"Sure." Groff lit it for her.
She said, "What are you going to do now, Mickey? After things clear up a little, I mean."
He hesitated. The question had not occurred to him for some time. "Go ahead as planned, I guess. Chief Brayer said the Swanscomb place wasn't damaged, and your husband seems to have given up the idea of making a warehouse out of it."
She laughed, not maliciously. "I wonder if he remembers that he signed a lease on it," she said.
"Lease?"
She nodded. "There were a couple of men from Ohio in to see him last week. He drew up a lease on the spot, and they paid him a binder."
Groff said, "Hell. Well, that was pretty stupid of him, but if it's a matter of getting—him—in trouble I suppose I could find some other—"
"Get Artie in trouble? Small chance, Mickey. He lands on his feet. And if he doesn't, he always has the family money to bail him out—my family, that is. What you really mean is you'd back out in order to do me a favor, isn't it? Don't answer. It wouldn't be a favor, Mickey. I decided a long time ago that I couldn't mother Artie. I had to let him get in his own scrapes and get out by himself, if he could get out. It hasn't made a man of him yet, but there's always the chance it may."
She tipped the ash of her cigarette neatly into a thick china saucer. "Stay around, Mickey," she said. "All of us need people like you around here. For much more than business."
A quality in her voice touched him, deeper perhaps than she had intended, deeper than he could remember being touched before. Responsibility. That was the word. Someone had to help. And it was something very different from ego that made him think too: Someone has to lead.