Eating wasn’t so easy. He ate a piece of steak that he had to cut up into tiny pieces, he ate American fries which he had to mash down, and he ate peas which were just fine. It was his jaw; it was sorer now than it had been six hours ago when he’d been hit.
He sat at a front window table of the Family Steak Restaurant, watching dusk bleed from the sky and the stars come out.
Nearer by, streetlights came on, lending the buildings wan light and deep shadows. People, mostly couples, strolled the business district, pointing out things in windows or simply standing on comers and taking in the air. You could smell rain coming, clear and clean and fine. The temperature had dropped fifteen degrees. After the heat today, the chill was a pure blessing.
Guild ate his custard and sipped his coffee. Because of cuts inside his mouth, he had to let the coffee cool, so he read the local paper, most especially “The City in Brief,” which included such items as:
Ten businessmen were caught in a crap-shooting game last night.
Two young people eloped on bicycles front Oquawka, Illinois, and were married at Ottumwa.
Our compositors made Reverend Dr. Iilden’s subject for yesterday morning read “Infidelity and Her Crown,” when it should have read “Fidelity and Her Crown.” (This struck Guild as very funny.)
Mr. Frank Redmond, a new baritone in our city, will sing at the Elks Minstrels tomorrow night.
Geo. Williams carries a full line o f Blatz and Schlitz bottled beer for family use. Telephone No. 133.
Try a Turkish Bath at Ford’s. You will like it.
Guild smoked a cigar with his second cup of coffee. Then he noticed the woman. She was one of those women it would be difficult not to notice.
She sat alone four tables away, gazing out the window. The first thing he noticed about her was how prim and pretty she was in her frilly, high-necked dress and sweet, angled little hat. He supposed she was forty or so. The second thing he noticed was the high, beautiful color of her skin. She was most likely a mulatto. In midwestem cities women who could “pass” were allowed to eat in white restaurants.
If she was aware of Guild’s presence, she kept it a secret to herself.
Given the lingering pain in his jaw, he needed a distraction. She provided it. Like most lonely people, he speculated on the lives of strangers. What they did. What they wanted. Where they’d come from and where they were going. The trouble was, this woman being a mulatto, his usual line of speculation didn’t work. Mulattos were especially despised. The only thing he could think she would want was to be left alone by men who wanted her carnally and by good citizens who wanted to express their contempt.
The hell of it was, that this woman with her dark eyes and full, exotic mouth did not look at all as if she needed Guild’s understanding or pity. Indeed, there was even a certain haughtiness in the way she sat there, dismissing everyone who passed by with a disinterested glance, returning her gaze inevitably to the street and the clip-clop of fancy buggies and the first silver drops of rain sliding down the window.
Several times he started to go to her table and introduce himself, but he always stopped. He wasn’t good at this sort of thing. His heart would get to hammering and his throat would twist into a snake of silence and his palms would get sweaty. He would stand there and everyone would stare at him and he would stand there some more and they would stare at him some more and finally he’d just sort of nod and leave, his face burning with embarrassment and his mind already flaying himself for his terrible performance.
When it came time for sex, he stuck to brothels. He didn’t get crushes on whores; whores never broke his heart.
By this time, still sitting at his window table in the Family Steak Restaurant, Guild was reduced to little eye games. He’d pretend to be vastly interested in whatever was going on in the street. Then he’d kind of ease his gaze back to her, convinced that this time she’d be noticing him.
Only she never did notice him, of course.
And at 9:03, when he very slyly brought his gaze back around again to see if she was watching him, she was gone. He glimpsed her long, graceful back at the cash register, her sweet little hat floating just above the heads of the crowd at the front door, and then—
Gone.
He supposed he was being asinine, but loneliness was a burden sometimes and seemed especially a burden tonight.
He paid his bill and splurged on a fifty-cent cigar and went out to walk the streets. He could hear the vaudeville show over at the opera house, the harmonies of the popular ballads melancholy and irresistible.