Джон Макдональд - More Good Old Stuff

“Drink your brandy,” he said.

“You know I don’t drink, Jerry.”

Max grunted as though somebody had shoved an elbow into the pit of his stomach. “Baby, look around. They’ve gone. And you need the brandy.”

She let go of his hand, picked up the shot glass. “Right down?”

“Down the hatch.”

She knocked it back, thumped the glass down, gasping, coughing, strangling, new tears in her eyes. “Fooo!” she said.

He watched color come back into her cheeks. “Sit right here,” he said. Stukey was watching too curiously. He went up to the bar, paid the tab, went back to the table and got her and walked her out into the late-afternoon sun. She clung to his arm. Usually Max did not care for the clingers, but this one made him feel very masterful. She was taller than he had thought, and she wasn’t too steady on her feet.

“Where are we going, Jerry?” she asked. Her voice had the small and faintly faraway tinge that her eyes had — as though she talked to someone a few feet behind Max.

He stopped twenty feet from the door of Stukey’s and said, “Let’s straighten this out, kid. I’m not Jerry.”

She moved away from him. Her eyes widened. Her mouth began to work. She began to make a hoarse moaning sound. Max had seen many ladies putting on an act. This was no act.

She looked as though she were about to run from him, screaming. He took three steps toward her, grabbed her shoulders and shook her gently. “Hey,” he said. “Sure I’m Jerry. I was kidding, baby.”

Right in the street, in the sunlight, she came into his arms, saying hoarsely, “Don’t do that to me again, Jerry. Please don’t.”

Some urchins witnessed the deal, and did considerable hooting and whistling.

Max walked down the street with her and he felt oddly like a man juggling a hand grenade after the pin had been pulled. He had begun to feel a certain responsibility. So, if he had to be Jerry, he had to be Jerry.

“When did you eat last, kid?” he said.

“I... I don’t know.”

Hiram’s was two blocks away. Not worth taxi fare. They took a booth in the back and she wanted her steak medium well. She ate without taking her eyes from Max’s face and he began to think that this Jerry was one lucky character.

Finally he had a play figured out. He grinned at her, his lips a bit stiff, and said, “Honey, we’ll pretend we just met, hey?”

“That would be nice.”

“Glad to meet you, miss. My name’s Jerry Glockenspiel.”

“Silly! Your name’s Jerry Norma. I’m Marylen Banner.” She gravely shook his hand.

Max frowned. He said absently, “Hi, Marylen.” The name Jerry Norma had rung a tiny bell way back in his mind. Jerry Norma had, at one time or another, been news. Not big news. Something about the size of a page three quarter column.

In a low voice that shook with emotion, she said, “Why did you do it, Jerry? Why did you run out on me like that?”

Max sighed inwardly. Boy ditches girl. Girl goes off the beam. Tired old story. Better get along with her, turn her over for observation.

“I shouldn’t have done it.”

“You were just pretending, weren’t you?”

“Sure. Just pretending.”

She said softly, her head tilted on one side, “The lights, the way they came on so quickly. And that concrete floor. The black drops. You walked away and the lights came on and then all that noise like thunder. You doubled over and fell so slowly, Jerry. And then — when I ran to you—”

She stopped and put the back of her hand to her forehead, her shadowed eyes closed. With the smudges washed off, she was delicately beautiful.

Max shut his jaw hard. He ground out his cigarette and, keeping his voice level and calm, he said, “You thought I was shot, eh?”

Her eyes snapped open. “Shot? I... I... can’t remember.”

“I walked away from you and the lights came on.”

“I think you left me sitting in the car, Jerry. Yes, in the car.”

“Then the car was inside. A garage, wasn’t it?”

“Now it’s fading away, Jerry. I can’t remember. I can’t.”

Suddenly she looked around, at the tabletop, at the floor under the bench. “My purse! I’ve lost my purse!”

“You didn’t have it when you found me in that bar, Marylen. Can you remember where you were before that?”

“I don’t know, Jerry. I was looking for you for a long time.”

He realized that she spoke well, that her clothes were smart, though not extremely expensive or shining new.

“I’ll take you home, Marylen. Where do you live?”

“Please stop teasing me, Jerry. Please. I’m too tired to take very much.”

Max stared at her. “Look, I just plain forgot where you were staying here.”

“Don’t you remember, Jerry? You met me at the train. We were going to find a hotel for me and then you said that when we were married I could move into your place. But my purse! All my money was in the purse. Everything.”

“Now I remember. You came on the train from Chicago.”

“Jerry, are you losing your mind? From New Orleans! When you wrote me I gave up my job and found another girl to take over my share of the apartment on Burgundy Street. And I came to you as fast as I could, darling.”

Max ran a finger around the inside edge of his collar. “Sure, kid. Sure.”

“What will we do?” she asked. “We checked all my things at the station and my baggage checks were in my purse.”

“Maybe we could get in touch with your folks.”

“You say such queer things, Jerry Norma. I told you what happened to my folks. It was so long ago that I hardly remember them. I told you about my guardian and how there was just enough money for school, and then nothing.”

“What am I going to do with you?” Max asked helplessly.

“You have plenty of money, Jerry, darling. Find me a room and tomorrow we’ll shop together for what I need — to be married in.”

Suddenly she winced, leaned low over the table and said, “Jerry, I’m sick. I’m so sick...”

When he had the cab waiting outside, he went back to the table and got her. She leaned heavily against him, walked with her head down, eyes half closed. People stared at them with wry amusement, thinking that she was drunk.

He said to the driver, “Memorial Hospital, and snap it up.”

But three blocks further on, he leaned forward and said, “Changed my mind. Take us to Bleecker Street.”

He paid off the cab, walked her up the three steps, held her in his left arm while he got the key in the door. She collapsed completely inside the door, and he picked her up in his arms, carrying her like a child. Gruber, the superintendent-janitor, came out into the hall, stared at him, then grinned.

Max snapped, “Pick up her hat and hand it to me. Then get hold of my friend Doc Morrison across the street.”

He stepped with her into the elevator as Gruber went out the front door. He had to put her on the floor while he got his door key and opened his front door. The tiny living room of his apartment was rancid with stale smoke, thick with dust. Through the open bedroom doorway he could see the unmade bed. He turned sideways to get her through the narrow door, her head hanging loosely, her arm swinging.

He grunted as he lowered her onto the bed. Then he went to the window, stood smoking a cigarette, his back to her, until he heard the knock on the door.

Morrison was young, dark, quick. He put his bag on the floor, went over to her, took her pulse. “What’s wrong with her?”

“You’re the doctor. She’s not loaded, if that’s what you mean.”

“Then get out and shut the door.”

Max sat in the armchair. He picked up a newspaper, found that he wasn’t getting any sense out of the words. He flipped it aside.