I’ve told Jeff already.”
“Oh.” A dozen nebulous fears darted into her mind. His voice wasn’t right. “Ray, what’s the matter?” she asked.
“Nothing. That is––– Well, never mind, Blondie, I’ll try to come in sometime tomorrow and talk to you.”
“Well, all right.”
A hundred times in the course of the evening and the next day she cursed herself for having tamely submitted to that. The Jill of the old days, the Jill who had been trained by Botchan and Konya, would have accepted such a suggestion as a command, and for every moment of lost sleep or worry she would have blamed herself, not her man. But Ray had spoiled her. In his company she had become cocky, little by little believing his belief that she was a delightful, valuable specimen of humanity. She had learned to demand a certain amount of consideration. Ray shouldn’t have let her down like that. He had no right to leave her in the air, worrying; he had no right. By afternoon she was in a rage with him, almost to the extent where she could forget the fear he had put into her mind. Why should he leave her so airily to wait, crouching in her room, until he chose to come and reassure her? Didn’t he know that she would not find it convenient? She dared not go out to meals for fear of missing his phone call, if he should decide to phone again; since getting up that morning from a night of interrupted sleep she had not eaten.
At three o’clock she telephoned the office where he sometimes dropped in to write his stories, but, as she had expected, he was not there. At four-thirty she swallowed her pride–and it was a surprisingly large lump to swallow, considering that she was Jill, the girl from Annette’s–and telephoned Gert. Gert was at home, but she was not very satisfactory on the phone. She sounded muffled, somehow; friendly as ever, but embarrassed and rather disinclined to talk. “No, I haven’t seen Ray,” she said. “He called Jeff a couple of times, but I don’t know where he is. Well, if he calls again I’ll tell him you’re trying to get in touch.”
“Please,” said Jill. “He told me he’d be in, but he didn’t say when. I’m fed up waiting.”
“Yes, well, naturally.” Gert sounded warmer. “Sure, he ought to call you at least. I’ll see to it, Jill.”
At six o’clock Ray walked in and stood in the middle of the room with his coat on. He looked very stern and rigid. When Jill fluttered up to him he kissed her once with a hard little peck and pushed her away.
“Sit down, Blondie,” he said. “I’ve got to tell you something. I––– Well, let’s have a drink while we talk.”
“But what about your coat?”
“Oh, I can only stop a minute,” said Ray, but he took it off. He poured out the drinks and sat down and cleared his throat. “The fact is,” he said, “I’ve been caught sort of short, Blondie, and is my face red! My wife arrived yesterday.”
“Oh,” said Jill.
“Without notice,” said Ray belligerently. “I know what you must be thinking, but honestly, Blondie, I had no idea she was on the way. She’s never done a thing like that before. She didn’t tell anybody, as far as I can make out.”
“Where is she?” asked Jill. It was very difficult to talk, for her lips felt stiff as cardboard, and she had begun to shake with a chill.
“Now? Oh, she’s over at the Maskee waiting for me.”
“I mean–––”
“Why, she’s staying over at Jeff’s at the moment. There wasn’t room for her in my hotel room and they didn’t have a double, so we moved in on Gert.”
“We,” said Jill.
At her tone he looked up from his glass and met her eyes. “But I must have told you I was married, Blondie.”
“You know you didn’t,” she said.
“I–––Oh hell, I suppose I do. I’m not a very nice guy. I did tell you that. Besides, when I’m away from her I don’t work very hard at being married. It isn’t–we don’t always get along. Sometimes we talk about cutting it all out.… As a matter of fact, when I left her this time I thought it was more or less settled. That’s why I didn’t bother to mention it to you or anybody else. She was going to go ahead and file suit while I was away; that’s how I understood it. Well–she didn’t, that’s all. She decided she’d come out and take one more look at me and see what she thought of Macklin. So here she is.”
The cardboard lips were too stiff to manage this time. Jill remained silent.
“Don’t keep on looking at me, damn it,” said Ray. “I never said I wasn’t married, did I?”
