Novak reached out and took the letter from me. ‘I didn’t intend for you to have time to memorize it,’ he said dryly, then dropped it at once into his desk incinerator. He glanced back at me. ‘Maybe you had better sit down, Major. Do you smoke?’
I did not sit down, but I was spinning so fast that I accepted the cigarette and let him light it for me. Then I choked on tobacco smoke and the sheer physical discomfort helped to bring me back to reality. I thanked him and got out-went straight to my room, called my office and left word where I could be found if the General really wanted me. But I told my secretary that I was suddenly quite ill and not to disturb me if it could possibly be helped.
I may have been there about an hour-I wouldn’t know-lying face down and doing nothing, not even thinking. There came a gentle tap at the door, then it was pushed open; it was Zeb. ‘How do you feel?’ he said.
‘Numb,’ I answered. It did not occur to me to wonder how he knew and at the time I had forgotten the ‘division head’ who had prevailed upon Novak to let me see it in the clear.
He came on in, sprawled in a chair, and looked at me. I rolled over and sat on the edge of the bed. ‘Don’t let it throw you, Johnnie,’ he said quietly. ‘”Men have died and worms have eaten them-but not for love.”‘
‘You don’t know!’
‘No, I don’t,’ he agreed. ‘Each man is his own prisoner, in solitary confinement for life. Nevertheless on this particular point the statistics are fairly reliable. Try something for me. Visualize Judith in your mind. See her features. Listen to her voice.’
‘Huh?’
‘Do it.’
I tried, I really tried-and, do you know, I couldn’t. I had never had a picture of her; her face now eluded me.
Zeb was watching me. ‘You’ll get well,’ he said firmly. ‘Now look here, Johnnie. . . I could have told you. Judith is a very female sort of woman, all gonads and no brain. And she’s quite attractive. Turned loose, she was bound to find a man, as sure as nascent oxygen will recombine. But there is no use in talking to a man in love.’
He stood up. ‘Johnnie, I’ve got to go. I hate like the mischief to walk out and leave you in the shape you are in, but I’ve already checked out and Grandfather Novak is ready to leave. He’ll eat me out as it is, for holding him up this long. But one more word of advice before I go -,
I waited. ‘I suggest,’ he continued, ‘that you see a lot of Maggie while I’m away. She’s good medicine.’
He started to leave; I said sharply, ‘Zeb-what happened to you and Maggie? Something like this?’
He looked back at me sharply. ‘Huh? No. Not at all the same thing. It wasn’t. . . well, it wasn’t similar.’
‘I don’t understand you-I guess I just don’t understand people. You’re urging me to see a lot of Maggie-and I thought she was your girl. Uh, wouldn’t you be jealous?’
He stared at me, laughed, and clapped me on the shoulder. ‘She’s a free citizen, Johnnie, believe me. If you ever did anything to hurt Maggie, I’d tear off your head and beat you to death with it. Not that you ever would. But jealous of her? No. It doesn’t enter the picture. I think she’s the greatest gal that ever trod shoe leather-but I would rather marry a mountain lioness.’
He left on that, leaving me again with my mouth open. But I took his advice, or Maggie took it for me. Maggie knew all about it-Judith, I mean-and I assumed that Zeb had told her. He hadn’t; it seemed that Judith had written to her first. In any case I didn’t have to look her up; she looked me up right after dinner that night. I talked with her a while and felt much better, so much so that I went back to my office and made up for time lost that afternoon.