The Victorious opposition

"Thank you, Mr. Ke

"My pleasure," he answered. "May I take you out to get a bite to eat now?" He didn't mean a bite with him and his wife. Rose would stay wherever Rose stayed while Joe did as he pleased. And no, supper wasn't all he had in mind.

She wondered what he saw in her. She was in her mid-forties, her brown hair going gray, fine lines not so fine any more, her figure distinctly dumpy. Maybe he didn't believe anybody could say no to him and mean it. Maybe her saying no was what kept him after her. If she ever did give in to him, she was sure he would forget all about her after one encounter.

"No, thanks, Mr. Ke

Ke

Shrugging, Sylvia got down from the stage. As soon as her back was to him, she let out a long sigh of relief. Every time she got away from Joe Ke

She hadn't gone far before another man fell into step with her. "You made a good speech," he said. "You told them what they needed to hear. Then, when you were done, you shut up. Too many people never know when to shut up."

"Ernie!" Sylvia exclaimed. She gave the writer a hug. If Joe Ke

He shrugged. He had broad shoulders, almost a prizefighter's shoulders, and dark, ruggedly handsome features. He looked more like a bouncer, a mean bouncer, than the man who'd put Sylvia's words on paper in I Sank Roger Kimball. Considering the wound he'd taken driving an ambulance up in Quebec during the war, he had more right than most men to seem, to be, mean.

When he saw she wouldn't be content with that shrug, he raised one eyebrow in a world-weary way that made him look older than she was for a moment, though he had to be ten years younger. He said, "I am looking for work. Why does anyone go anywhere these days? Maybe I will find something to write about. Maybe I will find something someone will pay me to write about. The first is easy. The second is hard these days."

"Are you hungry?" Sylvia asked. Ernie didn't answer. He had more pride than two or three ordinary men. Pride was a luxury Sylvia had long since derided she couldn't afford. She said, "Come on. I'll buy you supper." Before he could speak, she held up a hand. "I've got the money. Don't worry about that. And I owe you." She found herself talking as he did, in short, choppy sentences. "Not just for the book. You warned me my bank would fail. I got my money out in time."

"Good I could do something," he said, and scowled. He'd wanted her. She'd wanted him, too, the first time she'd really wanted a man since her husband was killed at-after-the end of the Great War. Considering his wound, that surge of desire had been nothing but one more cruel irony.

"Come on," she said again.

Ernie didn't tell her no, a likely measure of how hard up he was. She took him to an oyster house. He ate with a single-minded voracity she hadn't seen since her son was growing into a man.

She put money on the table for both of them. He frowned. "I still hate to have a woman pick up the tab for me."

"It's all right," Sylvia said. "Don't worry about it. It's the least I can do. I told you that already. And I bet I can afford it a lot better than you can."

His pain-filled bark of laughter made people all over the place stare at him. "You are right about that. You must be right about that. I do need to land a writing job. I need to do it right away. If I do not, I will wind up in a Blackford-burgh."

"You could do something else," she said.

"Oh, yes." Ernie nodded. "I could step into the ring and get my block knocked off. I have done that a couple of times. It pays even worse than writing, and it is not so much fun. Or I could carry a hod. I have done that, too. The same objections apply. I am glad to see you doing so well for yourself."

"I've been lucky," Sylvia said. "I feel lucky, seeing you again."

"Me?" Another sour laugh. "Not likely. I have tried to write books that show how things were in the war. People do not want to read them. No one wants to publish them any more. Everyone wants to forget we ever had a war."

"They haven't forgotten down in the Confederate States," Sylvia said.

"Sweet Jesus Christ. I am lucky. I have found someone who can see past the end of her nose. Do you know how hard that is to do these days?"

The praise warmed Sylvia. It wasn't smarmy, the way Joe Ke

"No. He is a real son of a bitch, that one, a rattler buzzing in the bushes by the road," Ernie said. "One of these days, we are going to have to settle his hash."

"I say things like that on the stump, and people look at me like I'm crazy," Sylvia said. "Sometimes I start to wonder myself, you know what I mean?"

He leaned forward and, with startling gentleness, let his hand rest softly on hers. "You have more sense than anybody I have seen for a hell of a long time, Sylvia," he said. "If anyone tries to tell you any different, belt the silly bastard right in the chops."

That had to be the oddest romantic speech Sylvia had ever heard. But, where most of the so-called romantic speeches she'd heard either made her want to laugh or made her want to kill the man who was making them, this one filled her with heat. That in itself felt strange and u

"Let's go to my flat," she murmured. "My son's married and on his own, and my daughter works the evening shift."

Ernie jerked his hand away as if she were on fire. "Did you forget?" he asked harshly. "I am no good for that. I am no damn good for that at all."

He'd told her the same thing once before. It had balked her then. Now… "There are other things we could do. If you wanted to." She looked down at the tabletop. She felt the heat of embarrassment, too. She didn't think she'd ever said anything so risquй.

"I will be damned," Ernie muttered, and then, "You will not be disappointed?"

"Never," she promised.

"Christ," he said again, only this time it sounded more like a prayer than a curse. He got to his feet. "Maybe you are lying to me. Maybe you are lying to yourself. I am asking to get wounded again. I know goddamn well I am. But if you do not change your mind in one hell of a hurry-"

"Not me," Sylvia said, and she got up, too.

Closing the door to the apartment behind them, locking it afterwards, seemed oddly final, oddly irrevocable. Going into the bedroom once she'd done that might almost have been anticlimax. Sylvia wished it could happen without undressing in front of a near stranger. She knew too well she'd never been anything out of the ordinary for looks or for build.

Ernie treated her as if she were, though. By the way he touched her and stroked her and kissed her, she might have been a moving-picture actress, not a fisherman's widow. He did know what to do to please a woman when he was no longer equipped to do one thing in particular. Sylvia rediscovered just how lonely taking care of herself was by comparison.

Only a little at a time did she realize how much courage he'd needed to bare himself for her. His body was hard and well-muscled. His mutilation, though… "I'll do what I can," Sylvia said.