They Call Me Patrice

“Here, Patrice,” he said softly, “I found the check. God was very good to a fellow like me, over there in that room last night. Better than I deserved. I found it in the pocket of the coat he’d had on when he came in. I’ve had it on me all night, and if they’d put their hands into my pockets—”

He was here beside her, real and safe. But she couldn’t find a word to say. She couldn’t even question him. They stood looking at each other for what were endless minutes of silence.

Then he took out a crumpled ball of light-blue paper and put it in her hand and pressed her hand closed over it. She didn’t open her fist to look at it. She didn’t move. Just stood there against him, exhaustedly, gratefully.

“It’s a funny thing, Patrice,” he said. “You didn’t want me to go back there. And if it hadn’t been for what you told me about the check, I probably wouldn’t have. But when I opened the door and went in the second time there was my own hat, lying there on the floor just inside the door. Initials on the band and everything. I must have dropped it when I was getting you out of the room and never even missed it in the excitement.”

She shuddered. “But Bill— Now what will happen?”

“Nothing. It’s over already. They’ve already found her. I was still there, around six, when they brought her in.”

“Her?” she whispered.

“Some poor thing who had the misfortune to love him too deeply for her own good. They always do, that kind of a guy. Don’t ask me why. She must have followed him here, and not understood what he was up to. She never even gave him a chance to explain.”

“And they?” she faltered.

“The police? They won’t know about you. I drove all the way out to the other place, after I left Georgesson’s. To Hastings, to that Justice. I explained part of the situation, that duress was used and a town-wide scandal might result. The record itself can’t be altered, of course, but the certificate won’t be mailed out. He gave me his promise not a word will ever be said about the matter by him to anyone. Just forget it as if it had never happened, Patrice.”

“And you stayed in that room and waited for the police, Bill?” she marveled.

“At his flat? I was the one who notified them to come over there. I had to. That was what I naturally would have done if I’d actually happened to drop by there, to remind him he owed me five or ten dollars. That’s what I told them had taken me there. I wouldn’t have just walked out again and left him for somebody else to find.”

“Bill, you’re so...  so honest and decent. And it’s time I tried to be too—”

She left him suddenly, went down the stairs and over to the closed door. He watched her go, watched her put her hand to the knob.

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going in there now and tell them, Bill. About me, about that part of it. I should have long ago, I’ve waited too long.”

“Wait just a little longer,” he said. He came after her and took her by the shoulders and turned her away. “A day or two. We’ll go to them together and tell them then. When we tell them about — us.”

His arms slipped around her waist.

The sense of peace, of safety, of belonging, that had been woven about her when she had first come to this house, that had been torn so rudely asunder, was returning. Nothing would ever tear its fabric apart again. The world was made right.

“Come on, walk upstairs with me, Patrice,” Bill said. “I’d like to take a look at the boy before I turn in.”

His arm still about her, they turned together up the stairway.

“Our boy,” he added softly.