Slow Sculpture by Theodore Sturgeon Page B

and still boasted the turned-spoke railing all the way around, looking like a picket fence that had gone to heaven. There was a little service bar up there, and a man could stay all evening watching what went on down below without being seen. This was what Tony O’Banion was doing, and he was doing it because he had felt like a drink and had never been to the club before, and he wanted to see what kind of place it was and what Sue Martin did there; and every one of these reasons were superficial—if he preceded them with “Why,” he felt lost. Within him were the things he believed, about the right sort of people, about background, breeding, and blood. Around him was this place, as real as the things he believed in.
Why
he was here, why he wanted a drink just now, why he wanted to see the place and what happened in it—this was a bridge between one reality and the other, and a misty, maddening, nebulous bridge it was. He drank, and waited to see her emerge from the small door by the bandstand, and when she did he watched her move to the piano and help the pianist, a disheveled young man, stack and restack and shuffle his music, and he drank. He drank, and watched her go to the cashier and spend a time over a ledger and a pile of checks. She disappeared through the swinging doors into the kitchen, and he drank; he drank and she came out talking to a glossy man in a tuxedo, and he winced when they laughed.
    At length the lights dimmed and the glossy man introduced her and she sang in a full, pleasant voice something about a boy next door, and someone else played an accordion which was the barest shade out of tune with the piano. Then the piano had a solo, andthe man sang the last chorus, after which the lights came up again and he asked the folks to stick around for the main show at ten sharp. Then the accordion and the piano began to make dance music. It was all unremarkable, and Tony didn’t know why he stayed. He stayed, though: “Waiter! Do it again.”
    “Do it twice.”
    Tony spun around. “Time someone else bought, hm?” said Sam Bittelman. He sat down.
    “Sam! Well, sit down. Oh, you
are
.” Tony laughed embarrassedly. His tongue was thick and he was immeasurably glad to see the old man. He was going to wonder why until he remembered that he’d sworn off wondering why just now. He was going to ask what Sam was doing there and then decided Sam would only ask him the same, and it was a question he didn’t want to fool with just now. Yes he did.
    “I’m down here slumming in the fleshpots and watching the lower orders cavorting and carousing,” he blurted, making an immense effort to be funny. He wasn’t funny. He sounded like a little snob, and a tight little snob at that.
    Sam regarded him gravely, not disapproving, not approving. “Sue Martin know you’re here?”
    “No.”
    “Good.”
    The waiter came just in time; Sam’s single syllable had given him a hard hurt; but for all the pain, it was an impersonal thing, like getting hit by a golfer on his backswing. When the waiter had gone Sam asked quietly, “Why don’t you marry the girl?”
    “What’re ya—kidding?”
    Sam shook his head. O’Banion looked into his eyes and away, then down at Sue Martin where she leaned against the piano, leafing through some music.
Why don’t you marry the girl?
“You mean if she’d have me?” It was not the way he felt, but it was something to say. He glanced at Sam’s face, which was still waiting for a real answer. All right then. “It wouldn’t be right.”
    “ ‘Right?” Sam repeated.
    O’Banion nipped his thick tongue in the hope it might wake hisbrains up. The rightness of it … vividly he recalled his Mother’s words on the subject: “Aside from the amount of trouble you’ll save yourself, Anthony, you must remember that it’s not only your right, it’s your
duty
not to marry beneath your class. Fine hounds, fine horses, fine humans, my dear; it’s breeding that matters.” That was