She shook her head.
“And anyway, what difference can it make to you? A beautiful girl like Blondie can have a dozen fellows that amount to more than R. Macklin. Why any good-looking woman takes any man seriously is more than I––– Look here, Blondie, didn’t I tell you a hundred times not to take me seriously? Is it my fault you wouldn’t listen?”
She succeeded at last in forming words. “I wonder,” she said.
“What?”
“I wonder if you’re telling the truth now. I think you knew she was coming.”
“As God’s my witness, Blondie––”
“That’s no good,” said Jill harshly.
“Well, then, never mind Him. Ask Gert; she’ll be straight with you. Gert can tell you I was knocked all of a heap when Dorothy turned up.”
“But what are you going to do now? What about Dorothy and the rest of it? Do you like her? Do you–like her better than me?”
Ray stood up and began to walk around the room. “I haven’t figured it all out. She’s a queer girl. She does a lot of thinking on her own, and she always does things suddenly, like this–sort of hysterical. I haven’t anything against her, Blondie; you’ve got to listen to this. She hasn’t done anything I wouldn’t do. Now she’s got some kind of notion–there’s another fellow in California and she thinks maybe she likes him better than Macklin, so she came out just to take another look and make sure.”
Jill went over and filled her glass, which she had emptied at some moment when she wasn’t noticing what she did.
“So she had another look,” said Ray, “and–I do feel like a heel talking this way, Blondie.”
“Why? What were you going to say? Go on, say it.”
He ran his hand through his hair and smiled weakly. “She–– Oh hell, I feel like a dope–– Well, now she thinks she still likes Macklin better. The damn fool.”
She had her answer; she heard the complacent note in his voice. “So you’re staying with her.”
“Well–yes. For the time being, that is. It’s always that way with Dorothy and me,” he explained. “Not static.”
“Yes, I see. So you won’t be seeing) me any more, will you?”
He held out his hand anxiously. “Blondie, don’t be like that.”
“Well, how do you want me to be?” She asked the question without anger, as if she really wanted him to tell her, as if she would act on his suggestion without demur. “Would you like me to beg you to leave her?” she asked. “Or should I just cry? I—I don’t quite know how to behave, Ray. This never happened to me before.”
“Oh, come now, Blondie.” He had almost finished his second drink, and they had been strong ones. “Don’t tell me that,” he added. “It’s none of my business what you’ve done before I met you–well, it’s none of my business what you do now, come to think of it, but after all, we both know you weren’t any virgin. Hmmm?”
Jill sat on the couch and studied the pattern of her shoelace. After a moment’s silence Ray walked over and put his finger under her chin, turning her face up to him. “Come on now, be a good girl,” he said. “Isn’t that the truth? You’ve been awfully sweet to me, but, Blondie, Blondie, you know it isn’t the first time this has happened to you.”
She stared at him with wide eyes. “Well, all right,” she said. “If that’s the way you feel about it. I guess it’s the way you would feel, naturally. You didn’t quite understand what I meant. I don’t want to quarrel wi
th you, Ray.”
He still looked down at her, trying to smile. “You wouldn’t try to tell me you really love me, would you? Better than those other fellows–the Hungarian, for instance?”
“I wouldn’t,” said Jill, her eyes fixed on his, “if you don’t want me to. Do you?”
He did not reply.
“What do you want, Ray?” she asked. “ Oh well.…”She moved suddenly and walked over to his coat and held it out toward him. “Put it on,” she said, “before you get drunk. Put it on and go back to Dorothy.”
“I guess maybe I’d better.”
Helping him on with the coat, she said, “Does she know about me?”
“Well, not yet, but I expect I’ll tell her. It all depends on how we get on. We’ll probably have a fight sooner or later; we always do.”
“I see.”
“You don’t see,” he snapped. “Women never do.” He stopped at the door. “Blondie, I know I’m a heel.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Yes, I am. You know it too. Blondie, I’m sorry as all hell.”
