Hill Girl

Eighteen

The desk clerk regarded me suspiciously when I registered again with Angelina and wanted to be moved into a double room. The combination of my whiskery, cut-up face with its evidence of a two-day binge and a wife who showed up unexpectedly with no luggage was obviously a little strong to take straight, but he managed it and moved us into a room overlooking the beach.

When the boy had gone I picked her up and walked over and sat down with her in the armchair by the window. We were silent for a long time and just sat there holding onto each other and listening to the swish of the surf beyond the sea wall.

“You’ll hold me a lot, won’t you?” she asked at last. “Like this. So I’ll forget about last night and the night before that.”

“Were they bad?”

“Awful. I kept trying not to think about not seeing you any more. But you can’t make yourself not think, can you?”

“No,” I said. “You can’t turn it off.”

“Did you miss me, Bob?”

“Yes.”

“Very bad?”

“Very bad. And on top of that was the way I’d hurt you. That was something to live with.”

“Don’t think about it now.”

She leaned back against my arm and ran her fingers lightly over the bruises and cut places on my face. “Poor face. Poor old sweet face, it’s all hurt.”

“It’s not hurt.”

“You tell me who did it and I’ll go scratch his eyes out.”

“Let’s forget about my face and talk about something nicer. Yours, for instance.”

“No. I will not forget about it. It’s a beautiful face and I love it. And I want to fix up the cut places.”

I lost interest in my face as a topic of conversation in a very short while, so I kissed her.

That changed the subject for both of us, all right. I wondered why kissing her could always cloud up the issue in a way that whisky never could. The jagged edges of facts and the sharp corners of realities became blurred and softened and all the noises muted.

“I love you so,” I said.

“What is it like with you, Bob? Do things seem to sort of run together? Is it like flying through colored clouds?”

“Right now it’s like having a high fever and being full of quinine. Everything’s fuzzy and my ears hum.”

“It doesn’t sound very nice for you. Maybe what you need is a doctor.”

“All right,” I said. “Call a doctor.”

“No. But I want it to be nicer for you. I want you to see the colors. Big clouds of colors swinging around and passing through each other. I don’t think men have any fun being in love. Don’t you see any colors?”

“No. I’m sorry.”

“Even with your eyes closed?”

“I didn’t close them. I don’t think I did.”

“Kiss me again, with your eyes closed.”

I kissed her again and I think I closed my eyes, but it wasn’t any different. There was the wildness of it and a paradoxical tenderness and a feeling of suffocation, but it was just the same.

“Did you see them?”

I shook my head.

“Poor men. They don’t have any fun. No colors.”

“I see the ones that are you. Like your hair. It’s a beautiful color. It’s just a little lighter than wild honey.”

“That’s nice, but it isn’t the same thing. You don’t just see these colors. You feel them.”

“I can see your hair and feel it, too. Against my face.”

“I want you to. I’m going to have it bobbed tomorrow and you’ll like it even better.”

“No, I won’t. It couldn’t be any better. And let’s not talk about tomorrow. We’re in no condition for long-range planning.”

“We’re not?”

“No. Planning requires great clarity of thought.”

“I don’t want any what-you-said of thought. I just want you to kiss me.”

“That’s better,” I said. “More kissing; less planning.”

“You can’t plan when you’re kissing me?”

“Not objectively.”

“Why not?”

“How could I kiss you and do anything objectively?”

“We won’t plan about the hair then? Not now?” she murmured.

“No.”

“Have you ever felt this way about anybody before, Bob?”

“No. Not ever.”

“We couldn’t have felt this way about anybody before, could we?”

I closed my eyes and put my face down against her throat and prayed I wouldn’t see Lee again, or hear him. Let’s don’t hear that thing again. Wasn’t once enough to hear it? It doesn’t mean anything now anyway. It was a thousand years ago in another place, and another girl named Angelina. Not this one.

We didn’t go back out any more that afternoon or night. We had supper brought up to us and ate with the cool breeze from the Gulf blowing in through the window and afterward sat watching the people go by on the sea wall.

Once, while we were lying quietly in the dark, she stirred suddenly in my arms and said, “Oh, Bob, the car!’

