Флетчер Флора - Take Me Home

“No, no. That’s not possible. Surely you can see that. Anyhow, it would do no good, and possibly a great deal of harm. I don’t want to cause Lila any trouble.”

“By God, if she tried to kill me, I’d want to make all the trouble for her that I could.”

“You don’t understand. You’re just like all the others I’ve known. You’re ignorant and bigoted and don’t understand in the least how things can be.”

“Look, now. Don’t start abusing me again. I have trouble enough getting along with you as it is. If this lovely cousin of yours tried to kill you, as you said, we’ve got to do something about it, and that’s ail there is to it. Would you like me to go and see her?”

“God, no! Why should I want that? What could you do?”

“I could scare the hell out of her, at least. I could give her as bad a time as she’s given you.”

“You leave her alone. Do you-hear me? Leave her alone. If I’d thought you were going to have a lot of crazy ideas about doing things, I wouldn’t have told you what happened.”

“Oh, all right. She’s your cousin, and it’s your life she tried to take. If it pleases you to be generous with a murderous queer, go right ahead.”

“And don’t call her names. Just keep still about her if you can’t speak decently.”

“I didn’t call her anything she isn’t. You’d better start learning to face the truth. And you’d better start learning to know who wants to be your friend and who doesn’t”

“Do you want to be my friend? Is that what you mean?”

“I doubt that anyone could be your friend. You wouldn’t allow it. You’re so damned abusive and offensive that you’d alienate anyone after a little while.”

“Is that so? I was just thinking the same thing about you.”

He grinned suddenly, and she grinned back, her small face lighting and assuming a loveliness that almost made it another face altogether, and then all at once they were laughing and laughing, together and at each other, and when they were done and quiet again, they felt relieved and much better and nearly comfortable.

“If we’re both difficult and offensive,” he said, “we at least have something in common.”

“Is it possible to be friends with a man? I hope so. It would be nice to be friends if he didn’t eventually want to be something more.”

“Maybe if you were good friends long enough you would begin to feel different about being something more.”

“Do you think so? It would make everything so much simpler and better if I could.”

“It might be possible. I don’t know. It seems reasonable to me that you learned to be what you are, and it’s just as reasonable, though probably harder, that you could learn to be something else.”

“It’s encouraging to hear you say so. I like you very much, and I’m sorry I’ve been so bitchy, even though I know very well that I’d be bitchy again and again if we were going on knowing each other.”

“Would you like to go on knowing each other?”

“I think so. I think I’d like to try. Would you?”

“Whether I would or not is beside the point. The point is, you don’t want to leave, because you have no place to go, and I’m not going to kick you out, because I’m not tough enough or mean enough or smart enough, whatever it would take to do it, and so you will have to stay here with me, and later we may be able to work something out. There’s one thing you’ve got to stop, however, and that’s thinking all the time that I’m about to ravish you, or some damn thing like that. I may want to, and probably will want to under the circumstances, but I won’t.”

“Do you really want me to stay?”

“Let’s not press the point. I’m willing to have you if you behave yourself and quit giving me hell for every little thing I do, or that you imagine. I haven’t enough money to buy you clothes or other things you’ll need, however. One of us will simply have to go and get what you have in the place you came from.”

“All right. I’ll go myself tomorrow. I’ll go and come right back. I’m determined not to be a coward about it any longer.”

She got up suddenly and sat down beside him on the sofa. Leaning toward him, very carefully not touching him the least bit more than she intended, she brushed her lips softly across his cheek, and he was aware of the enormous effort it required and the exorbitant concession that it was.

“Thank you,” she said. “I hope we can be friends. I’ll try very hard, honestly.”

“Oh, hell,” he said with quiet despair. “Oh, hell.”

The next morning, which was the morning of Monday, Henry Harper was gone when Ivy Galvin wakened. There was a penciled note on his work table, and under the note there were five one-dollar bills. The note said that Henry had gone to work, and it was the first time, reading the words, that she realized that he must surely have a job of some kind, since he was earning nothing from his writing, and that he would have to go to his job today, since it was Monday. The five dollars, the note said, were for breakfast and lunch and taxi fare to and from the place she needed to go, and he hoped that it was enough, for it was, in any event, all he had to spare.

She had slept well in the night for a change, no dreams at all, and she was feeling better this particular Monday morning than she had felt any morning of any day for a long, long while. The note was encouraging too. It made her feel warm and important in a minor way, giving her at least five dollars’ worth of significance to someone who was under no obligation to do anything for her that he did not really want to do. She was sorry she had called him chintzy and a son of a bitch and all the bad names she had called him. She resolved hereafter to be as good as possible as much of the time as possible, but she was honest enough with herself to concede that it was unlikely that she could suddenly start being good consistently when she had so little practice at it.

After bathing and dressing, she decided that she would start immediately for the apartment to get her possessions. There was no telephone in the rooms with which to call a taxi, however, and the street outside was not the kind of street on which taxis would ordinarily cruise. Anyhow, surprisingly enough, she was hungry and wanted something to eat before starting. Late yesterday afternoon, after they had settled things between them, she and Henry had gone down to the Greek’s to eat a really substantial dinner that Henry had paid for, and here she was already hungry again the morning after. She could not remember the last time she had been hungry in the morning, it had been so long ago, and she thought that her hunger was surely a good sign of things getting better generally.

She went downstairs to the street and down the street to the Greek’s. The little diner was beginning to assume in her mind a position of priority. She was fond of it for the part it had played in the changes she had made, or was making, and she was prepared to be just as fond of the Greek himself if he was willing to forgive her for calling him fat and greasy. He came down behind the counter to where she sat, his fat face creased amiably, and it was apparent that either he did not remember her at all or was willing to start over on better terms.

“Do you remember me?” she said.

“To be sure,” he said. “You’re the girl with trouble and no dime, and I’m a fat, greasy Greek.”

“I’m sorry I called you that. I hope you will forgive me.”

“It’s not necessary to forgive the truth. It’s true that I’m fat, and it’s true that I’m a Greek. I’d prefer not to be called greasy, however, even though that’s also true.”