Half of August had joined the past. And with it was passing Joe's complacency. Each day brought a certain routine: customers to be developed, doubtful and recalcitrant ones to be urged to the purchasing point. One day's work was very like the next. But each day passing brought a certain satisfaction, of being one day nearer to the day ahead.
The day that he had taken Myrtle Macomber up the river road had been Tuesday. On Wednesday he had risen, sluggish and weary, with an ache in his bones. A half-hearted, spasmodic attempt at work had ended at eleven o'clock. He had called up Myrtle. They went that afternoon to a ball-game. Thursday morning came, bright with promise, and a profitable forenoon was spent in the old hammer-and-tongs manner. By noon he had two orders in his pocket and felt quite exhausted. The heat drank up the very marrow from one's bones. He met Myrtle on the street. They had lunch together. All that afternoon they paddled about in the river and came home with hair wet and nerves sagging. Friday passed, a long dreary day. By the time five o'clock arrived Joe would willingly have sunk down on the cement pavement in some shaded corner, just to take his mind from the grip of the traffic. There was nothing in the selling of motor cars to give his mind anything to bite on. What was it kept him going, he asked himself? The answer suggested itself to him, but he shook it off and mused on. Summer was a dreary time. That night he dragged himself to Lytle Street. He found Miss Macomber waiting for him on the porch. She was wearing a Nile green sports suit of soft flannel, with white facings, and white shoes and stockings and a stiff sailor hat of white straw. As he came up the walk and approached the steps, he heard a scurrying and moving of chairs, and as he gained the porch he caught a glimpse of a scuttling back in a baggy shirt with suspenders, a stooped fat neck that was collarless, and a frayed-out bald spot—just a glint of it—on the head above. From humble soil is sometimes nurtured the choicest of blooms. Joe had never met Mr. Macomber and the mother always seemed to keep discreetly in the background.
They went that night to the amusement park on the river. Myrtle looked like a clipping from a style magazine; there was not a flaw in her. She drank up amusement like a thirsty sponge. They wandered about after the show. They drank lemonade. They danced in the pavilion. They wandered about some more, listened for a short time to the trillings of a robustious prima donna come upon evil days. They soon tired of this so easily attained diversion and feverishly set out for more. They danced again. They ran into a crowd of Myrtle's friends. They joined them in a series of mad dashes on the roller coaster. Myrtle's zest seemed fed from eternal springs. They danced a third time, or rather Myrtle did, with each clamouring swain, while the music bleated and whined away in expiring ecstasies and Joe leaned back against the window sill and gazed hollow-eyed at the ceiling or answered the fatuous banalities of some of the less fortunate ladies who were not dancing at the moment for various reasons. And as they went home that night, after twelve, they talked of the vast still places of the world, "where Nature leans a brooding ear" and "where one can be reposed and strong and silent and happy" and "just drink up the atmosphere in great gusty draughts, and steep oneself in calm. None of this terrible grind from day to day."
Saturday, Myrtle went up-state. Saturday was hot and long and interminable. Sunday she motored, likewise up-state. It did not make the city streets the cooler, thinking of her. Sunday night produced a rain and a rising wind and a repetition of that chill, aching weariness for Joe when he dragged himself to bed. Just as relaxation slipped down between the covers upon his weary body the future came and stood at the foot of his bed and stared at him like a flat, empty sheet of yellow foolscap, without a mark on it, and away it stretched endless. It was a silly image; it stared so vacantly. But it roused him with a start and he tossed about restlessly on his bed and threw back the covers that had become oppressive and let the breeze from the window, a water-soaked breeze, blow in upon his bare chest. How long would he be selling motor cars? He shelved that question. How much would he have to make this month still, to pay all his bills? He shelved this one, too. What was the matter with him, that he felt so played out? Suddenly he shivered and was chilled to the marrow, and he pulled the sheet up under his chin and went to sleep in the absorbed contemplation of each minute bodily misery.
Monday noon found them lunching together in the tea room. Joe spoke very distantly and formally to Mary Louise when once she came in, looked around at the tables, and then disappeared in the mysterious regions behind. Tuesday night they went on a moonlight picnic on a large river steamer and got back at half-past one. There had been a blissful hour of drifting black shadows, of gleaming ripples, and the heavy sonorous exhaust of benign boilers, spent on the topmost step of the pilot-house stairs, with a moon that dipped and swam in a turgid sea of drifting clouds. The rest had been rattle and bang of jazz and chatter, and bumping about on a hot, swaying floor into obstreperous shoulders, and the smell of sweetened popcorn and fresh paint and sickly perfume. Wednesday they went for a ride again and ended up at the "Ferry" and danced and drank lemonade. And they passed a table where sat old Mrs. LeMasters with a youngish boy with a very red, sunburned face, and she wagged her finger at Joe and looked long and critically at Myrtle. Thursday night he stayed home and felt solitarily virtuous.
On Friday a picnic had been arranged. Joe "knocked off" work at four o'clock and went home and dressed by a window through which the sun streamed broiling hot. Before putting on his shoes he yielded to the lure of the bed and flung himself upon it. It was all he could do to drag himself forth and put on the finishing touches. Somehow the notion of the picnic did not thrill him. There would be the same crowd on hand, noisy, obstreperous, vulgar. They had no real "punch" to them. They were like beating a tin pan: all of it was right on the surface.
He arrived twenty minutes late and was scolded. They loaded a stack of baskets into his car; all about his feet were cumbersome bundles; and they scratched the polished panel in the tonneau behind the front seat. He could hear the grating of the straw basket across the beautiful surface and he shrank from the sound. Into the seat beside him clambered the soft, fattish girl. Her name was Penny, he had learned. She smirked at him as she adjusted her skirts. There was a line of tiny beady perspiration upon her upper lip and her white slippers gaped at the sides and were not too clean. Her pink georgette crêpe waist clung to a flabby back with a suggestion of dampness and she simpered at him:
"I hope Myrtle won't put poison in my ice-tea."
He confessed that that would distress him exceedingly.
Into the back seat clambered the two boys with the copper throats. Their names were Glotch and Trumpeter. They hailed Joe with acclaim, slapped Miss Penny on the bare neck, coyly, with little flips of the fingers, and when the slim, sour-faced girl—who was a Miss Ardle—with her slicked black hair, climbed in between them, they fell on her neck in ecstasies of greeting and threatened to kiss her and were slapped roundly for their pains amid loud guffaws. It ended by Miss Ardle coming around and sitting in the front seat to the rapturous discomfort of Miss Penny, whose fat leg was thereby squeezed against the gear-shifting lever where it was in Joe's way for the remainder of the trip.