The Moth

by James M. Cain

  “I took you for a co-ed.”

  “But you—you go to college?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t you have a name?”

  “Don’t you know it?”

  “Why—I never saw you before. Or have I?”

  I picked up the picture that I’d cut out for Miss Eleanor, and handed it over. She gave a gasp, put it down, stared at me. “But of course! ... The wallop you gave me today—I’m still not over it—I And you’re just a baby.”

  “Well—thanks.”

  “Don’t you like being a baby?”

  “Would you?”

  “I did.”

  “That’s right, I—sort of said the same, didn’t I?”

  “And I loved it.”

  “Then thanks again. This time, real thanks.”

  “I think I owe you something.”

  “You certainly do.”

  “I’m not talking about the ten dollars you helped win for me—I bet Maryland would score—though that I can use. Something else. What I felt looking at you out there, with that taffy hair shining in the sun, and the heavy determined look on your face. Did anybody ever tell you how your head cocks to one side?”

  “Hadn’t heard of it.”

  “And when the other team is up to something you stand there for all the world like a cat watching a mouse hole. Then your shoulders go forward. Then something happens to your jaw. Then you spring. Then the cat’s no longer a cat. He’s a tiger... Let’s go to some club.”

  “All right, but I’m taking you.”

  “It’s I who owe you. And besides, I’m a very successful widow, as I’ll probably tell you all evening, now we’ve discussed you a little bit. Quite a high-pressure girl, and today I put something over, as I think I said.”

  “I’m not exactly a failure, myself.”

  “Well, listen to him!”

  “I too can pick up a check.”

  “Can’t we match for it?”

  She was standing beside me and we both laughed. Then her eyes crinkled up in a way that made me like her even better than I had liked her, and we both got out quarters and cupped our hands and rattled them around. “You’re matching me, Mrs. Lucas, and if you win the drinks are on me.” So she won, and I got up and bowed, and she picked up her letters and I put the clipping in mine and stamped it and sealed it. Then we went out and across the lobby to the mail chute. Then she headed for the elevators. “I’ll have to put something on.”

  “I have no evening clothes with me.”

  “All right, but I can’t go in a suit.”

  “Then I’ll wait here.”

  “Why? Come on up.”

  It was my first contact with a suite, because while my father always took one, it was on account of the gang he always had with him, his sisters, me, and like as not some friends, and I hadn’t known that one person, if they just take that sitting room extra, can have anybody up there they please. She was on the ninth or tenth deck, her windows overlooking the Hudson, and as soon as she turned on the radio she excused herself and went in the bedroom. I sat and listened and looked out at the lights, but it seemed to me my heart was a little high in my throat, and why I didn’t exactly know. Everything was straight down the middle, exactly according to Hoyle. And yet here we were, the two of us alone together in a strange city, and I was excited. The buzzer rang and the bedroom door opened a little bit. “Will you see if that’s the boy? I thought we could have something before we started. Just let him in and ask him to wait.”

  I opened the door, and a bellboy was there with a pitcher of ice, some fizz water, and two glasses. She came out in a kimono and paid him and he went. Then she went into the bedroom and came out with a pint of rye. “It’s prescription stuff, so it’s all right. You like it plain or highball?”

  “Highball.”

  I’m glad, looking back on it now, that I said nothing about training. For all I knew, this was about nothing whatever, but if it was about anything at all, it was a lot more important than football. She made the drinks, then sat across from me with the cocktail table between, and talked about herself. Her husband had been in the hard-coal business, the mining end, but died on a trip to Cuba. They had lived in Easton, Pennsylvania. She had to do something, and got a job in their big department store. Soon she was children’s buyer, and had come piling to town yesterday to stop shipment of stuff ordered for Christmas. She seemed pretty stuck on herself that she’d found a clause in the contract to let her off the hook, on account of some delay in deliveries. That there was any connection between those toys and my stock never entered my mind, and fact of the matter, I’d been too busy running, kicking, and passing to pay any attention to finance. They tell me now it was all over the front pages, but if so, it must have been on days when I was looking for my picture inside.

