Ever since the day Sally went away.”
“I knew a Sally once,” I said.
“You did?” said the bartender, not looking at me.
“Sure,” I said. “Very first girlfriend. Like the words of that song, makes you wonder, whatever happened to her? Where’s she tonight? About all you can do is hope she’s happy, married, got five kids, and a husband who isn’t late more than once a week, and remembers, or doesn’t remember, her birthdays, whichever way she likes it most.”
“Why don’t you look her up?” said the bartender, still not looking at me, shining a glass.
I drank my drink slowly.
“Wherever she may go,
Wherever she may be,
If no one wants her now,
Please send her back to me.”
The people around the piano were finishing the song. I listened, eyes shut.
“I wonder what’s become of Sally,
That old gal of mine.”
The piano s
topped. There was a lot of quiet laughter and talk.
I put the empty glass down on the bar and opened my eyes and looked at it for a minute.
“You know,” I said to the bartender, “you just gave me an idea …”
Where do I start? I thought, outside on the rainy street in a cold wind, night coming on, buses and cars moving by, the world suddenly alive with sound. Or do you start at all, which is it?
I’d had ideas like this before; I got them all the time. On Sunday afternoons if I overslept I woke up thinking I had heard someone crying and found tears on my face and wondered what year it was and sometimes had to go off and find a calendar just to be sure. On those Sundays I felt there was fog outside the house, and had to go open the door to be sure the sun was still slanting across the lawn. It wasn’t anything I could control. It just happened while I was half asleep and the old years gathered around and the light changed. Once, on a Sunday like that, I telephoned clear across the United States to an old school chum, Bob Hartmann. He was glad to hear my voice, or said he was, and we talked for half an hour and it was a nice talk, full of promises. But we never got together, as we had planned; next year, when he came to town, I was in a different mood. But that’s how those things go, isn’t it? Warm and mellow one second, and the next I looked around and I was gone.
But right now, standing on the street outside of Mike’s Bar, I held out my hand and added up my fingers: first, my wife was out of town visiting her mother downstate. Second, tonight was Friday, and a whole free weekend ahead. Third, I remembered Sally very well, if no one else did. Fourth, I just wanted somehow to say, Hello, Sally, how are things? Fifth, why didn’t I start?
I did.
I got the phone book and went down the lists. Sally Ames. Ames, Ames. I looked at them all. Of course. She was married. That was the bad thing about women: once married they took aliases, vanishing into the earth, and you were lost.
Well then, her parents, I thought.
They were unlisted. Moved or dead.
What about some of her old friends who were once friends of mine? Joan something-or-other. Bob whatsis-name. I drew blanks, and then remembered someone named Tom Welles.
I found Tom in the book and telephoned him.
“Good God, is that you, Charlie?” he cried. “Good grief, come on over. What’s new? Lord, it’s been years! Why are you—”
I told him what I was calling about.
“Sally? Haven’t seen her in years. Hey, I hear you’re doing okay, Charlie. Salary in five figures, right? Pretty good for a guy from across the tracks.”
There hadn’t been any tracks, really; just an invisible line nobody could see but everyone felt.