Read In Sunlight and in Shadow for Free Online Page B

o’clock?”
    “They’re having dinner in Spain.”
    “Where would you suggest, other than Spain?”
    “We could gamble. The first place we see.”
    “I don’t eat at lumberyards or hardware stores. I’m not a termite.”
    “Look,” he said, “the automat.” A block and a half away, it was announced by its marquee of electric lights glowing weakly in the daylight. No man had ever taken Catherine out to dinner at anything other than an expensive restaurant that was thought to match her station, and never at four o’clock. “There,” he said, gesturing at Horn & Hardart, “for a first date.”
    She disengaged from his arm, as if regretting all that occurred, and said, severely, “It’s not a date. It can’t be.”
    He thought she might turn and walk away. It would have been exquisitely painful had she done so. Instead, she said, “The automat has the best iced tea in the world, somehow,” and led him inside. He felt as if he had just liberated Paris, and then Catherine told him her second untruth.
    It wasn’t exactly a lie, and though it made her uncomfortable, it was something she had to do. She was troubled not because she would be misleading him but because it was necessary to mislead him. Despite her belief that they could not progress much further, she began to weave the deception. “At least it’s familiar,” she said. She had no knowledge of the automat other than what she had been told by people who had been there. “I eat here a lot. It’s wonderfully cheap, which is why I like it. And it’s pretty good.”
    “And no one bothers you,” he told her, “although sometimes I bother them.”
    This made her more than slightly nervous. “How do you mean?”
    “I’ll show you.” They walked over to a bank of little glass doors in the hot-food section. He guided her to the counter in front of a rank of empty windows, put his hand in his right jacket pocket, took out a nickel, and rolled it into the slot of a “Frankfurter and Baked Beans” chamber.
    “Why did you do that?” she asked. “There’s nothing in there.”
    “There will be,” he answered.
    After standing with his left hand holding the metal-framed glass door slightly ajar for a minute or so, it shuddered, and a pleased smile came to his face. All the other doors locked shut, but not his. Soon, oval green ramekins holding little chariot-loads of baked beans with a hot dog reclining in the middle, like a very thin Prussian in an old-fashioned bathtub, were flipped like pie plates into each heated chamber. They came from the mysterious food-producing precincts behind the wall of little glass doors and the porcelain knobs one had to operate to unlock them.
    When it was the turn of the chamber that Harry oversaw like a Brazilian Indian watching a rapids for the appearance of a fish, the back door opened and a hand appeared behind a loaded green dish. Harry grabbed the hand.
    A scream came from behind the wall. “Lemme go!” It was a woman with the voice of Ethel Merman. Her fingernails were polished.
    “Not until you put an extra hot dog on the plate,” Harry told her. “That’s the ransom.”
    “Are you crazy? I can’t do that.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because we’re not supposed to.”
    “Did anyone actually ever tell you that?”
    There was a pause. “No.”
    “Don’t you have discretion?”
    “Let go of my hand! What’s discretion?”
    “It means you’re not an animal or a dummy. You can think for yourself, you can act for yourself, you can protect your own interests, you’re not a creature of the boss.”
    “What are you, Willie Sutton? Batman?”
    “Batman.” He glanced at Catherine, whose eyes were wide. “Say something, Robin.”
    “Hello!” Catherine said in a high, lovely voice, after clearing her throat.
    “I’ll getcha one, but you gotta let go. I can’t reach it.”
    “I’ve heard that before,” Harry said. “Can’t do that.”
    “Then no extra dog. I’ve got discretion.”
    “How can I