  So I just listened, sipped my drink, and once or twice, for no reason I could see, my heart would give a little bump. After a while she said she’d better get her things on, then drank out and went in the bedroom. I tried not to see it but my heart kept reminding me: she hadn’t closed the door. Pretty soon, sounding like a homesick foghorn, I heard myself say: “You need any help?”

  “No, thanks... Of course now, wanting a little help, that might be different.”

  Somehow, my legs took me in there. She was in a little pair of filmy pants, bra, shoes, stockings, and nothing else, standing in front of the mirror looking at herself. She had a round, perky little figure, and it did things to me. She stood first on one foot, then on the other foot, with her hand on her hip and one little finger sticking out. Then: “For an old woman of twenty-five, I do look young.”

  “You look young, beautiful and—kissable.”

  “What are you trembling about, Jack?”

  “Am I?”

  “The bubbles in that glass are making a regular razzle-dazzle. If it shakes any worse the ice will be clinking.”

  “Reaction, maybe. Hard game today.”

  “Why don’t you ask why I’m trembling?”

  “All right, why?”

  “Reaction—or something... I knew we weren’t going out, Jack. That we were just pretending. So I could blow smoke at you and muss up your hair—will you ever stop pasting it down like that? It would have a nice wave if you’d let it wave. I knew all that, but I never did anything like this.”

  “Did you say children?”

  “That’s different. And you never did, either. All right, I suppose it’s the worst insult you can offer a man, to insinuate, or even hint that he could be anything but an expert on the subject. Just the same, I know what I know. And I want it like this. It’s a lot sweeter that you come to me—as a little child might. As a little taffy-haired boy entering a new and beautiful garden, a little forbidden, and utterly mysterious...”

  “Mrs. Lucas, what is your other name?”

  “June.”

  “June, come here... It’s all true, what you know.”

  “Does it hurt, to admit it?”

  “No.”

  I told her about the car, the way Denny and I had chased girls, and the afternoon on the bay. She listened, then went to the window and stood looking up at the stars. Then: “Jack, I’m so glad it made you sick! ... I guess I understand it, how those girls felt, how your friend felt—I wasn’t born yesterday. They want to be exalted but all they’re capable of is to be excited. What was it Wilde said? ‘Each man kills the thing he loves’—? Except that such people don’t kill it, they merely befoul it. I’m proud of you that you didn’t and couldn’t. Tonight is a night you can never have twice, and it’s wonderful you saved it—for me. I’m happy it’s me. And that it’s silly, romantic, and cockeyed. Can I give you one little ideal, I’d like you to keep? ... Let it always be beautiful. Don’t ever befoul it.”

  She kissed me then, and through the night spread the color of the moth.

  8

  THE REST OF THAT fall, I guess we played some football, but who we played and how it came out I wouldn’t know
. I wrote her or wired her or sent her something every day, and then after the Hopkins game, which was played in Baltimore, I called up Doc Henry, that had tended me ever since I could remember, and got him to certify by wire to the college that I needed a little toe-nail-ectomy, something like that. Then without any more than calling up the house, I beat it for the station and took the train for Easton. I saw her a little sooner than I expected. I got in late at night, and next morning went down in the dining room and had breakfast, wondering if I could ever make the clock go around until it would be time to ring her telephone. But I had sent her a wire I was coming, and when I looked up, who should be there, following the waiter over to my table, but her, even younger-looking than she had been, with a little brown hat over her blonde hair, a fur coat, and a flower for my buttonhole. I was so glad to see her I could hardly eat my eggs. “Well, June, what would you like to do? I put a few lies on the wire and had a doctor send some, so I’m free till this time next week, if you are. I mean, we played our last game yesterday, and I’ve fixed it so I’m not due back to the kiddy-pen until after the Thanksgiving holidays.”

  “Who won, by the way?”

  “We did... And I have a suite. Would you like to see it?”

