Work Song - Ivan Doig [68]
“Dogs.”
My jaw dropped. “Believe me, I never have and never shall put money on the velocity of a canine.”
“Arthur was hopeless about it,” she half-whispered again, her voice carrying the strain of the memory. “He would be perfectly fine for a while, bringing his wages home, sweet as anything. Then would come a payday when he didn’t show up for supper and I knew he’d gone to the dogs again. The races, that is.” She folded her arms, wincing as she did so. “And there you were yesterday, one minute as perfect a companion as a woman could ask for, and the next, behaving as if you were trying to break the bank at Monte Carlo. Which one is the real you? I can’t tell from one moment to the next whether you’re the best creature that ever wore pants, or, or—I don’t know what.” Her tirade ran down. “How can a person ever hope to get a straight line on you, Morrie?”
I nervously smoothed my mustache, dreading where this was leading. It had to be faced, it always does.
“Grace”—I used her name as if patting it before putting it away for good—“I don’t know any cure for being myself. The lotion for that hasn’t been concocted yet.” The next had to be said past the lump in my throat. “Do you want me to pack my satchel and go?”
No man is a hero to his butler, it is said; nor is any boarder a model of perfection to his landlady. Grace Faraday straightened up and scrutinized me, blinking harder. “If I had a lick of sense, I should push you out the door right now, shouldn’t I.” As I watched, her dubious self struggled with the proprietorial side of her. “But when you’re not a pile of trouble, you’re no trouble. You’re on time with the rent every week, although heaven knows how. You aren’t a steaming drunk, at least since you gave up wakes. You don’t throw a fit when dynamite goes off under the place. And Griff and Hoop don’t seem to drive you crazy. That counts.”
Had she been ticking these off on her fingers, she now was out of fingers. Looking as doubtful as she sounded, she concluded:
“For now, you may as well stay. One more thing, though. We need to be as clear as we can about each other. Yesterday was too, um, too forward of me, Morrie, and it wasn’t really fair to you.” Something more than an itch was making her chalky face twitch. “You shouldn’t get the wrong idea and feel . . .” There she faltered.
“Taken up with,” I finished for her, and I was surprised at how sad it sounded.
THIS WAS ONE of the nights of the week when I had to go back to the library and lock up after the evening groups, and I trudged off to do it with the old weight of disappointment on me.
First Rose, now Grace. Rejection as soon as someone personable and pretty took a good look into me, whatever it was they thought they saw.
Women were the fairer sex? What was fair about their fingersnap judgments of me? Even Sandison, grumpy and flatfooted around women, had found someone to put up with him, the redoubtable Dora. While my best efforts caused them to dust their hands of me or break out in hives.
I felt lonely as a castaway, and, what was worse, from present indications I had better get used to it.
My acidic mood was at odds with the gentle summer dusk, spreading down from the Hill over the brick canyons of the city, casting the streets into picturesque shadow. That sank through to me, and a couple of times I whipped into a doorway and looked back. There was no sign of goons, at least. Brass knuckles seemed to get the job done, although I couldn’t see how to apply that to courtship.
In the library basement when I arrived, the Ladies’ and Gentlemen’s Literary and Social Circle was still going strong. A balding young man with the look of a bank clerk was onstage, reciting in round tones: “. . . now when heaven holds starry night in its keep / and on moonlit Olympus, the Muses gently sleep.” Ordinarily I am all in favor of the Muses, but tonight I shooed the