“Ray,” the woman said. “Ray, baby. Fetch me a towel, will you?”

  And Norville knew he was listening to the voice of Lorene Devereux.

  Raymond Hardy winked at him, his lips set in a smirk.

  “You savvy?” he said.

  Then he closed the door.

  Norville started walking. He walked past the Old Cathedral and thought for a moment about going in, but it’d been so long since he’d been inside a church he thought he had no right. He walked across the river bridge into Westport and stopped at the Showboat. The grill was hot now, and the joint was full with the breakfast crowd. Norville was surprised to discover he was famished. He sat down at a table and ordered eggs over easy, and hash browns, and a short stack of pancakes. “And coffee,” he told the waitress. He wanted it black and strong.

  “You got it, sugar,” she said. She was a woman near to his age with thick black hair and elegant hands, long-fingered and neatly manicured. He imagined what it would be like to hold one of them, to feel her fingers intertwine with his. He wanted to ask her name, but before he could screw up his courage, she said, “You work at the Grand Hotel, don’t you?”

  “That’s right. Do I know you?”

  “You wouldn’t have any reason to know me.” She finished writing out his order and then stuck her pencil into that thick black hair just above her left ear. He knew she was busy, and yet she lingered. “But I’ve seen you sometimes when I come past the Grand on my way to work. I saw you this morning out in front, helping a man with his suitcase. You looked chipper. You looked like you were ready to take on the world.”

  Just a short time ago, the morning had seemed fresh and clear to him, and the day was full of possibilities. Then he bounded up the stairs to Raymond Hardy’s, and in an instant everything changed. Now here was this woman who had taken notice of him. What about that?

  “It’s going to be sunny and clear today,” he said to her, “with temps approaching eighty-three degrees.”

  “Summer’s stretching on, isn’t it?” The waitress smiled at him. “I’m Ruth,” she said. “I’ll get that order right in for you.”

  “Norville,” he said. “My name is Norville.”

  “Sure it is, sugar.” Ruth gave him a wink. “I already knew that.”

  He watched her walk away, swiveling her hips to squeeze between the tables. She had on a pair of black and white plaid pedal pushers and a white sleeveless blouse. Her arms were thin and tanned. Her name was Ruth. And she knew his name.

  He ate like a thresher. He shoveled in eggs and potatoes and pancakes. He asked for toast with lots of butter and jelly. He ate like a man who’d nearly forgotten how to eat, a man who’d long been missing the goodness of food.

  “Look at you go,” Ruth said with a laugh. “You must have been starved.”

  “I was,” he said. “I surely was.”

  He was thinking of the long years of his bachelorhood. Night after night alone, picking at meager meals cooked for one, opening a can of Campbell’s soup, perhaps, or frying a single pork chop. He ate slowly trying to delay the end of the meal, when he would have to rise and face the rest of the evening. Off to work at eleven in the general quiet of the Grand. On occasion, he had a few words of conversation with late-arriving guests or ones checking out early, like he had today with Charlie Camplain. His closest human interactions were with people he’d never again see, people just passing through his life.

  Even his time with Lorene had its restrictions. They might have supper together and a quick walk before she was off to bed and he had to go to work. Mornings, she was getting ready for work when he was leaving the Grand, or, as he’d found out this morning, waking up in the bed of Raymond Hardy. He could see her at lunch if he didn’t mind sacrificing his sleep. He remembered they had a lunch date scheduled on this very day. Would she be there? Would Raymond Hardy have told her how he showed up at the apartment this morning? What if Norville were to keep that lunch date and not let on that he knew about her and Raymond. That was something to chew on.

  Finally, Norville laid down his knife and fork. His gut strained against the belt of his trousers. He dabbed his sweaty forehead with his napkin.

  Ruth brought him his ticket. “Can I get you anything else?”

  He shook his head. “I’m afraid I’ve been a bit of a glutton.”

  “I just love to see a man eat the way you do.” She leaned over the table and started stacking saucers and plates. She smelled of hot grease from the kitchen, but underneath that scent was a sweeter one, a perfume of flowers—just a faint aroma, but enough to make Norville want to press his face to her hair. “You come back and see us anytime,” she said.