“What about the car?”

“We didn’t bring it back. It’s still downtown where you left it.”

I laughed. “Well, what if it is?”

“Won’t somebody be apt to steal it?”

“That would be fine.”

“Oh.” There was silence for a minute, and then she said, “You don’t like the car, do you?”

“It’s something like that, I guess. I don’t like for us to be in it.”

“That was what it was when we had that fight by the river, wasn’t it? It was the car that suddenly made you remember things, that made you mad.”

“Let’s don’t talk about it.”

“We won’t, if you say so, but I’d rather talk about it than to have it coming between us. I’m sorry about it, but I’m not ashamed.”

“You shouldn’t be. I think I understand it all, Angelina. Let’s just bury it.”

The next morning I was awake in the early dawn. It was cooler, with a light breeze blowing off the water and the low-flying clouds that mean a clear day later on. The sea wall was deserted and quiet and the low sound of the surf beyond was peaceful. Angelina was sleeping quietly beside me, with her cheek on the crook of her arm and the cloud of hair spreading across the pillow. I leaned over and kissed her on the throat and she opened her eyes and smiled.

“You need a shave. Your whiskers stabbed me on the throat.”

“It’s a fine day,” I said. “We’ve got lots to do.”

“Oh, can we plan now?”

I grinned. “At the moment, yes.”

“All right. What do we have to do?”

“First we have to cash a draft. We need some more money.”

“Oh, I forgot to tell you. I’ve still got about fifteen dollars of your money. I meant to give it back to you.”

“My money? Haven’t you realized yet what that man was mumbling about back there in Shreveport the other day? It’s our money now.”

“All right, smarty, I’ll keep it. But you say we have to have some more? Why? And how do we get it?”

“We have to have more because I’ve only got about seventy-five left and we’re going to be here a week. And we’ve got to buy you some more clothes and a traveling bag and a bathing suit and”—I gave the sheet a sharp tug—”a nightgown. Look at you.”

She smiled at me lazily, uncovered to the waist. “Do I need a nightgown? Why?”

I looked at her and began to feel less like the great planner. “I’ll be damned if I know now.”

“Go on and tell me why I need one.”

“Well, we could get you one eight feet long and made out of canvas with a drawstring at each end, so I could think out our schedule.”

She pulled the sheet over her, clear up over her head, with only one brown eye looking out. “Now go ahead. I can see your thinking is too easy to interrupt. The teenciest little thing upsets you.”

“And after we get all this stuff done, we’ll go swimming in the surf,” I went on.

“Couldn’t we go this morning? There was a sign on the pier saying they rented suits.”

“Put you in one of those gunny sacks? Like hell we will. It’d be a sacrilege, like dressing Helen of Troy in a burlap bag.”

“I knew it.” The one brown eye regarded me impishly.

“You knew what?”

“That when you did want to, you could say nicer things than anybody.”

“Nuts,” I said. “I’m a great oracle and I speak only profound truths.”

“Great oracle yourself. You’re just sweet.”

“That’s no way to speak to oracles. I’ll take it up with the union.”

She bobbed her head out from under the sheet. “Is there any room in this big schedule of yours where I’m going to get my hair cut?”

“You don’t seriously mean to cut it off, do you?” I said.

“Of course, silly. Haven’t I been telling you for the last two or three days? I’m going to have it cut real short. I saw a girl on the street the other day and hers was cut that way and curled up in little curls close to her head and it was the cutest thing you ever saw, and mine is naturally wavy so it wouldn’t be hard to make it stay and that’s the way I want to do it, and I almost went up to her and asked her where they did it and—” She was talking faster and faster and started to sit up in bed, carried away with the project. I put a hand over her mouth.

“Relax,” I said. “Saying hair to you is like breaking a fire main.” She bit my hand.

“I can get it cut today, can’t I?”

“I don’t think you ought to cut it off. I think it’s beautiful the way it is.”

“Yes, but how do you know what it’ll be like cut short? It’ll be lots prettier.”

“No. It couldn’t be.”

“It’s my hair, Bob Crane, and I’ll do what I damned please with it.” She hitched away from me on the bed with the sheet up to her ears ‘and her eyes angry. There was that stubborn-mule look in them.

