Уильям Айриш: Phantom lady

Six p. m.

The night was young, and so was he. But the night was sweet, and he was sour. You could see it coming from yards away, that sullen look on his face. It was one of those sustained angers, pent-up but smoldering, that last for hours sometimes. It was a shame, too, because it was all out of tune with everything around him. It was the one jarring note in the whole scene.

It was an evening in May, at the get-together hour. The hour when half the town, under thirty, has slicked back its hair and given its billfold a refill and sauntered jauntily forth to keep that date . And the other half of the town, still under thirty, has powdered its nose and put on something special and tripped blithely forth to keep that same date . Everywhere you looked, the two halves of the town were getting together. On every corner, in every restaurant and bar. outside drugstores and inside hotel lobbies and under jewelry store clocks, and darned near every place there was that somebody else hadn’t beat them to first. And the same old stuff went around and around, old as the hills but always new. “Here I am. Been waiting long?” “You look swell. Where’ll we go?”

That was the kind of an evening it was. The sky was rouge red in the west, as though it was all dolled up for a date itself, and it was using a couple of stars for diamond clips to hold up its evening gown. Neons were beginning to wink out along the street vistas, flirting with the passers-by like everyone else was tonight, and taxi horns were chirping, and everyone was going some place, all at one time. The air wasn’t just air, it was aerated champagne, with a whiff of Coty for good measure, and if you didn’t watch out it went to your head. Or maybe your heart.

And there he went, pushing that sore face in front of him, spoiling the whole scene. People glancing at him as he strode by wondered what he had to be that ill-tempered about. It wasn’t his health. Anyone that could swing along at the gait he was, must be in the pink of condition. It wasn’t his circumstances. His clothes had that carelessly expensive hang that can’t be faked. It wasn’t his age. If he had thirty beat at all, it was by months, not years. He wouldn’t have been half bad looking if he’d given his features a chance to unpucker. You could tell that around the edges where the scowl was thin.

He went striding along with that chip-on-the-shoulder look, his mouth a downturned ellipse, a horseshoe stuck under his nose. The topcoat slung across the crook of his arm bobbed up and down with the momentum of his pace. His hat was too far back on his head and it had a dent in the wrong place, as though he’d punched it on without adjusting it afterward. Probably the only reason his shoes didn’t strike sparks from the pavement was because they were rubber heeled.

He hadn’t intended going in where he finally did. You could tell that by the abrupt way he braked as he came opposite to it. There was no other word for the way he halted; it was as though a brace down his leg had locked, jamming him still. He probably wouldn’t have even noticed the place if the intermittent neon over it hadn’t glowed on just then, as he was passing. It said Anselmo’s in geranium red, and it dyed the whole sidewalk under it as though somebody had spilled a bottle of ketchup.

He swerved aside, on what was obviously an impulse, and went barging in. He found himself in a long, low-ceilinged room, three or four steps below street level. It wasn’t a large place nor, at the moment, a crowded one. It was restful on the eyes; the lighting was subdued, amber-colored, and directed upward. There was a line of little bracketed nooks with tables set in them running down both walls. He ignored them and went straight back to the bar, which was semicircular, facing toward the entrance from the rear wall. He didn’t look to see who was at it, or whether anyone was at it at all. He just dumped his topcoat on top of one of the tall chairs, dropped his hat on top of it, and then sat down on the next one over. His attitude plainly implied he was there for the night.

A blurred white jacket approached just above the line of his downcast vision and a voice said, “Good evening, sir.”

“Scotch,” he said, “and a little water. I don’t give a damn how little.”

The water stayed on untouched, after its companion glass was empty.

He must have, subconsciously at the moment of sitting down, glimpsed a bowl of pretzels or some sort of accessory like that over to his right. He reached out that way without looking. His hand came down, not on a twisted baked shape but on a straight smooth one that moved slightly.

He swung his head around, took his hand off the other one that had just preceded his into the bowl. “Sorry.” he grunted. “After you.”

He swung his head around to his own business once more. Then he turned again, gave her a second look. He kept on looking from then on, didn’t quit after that. Still in a gloomy, calculating way, though.

The unusual thing about her was the hat. It resembled a pumpkin, not only in shape and size but in color. It was a flaming orange, so vivid it almost hurt the eyes. It seemed to light up the whole bar, like a low-hanging garden party lantern. Stemming from the exact center of it was a long thin cockerel feather, sticking straight up like the antenna of an insect. Not one woman in a thousand would have braved that color. She not only did, she got away with it. She looked startling, but good, not funny. The rest of her was toned down, reticent in black, almost invisible against that beacon of a hat. Perhaps the thing was a symbol of some sort of liberation to her. Perhaps the mood that went with it was, “When I have this on, watch out for me! The sky’s the limit!”

Meanwhile, she was nibbling a pretzel and trying to seem unaware of his steady scrutiny. When she broke off nibbling, that was the only sign she gave of being aware that he had quitted his own chair, come over, and was standing beside her.

She inclined her head very slightly, in a listening attitude, as if to say, “I’m not going to stop you, if you try to speak. Whether I do after that or not, depends on what you have to say.”

What he had to say, with terse directness, was, “Are you doing anything?”

“I am, and I’m not.” Her answer was well-mannered, but not encouraging. She didn’t smile nor commit herself to receptiveness in any way. She carried herself well; whatever else she was, she wasn’t cheap.

There was no trace of the masher in his own manner, either. He went on, briskly impersonal. “If you’ve got an engagement, just say so. I’m not trying to annoy you.”

“You’re not annoying me — so far.” She got her meaning across perfectly: my decision is still held in the balance.

His eyes went to the clock up over the bar, facing both of them. “Look, it’s ten after six, right now.”

Her own eyes sought it in turn. “So it is.” she agreed neutrally.

He had taken out a wallet, meanwhile, extracted a small oblong envelope from one of the compartments. This he opened in turn, and prodded forward two salmon-colored pasteboard strips, forking them apart as he did so. “I have two perfectly good tickets here for the show at the Casino. Row Double-A, aisle seats. Care to take it in with me?”

“You’re abrupt about it.” Her eyes went from the tickets to his face.