A. Fair - Owls Don't Blink

“I told you it was.”

“Why, I like it. It’s a delightful drink. Much better than the conventional Scotch and soda. It has just enough body without having a cloying sweetness.”

Marilyn sipped her cold tea and said, “I like this bourbon and plain water. It’s a nice drink — when you’re doing quite a bit of drinking.”

Hale seemed shocked. He looked her over and said, “Do you do a lot of drinking?”

“Oh, off and on.”

His eyes looked her over, searching for evidences of extreme dissipation.

“Cigarette?” I asked her.

“Please.”

I gave her a cigarette. Hale took a cigar. We lit up.

“Where are you boys from?” she asked.

I said, “My friend’s from New York.”

“Must be quite a city. I’ve never been there. I think I’d be afraid to go.”

“Why?” Hale asked her.

“Oh, I don’t know. Big cities terrify me. I know I couldn’t find my way around.”

Hale contrived to cast himself in the role of cosmopolite by saying, “I think New York is an easy city to get around in. Chicago and Saint Louis are much more difficult.”

“They’re all too big for me.”

“If you ever come to New York, let me know, and I’ll see that you don’t get lost.”

“Or stolen?” she asked, her eyes laughing.

“Yes.”

“How about strayed?”

“Well,” Hale deliberated, and glanced at me. A smirk began forming about the comers of his mouth. “If you stay with me, you won’t stray very far.”

“No-o-o-o?” she asked with just the right rising inflection, using her eyes.

Hale laughed as though he’d received a shot of vitamins. “I like this drink, Lam. I like it very much. I’m certainly glad you called my attention to it. I like this New Orleans type of nightclub, so cosy, so intimate, so typical of the French Quarter. There’s a certain distinctive, informal atmosphere which you wouldn’t find anywhere else, eh?”

I grinned across at Marilyn and said, “I’ll give you one guess as to who’s having a good time.”

“I don’t think you are.”

“What makes you think so?”

“You haven’t said so.”

“I’m the strong, silent type!”

Rosalind walked by. Marilyn looked at her as a watchdog might look at a tramp. Rosalind gave me no sign. Marilyn looked away, and I got a quick, intimate, split-second smile; then her face was a dead blank once more.

I ground out my cigarette in the ash tray, dropped my hand to my coat pocket, and surreptitiously dumped all of the cigarettes except one out of the package.

Hale said, “I think this is one of the most delightful drinks I’ve ever tasted.”

Marilyn tossed off the rest of her cold tea, said, “If you take two or three of them one right after the other, you really feel good. But you never get high on them, just a pleasant glow.”

“Is that so?”

She nodded.

“I like to sip a drink like this,” Hale said.

I said, “Be a sport and drink it down. Marilyn wants us to buy another drink.”

Her eyes caressed me. “How did you know?”

“I’m psychic,”

“I believe you are.” Her hand came across the table to rest on mine.

The psychic one was the waiter. He materialized by the table without any apparent signal.

“Fill them up again,” I said.

I took the cigarette package from my pocket, extended it to Marilyn. “How about another one?”

“Thanks.”

She took it, and I fumbled around in the package with my forefinger.

“I believe I took the last one,” she said.

I shook the package, grinned, crushed it, said, “That’s all right. I’ll get more.”

“The waiter will bring some.”

“No. This is fine, thanks. I see a machine over there.”

I held a match to her cigarette, shook it out, got up, and walked over to the cigarette-vending machine. I pretended I was out of change, and went over to the bar to get some. After getting the package of cigarettes, I paused by the pinball machine and played a game. While I was doing that I slid my right hand down into my coat pocket, got hold of the discarded cigarettes I’d slipped out from the other package, crumbled them into a ball, and dropped them unobtrusively on the floor.

I finished my game on the pinball machine and managed to ring up a couple of free games.

I looked back over at the table. Marilyn was watching me, but Hale was leaning forward, pouring conversation into her ear. The three new drinks were on the table.

I waved my hand, called out, “This is velvet,” and turned back to the pinball machine.

Rosalind walked up to the cigarette-vending machine, fumbled in her purse for coins, said out of the comer of her mouth, “Don’t look up.”

I kept playing the pinball machine.

“Don’t make any play for me. It would cost me my job. She’s interested in you. When you walked out on her, it knocked her for a loop. But-don’t go overboard.”

“Why?”

“You’d be sorry.”

“Thanks.”

She picked up her cigarettes and turned away.

I swung around so I could see the mirror over the bar. Marilyn was watching her with the cold, unwinking stare of a snake regarding a young bird that has just fluttered to the ground.

I kept on shooting balls in the machine, used up my two free games, started feeding in coins.

Hale was really going to town. He’d worked up a lot of enthusiasm now, making gestures with his hands, looking in Marilyn’s eyes, occasionally letting his glance stray down to the bare shoulders.

I went back to the table.

Emory Hale was saying, “—ex ceed ingly fascinating.”

Marilyn was giving him the steady eye. She said, “I’m glad you think so because I find mature people so much more interesting than the men of my own age. Somehow those younger men can’t seem to hold my attention. After a little while they bore me to distraction. Now why is that, Emory? Is there something wrong with me?”

He beamed across at her. At that particular moment he didn’t know I was anywhere in the country and she couldn’t see me without turning.

“Go on,” she pleaded. “If you know why it is, tell me.”

I cleared my throat. Neither of them looked up.

He said, “It’s because, my dear, you have such a fine mind. You can’t be interested in the mediocre banalities of adolescent conversation. Despite your beautiful body and your very evident youth, it’s quite apparent that you—”

I backed up a few steps, coughed loudly, and came walking toward the table.

Marilyn said, “We thought we’d lost you.”

“I went to buy some cigarettes.”

“I’ll take one,” she said.

Hale kept looking at her while I opened the package.

“How’s the pinball machine?” Marilyn asked.

“Pretty fair. I won a few.”

“Cash in?”

“No. Played back.”

“I always do that. They say it’s foolish. You should cash in your winnings.”

“I can’t see that it makes much difference.”

“If you don’t cash them in, the machine eventually cleans you.”

“It does anyway.”

She thought that over.

Emory Hale cleared his throat. “As I was saying, it is very seldom that one finds a mind capable of developing the mature outlook before—”

She said, “Oh, there’s the waiter — looking over this way. I guess he sees my glass is empty. He’s such a funny chap. Do you know if I sit here with an empty glass, he’ll stand there and stare at us as though he was trying to hypnotize me. Why, you have a drink there which you haven’t touched, Donald.”

I said, “That’s right. I should have taken it over to the pinball machine with me. Well, here’s happy days.”