James Cain - The Cocktail Waitress

“… How come you know my last name?”

“I said: We’ve met before.”

“We haven’t-I’ve never seen you before.”

“It’s possible you didn’t notice me that day-but we met, I assure you. You live in a bungalow, just up a ways from this place. I called for you there, took you home there, and stayed by your side in between.” “… When was this?”

He named the day in June, and I felt the blood leave my face, for it was the day Ron was buried. I stared at him, and suddenly asked: “Who are you? And what is this, anyway?”

“Barclay’s my name,” he said in a casual way. “Thomas Barclay- Tom. I took the place of a friend’s son, Jim Lacey’s son Dan, who couldn’t respond to the undertaker’s call because he’d been out with me the night before. We’d gotten to drinking, I’m afraid-and you’ve seen for yourself how that can end up. But if Dan had simply failed to show, he’d have gotten the one more black mark the school had told him he couldn’t afford-in a word, he’d have been expelled. So his father asked if I would sub in: go for you in the car, pick you up and ride you over to the cemetery that day, and then ride you back. I didn’t much want to, I’ll admit, but his father’s an important man and I did it. And I was awfully glad I did. When you waved me goodbye, then blew me a kiss from the porch-”

“I? Blew you a kiss? You blew one to me, I recall, but I did no such thing.”

“I’m here to tell you you did. I couldn’t see your face as you had on a veil. I never did see it, that day. But I saw your hand move, under it and out.”

“Do you hear? I did not blow you a kiss.”

“I’m sorry, I was sure you did.”

“I may have fussed with the veil.”

“But you did see me blow you one?”

“I couldn’t very well help it. And I confess I was greatly surprised. It seemed a piece of insolence, to a woman bereaved as I was.”

“I wouldn’t have done it if you hadn’t done it first. It was only polite to respond in kind.”

“I see, so you were being polite.”

“If that makes you happier to receive it, certainly, let’s say it was politeness.”

“I’d believe it more if you hadn’t made so much just now of how unforgettable my legs are.”

“Can’t a man have two reasons?”

“He can have as many as he wishes. It’s no concern of mine.”

“Mrs. Medford, I apologize. I’ve made a terrible impression. I’d like to make it up to you. But I see here is not the place to do it-not with you waiting on me, and people watching. What would you say to my taking you out? Somewhere private, when you get through, some place where we can talk and get better acquainted.”

“Thank you, that wouldn’t please me.”

He had a way of smiling, a way of holding his head cocked slightly, that defied you to dislike him. “It might. You never know.”

I struggled not to show any response. It was more of a struggle than it should have been. My heart had been warring with my head since the first moment I’d seen him, or perhaps it was something lower down inside me than my heart, and the battle wasn’t over yet. “Will there be anything else?”

He put up his hands in surrender. “What do I owe you?”

“I’ll get you your check for the seltzer.”

Taking me home that night, it was Liz who began talking about him. “Not to be nosey,” she said, “but did Tom Barclay settle that check? The one he walked out on last night?”

“The young man I slapped, you mean?”

“I’d say you more or less beat him up, but yes he’s the one I mean.”

“Yes, he paid it.”

“I saw him, drinking seltzer for a change.”

“And quite an improvement, I would say.”

“He really is O.K.,” Liz said, and drove along a while further. “Look, I saw what he did. And I’d have been hot, too. I hate that kind of stuff, always have, always will. It’s one thing if they pay for the privilege, but …” She smiled over at me. I had a hard time smiling back. “But, boys will be boys, way I look at it-they got hands, and what God gave them to use, they’re going to use come hell and high water-nothing’s going to stop them, let’s face it. But, if they apologize, if they show they got some respect, then O.K., life can go on-no use being sore. What I’m trying to say is, now he’s been in, now he’s apologized, you could think that guy over, Joan. I mean, for kind of a steady, go out with him after work, maybe ask him up to the house, you might like it, just for a change. And who knows? It might really lead you somewhere. Things like that happen, occasionally. I wouldn’t smack him out.”

“You trying to sell me this guy?”

“He’s hardly unpleasant to look at, and he’s got prospects. You could do worse, Joanie.”

“And who says he’s sold on me?”

“He could have done some talking. His talk could have got to me. O.K., then, I spill it: He told one of the guys last night he’d met you before-and that you made quite an impression on him. Supposedly he didn’t realize it was you in the Garden, first off, but then from your legs he knew you. I don’t get it, Joanie, why your legs, not your face-”

“He escorted me to Ron’s funeral.”

“And why wouldn’t he know your face? It’s pretty enough, I’d say. If I was a guy, I wouldn’t forget it, I don’t think.”

“I was wearing a veil.”

“Oh? Then it checks out, Joanie!”

“Yes, he was telling the truth. He took me.”

“O.K., then, I’d think him over if I was you.”

“Why? Is he anybody special? Or just because you and Bianca have known him since he was a pup?”

“He’s nobody special-not yet. But he’s one of those you just know will be. Tom Barclay’s got an ambition that means something. He’s got all sorts of big ideas.”

“Like what?’

“I don’t remember them all. There was one about clearing all the nettles out of Chesapeake Bay using the hot-water overflow from one of those atomic energy plants.”

“That’s his idea? We’d all be irradiated in no time.”

“Well, he’s had others.”

“Any that succeeded?”

“Some he said have come close.”

“He said.”

“Don’t count him out,” Liz said. “He’s a thinker, our Tom, and one of these days he’ll think up something that’ll turn the world on its ear.”

“I’ll wait till he does.”

“Oh, then it’ll be too late! He’ll be in such demand!”

“I’ll stand my chances.”

“You don’t like him at all?”

“… I could stand to look at him.”

“That’s the spirit.”

“But Liz, he put his hand-”

“-where you’ve put it many a time yourself, let’s not kid ourselves. There are worse things than a handsome man with his hand down there.”

I lay there in bed that night, thinking him over. If he really did have prospects, that might put things in a different light, though of course ‘prospects’ was only a way of saying he might someday have some fraction of what Mr. White already had for sure today. At the same time, he did have, in spades, what Mr. White did not, what we might term a physical appeal, not just being good looking and young but having a presence to him, a scent almost, that took something loose inside a woman and coiled it up tight. And I thought, perhaps it does make sense, what Liz said on the way home, that if they apologize, then life can go on, and no use being sore. I began feeling less bitter towards him. But then all of a sudden I thought: When did he apologize? I thought over the whole conversation, and remembered his apologizing for not knowing me until he looked at my legs, but for what he did he never apologized at all, and fact of the matter, never even brought the subject up. And then I wondered: Why? Why, if he did something like that, that calls for an apology if anything ever did, didn’t he come out and say it? It seemed there had to be a reason. Matching it in with the fact that he made me a pitch, tried to date me up for the night after I got through work, it had to mean something, it couldn’t be accident, something he didn’t have manners to do, or forgot about, or would have said if something else hadn’t come up. I mean, it was deliberate, had to be. I slept all right, didn’t lie awake over it, and yet it was there, whenever he crossed my mind.