north would have been called a roadhouse. It was dark, and looked deserted and closed. Waterfield rapped on the door, anyway. A man in an open shirt and a woman in a long gown opened it. The two led them into music, warmth, low lights, and a long bar along the lefthand wall with a dance floor behind. Vera Lynn was singing “The Umbrella Man.” There had been ten or twelve cars outside in the parking lot. All the people from them were in here.
Waterfield got a chorus of affectionate greetings. Somebody said, “Say, Charlie, who’s your friend?”
“Friend of Annie’s come to visit. From Luxor.”
The point wasn’t pressed, but it was an announcement. Any friend of Charlie’s had better be a friend of Landers.
In the light, he had circles under his eyes so pronounced they gave him the look of an alert, very patient hound dog. The eyes looked at you with that same look of a smart hound, alert, patient, waiting.
They fixed a table for him, in what was apparently a ritual. Off by itself, with a bottle of whiskey, glasses, ice, and a pitcher of water. The two of them sat at it and talked as they drank, mostly questions by Charlie and answers by Landers about Annie.
How was she doing down there in Luxor? Was she in good shape, healthy? Was she having a good time, was she happy? How was that job of hers holding up? Did she look good? Did she have decent friends?
Here was the only place he stumbled, over the adjective decent, which he half hesitated on, then changed to nice. So that the final question read: Did she have nice friends?
Landers answered the best he could, not knowing much about Annie. Landers did not know, for example, whether Annie had a job or not. He did not see how she could, going off for a week or a month with servicemen all the time. But he did not tell this to Charlie.
“She doesn’t have to work,” Charlie smiled, from below the perpetually alert hound’s eyes. “I send her all the money she wants. But I guess she enjoys working.” Landers thought it best not to make an answer to this at all.
There wasn’t much question that Charlie was at least part owner of the joint. The lady manager in the gown came over to ask his advice on a technical question about the bar. “I don’t want to talk about it now,” was all he said, raising those alert, patient hound’s eyes, and the lady faded. Charlie went back to his questions about Annie.
It was six-thirty and the daylight was coming up in the east, when they finally got home. Landers was both drunk and exhausted. Charlie showed no signs of either. He showed Landers to his bedroom in the huge derelict house, but he himself did not go to bed. He changed into his day uniform, and went out to do his morning inspection tour he did every day at this hour.
Changing into his day uniform meant taking off his navy blue pants, and the white shirt with shoulder straps, with its black four-in-hand tie; and putting on khaki pants and a khaki shirt with shoulder straps, and a khaki four-in-hand tie. The sheepskin coat and semi-Western-style hat he did not change. He walked out of the house, telling Landers that Loucine would be around the house when he woke up, to make him breakfast. This was the pattern life took, in the big Main Street house. It was Charlie’s pattern, but day by day Landers’ pattern fell more and more in line with it. He got up at noon, had breakfast, then read the papers in the dark, unused living room. Then he went for a walk in the business district, hitting all the poolrooms, and in one of them he usually found Charlie. He would have a sandwich and a Coke laced with illegal whiskey for lunch in one of them. It was amazing how much whiskey there was loose in this county seat of a dry county. Then he would go back to the tall, spindly house and sleep or read for a couple of hours. They almost always had dinner out with Loucine. Then when Loucine went home to bed, the two of them would start Charlie’s late evening rounds that would last till dawn.
It was not such a terrible deal. At the very least he was safe here. The only comment Charlie Waterfield ever made on