hair up into that roll on the back of her neck and I took her by the arms and turned her around.
“Couldn’t you leave it down now?” I asked. “After all, there hasn’t been any description of you broadcast, as far as we know. As a matter of fact, nobody’s seen you for-a year and they don’t even know what you look like. But, no, I guess not. It would attract attention, chopped up like that. I don’t like it, though. Put up that way, I mean. Because it’s so damned lovely when it’s down across the side of your face.”
“But after all, Jack,” she smiled, “when we’re alone together I always have it down. And you don’t care what it looks like to other people, do you?”
“Yes that’s right. But remember that when we’re out in public, the other people aren’t the only ones looking at you. I am too.”
“You say awfully nice things for this early in the morning.
“There is no early morning in the way I feel about you,” I said, grinning. “It’s always just at dusk with the moon rising.”
“Sweet! Maybe, though, I could get a beauty-shop appointment this morning and have it cut to even it up. It would be all right then.”
“Try it,” I said eagerly. “That’d be fine.”
She looked up some in the telephone book and started calling. On about the third one she hit a cancellation and they said they could take her at eleven-thirty.
We went down the street to the airline office, going in separately, and she picked up her ticket while I bought one. There isn’t much need for all this cloak-and-dagger stuff any more, I thought, and as soon as we’re on the plane we’ll call it off. It’s all right now.
We went back to the hotel to wait until she had to go to the beauty shop. The rest of her packages had been delivered. I went up to my room and found that the suit and the other clothes I had bought had come, as well as the new bag. I packed, and just as I was starting out the door to meet her down in front of the hotel I remembered I hadn’t shaved this morning. I’d forgotten all about it. Well, there isn’t time now, I thought; I’ll come back and do it while she’s in the shop.
The beauty shop was only two blocks away, and we walked, going slowly along through the dense crowds and the heat. The boys were beginning to call the afternoon papers and I was just going to buy one when a sharp cry from Doris interrupted me.
“Jack! I left my watch!” She had stopped. “I took it off to bathe this morning and put it on the dresser. And when I got ready to meet you I went right over there and looked at it to see what time it was and didn’t put it on. Oh, how stupid!”
“It’s all right,” I said. “It’s safe in the room. “But I’m worried about it. It’s such a beautiful thing, and you gave it to me. And, besides, the maid will be in to clean the room.”
“I know what,” I said. “Give me your key and I’ll run back and pick it up while I’m waiting for you.”
I watched her go across the street and into the shop, and when she was inside I walked back to the hotel. The watch was still on the dresser and I picked it up and put it in my pocket. I’ll run upstairs and shave, I thought, and go back to meet her. She said it’d take only about half an hour. Then I remembered the paper I hadn’t bought, and was suddenly curious as to whether anything new had turned up. I went back out and bought one from the boy on the corner. He handed it to me folded and I stuck it under my arm, going up the street toward the bar I had been in yesterday. It was air-conditioned and would be more comfortable than the hotel.
The place was almost deserted, very cool and dim after the crowds and hot sunlight in the street. The barman in his white jacket was bent over a newspaper spread out on the bar, and as I went past I noted absently that it was the same one I carried under my arm, the afternoon paper with the salmon-colored outer sheet. I sat down at the end of the bar and he came over.