  “... Jack, I’m afraid I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “For the same reason I’m here so early to head you off from coming to see me. So I won’t have to have you at my house... Jack, it happened. If it just took us by surprise so we had a lovely night—oh, all right, two lovely nights and a long, dreamy day—and I’m not ashamed. Life is like that, and it has little lyric poems in it, as well as other things. But a lyric is one refrain, and there’s no second verse. I loved you, for one week end, as beautifully as I’m capable of loving. But I couldn’t go on with it. And not here. I forgot to tell you, I guess. I’m prominent. I belong to clubs and things. I have friends, who wouldn’t understand. And you’d be most difficult to explain.”

  “Why?”

  “Well—who are you?”

  “A guy in love.”

  “Yes, but—they’d expect to know more.”

  “All right, tell them more.”

  “What, for instance?”

  “A guy in love that you’re engaged to.”

  “That wouldn’t do.”

  “People get engaged, you know.”

  “Grown women, with children, don’t get engaged to babies going to college—or if they do, they don’t expect anybody to believe it. What they get taken for is what they are, somebody’s sweetie. And that I won’t have.”

  “All right, a guy in love, that you’re married to.”

  “What?”

  “They get married, too.”

  “When?”

  “Today.”

  “The bureau’s not open on Sunday.”

  “Then tomorrow.”

  “Jack, please be serious.”

  “I am.”

  I began to lean on it, then, to get it through her head that I meant business. I told her about myself, the money I’d made singing, the way I was going ahead at the mechanical engineering, and all the rest of it. I said we’d sell my stock, if that was what we’d have to do, and she could come with her kids and live at College Park, or I’d come to Easton and make a deal with Lafayette to play football. Or, I said, I’d quit school and we’d start over, here in Easton or wherever. She looked at me sharp when I spoke of the stock, asked me some questions, and said I’d better check on it, as things had happened. Then: “Jack, I see I’ll have to tell you the truth. Let’s go up to your suite.”

  So we went up there and she called her home and told the maid she wouldn’t be in until supper. Then she was in my arms and it was late afternoon before we did any talking. But when she started she hit it on the nose: “Jack, I think I’m going to get married.”

  “To me?”

  “No.”

  “Well—that’s making it plain, so a guy can understand it. When did all this happen, or do you mind my asking?”

  “It hasn’t happened.”

  “You’re just considering?”

  “Not even that. But—it’s being considered.”

  “I see.”

  “A woman knows, I suppose, when something of that sort is in the wind, and I’m quite sure at the proper time, in the proper way, I’ll be asked. I’ve done nothing with you I’m not free to do, nothing I’ll feel bound to mention, as it concerns nobody but ourselves. Just the same, it makes sense, and you don’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “You’re a baby, for one thing.”

  “Just an infant. But why does ‘it’ make sense?”

  “‘It’ was a friend of my husband’s, and he’s known me since I was married, and he’s fond of the kids, and they’re insane about him, and—I hate to bring this up, but it’s important: He’s very rich, and—”

  “I got it now.”

  “I don’t think you have.”

  “Do you love him?”

  “Not as I love you, here and now.”

  “But, he’s rich—”

  “Jack.”

  “What?”

  “Stop being offensive.”

  “Am I?”

  “Yes... If I were myself alone, and you asked me to do this mad thing, I don’t say I wouldn’t. I might. It’s mad enough, to be with you, like this. But I’m not myself alone. I have children, family, friends, position, all sorts of things to think of, that I will not give up. To have you I must give them up, for as you’ve said, it will involve a complete new start. With him, I do nothing much about it, and life goes on, pleasantly, sensibly, satisfactorily. And one other thing: When did riches become so loathsome?”

  “All right.”

  “They’re the foundation, at least moderate wealth is, of practically everything people want out of life, and this idea they’re so horrible, that a woman should never consider them, is just plain silly. Of course, that’s a man’s idea. No woman ever had it.”

  She put her arms around me and came close. After a long time she said: “It’s not so terrible now, is it?”

  “I just hate it.”

  “You won’t.”

  “Time the great healer, I suppose?”

