Sadie When She Died полностью

“I’m glad you called,” Nora said. “I hate to go straight home after the end of a busy day. The apartment always feels so empty. And the meeting today was a disaster. The art director is a man who started in the stockroom forty years ago, after a correspondence course from one of those schools that advertise on matchbook covers. So he had the gall to tell me what was wrong with the girl’s hand.” She looked up from her drink and said, in explanation, “It was this drawing of a girl, with her hand sort of brushing a strand of hair away from her cheek.”

“I see,” Kling said.

“Do you have to put up with that kind of crap?” she asked.

“Sometimes.”

“Anyway, I’m glad you called. There’s nothing like a drink after a session with a moron.”

“How about the company?”

“What?”

“I’m glad you appreciate the drink . . .”

“Oh, stop it,” Nora said, “you know I like the company.”

“Since when?”

“Since always. Now just cut it out.”

“May I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“Why are you here with me, instead of your boyfriend?”

“Well,” Nora said, and turned away preparatory to lying, “as I told you . . . oh, look, the violinists are coming over. Think of a request, quick.”

“Ask them to play ‘Something,’” Kling said, and Nora turned back toward him immediately, her eyes flashing.

“That isn’t funny, Bert,” she said.

“Tell me about your boyfriend.”

“There’s nothing to tell you. He’s a doctor and he spends a lot of time in his office and at the hospital. As a result, he’s not always free when I’d like him to be, and, therefore, I felt it perfectly all right to have a drink with you. In fact, if you wouldn’t be so smart all the time, saying I should request ‘Something’ when you know the song has particular meaning for me, you might ask me to have dinner with you, and I might possibly say ‘yes.’”

“Would you like to have dinner with me?” Kling asked, astonished.

“Yes,” Nora said.

“There isn’t a boyfriend at all, is there?” he said.

“Don’t make that mistake, Bert. There is one, and I love him. And I’m going to marry him as soon as . . .” She cut herself short, and turned away again.

“As soon as what?” Kling asked.

“Here are the violinists,” Nora said.

One storm had blown out to sea, but another was approaching, and this time it looked as though the forecasters would be right. The first flakes had not yet begun to fall as Carella walked up the street toward The Saloon, but snow was in the air, you could smell it, you could sense it, the goddamn city would be a frozen tundra by morning. Carella did not particularly like snow. His one brief romance with it had been, oh, several years ago, when some punk arsonists had set fire to him (talk about Dick Tracy!) and he had put out the flames by rolling in a bank of the stuff. But how long can any hot love affair last? Not very. Carella’s disaffection had begun again the very next week, when it again snowed, and he again slipped and slogged and sloshed along with ten million other winter-weary citizens of the city. He looked up at the sky now, pulled a sour face, and went inside.

The Saloon was just that: a saloon.

A cigarette-scarred bar behind which ran a mottled, flaking mirror. Wooden booths with patched leatherette seat cushions. Bowls of pretzels and potato chips. Jukebox bubbling and gurgling, rock music babbling and bursting, the smell of steamy bodies and steamy garments, the incessant rise and fall of too many voices talking too loud. He hung his coat on the sagging rack near the cigarette machine, found himself a relatively uncrowded spot at the far end of the bar, and ordered a beer. Because of the frantic activity behind and in front of the bar, he knew it would be quite some while before he could catch the bartender’s ear. As it turned out, he did not actually get to talk to him until eleven-thirty, at which time the business of drinking yielded to the more serious business of trying to make out.

“They come in here,” the bartender said, “at all hours of the night, each and every one of them looking for the same thing. Relentless. You know what that word means? Relentless? That’s what the action is here.”

“Yeah, it is kind of frantic,” Carella said.

“Frantic? That’s the word, all right. Frantic. Men and women both. Mostly men. The women come for the same thing, you understand? But it takes a lot more fortitude for a woman to go in a bar alone, even if it’s this kind of place where the only reason anybody comes at all is to meet people, you understand? Fortitude. You know what that word means? Fortitude?”

“Yeah,” Carella said, and nodded.

“Take yourself,” the bartender said. “You’re here to meet a girl, am I right?”

“I’m here mostly to have a few beers and relax,” Carella said.

“Relax? With that music? You could just as easy relax in World War II, on the battlefield. Were you in World War II?”

“Yes, I was,” Carella said.