‘Perhaps I can slip my shoesoff,’ he said. ‘For one hundred and twenty seconds, before we run out again.’
‘Isn’t right to keep your feet boxed up all the time.’
They both slipped off their shoes.
‘Elma?’
‘Yes?’ She looked up.
‘Nothing,’ he said.
They heard the mantel clock ticking. They caught each other peering at the clock. Two in the afternoon. Only six hours until eight tonight.
‘John?’ she said.
‘Yes?’
‘Never mind,’ she said.
They sat.
‘Why don’t we put on our woolly slippers?’ he wondered.
‘I’ll get them.’
She fetched the slippers.
They put them on, exhaling at the cool feel of the material.
‘Ahhhhhh!’
‘Why are you still wearing your coat and vest?’
‘You know, new clothesarelike a suit of armor.’ He worked out of the coat and, a minute later, the vest.
The chairs creaked.
‘Why, it’s four o’clock,’ she said, later.
‘Time flies. Too late to go out now, isn’t it?’
‘Much too late. We’ll just rest awhile. We can call a taxi to take us to supper.’
‘Elma.’ He licked his lips.
‘Yes?’
‘Oh, I forgot.’ He glanced away at the wall.
‘Why don’t I just get out of my clothes into my bathrobe?’ he suggested, five minutes later. ‘I can dress in a rush when we stroll off for a big filet supper on the town.’
‘Now you’re being sensible,’ she agreed. ‘John?’
‘Something you want to tell me?’
She gazed at the new shoes lying on the floor. She remembered the friendly tweak on her instep, the slow caress on her toes.
‘No,’ she said.
They listened for each other’s hearts beating in the room. Clothed in their bathrobes, they sat sighing.
‘I’m just theleast bittired. Not too much, understand,’ she said. ‘Just alittle bit.’
‘Naturally. It’s been quite a day, quite a day.’
‘You can’t justrushout, can you?’
‘Got to take it easy. We’re not young anymore.’
‘That’s right.’
‘I’m slightly exhausted, too,’ he admitted casually.
‘Maybe.’ She glanced at the clock. ‘Maybe we should have a biteheretonight. We can always dine out tomorrow evening.’
‘A really smart suggestion,’ he said. ‘I’m not ravenous, anyway.’
‘Strange, neither am I.’
‘But, we’ll go to a picture later tonight?’
‘Ofcourse!’
They sat munching cheese and some stale crackers like mice in the dark.
Seven o’clock.
‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘I’m beginning to feel just a trifle queasy?’
‘Oh?’
‘Back aches.’
‘Why don’t I just rub it for you?’
‘Thanks. Elma, you’ve got fine hands. You understand how to massage; not hard, not soft–but justright.’
‘My feet are burning,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I’ll be able to make that film tonight.’
‘Some other night,’ he said.
‘I wonder if something was wrong with that cheese? Heartburn.’
‘Didyounotice, too?’
They looked at the bottles on the table.
Seven-thirty. Seven forty-five.
‘Almost eight o’clock.’
‘John!’ ‘Elma!’
They had both spoken at once.
They laughed, startled.
‘What is it?’
‘You go ahead.’
‘No, you first!’
They fell silent, listening and watching the clock, their hearts beating fast and faster. Their faces were pale.
‘I think I’ll take a little peppermint oil for my stomach,’ said Mr Alexander.
‘Hand me the spoon when you’re done,’ she said.
They sat smacking their lips in the dark, with only the one small moth-bulb lit.
Tickety-tickety-tick-tick-tick.
They heard the footsteps on their sidewalk. Up the front-porch stairs. The bell ringing.
They both stiffened.
The bell rang again.
They sat in the dark.
Six more times the bell rang.
‘Let’s not answer,’ they both said. Startled again, they looked at each other, gasping.
They stared across the room into each other’s eyes.
‘It can’t be anyone important.’
‘No one important. They’d want to talk. And we’re tired, aren’t we?’
‘Pretty,’ she said.
The bell rang.
There was a tinkle as Mr Alexander took another spoonful of peppermint syrup. His wife drank some water and swallowed a white pill.
The bell rang a final, hard time.
‘I’ll just peek,’ he said, ‘out the front window.’
He left his wife and went to look. And there, on the front porch, his back turned, going down the steps, was Samuel Spaulding. Mr Alexander couldn’t remember his face.
Mrs Alexander was in the other front room, looking out a window, secretly. She saw a Thimble Club woman walking along the street now, turning in at the sidewalk, coming up just as the man who had rung the bell was coming down. They met. Their voices murmured out there in the calm spring night.
The two strangers glanced up at the dark house together, discussing it.
Suddenly the two strangers laughed.
They gazed at the dim house once more. Then the man and the woman walked down the sidewalk and away together, along the street, under the moonlit trees, laughing and shaking their heads and talking until they were out of sight.
Back in the living room, Mr Alexander found his wife had put out a small washtub of warm water in which, mutually, they might soak their feet. She had also brought in an extra bottle of arnica. He heard her washing her hands. When she returned from the bath, her hands and face smelled of soap instead of spring verbena.
They sat soaking their feet.
‘I think we better turn in those tickets we bought for that play Saturday night,’ he said, ‘and the tickets for that benefit next week. You never can tell.’
‘All right,’ she said.
The spring afternoon seemed like a million years ago.
‘I wonder who that was at the door,’ she said.
‘I don’t know,’ he said, reaching for the peppermint oil. He swallowed some. ‘Game of blackjack, missus?’
She settled back in her chair with the faintest wriggle of her body.
‘Don’t mind if I do,’ she said.
The End
