“He has lots of them. Jesus, with that car, what did you expect?”
“A lot of girls, including this one, don’t really care what kind of a car a fellow drives.”
“There’s not a lot of girls like you.”
“Is that the voice of experience talking?”
“Maybe, maybe not. Matt was really bananas about one girl. A rich girl, like him. He met her when Whatsername, the girl whose father owns Nesfoods, got married.”
“What happened?”
“She was a rich girl. She thought he was nuts for wanting to be a cop. Instead of like, a lawyer, something like that.”
“So why does he want to be a cop?”
“I thought a lot about that. What it is, I think, is that he likes it. It’s got nothing to do with him not getting in the Marines, or that his father, his real father, was killed on the job. I think he just likes it. And he’s working for Inspector Wohl. He gets to see a lot of stuff. I don’t think he’d stick around if they had him in one of the districts, turning off fire hydrants.”
“You really like him, don’t you?”
“Yeah. We get along good.”
“You going to ask him to be your best man when we get married?”
Charley had not thought about a best man.
“Yeah,” he said. “I guess I will, if I live that long.”
“Are we going to start on that subject again?”
“I’m not starting anything. That’s just the truth.”
“We want to have some money in the bank when we get married.”
“I’d just as soon go in hock like everybody else,” Charley said. “Jesus, baby, I go nuts sometimes thinking about you.”
“Like when, for example?”
“Like now, for example. Since you asked. I smell your soap, and then I—”
“Then you what?”
“I think of you taking a shower.”
“Those are carnal thoughts.”
“You bet your ass they are,” Charley said. “About as carnal as they get.”
There was a long silence.
“I guess I shouldn’t have said that. Sorry.”
“You think you could live six weeks the way things are?”
“What happens in six weeks?”
“The semester’s over. I could skip a semester. I wouldn’t want to be a just-married, and work a full shift, and try to go to school. But I could skip a semester.”
“Jesus, baby, you mean it?”