“Willie,” the other man answered.
“Willie?”
“Call me Willie. My wife does. Half the chemists in America do. Anybody who can write about using isotopes the way you did can automatically call me Willie. You’re Jimmie—and I’m Willie. Mm. I can imagine your folks are—a shock.” He shrugged. “I’ll show you through the shop tomorrow. Meantime, what’s this I got in a letter practically dunked in sealing wax about you working on an incendiary that will stick to whatever it hits?”
Jimmie pulled his chair forward. They began to talk. Only a few thousand men in the whole of America would have understood everything that they said. The five-o’clock shift went home. The bright yellow smoke paled against the darkling sky. Lights came on—Willie Corinth impatiently jerked on his bluish one in the middle of something about a gas-driven torpedo motor that would stand being dropped from forty thousand feet onto the hard sea. At last Jimmie looked at his watch and flushed.
“It’s after seven!”
“So ’tis. I’ll run you home. I’ve got a jalopy that I keep just to see how long it can go without a visible reason. Your mother’ll be burnt to a crisp!”
People were leaving, when Jimmie climbed out of the jalopy—women in furs, men in chesterfields. He ran up the steps, bumping past them. There were guests in the house, scores of them, but they had a straggler look. Several had drunk too many cocktails. A woman with an overwarm, oversoft face, a maternal face belied by sharp, acquisitive eyes, filled the front room with a belting cry, “Here’s Jimmie, at last! My! Isn’t he handsome!”
They came from every side. He wanted to run. But Biff put a glass in his hand.
And Sarah whispered, “Well, you ducked this one and made us pretty ashamed! But you won’t escape Mother from now on—don’t think you will!”
Then his mother was near. Her voice hissed. “Jimmie! Your trouser leg!”