  “Partly. Partly that after you’ve thought it over, and the romance has palled, you’ll be turning handsprings I did marry somebody else. Because you’re not ready yet, for a wife and two children that aren’t even yours. You’d have to quit school, and I’d have to keep on with this job I’ve got, and—a lot of things. But, Jack.”

  “Yes?”

  “Send me one red rose a year.”

  “All right.”

  “You love me?”

  “Yes.”

  I guess trains run between Baltimore and Easton, because if they had one to take me there it looks like there’d be one to take me back. But I don’t remember any train, any change at Philly, or anything of that kind. All I remember is wandering around that night, on a bridge over some river, on a street with picture shows on it, and up and down a hill near Lafayette College, trying to get through my head what was going to happen, so I could kill what I felt for her and get used to it she was going to marry somebody else. As to what it meant, from where he sat, if he ever heard of it, that she’d go around with him and then spend a week end with me, I tried not to think and I can’t even make sense of it now. I guess, when you come down to it, if it was cockeyed enough, it could be what she said, a lyric, to be sung once and then forgotten. Then next day, Monday, I was home, in my room, going through the whole thing again. I thought it was funny my aunts had so little to say, specially about running off after the football game. But they just said hello and asked me no questions, and the house was so still you could hear the kids playing outside. Then along toward dark I heard my father’s voice downstairs, and Nancy called that he wanted to see me.

  He was in the study, and didn’t look at me when we shook hands. He had nothing to say about the football game, or anything, until I had sat there
some little time. Then: “Jack, I’ve bad news for you.”

  “Yeah? What about?”

  “Your securities.”

  “... Oh. I’ve been hearing about them.”

  “Then you know of the crash?”

  “What crash?”

  “Of Black Tuesday, as they’re calling it.”

  “I’ve been—playing football.”

  “Yes—I should have congratulated you.”

  “It’s not important.”

  He began, then, telling me about the stock-market drop, twisting his face with his hand, or untwisting it, maybe. He told me about this stock and that I’d had, how some of them had been sold and replaced with others, how he’d watched the dates so I’d always have dividend checks coming in, some due one month, some another. It seemed to give him quite a lot of satisfaction I’d had some profit on some of the deals, and that for four or five years now I’d been cashing dividend checks at the rate of twenty or thirty dollars a month. “But—I’m broke, Dad, is that it?”

  “I don’t know yet. I didn’t do what many did, throw everything overboard for salvage value. I thought it over, I even resorted to prayer, I’m not ashamed to confess. And I decided if I held on, at least the stock was the stock. If, as, and when, the market recovers, it’ll be there, it’ll have a value, and it’ll pay dividends, or so we hope. Except, of course—”

  “Come on, let’s have it.”

  “Some I carried for you on margin.”

  “And—?”

  “It’s gone.”

  “Well, what does the totalizer say?”

  “I have the list here... It says, at the prices I paid for it, there’s three thousand dollars odd of stock in the clear, and two small government bonds. What any of that is worth now I’d hate to say. It could be sold, I guess. Whether dividends will continue, that we don’t know. But, disregarding the future, considering only now—it’s gone.”

  “Everything?”

  “Practically.”

  “Well, that’s that.”

  “Jack, it tortures me, it humiliates me, it—stultifies me, that I have to tell you this, after the issue I made of it. I’d give my right hand not to, for I think you’ll believe me when I say if I could draw the money from the bank and hand over what I lost for you, I’d do it. I can’t. I haven’t told you everything. There’s more. I myself am heavily hit. I said nothing to you, but I’ve expanded. With your friend Denny’s father, I leased a lot, on Mt. Royal near the Automobile Club, and started a big garage, with general service, pit for car wash, pumps, tanks, jacks—an installation in six figures. We were unequal to it alone, naturally, and went to a bank. And since this they’re pressing us hard. And while we’ve raised something—how I simply won’t tell you—we’re still in frightful shape. The big service station is completely gone as a possibility at this time. The agency, the North Avenue place, I keep, but it’s—involved. Heavily. All I can say is, when I can, if I ever can, I shall regard your funds as a debt, and you shall—”