“Don’t mention it.”
My shoes slip and clatter on the paving stones. The headlights flare against the glitter of my dress, against the tiny whir of snowflakes. I reach the sidewalk and the door. Pull out my latchkey, like any modern, independent girl in New York City. The snow coats the stoop like a layer of dust, and mine are the first footprints. The knob turns, and I remember something.
“Anson! Your jacket.”
“Keep it.”
I shrug the garment from my shoulders and trip back down across the sidewalk to where Anson stands next to the driver’s-side door, in his overcoat and a plaid muffler, probably cashmere wool, like the girls at college used to wear, only sleeker. Hat pulled down low over that slanting forehead. The car’s parked right in the middle of two street lamps, nice and dark, so I can’t see his face all that well.
I say, “No, you take it. Or else you’ll be coming back for it, won’t you? And that wouldn’t do at all.”
He takes the jacket and folds it over his arm, while the snow stings my bare skin and lands in my hair. And you know something? For a single crazy instant, I imagine myself asking him upstairs. You know. For a cup of coffee or something. Chase away the winter.
Anson nods, like he’s imagining the same thing. His hand reaches out to land on my shoulder, and the leather feels wet on my skin, cold: the fresh, sweet meltwater of New York snowflakes.
“Now get inside before you freeze to death.”
I SUPPOSE YOU imagine, after a night like that, I’d be looking forward to a long winter’s nap in my own clean bed. And I am. I might sleep all February, if you let me.
But I can’t, you see. Because in the first place, I’m shortly due at a typing pool in the underwriting department of Sterling Bates & Company on the corner of Wall and Broad, come snow or come revenue agents; and second of all, the light’s shining forth from underneath my door.
And it turns out, Special Agent Anson was wrong, after all.
DARLING!”
“Billy! Wh—” (Word ends in oomph against the lapels of Billy’s dinner jacket.)
“Darling. I’ve been worried sick.” (Into my hair.) “Where have you been? I telephoned the precinct, I telephoned everyone I could think of—”
“You telephoned what?” (Extracting self from lapels.)
“Dearest love.” He takes my face between his hands and kisses my mouth. His breath smells of cigarettes and Scotch whiskey and anxiety. “Did they hurt you? If anyone hurt you—”
“Nobody hurt me.”
“That agent. The agent who called in the raid.”
“What about him?”
“He didn’t try anything, did he?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Billy holds me out at arm’s length—which is to say, about the length of the entire room—and examines my eyes for truth. “But you were away all night.”
“That sometimes happens in a police raid.”
“You look exhausted.”
“Of course I’m exhausted. I’ve just spent the night in jail. And you’re supposed to be in New Jersey by now. Don’t you have some lecture or something tomorrow? Some professor requiring your presence?”
He blinks. Exhibits a sort of disheveled aspect altogether, collar loose and tie undone, hair spiking madly into his forehead. Waistcoat all unbuttoned. A fine few lines have grown in around the corners of his eyes, pointing out the reckless black throb of the pupils. “My God. Lectures? Who gives a damn about college?”
“Why, your parents, I’ll bet. For one thing.”
“My parents?”
“Yes. Those. The ones picking up the check for the whole racket, if I’m not mistaken.”
“Ginger. Darling. How can you possibly think I’d leave you to rot in some stinking jail while I—I—slink back to college like some damned little rat and listen to some damned little professor—as if that matters, next to you—”
“Of course it matters! I’m just some dame you know in the city, you silly boy. I can take care of myself.”
“You shouldn’t have to. You wouldn’t, if you would just allow me—”
“Billy.” I stroke his cheeks a little, the way you might stroke a Labrador puppy to calm him down. How I worship those cheeks. He’s got the loveliest bones up there, high and sturdy and dusted with pink on most occasions, as now. Hasn’t got much beard to speak of—shaves but once a day—and the skin’s as tender as any velvet, curving deliciously downward to his jaw and his plump raspberry mouth, presently pursed with worry. The room is cold, and he’s so warm. Scintillating with distress. “How awfully touching. You sweet, dear thing. But you have a future, remember? A nice, bright, shining future. And futures like yours require a college education.”
“I don’t want any kind of future that doesn’t have you in it, Gin. That’s the kind of shining future for me.”
“Oh, Billy. Go home, sweetie. Go home and get some sleep.”
“It’s too late to go home.” He kisses me again, more softly. Hands sliding down my shoulders to the small of my back. Voice running lower, like an engine changing gears. “Hudson ferries’ve been in port for hours. And I don’t want to sleep.”
“I mean uptown. Your parents’ place.”
“They’ll ask too many questions if I turn up now. Four o’clock in the morning. And I’ll wake up the baby.”
“You know, for such a tender sprout, you’re awfully persuasive, Billy-boy.”
“My uncle’s a lawyer, remember?”
“Is he a good one?”
Billy laughs into the hollow behind my ear. “Not really.”
“What about you? Do you want to be a lawyer?”
“I don’t care what I am, Gin darling. Not right now. I’m just so glad to see you. Glad you’re safe and free. Let’s not go down to that club anymore, all right? Let’s find a place somewhere, place of our own—”
“Now, Billy.”
“Aw, I mean it this time. You don’t know what it’s like, riding that stinking ferry back to New Jersey, knowing what kind of stew I’m leaving you in. I can’t stand it any longer.” (He’s unbuttoning my dress by now, nimble long aristocratic fingers, touching the base of my spine in the way that makes me shiver and forget things.) “Wherever you like, Gin. Upstate or down south or Timbucktoo. We can get married and raise a bunch of kids.”
“Says who?”
“Says me.”
“And what are we going to live on, Billy-boy? Moonshine?”
“I’ll find something.”
The dress is history. He picks me up and sort of crashes backward down on the bed. The mattress heaves and settles. Releases the musty lavender smell of old sheets. Dear Billy-boy. Bones like a sapling. Sweet lips kissing the sense right out of my skin. The