“Oh, that’s all right, Ray, skip it. Go on along, for God’s sake.”
“Well, listen.” He stood sideways, talking to her with his face turned toward her as he stood in the doorway. “What about you?” he asked. “What are your plans?”
“You never asked me that before,” said Jill, and this time her voice was bitter. “Why ask me now?”
“Because I’ll be wanting to see you, maybe. Dorothy can’t just go on living here indefinitely, and if I’m not sent away just yet––– Look here, Blondie, I’m awfully fond of you. I can’t just say good-by like this. You see that yourself.”
“I suppose I do,” she thought. “Ray is still a little better than the ones I’m used to; he would have some sort of feeling, some shame or guilt, even after the crack about my past.”
“Where can I reach you if I get a chance?” he insisted.
She raised her head and took hold of the door.
“You know Annette’s in Tibet Road?” she said. “That’s where I’ll be when you want me.”
She started to close the door, but before it had quite cut off from her the sight of his shocked face she thought of one more thing she wanted to say.
“Only after this,” she said clearly, “it will cost you something.”
The door clicked shut.
“Well, there it is,” said Jill to Dr. Lionel Levy. “There’s the whole story, and I hope you haven’t been bored. I’d better be getting back to the house now.”
“No, it is not necessary yet. Or do you have an early date?”
He smiled before he remembered that she usually resented his smiles, and immediately she flared at him.
“Stop laughing at me, damn you!”
“How many times,” he said softly, “must I tell you that I laugh at nobody? Perhaps at you least of all.”
They were sitting in a little Russian cafe in Avenue Joffre, and her shrill cry had made the waiter jump nervously. Dr. Levy’s low voice and his words soothed both her and the waiter. She dropped her head and groped for her lipstick; the waiter walked back to the kitchen.
“Why me least of all?” she mumbled.
“Because you try to tell me honestly about these things, and I value that honesty.”
“I don’t know why,” she said. “I oughtn’t to talk like this except to somebody who knows how to listen.”
“But I am, I assure you, a trained listener.”
“Oh, I don’t mean you; I mean a priest. I used to think I could go and confess while I was going around with Ray. Then I’d think, Well, I’ll wait until things are going better and I won’t get such a scolding. I was waiting for results, don’t you see? And then all of a sudden I was worse than ever before.”
They sat facing each other across the narrow polished table, but her eyes were fixed on her handbag, and his were glazed. They sat in silence for a long time, each one alone and far away.
A sudden report in the darkening street outside brought them together again. It was not a gunshot, merely a truck backfiring, but they leaped and looked at each other with fresh eyes.
“No,” said Dr. Levy.
“No, I guess not,” said Jill. “Not yet. Listen, do you think we’ll have some more trouble here?”
“Oh, almost certainly,” said the doctor. “Almost without fail, I dare to make the prophecy. We have had no trouble at all yet. Did you think this one little spot can escape?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. The Japanese at Annette’s don’t talk very much about what’s coming, but they seem to be satisfied now with what they’ve got of Shanghai. After all, they do what they like; nobody stops them. They’ve got the post office and all the Chinese country outside, and they’ve got Nanking.”
She talked to him as if she were pleading, and as if he were refusing her plea, he shook his head. “Too easy,” he repeated. “Too easy. These good Chinese burghers have seen nothing as yet.”
“But they have. It was dreadful, what went on in the Chinese city. Tony’s cousins were telling us at the house–it was horrible. I cried.”
“Yes.”
Jill talked with urgency in her voice. “But now it’s settling down, and maybe everybody’s satisfied to leave it the way it is. I’m sure I don’t care. It isn’t any different for us at Annette’s, the way things are, except that we’ve got the Japanese now instead of those Chinese generals who used to come.”
“Then why,” asked Dr. Lionel Levy, “do you keep asking me about the future? I do not mind playing the soothsayer, but why do you keep worrying at this question like a little terrier?”
Jill shrugged.
