He said, “I’ll have a talk with the Greek. He’ll get rid of the license. All he has to do is light a match.”
She didn’t say anything. She looked at the ring on her finger. She started to take it off and it wanted to stay there, as though it were a part of her that pleaded not to be torn away.
He said, “It’ll come off. Just loosen the hinge.”
Her eyes were wet. “If we could only—”
“But we can’t,” he said. “Don’t you see the way it is? We don’t ride the same track. I can’t live your kind of life and you can’t live mine. It ain’t anyone’s fault. It’s just the way the cards are stacked.”
She nodded slowly. And just then the ring came off. It dropped from her limp hand and rolled across the floor and went under the bar to vanish in the darkness of all lost dreams. He heard the final tinkling sound it made, a plaintive little sound that accompanied her voice saying good-by. Then there was the sound of his own footsteps walking out of Dugan’s Den.
As he came off the pavement to cross the Vernon cobblestones, his tread was heavy, coming down solidly on solid ground. He moved along with a deliberate stride that told each stone it was there to be stepped on, and he damn well knew how to walk this street, how to handle every bump and rut and hole in the gutter. He went past them all, and went up on the doorstep of the house where he lived. As he pushed open the door, it suddenly occurred to him that he was damned hungry.
In the parlor, Bella was lying face down on the sofa. He gave her a slap on her rump. “Get up,” he said. “Make me some supper.”