  “Oh, I will,” he said. “You can count on that.”

  At the cash register, Dick Dollahan was chewing on a cigar. Norville knew him because on occasion Dick booked “special guests” into the Grand. Rumor had it they were young ladies meant to provide companionship for VIP gamblers who came from out of town to play in private high-stakes poker games in the Showboat’s back room.

  “Are these girls prostitutes?” Norville asked him one night. Dick gave him a grin. He put his arm across Norville’s shoulders and pulled him in so close he could smell cigar smoke and whisky and Old Spice.

  “Don’t you know prostitution is illegal in Indiana?”

  Now Dick asked him if his breakfast had been to his liking.

  “Very much so,” Norville said. “Your waitress, Ruth, she’s top-notch.”

  “You like her, do you?”

  “She treated me fine.”

  “Ruth has a way about her. I’ve known her a long time.”

  Norville fished a few ones out of his billfold. “Local gal, is she?”

  Dick punched the total into the cash register and the change drawer sprang open with a bing. “Lives on Second Street, two blocks down from the Grand. Little bungalow with a blue gazing ball in the yard. You musta been by it a million times.”

  He had indeed, and never once had he known a thing about who lived there. Norville held out his hand for his change. That’s when he saw it resting against the wall behind Dick—the oxblood leatherette suitcase, the one with the brass latches and the monogram that told him it was the same case that belonged to Charlie Camplain.

  “How’d you come to have that case?” Norville asked.

  Dick glanced back at it. “Fella brought it in early this morning. Said he needed someplace to leave it, said he’d be back for it later. A real spiffy fella.”

  “Maroon necktie?”

  “A crazy pattern on it.” Dick rubbed his eyes. “Circles in circles. Enough to make me dizzy.”

  Norville nodded. “I checked him out of the Grand this morning.”

  “He said it was a special day. Sorta gave me a boost just to be around him.”

  “I know what you mean, but there’s something fishy about that guy. He had a gun in his pocket. A snub-nosed .38.”

  “What’s he carrying a gun for?”

  “Said he was a traveling man and he couldn’t take a chance.”

  Dick took the cigar out of his mouth and studied it. “A real friendly fella.”

  As he took his change from Dick Dollahan, Norville felt a heavy hand clamp down on his shoulder.

  “Looks like you’ll serve anyone these days, Dick.”

  Norville knew without turning around that the voice belonged to Raymond Hardy.

  “Anyone with cash,” Dick said with a laugh.

  Raymond Hardy slapped Norville on the back. “I guess that’s one thing Norville’s got. Probably got the first dollar he ever made.”

  Norville opened his billfold and slipped the two ones that Dick Dollahan had given him in with his other cash.

  “I think I just saw a moth fly out,” Raymond Hardy said. “Did you see it, too, Dick?”

  “Flew right past my ear,” Dick Dollahan said.

  Ruth was passing by with a fresh pot of coffee. She was chuckling, and Norville imagined she thought she was overhearing some good-natured ribbing. She didn’t know Raymond Hardy had no intention of being friendly.

  He swatted her on the fanny as she passed. She turned back and waved her free hand at him. “Oh, you,” she said in a way that pretended to be angry, but Norville could tell she was secretly pleased.

  He said to Raymond Hardy, “I hear you like to play fast and loose with your money. Word is you’re a careless man.”

  The smile faded from Raymond Hardy’s face. His nostrils flared, and he closed his hands into fists. The conversation had taken a sharp turn. It wasn’t about joking and ribbing any longer. It was personal and pointed, and Norville knew it would be clear to anyone who was nearby that they each disliked the other.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Raymond Hardy said.

  “It would be ungentlemanly for me to say.” Norville put his billfold in his hip pocket. “But I understand that you’ve had reason to pay for the services of a certain doctor. More than once, or so I’ve heard. Perhaps you also play fast and loose with your affections.”

  Raymond Hardy smirked. “You don’t know a thing. You’re trying to make something out of nothing.”

