It was somewhat later, early in April, a week or so after Cecelia’s final valiant effort to rescue her friend from the clutches of a blackguard, that Lora for the first time extracted a crisp twenty from the hoard in the handkerchief drawer. The occasion was this: Cecelia had departed on Saturday morning for a weekend visit to friends in Eastview, and Pete and Lora had arranged to dine downtown and afterwards go to the theatre. She had already given him money to get the tickets, but was doubtful whether she had enough left for the dinner. The event proved that the precaution was well taken, for what with an elaborate meal at Dillon’s, a taxi to the theatre, a rarebit with beer afterwards, and a taxi out to the apartment, the remains of the twenty were hardly more than chicken feed. That was how Pete phrased it, as he searched his pockets for bits of change to hand to her — for it had become the custom for him to assume the functions of chancellor of the exchequer and return the residue at the end of the evening. Sometimes this was done on the sidewalk, when it was late and Lora had to work the next day; on other occasions, as the present one, the transfer was made after they had mounted to the apartment and Pete had got comfortably into his favorite chair.
“We ought to figure it up,” he declared. “How do we know but that I’ve a five — a ten even, though that transcends all like-lihood — stuck away in my vest or in this little trick pocket in my pants that I pretend I can’t get my fingers into? It would be just like me. I seem to have a faint memory of folding up a five separately and tucking it away somewhere, while we were in the restaurant I think. You didn’t happen to see me?”
Lora was seated cross-legged on a cushion on the floor, in front of him, not far away, watching the smoke curl upward from the tip of her cigarette.
“Yes,” she said, without looking at him, “it’s in that little pocket in your trousers.”
He threw back his head and burst into a roar of laughter.
“You’re not so smart,” she went on, “I knew you knew I saw you. You were trying to see if I’d lie about it.”
“How much have you got there?” he demanded.
She fingered over the little pile beside her on the carpet — three silver dollars and several smaller pieces.
“Four dollars and forty cents.”
“A goodly sum.” He made his voice deep, down in his throat. “Almost precisely a day of your wages. I shudder — absolutely and visibly shudder — to reflect that that miserable little heap of metal represents nine hours, nine glorious miraculous hours, of the coursing of your sweet young juices and the disintegration of your lovely flesh. There it lies, look at it, four dollars and forty cents.”
“My flesh isn’t disintegrating.”
“Oho, it isn’t, eh? Immortal? You’ve learned the secret...”
“No, I’m too young. I won’t begin to disintegrate for ten years at least.”
“You began the day you were born. However, let that pass. The point is, you’re a slave. Not to the switchboard or the little worm that owns it, but to yourself. For illustration, that five dollars I may have thoughtlessly tucked away; why do you let me keep it?”
“I don’t.”
“Demand it then.”
Lora stretched out her hand and said commandingly:
“Give it to me.”
He grinned at her, not mockingly or in refusal, not with any content whatever; he simply grinned. She got onto her knees so as to reach further; her hand was nearly touching him.
“Give it to me,” she repeated.
Still grinning, and leaning back so as to release the pressure of his belt, he got his fingers into the little waistline pocket of his trousers and pulled out a small folded wad, no bigger than a postage stamp. He unfolded it and smoothed it out.
“Good guess, it’s a five all right. Do you mean it?”
“Yes.”
He placed it, flat, on her outstretched palm. Her fingers closed around it and she dropped back from her knees onto the cushion. Then her fingers opened again, letting the crumpled bill flutter to the carpet, and her head bent suddenly forward, lower and lower, and her hands came up to cover her face, spreading themselves protectingly over her face that did not want him to see.
“I warn you, it mustn’t be left there,” she heard his voice. “Either you take it or you don’t. Slave or master, either will work; in between those two honesties are all the lies and pretenses in the world. You take it, that’s fine, your pretty little ankles are still free to dance and kick all they want to — or give it back to me, frankly I prefer that, I happen to need it, and then we’ll know where we stand. But for god’s sake don’t leave it between us on the floor, that’s humanism, the cooperative society, the triumph of liberal progress, the only real hell, the Great Universal Smirk. What if I grab it and run? It’s quite possible, for I shall want to eat tomorrow. Then you are in a mess, the painful position, not at all uncommon, of wanting what you didn’t take and taking what you didn’t want, and after all left with nothing...”
