shower. I was all undressed. I pick up the bathroom phone and dial you at Merry Mansions. And I hear, this is the tabernacle of the dark complexioned redeemer. Was that Matilda. I was about to hang up until I heard you. Black bitch. Shit. Sorry about the language. I was promising myself I wouldn't be uncharitable. Smith you busted a guy into the tracks. I couldn't believe it was you till I read about the cemetery and that last line. I laughed. Gent of the old brigade."
"School."
"That got me. My brother is getting jealous of your publicity. Wallflower Smith, the small backroom operator. Marvellous how you come out in the paper as if you were something important with your ritzy bone house. Even I was saying to somebody, I know that guy. They said you're a mystery, till I told them."
"What, Miss Tomson."
"That you're real. Guy my brother knows, Ralph, a big mouth, as if he knew you, that it was interesting how you sold out your closest friends first, double crossing distant acquaintances last. I socked him right on the jaw. He thought it was funny because he didn't feel it. So I grabbed him by the hair. Boy he started screaming. Think I had him by the balls or something. If he has any. Just a jerk in show biz said he could do something for my brother, who isn't too well recently. Too many dames and cotillions."
Waiter with steamy tray. A plate of copper colored glistening futters in a light grey sea of sauerkraut. Setting a beer before Miss Tomson and a beer and white plate before Smith, who smiling sat, socks pulled up. An arm's length away from the blue wisely lit eyes of Sally Tomson, full of sparks and narrowing strangely, full of woman. Her finger glittering with an overture to a complicated contract. Like one I agreed with Shirl. Tied together with four kids. That come tripping you up during the waltz. Go sleigh riding down the other side of life in the sixty foot winter shadows. Hoping to land in May and wallow among the daisies of July. Instead of pushing them up.
"Smithy what do you think about when your eyes go away like that. Like you belong to the committee figuring the solution to the prevention of do it yourself whipping in isolated convents."
"Ha ha."
"Give me a wiener. Please."
Smith spearing the defenceless cylinder. Lifting it dripping with sauerkraut juice to Miss Tomson's open lips. As she softly sucks it in. A flash of white teeth. For which I searched waiting in train stations, lonely seven, eight and nine o'clock at dark. Left me all these many weeks tarnished and vulnerable till the phone rang tonight. And my heart nearly exploded. Letting the seconds tick in silence listening to her voice like one two three freckles under her right eye where there used to be four. My God Miss Tomson please. Come walking back as Sally into my life. Wearing nothing but your pearls.
"Come on, what do you think of."
"Just pleased you're here chewing a wiener."
"We're kind of like old friends now. I said I'd go to your funeral. So if I ask you to my wedding will you come."
"Miss Tomson, this is a terrible conversation."
"I know. I better go."
"Don't go."
"Got to get back. Could only spare an hour anyway."
"Please."
"Why keep up a pretense. I'm going to try the wedlock. Hands in the soap suds, squeeze out the socks, wax the furniture. Gee I make a terrible liar. Only thing my hand will go into is a glove, holding a check book. The guy's a dynasty. If I want an ocean liner, I whistle. Those are the facts. I keep amassing them. End up with one gigantic fiction. It's in his grandfather's will that when we march down the aisle, we got to have the guy's ashes thrown over us. I don't want some dead guy's ashes on me."
"Miss Tomson, what will you do for love."
"That's nice, the way you said that."
"What will you."
"I don't know. What I always do, cry. I'll be crying and whistling. I'll make a stinking wife and I know it. I'm taking him for his money. I told him so. Sweet thing about him is he said he was marrying me for my brains. I thought that was so rich I accepted on the spot. After he'd been begging me for six months."
"You do have brains, Miss Tomson."
"Thanks."
"You have."
"A head full of pigeons. Sometimes I tie a