  “I don’t imagine it was nothing to the women involved. I suspect it was very much something to them.”

  “Some people make mistakes.” Raymond Hardy gave Dick Dollahan a wink. “Other people make mistakes go away.”

  Ruth was passing by again. “What are you boys talking about?”

  Raymond Hardy glared at Norville, daring him to say something more, but Norville didn’t.

  Finally, just as the silence was starting to get uncomfortable, Raymond said, “We’re just gassing. That’s all. Just pulling each other’s leg. Right, Norville?”

  Norville nodded. Immediately he hated himself for doing that, and by so doing, sanctioning Raymond Hardy’s behavior. “I’ll be seeing you,” Norville said to Dick Dollahan.

  “Leaving so soon?” Raymond Hardy said. “Slipping away just when things are starting to get interesting. What are you? Some sort of wet blanket?”

  Ruth laughed again. “Don’t be a wet blanket, Norville.”

  It was at that moment that Norville made up his mind. He’d go to Gimbels. He’d keep his lunch date with Lorene. He’d promised her he’d be there, and so he would. He’d keep his word. He’d try to be a man to whom that still meant something.

  “I’ve got a clear conscience,” he said.

  6

  THE RADIO TOWER CAME INTO view, and that was when Charlie knew he was close. WAKO in big red letters. The cab was still running through the river-bottom farmland—fields of corn and pumpkins—but there was that radio tower and the town beyond it and the high school, and the love of his life, who would soon be his, as she was meant to be since they’d fallen for each other when they were both students at Eastern Illinois University.

  “That’s Lawrenceville, right?” Charlie pointed at the radio tower.

  “Yes, sir,” said Grinny. He’d kept his yap shut ever since Charlie had to get firm with him in the parking lot of the Showboat. “That’s where you want to go, right?”

  “Oh, yes, my friend. That is indeed where I want to go.”

  Because her name was De Belle and his was Camplain, they ended up sitting next to each other in an English Literature class at Eastern in the autumn of 1948. Their seats were near the tall windows on the west side of Old Main, a castle-like building with wide marble halls and doors with transoms and an auditorium for assembly each morning, where the student body heard inspirational speeches, learned about world events, and received lessons on decorum. Little by little in the classroom, as the afternoon lengthened, the sun slanted first across him and then across her, and in the warmth he started to imagine a life for them. He even said to himself, though he knew how corny it would sound if he heard someone else say it, “Charlie, old pal, you’re going to marry that girl someday.”

  One afternoon, as the prof, an ancient man with a humped back and a pink face, droned on about Robert Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,” she leaned toward him and whispered, “It’s nice, isn’t it? The sun?”

  He could smell her perfume, a flowery scent that reminded him of the gardens outside Walter Reed, where he’d liked to sit while he waited to see what the doctors might do for the nerve damage in his ear, until they finally gave up and fitted him with a hearing aid and sent him home. In those first weeks, when he moved through the world of muted tones, it was practically a relief after the noise of the war and his work on the demolition crew. He liked to sit in the sunlit gardens and close his eyes and take in the scents of freshly cut grass and roses and to dream of moments like this: a girl who smelled of flowers, and whose hair fell in waves over her collar, and who smiled at him, the way Miss Jean De Belle was doing now.

  Was it his imagination, or had she said something to him? He wished his good ear was turned toward her. He reached for the volume control of his hearing aid, but it was too late. She’d already turned her attention back to the prof, and to Charlie it now seemed that her lips were set in a tight line. He feared he’d ruined his chance. He waited until the class was over, meaning to say something to her—something charming and maybe a bit flirtatious—but he couldn’t think of the right words, and, much to his regret, he watched Miss Jean De Belle gather up her books and walk out of the room, leaving him all the more enchanted with her.

  Then one evening, when he was walking across the quad from the library to the student union, he saw her standing alone in the light cast by one of the lamps that lined the walkway. She was just standing there, her books cradled to her chest, her face tipped down as if she were studying her loafers or her white ankle socks. She had on a long wool coat and a head scarf tied under her chin. The first cold snap of autumn had come in, and most of the students were skittering along in a hurry to be somewhere warm. She looked so forlorn standing there alone. Charlie felt his heart go out to her.

