The Young Lions

Sleeper's play, in which Cahoon had given him a five per cent interest, was doing very well, and it would undoubtedly sell to the movies, and there would be money coming in from it for two years. "I will be the richest private," Michael said, "in the American Army."

"I still think," Piper said, "that you ought to let me invest it for you."

"No, thank you," said Michael. He had gone over that again and again with Piper, and Piper still couldn't understand. Piper had some very good steel stocks himself and wanted Michael to buy some, too. But Michael had a stubborn, although vague and slightly shamefaced, opposition to making money out of money, of profiting by the labour of other men. He had tried once to explain it to Piper, but the lawyer was too sensible for talk like that, and now Michael merely smiled and shook his head. Piper put out his hand. "Good luck," he said. "I'm sure the war will be over very soon."

"Of course," said Michael. "Thanks."

He left quickly, glad to get out of the lawyer's office. He always felt trapped and restless when talking to lawyers or doing any business with them, and the feeling was even worse today.

He rang for the lift. It was full of secretaries on the way to lunch, and there was a smell of powder, and the eager, released bubble of voices. As the lift swooped down the forty storeys, he wondered, again, how these young, bright, lively people could endure being locked in among the typewriters, the books, the Pipers, the notaries' seals and the legal language all their lives. As he walked north along Fifth Avenue, towards the restaurant where he was to meet Peggy, he felt relieved. Now he was through with all his official business. For this afternoon, and all the night, until six-thirty the next morning when he had to report to his draft board, life was free of all claims on him. The civil authorities had relinquished him and the military authorities had not yet taken him up. It was one o'clock now. Seventeen and a half hours, unanchored, between one life and the next.

He felt lightfooted and free and he looked fondly about him at the su

He turned down the two steps to the entrance of the little French restaurant. Through the window he could see Peggy already sitting at the bar.

The restaurant was crowded and they sat at the bar next to a slightly drunken sailor with bright red hair. Always, when he met Peggy like this, Michael spent the first two or three minutes silently looking at her, enjoying the quiet eagerness of her face, with its broad brow and arched eyes, admiring the simple, straight way she did her hair and the pleasant way she wore her clothes. All the best things about the city seemed somehow to have an echo and reflection in the tall, straight, dependable girl… And now, when Michael thought about the city, it was inextricably mixed in his mind with the streets he had walked with her, the houses they had entered, the plays they had seen together, the galleries they had gone to, the bars they had sat at late in the winter afternoons. Looking at her, her cheeks flushed with her walk, her eyes bright with pleasure at seeing him, her long competent hands searching out to touch his sleeve, it was impossible to believe that that eagerness or pleasure would ever wane, that there ever would be a time he would return here and not find her, unchanged, unchanging…

He looked at her and all the sad, grotesque thoughts that had dogged him uptown from his lawyer's office left him. He smiled gravely at her and touched her hand and slid on to the stool beside her.

"What are you doing this afternoon?" he said.

"Waiting."

"Waiting for what?"

"Waiting to be asked."

"All right," Michael said. "You're asked. An old-fashioned," he said to the bartender. He turned back to Peggy. "Man I know," he said, "hasn't a thing to do until six-thirty tomorrow morning."

"What will I tell the people at my office?"

"Tell them," he said gravely, "you are involved in a troop movement."

"I don't know," Peggy said. "My boss is against the war."

"Tell him the troops are against the war, too."

"Maybe I won't tell him anything," said Peggy.

"I will call him," Michael said, "and tell him that when you were last seen you were floating towards Washington Square in a bourbon old-fashioned."

"He doesn't drink."

"Your boss," said Michael, "is a dangerous alien."

They clicked glasses gently. Then Michael noticed that the red-headed sailor was leaning against him, peering at Peggy.

"Exactly," said the sailor.

"If you please," Michael said, feeling free to speak harshly to men in uniform now, "this lady and I are having a private party."

"Exactly," said the sailor. He patted Michael's shoulder and Michael remembered the hungry sergeant staring at Laura at lunch-time in Hollywood the day after the begi

"Exactly," the sailor repeated. "I admire you. You have the right idea. Don't kiss the girls in the town square and go off to fight the war. Stay home and lay them. Exactly."

"Now, see here," said Michael.

"Excuse me," said the sailor. He put some money down on the bar and put on his cap, very straight and white on top of his red hair. "It just slipped out. Exactly. I am on my way to Erie, Pe

Michael watched him walk out. He couldn't help smiling, and when he turned back to Peggy he was still smiling. "The Armed Services," he began, "makes confidants of every…" Then he saw she was crying. She sat straight on the high stool in her pretty brown dress and the tears were welling slowly and gravely down her cheeks. She didn't put up her hands to touch them or wipe them off.

"Peggy," Michael said quietly, gratefully noticing that the bartender was ostentatiously working with his head ducked at the other end of the bar. Probably, Michael thought, as he put out his hand to touch Peggy, bartenders get used to seeing a great many tears these days and develop a technique.

"I'm sorry," Peggy said. "I started to laugh but this is the way it came out."

Then the head-waiter came over in a little Italian flurry, and said, "Your table now, Mr Whitacre."

Michael carried the drinks and followed Peggy and the waiter to a table against the wall. By the time they sat down Peggy had stopped crying, but all the eagerness was gone out of her face. Michael had never seen her face looking like that.

They ate the first part of their meal in silence. Michael waited for Peggy to recover. This was not like her at all. He had never seen her cry before. He had always thought of her as a girl who faced whatever happened to her with quiet stoicism. She had never complained about anything or fallen into the irrational emotional fevers he had more or less come to expect from the female sex, and he had developed no technique for soothing her or rescuing her from depression. He looked at her from time to time as they ate, but her face was bent over her food.

"I'm sorry," she said, finally, as they were drinking their coffee, and her voice was surprisingly harsh. "I'm sorry for the way I behaved. I know I should be gay and offhand and kiss the brave young soldier off. 'Go get your head shot off, darling, I'll be waiting with a martini in my hand.'"

"Peggy," Michael said, "shut up."

"Wear my glove on your arm," Peggy said, "as you do KP."

"What's the matter, Peggy?" Michael asked foolishly, because he knew what the matter was.