I also have an idea. Mine is that when the last gong rings I’m going to be leading this baby and some of her playmates to the city prison. That is an excellent reason—among a dozen others I could think of—why I shouldn’t get mushy with her.
I was willing enough to camp there with her until something happened. That apartment looked like the scene of the next action. But I had to cover up my own game. I couldn’t let her know she was only a minor figure in it. I had to pretend there was nothing behind my willingness to stay but a desire to protect her. Another man might have got by with a chivalrous, knight-errant, protector-of-womanhood-without-personal-interest attitude. But I don’t look, and can’t easily act, like that kind of person. I had to hold her off without letting her guess that my interest wasn’t personal. It was no cinch. She was too damned direct, and she had too much brandy in her.
I didn’t kid myself that my beauty and personality were responsible for any of her warmth. I was a thick-armed male with big fists. She was in a jam. She spelled my name P - r - o - t - e - c - t - i - o - n . I was something to be put between her and trouble.
Another complication: I am neither young enough nor old enough to get feverish over every woman who doesn’t make me think being blind isn’t so bad. I’m at that middle point around forty where a man puts other feminine qualities—amiability, for one—above beauty on his list. This brown woman annoyed me. She was too sure of herself. Her work was rough. She was trying to handle me as if I were a farmer boy. But in spite of all this, I’m constructed mostly of human ingredients. This woman got more than a standoff when faces and bodies were dealt. I didn’t like her. I hoped to throw her in the can before I was through. But I’d be a liar if I didn’t admit that she had me stirred up inside—between her cuddling against me, giving me the come-on, and the brandy I had drunk.