Free Victory Over Japan by Ellen Gilchrist

every state. I wanted to put them on a wall and make the whole United States.
    â€œHow old are you?” she said.
    â€œI’m thirty-four. How old are you?”
    â€œI’m thirty-four. Think of that. Our mothers could have passed each other on the street with us in their stomachs.”
    â€œYou say the funniest things of anyone I ever talked to. I was thinking that when I’d talk to you on the phone. You think real deep, don’t you?”
    â€œOh, I don’t know. I read all the time. I read Albert Einstein a lot. Oh, not the part about the physics. I read his letters and about political systems and things like that. Yeah, I guess that’s true. I guess I do think deep.”
    â€œYou really own a sailboat in this place?” he said. He was still holding the placemat.
    â€œI guess I do. I forgot to put it in the divorce.” She laughed. His hand had let the placemat drop. His hand was very near to hers. “It isn’t nearly as much fun as it looks in the pictures,” she said. “It’s really pretty crowded. There are boats all over the place there now, big power boats from Puerto Rico. It’s all terribly middle class really. A lot of people pretending to have adventures.” She was looking at the briefcase out of the corner of her eye. It was still there. Why don’t you go on and give me the check, she wanted to say, and then I’ll give you a piece of ass and we’ll be square. She sighed. “What did you want to talk to me about? About settling the robbery I mean.”
    â€œJust to finalize everything. To give you the check they cut this morning.”
    â€œAll right,” she said. “Then go on and give it to me. Just think, Earl, in my whole life I never collected any insurance. It makes me feel like a criminal. Well, you’re an insurance salesman. Make me believe in insurance.”
    He picked up the briefcase and set it down in front of him on the table. “Will this hurt the finish on your table? It’s such a pretty table. I wouldn’t want to scratch it up.”
    â€œOh, no,” she said. “It’s all right. It’s an old table. It’s got scratches all over it.”
    He opened the briefcase and moved papers and took out the check. He held it out very formally to her. “I’m sorry about the ring,” he said. “I hope this will help you get another one.”
    She took it from him. Then she laid it carelessly down behind her on a counter. She laid it down a few inches away from a puddle of water that had condensed around a green watering can. Once she had put it there she would not touch it again while he was watching. “Thanks for bringing it by. You could have mailed it.”
    â€œI wanted to meet you. I wanted to get to know you.”
    â€œSo did I,” she said. Her eyes dug into his skin, thick black skin. Real black skin. Something she had never had. It was cool in the room. Three thousand dollars’ worth of brand-new air-conditioning was purring away outside the window. Inside everything was white and green. White woodwork, green plants, baskets of plants in every window, ferns and philodendrons and bromeliads, gloxinia and tillansias and cordatum. Leaves and shadows of leaves and wallpaper that looked like leaves. “What are you doing tonight?” she said. “What are you doing for dinner?”
    â€œI’ll be putting napkins in your lap and cutting up your steak if you’ll go out with me,” he said. “We’ll go someplace nice. Anywhere you want.”
    â€œWhat time?”
    â€œI have to go to a meeting first. A community meeting where I live. I’m chairman of my neighborhood association. It might be eight or nine before I can get away. Is that too late?” He had closed his briefcase and was standing up.
    â€œI’ll be waiting,” she said. He locked the briefcase and came out from beside the table.