XIII

“Hi, Johnnie! You surprised?”

“Rather.” He closed the door behind him.

“Well, I’ll tell you. We got kind of fed up with Nantucket, if you know what I mean. We’d been everywhere and done everything. So Billie and I decided we’d have more fun out here in Sconset with you and Eth. It’d be company. Billie didn’t want to make the change at first on account of the money but gosh, money’s no object right now. You don’t go on honeymoons every day in the week, isn’t that right, Johnnie?”

He was on the floor, on one knee, bent over an open suitcase, but he beamed up at Grandin with childlike pleasure and welcome. He looked immaculate, incredibly healthy, fresh, and full of good spirits; and he had got a haircut.

“Where’s Billie?”

“Billie? Oh, she’s gone out to find a dry cleaner somewheres.—What’s the matter, Johnnie? Aren’t you glad we came?”

Grandin sat down. “Of course I am, Cliff.”

“I just thought for a second, there, you looked kind of—well, funny.”

“I’m surprised, that’s all.”

“Oh, I knew you’d be surprised! I bet I said twenty times this morning, gee, won’t Johnnie and Eth be surprised!” His smile was enchanting; John Grandin resisted an impulse to leave.

“I see you got a room all right,” he said.

“Sure, no trouble at all. I called up first—said I was a friend of yours.”

“How long will you be staying?”

“That depends on when I hear from Brooklyn. I may have to report back any day now,” he added happily, as though it meant the promise of everything he wanted in life. “Did you miss us this morning?”

“Yes.” For the first time John Grandin realized he had missed him indeed.

“We missed you! Gosh, last night and this morning Billie and I didn’t know what to do with ourselves.” He lifted out a pile of shirts and put them away in a bureau drawer. “Billie’s all settled,” he said. “Look, she’s even got my picture up already.”

On the dresser, in a mirrored glass frame, was a large photograph of Cliff in dark-­blue Marine jacket with a white cap. The face looked stern and unhappy, self-­conscious to the point of pain. It seemed to have no connection whatever with the buoyant good nature which at this moment charged the atmosphere of the dingy bedroom with an almost overpowering vitality.

“I’ve got some more of those, Johnnie, if you’d want one.”

“Thank you, Cliff, but I don’t care particularly for photographs of friends. They—age too quickly.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right. Well, Billie’s got to have something to show the girl friends. You know women.” In the suitcase, on top of a pile of clean skivvy shirts, lay a pale-­khaki overseas cap with a pair of silver bars pinned on it. It was very flat; it took up hardly more room than a folded handkerchief. Grandin sat looking down at the cap. It looked almost touchingly neat, fresh, and military; exactly like Cliff. Here was something he did want.

“This vacation’s sure done me a lot of good. Isn’t Nantucket a wonderful island, Johnnie? Never felt better in my life! Why, I’m going to go through that examination like a breeze. . . .”

All in one passing moment John Grandin wanted it (that was all he did want of Cliff, he thought now), wanted to be able to look at it occasionally by way of remembering Cliff and the holiday—wanted it somewhere at hand when Cliff was far off on the other side of the world and gone forever; and in the same moment he rejected the idea and the thought as being shameless sentimentality, disliked himself acutely for having had the impulse at all—and could not keep from looking at the cap even as he refused it in his mind.

Hauman saw him looking. He reached out for the cap, held it for a moment flat in his palm, and said: “Would you like to have it, Johnnie? I got another.”

“What for?”

“Oh”—he shrugged—“souvenir . . .”

“Yes.”

“Lots of people like war souvenirs. They’re nice to have. Specially later, after it’s all over.”

John Grandin felt sick at heart. He wanted to say—he felt it impossible to keep from saying—Cliff, I’m very fond of you. The words stuck in his throat, he would never be able to get them out, never in a thousand years; and he was glad that this was so. He folded the cap and thrust it deep into his pocket; and as he did so, he believed he had never felt so foolish in his life.