“That was in Virginia and Tennessee. We don’t go through Virginia to Chicago, dumbbell.”
“We go through Tennessee, though.”
“Not that part of Tennessee. Shut up, I tell you. Here, you get up and go back to your room.”
“No. Please, just a little while longer. I’ll lie still. Come on, Gus, don’t be so crummy.”
“Get out, now,” he repeated implacably.
“I’ll be still: I won’t say a w—”
“No. Outside, now. Go on. Go on, Gus, like I tell you.”
She heaved herself over nearer. “Please, Josh. Then I’ll go.”
“Well. Be quick about it.” He turned his face away and she leaned down and took his ear between her teeth, biting it just a little, making a kind of meaningless maternal sound against his ear. “That’s enough,” he said presently, turning his head and his moistened ear. “Get out, now.”
She rose obediently and returned to her room. It seemed to be hotter in here than in his room, so she got up and removed her pajamas and got back in bed and lay on her back, cradling her dark grave head in her arms and gazing into the darkness; and after a while it wasn’t so hot and it was like she was on a high place looking away out where mountains faded dreaming and blue and on and on into a purple haze under the slanting and solemn music of the sun. She’d see ’em day after to-morrow. Mountains. . .
7
Fairchild went directly to the marble and stood before it, clasping his hands at his burly back. The Semitic man sat immediately on entering the room, preëmpting the single chair. The host was busy beyond the rep curtain which constituted his bedroom, from where he presently reappeared with a bottle