  “Waiting for someone?” he said.

  She lifted her head and looked at him, and that’s when he saw that she’d been crying. Her eyes were red, and her cheekbones were damp with tears.

  “Cold, isn’t it?” he said. “My eyes always water in the cold.”

  She gave him a hesitant smile. “It’s not the cold,” she said. “It’s just...” She bit her lip, unable to continue, and then the tears came in earnest, and before Charlie could think what to do, she said, “I have to go.” She turned and hurried on up the walkway, her hand pressed to her mouth, her steps growing longer until she was practically running.

  Charlie stood there in the cold and watched her go. He felt all alive inside his skin, the way he had when he worked demo in the Army and he hit that moment of pause just before the detonation, that silence when he anticipated the explosion. Like then, he knew that something was going to happen. He didn’t know what it might be, but he was fairly certain that something was going to happen between him and Jean De Belle.

  So he wasn’t surprised when, the next day in their English Literature class, she passed him a note. She stared straight ahead at the prof while Charlie unfolded the piece of notebook paper and began to read. She didn’t look at him then, or when he was finished. She didn’t look at him the entire class. At the end of it, she gathered up her books and left the room without a word, leaving him to read the note again and again, although really there was no need since he’d already memorized it:

  You must think me a silly goose for the way I acted last night. Please forgive my rudeness. Meet me at the pond tonight at 7, and I’ll explain. That is, if you want me to. If you don’t show, I’ll understand. Probably the last thing you need is a silly goose like me. Yours, Jean.

  Would he show? Boy, howdy! Over and over, he read the words Yours, Jean. Then he got a move on. He needed a haircut. He needed to iron a shirt and press his trousers. Should he wear a coat and tie? He had to polish his shoes. And here it was nearly four thirty. Time to shake a leg, because he had a date tonight with the girl who had long visited his dreams. She was his. She’d said so. Yours, Jean.

  The pond was on the other side of Fourth Street, on the west edge of the campus. Charlie followed the path that countless students had worn into the grass. He checked his wristwatch and saw that he’d been overanxious. It was only six thirty. A half an hour to kill before Jean arrived. He should have stayed a bit longer in the room he rented in a house on Seventh Street, but geez, it was so hard to sit still. He’d shaved and dressed by six, and then he paced back and forth, stopping at the dormer window that looked out onto the street. He could see the turrets at Old Main and students passing through the glow of the streetlamps on campus. The girls had scarves tied under their chins and car coats buttoned to their throats. Some of the boys wore earmuffs and kept their hands jammed into the pockets of their jackets. They all hurried along as if they had somewhere to go and short time to get there.

  Well, Charlie had somewhere to go, too, and the longer he waited, the smaller his room seemed to get. How many nights had he opened a can of soup and warmed it in a pan on his hotplate and eaten it with saltine crackers and sardines in that room while listening to the distant sound of music playing on radios in other rooms, and the chummy yackety-yak-yak of the other boys who lived in the house? Just gassing about anything—a Trig exam, the basketball team, the girls they’d like to... But then someone called out a name—maybe it was Bill, or Peanut, or Harry or Dale. “You wanna come along? Hey, you wanna come, too?” Then it was a madhouse: fists knocking on doors, those doors opening and closing, feet pounding down the stairway, calls of “Hey, wait up. Wait for me.”

  No one ever knocked on Charlie’s door. Sometimes he turned off his hearing aid so the noise would be more distant, so it would be noise and nothing more than that.

  They were all kids, full of piss and vinegar but barely dry behind the ears. What did they know—what did any of them know—about what it was to be him? “The Old Man,” they called him under the guise of good-humored camaraderie. But Charlie knew what they really thought of him. He’d heard them call him another name. “Maybe we ought to ask the dummy if he wants to come along.” “What? What say?” “Exactly. Who wants to have to shout all night.”

 

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