“You’ll like hell do what you please,” I started, and then caught myself and shut up. After all, it was her hair, and Sam Harley had been telling her she couldn’t cut it all these years and trying to browbeat her, and look where he had wound up in her eyes. You couldn’t get anywhere by trying to bully her. She didn’t bully worth a damn. You might get your way if you overpowered her, but it wouldn’t be worth what you lost in the process.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “We’ll have it done today. I didn’t mean to get tough about it. It’s just that I think it’s so lovely the way it is.”

“I’m sorry, too. Oh, Bob, I don’t want to be stubborn about it, and I won’t do it if you absolutely don’t want me to. But I know you’ll like it better the other way. And all my life somebody has been telling me what to do with it and I didn’t like it when you started to sound like Papa.”

I grinned. “Well, it’s all set I don’t want to wind up where Papa did.”

It was only about seven-thirty when we came out of the hotel, so we walked along the sea wall a long way before we went downtown, with Angelina excitedly asking questions about the shrimp boats offshore and whether any big ships tied up at the swimming pier and laughing at herself when I explained that the water was only about four feet deep under it. She insisted we go down on the beach and look for shells. After a while we came back and caught a streetcar and had breakfast at a restaurant near the interurban. She wouldn’t eat anything except some sliced bananas and kept telling me how we looked in the mirror that was on the wall across from our table.

We hunted up a beauty shop and I left her there while I went off to see about the bank draft. When we parted in front of the place, she said, “What on earth are you looking at, Bob?”

“Your hair,” I said. “I’m seeing it for the last time and I want to remember what it looked like if this new business is a flop.”

She laughed. “You’ll be back in about an hour, won’t you? I don’t like you to be away from me.”

“Yes,” I said. “But you’ll probably be in there two hours or longer. You may have to wait, because I think you’re supposed to have an appointment.”

I looked up an old friend of the Major’s who was in a cotton firm and he went down to his bank with me and helped me cash a draft. I bought a traveling bag for Angelina and had her initials put on it and told the shop to deliver it to the hotel and then went to a florist’s shop and ordered some flowers. When I had finished this I walked down Market to 24th and the car was still there across from the bar. One of the taxi drivers in front of the cab stand next door grinned at me as I went by and said, “Say, ain’t you the guy that tangled with Jack the other day?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“He’s been telling it big about what he’ll do if you ever show up down here again. Says the reason you haven’t picked up your car is because you’re afraid to come back.”

I went on to the car. His eagerness to see a free fight was a little disgusting. In front of the place I hesitated and wondered if I should go in, but then I remembered I was supposed to meet Angelina in about a half hour and went across the street and got in the car and drove off, feeling proud of myself as a married man with responsibilities. I wondered at it a little. Before, the prospect of another fight with Big-mouthed Jack would have had an irresistible allure.

I parked across the street from the beauty shop and waited. After a while she came out of the shop and stood looking up and down the street. I felt warm and happy watching her and waited a minute before I hit the horn and waved at her. The close-cropped hair was a shock, as I had known it would be, but now with the sun on it and striking fire in the curls I could see that it was going to be easy to live with and that by the time she got ready to change it again I would be just as outraged as I had been this time. I got out and went across the street and she waited for me eagerly.

“Well?” she asked.

“You’re right,” I said. “I was talking through my hat all the time. It’s lovely.”

“Feel,” she said. I put my hand on the side of her head, very gently so as not to muss anything, and felt the brush of the ringlets against my palm.

“Let’s go back to the hotel,” I said.

She grinned at me. “No. You have too much trouble working out your schedules back there. Let’s stay downtown until we get finished.”

We went around to one of the department stores and picked out a blue bathing suit and a woolly beach robe of canary yellow and some sandals and a bathing cap. I bought some bathing trunks for myself while she ran ecstatically through their stock shopping for more clothes. We filled the car with bundles and went back to the hotel. The flowers were there in the room when we came in. She put her arms up around my neck and pulled down hard, with that way she had, like a drowning swimmer, and with her lips against my ear she whispered fiercely, “Hold me tight like this, Bob. Don’t ever let me go.”