The Wine of Youth (26 page)

“Forget it,” she said. “I can do without, if I have to.”

But Julio Sal no longer cared, not even for himself.

“Waiter,” he said.

That night Julio Sal drank five bottles of champagne, drank most of it himself, yet the bitterness within him remained dry and aching, and drunkenness did not come. There was only thirst and desire, and a salty satisfaction in playing the fool. At midnight he stared in fascination as the red nails clawed the three hundredth ticket. Sometimes she said, “Wanna dance?” and sometimes he asked, “Drink?” Sometimes she squeezed his hand and asked, “Having a good time?” And always he answered, “Very good time.”

Searching for a match, his fingers touched something hard and square in his pocket.

He brought out the jewel box that held the engagement ring. It was a single diamond set in white gold. He held it under her eyes.

“You like?”

“Beautiful.”

“I buy for girl. She die.”

“Automobile accident?”

“Just die. Sick. You want ring, you keep.”

“I couldn't.”

He slipped it on her finger. She tilted it to and from the light, laughing as it sparkled.

Three times the bell clanged, but she forgot the roll of tickets. Then she looked at him again, studied his delicate nose, his fine lips. She lifted his hand and pressed a kiss into the calloused palm.

“You can take me home. That is, if you want to.”

He stared into his empty glass, twirled it around and smiled at the memory of the little speech he had prepared that afternoon, the words he planned to say when he slipped the ring on her finger.

“Don't you want to?”

“I like, very much.”

“Do you have a car?”

“We take taxi.”

She pushed her chair closer to him, so that they sat crowded side by side. She held his hand in both of hers, pressed it, played absently with his fingers.

When he suggested one more bottle of champagne, she frowned. “It's for suckers.”

“I am sucker.”

“You're not either. You're nice,” she said.

“I have friend,” he said. “Name Julio Sal. He know you.”

“The guy that writes all them crazy letters? He must be nuts.”

“Ya. He nuts.”

He looked at the clock over the bar and wanted to sigh; instead a sob shook itself from his throat. It was twelve-thirty. The dream was dead.

“I wait for you at door downstairs,” he said.

He got up and left her sitting there. It was warm in the street. He walked a few doors north to a small, hole-in-the-wall, all-night grocery store. Boxes of figs and grapes were tilted toward the street. The sight of them increased the acrid, cigarette-and-champagne dryness of his mouth. He bought a bunch of grapes for a nickel, waved the clerk aside about a paper sack. The grapes were Black Princes, big and meaty.

He put one of them into his mouth, felt it burst between his teeth, tasted the sweet juice that filled his mouth. A grape from Sonoma County, from the vineyards around Santa Rosa. He had picked grapes in Sonoma—who could say, perhaps from the very vine upon which this bunch had grown.

Eating grapes, Julio Sal walked a block to the Terminal Building, took his overcoat and grips from the ten-cent lockers, went down the stairs to Los Angeles Street and the bus depot. The ticket agent nodded.

“One-way ticket Santa Rosa,” said Julio Sal.