“Very well,” said the doctor, “I will tell you why, shall I? Because you are not quite sure I am wrong, and Annette is talking again of selling her nice house and going away. Is it that?”
“Ray Macklin too,” said Jill. “Before they told him to go to Manila or Hong Kong or wherever he went. He told me to get out.”
“Ah, then you did see him again,” said the doctor.
“Oh yes.” Jill laughed abruptly and stopped short. “Sure I saw him again. He came to Annette’s to see me. Yes,” she said mockingly, forestalling him. “So! So! He came to Annette’s to see me, the way I told him to.”
She paused. Dr. Levy waited patiently, without speaking. At last she felt pushed to continue. “Weeks after I’d come back to work,” she said, “he came in and asked for me, and I didn’t happen to be out or upstairs with anybody. I’ve been sorry sometimes that I wasn’t upstairs. It would have been good for him.” Sensing the viciousness of her tone, she stopped a minute in order to quiet down. “Anyway, he behaved pretty well; he acted just like he was meeting me for a date somewhere else, in a hotel or something, having a drink the way we used to. He told me he was being sent away soon, the real thing this time. Because the war was going to break pretty soon and his people wanted him to be somewhere else; I don’t know why. I guess they figured wrong, like most newspapers. I used to wonder, after everything did start, if he’d come back with all the other reporters, but if he did I never heard about it.”
“Was that all he wanted to say?”
“Just about all. Oh, he did talk a lot of nonsense about my being at Annette’s. He said he was afraid he had sent me there or something, and if there was anything in the world he could do in the way of–well, money…”
Dr. Levy, noticing the waiter’s wistful stare from the kitchen, signaled him for the bill. Jill glanced at her watch and picked up her gloves.
“He told me something else, too,” she said. “He was sending his wife away because he didn’t feel easy about things here; I think she meant to go to Hong Kong and then wherever she felt like. He wanted me to get out of here too. He kept asking me to promise him. I guess it was nice of him to worry. I thought so then, anyway. But I’ve never gone.”
“You must wait a minute,” said Dr. Levy. “I am waiting for my change. Do not be
so nervous. There is plenty of time.”
“Annette doesn’t like me just being social,” said Jill, smiling. “You’re not a regular customer. You shouldn’t take up so much of my time.”
“You know why I do not become a customer,” he said.
“Well, as a matter of fact, I don’t. I’ve known a lot of doctors, but they’re usually just the same as other men.”
“Perhaps that is the truth. Well, I shall try to explain. I don’t go upstairs with you, Jill, for two reasons. First, I am conceited and I should like you to remember me always as somebody a little unlike the others.”
“Remember?” asked Jill. “Are you going away?”
“Who knows? In my life friends are always being swept apart. But I have another reason. I am somewhat of a neurotic, but I am in the main a normal man. I am a young man. I, too, must have my illusions. You understand?”
“No, I don’t,” said Jill. “But anyway, I never asked you. It’s your own affair what you do with your money. I like talking to you, though you’re not the priest.”
“Oh no,” admitted Dr. Lionel, “I am not the priest.… But about Macklin, you have not finished with him. You left him in the middle of Annette’s drawing room.”
“The hell I did,” said Jill. “We went upstairs in the end.”
“So.”
“So. He paid full price for it too; there was never anything mean about Ray. I will say that for him.”
She fell into a silence so somber that this time it was Dr. Levy who suggested they go.
XIII
“You’d ought to get out of town right now, Jill,” said Annette. “That’s my honest opinion for what it’s worth.”
Jill sat glumly, her chin on her fist, and stared with blank eyes at the polished radio in Annette’s private sitting room.
“Don’t you see, if it was only the International Settlement, Bob could do something with the boys,” said the fat woman. “It’s these awful Frenchmen that always make the trouble for me. That’s why I left Frenchtown, as well you know. In the end it’ll come to a shakedown–even Bob can’t keep the boys from taking their cut once in a while–and frankly, Jill, you’re not worth it to me just now. No one girl would be. I’ve paid all I’m going to for protection till the end of the year.”