Gentleman's Agreement by Laura Z. Hobson Read Free Book Online Page A

“Here’s to—” and stopped. “I’m no good at toasts,” he said. “I can never think of anything.”
    “Here’s to never thinking of anything,” she said quickly. He thought it the most charming, the wittiest—and before he could finish the sentence he thought, Boy, it wasn’t that good. She was taking a sip of her drink, and he noticed her pursed lips. She started telling a funny thing that had happened at the nursery school that afternoon. She told a story well. The too-social tone was gone. Had he imagined it entirely? One way or the other, it didn’t matter any more. She had begun laughing at her own story, and he laughed with her.
    “You like kids, don’t you?”
    “I seem to,” she said. “I’ve got thirty. All stages from training pants to six years. They’re more exhausting than the factory ever was.”
    “What factory?”
    “Didn’t I—for Pete’s sake, did I leave that out?”
    “I’m not so much of an interviewer at that, am I? What factory?”
    It was her first job after her divorce, the first full-time job she’d ever had. For the first year of the war, she had operated a drill press at Wright Aeronautical in Paterson. After a deep bronchial infection her doctor talked darkly of pneumonia, even tuberculosis, and ordered her to leave.
    “I guess I wasn’t hard to persuade,” she said. “After the first excitement, I hated it.”
    “I bet.”
    “Anyway, after a vacation, I got into the school. In those days nobody asked you if you had the proper training. I do like kids.”
    She asked about Tom, and he guarded himself against sounding boastful. He was a nice kid, fun to talk to and take places. He’d made a good adjustment already to his new school.
    “It could be tough on a boy that age,” he ended. “Switching from a small country school to a big city one and especially in the middle of a term. He’s O.K., I guess.”
    Suddenly she smiled at him and saw his eyes go uncertain, as if he were unsure of why she had and were asking her not to wound him. She wanted to tell him that she knew more about his inner states than he had told her, that she knew he not only wasn’t happy now but hadn’t been for a long time, so that possibly he’d forgotten how simple and good it was to feel happy. But she said none of those things. New Yorkers made greatly personal remarks to each other on first or second meetings, but perhaps people from smaller places would get tied up with constraint and embarrassment. He’d be miffed if he knew she thought of him as different from New Yorkers. He’d been abroad three times, he’d traveled a good deal in America, yet there was some of the air of a small-towner about him, indefinable but there.
    “You’re sort of afraid,” she said, “to let on to anybody that you’re nuts about Tom, aren’t you?” She leaned toward him earnestly. “Don’t be, Phil, you don’t have to be, with me or anybody.”
    “It’s—well, I just—” He broke it. He was touched, about what he did not know. Ever since Betty he had not found any girl who knew more about him than he chose to put into words. Communication with another human being, communication on the levels where words were needless, was something he had missed so deeply that recognition of it stirred sharply in him. “I guess I cover on lots of things,” he said stiffly.
    “And when you do, you look—well, all sort of dark and brooding.” She suddenly added, “Like Toledo. You know, that landscape of El Greco?”
    He laughed.
    “You mean all dark greens and blacks? Mackerel sky? Storm coming?”
    She nodded. “Practically a portrait of you.” She waited till he stopped laughing and then asked about the new assignment. He countered by telling her of the taxi driver. She said, “It’s sickening, isn’t it?” and they fell silent. A moment later, he suggested that she play for him. She went at once to the piano and began a simple Mozart sonata. Several times she struck wrong notes and