The Decent Thing to Do

Did You Ever Wonder how Tanya, the housemother at the Alumni Club – poor old Tanya, with her one eye blue and the other brown, and all the dents in her head where the Bolsheviks walked on her – got the new Jaguar Mark VII? Don't tell me you never wondered about that, son, it's the most obvious insoluble mystery since the Gordian Knot.

Well, there was a gentleman at the bottom of it, despite what you might think after looking at Tanya. And as fine and modest and honorable a gentleman as ever came out of Texas with hundred dollar bills stuffed in his boot tops.

That there gentleman, son, was Dallas Smith, a gambling man from the word go; was it for money, chalk or women, you say "go" and he went. Maybe you remember him from the Tech game when we were sophomores. He won that one with a 105 – yard kickoff return and he'd have been a great halfback all through college except the Tech linebacker welched and told the officials when old Dallas came around after the game and tried to collect that sawbuck he'd bet the line-backer on that kick after touchdown.

Well, you remember Dallas Smith now, son. But to get back to Tanya. One night Dallas stopped in at the Alumni Club and the place was pretty well deserted, except for old Tanya at the bar. Dallas saw right away that Tanya was having herself an attack of homesickness, the way she did every once in a while. She was mixing herself toddies, a third vodka and a third Cointreau and a third yellow chartreuse, and after she tossed one off she'd put her chin in her hands and heave those big Russian sobs until the earrings with the arms of the Ninitschkoys and the Romanovs rattled on the bar. She was real sad.

Now Dallas, being a man who couldn't stand to see a woman in tears when he hadn't had anything to do with it, high-heeled his way across the bar and asked her all about her trouble.

Tanya waved a piece of paper at him.

"This is all I have to show for 27 years' tips from these cheap bums," Tanya said, waving the paper. "I will never have enough to buy a Jaguar Mark VII with red wheels."

The piece of paper was a thousand dollar bill.

Well, this conversation touched old Dallas Smith in two tender points. First place, he was right grieved to learn that a woman with all of Tanya's refinement and background considered the members of the Alumni Club a bunch of cheap bums. Second place, that thousand dollar bill roused his gambling spirit. So he said, as courtly as only a Texas man can get:

"Honey, tell you what. I'll just lay you – –"

He stopped then, the way Tanya perked up, and rephrased his remarks. "Honey," he said, "I'll bet you that grand you got there in your pore spavined old alabaster hand, that I can run it into a new Jaguar sedan for your next birthday."

"You're on, Texas," Tanya said. "And my next birthday is only four months away."

"It's a bet, then," Dallas Smith said. He reached over and took the thousand dollar bill out of her fingers and high-heeled his way out of the place. He was probably the only inmate of our university, past or present, who could have taken that thousand and walked away with it. But even Tanya knew old Dallas, that he lived by a mighty strict code.

Nothing more was said about the bet for quite a while. Matter of fact, Dallas Smith didn't show up much around the Alumni Club, except sometimes for a quick 10 or 12 hours of five-card stud in the middle of the week.

But then one night he threw a little stag dinner for five of his friends, and when Tanya took them into the private dining room – after she'd bawled hell out of the waiter in Russian and French both for not having the champagne just right in the buckets, and having the ice too fine under the blue points – she brushed past old Dallas and said, "Tomorrow is my birthday, Texas."

"I know it, honey," Dallas said with that long slow grin. "I sure do know it."

And that's all that was said between them. The dinner went along fine. There were just five guests, all fellows who had been in school together and still were one another's best friends even though Dallas was the only one who still was a bachelor. The others – there was Steve Farber, whom you might remember from the track team, he got a bronze at Helsinki; and Les and John and Rod and Albert; the old gang – all had married well and were doing right well in the business world, too. Dallas not only hadn't married, he wasn't much involved in business either. He always said that the money kept gushing up out of the ground in Texas so fast he couldn't clear it away and get down to work for a long time.

Anyway, the dinner was down to the café avec calvados stage – that was a local vice in our undergraduate days – when Dallas leaned back and blew away some of the orange-flavored smoke from Armin's suzettes and said:

"Friends, there's a little matter that I don't rightly know whether I should bring up. But it's a gambling matter, and I'd purely appreciate a mite of advice from you-all."

Well, that sure flattered the company, Dallas Smith asking for advice on a gambling matter.

"It's kind of a delicate matter," Dallas said, "since it involves the opposite sex and a middling indelicate wager that was undertaken, however," he explained, "Purely in the interests of science, philosophy and gamblin'."

"Put your problem right in our hands," Steve Farber said.

"Yes indeed," Les said, taking his pipe out of his mouth to make room for his big smile.

"We're at our best deciding indelicate wagers," said John.

"Especially those undertaken in the interests of science, philosophy and gambling," Albert said. "Really we are."

Rod just nodded, sniffed the calvados steam from the demitasse.

So Dallas put it out there for their consideration. No names, of course, he said. After all, a right dear friend of his was involved. So there wouldn't be any identification. But he'd fill in details that were pertinent, he said, so's they could make a fair judgment.

It seemed, Dallas said, that a few weeks ago he and this good old friend of his had been sitting in the friend's apartment, sipping Amarillo lightning and discoursing right freely on the state of the world (as they usually did) and on the state of womankind (as they frequently did) and presently upon the feminine qualities that are bleakly termed "chaste" and as bleakly "virtuous" (which they rarely did).

A discussion like that, with the tapes of an old Bessie Smith collection of dirty blues in the background, led them pretty promptly into a debate considerably warmer and more specific than the same subject would have generated at an executive luncheon. This friend of old Dallas put up as his premise that among the beautiful and the beloved, virtue existed as an abstract quality. But old Dallas, who wasn't what you might call a fervent Platonist even back in old man Gootlieb's Philosophy 210, said he figured that virtue was about as abstract, say, as money. Either one, he allowed, could provide a fit and proper subject for a little abstract contemplation, but you could demonstrate right quick the existence of either one.

"Why, son," Dallas said, "I'll take the position that virtue in our charmin' companions on this li'l old earth is such a damn practical thing that a man with a honed-down sense of timin' and opportunity can lull it into a doze in right smart order."

"Nonsense," his friend said.

"Son," said Dallas, being a gambling man from the word go, "I'd sure like to set up a little wager on this, for the sake of defendin' my philosophical principles."

"You mean," his friend said, "you're willing to bet that you can prove virtue among the fair doesn't exist as an abstract quality, by assailing and overcoming it in the flesh?"

"The Lord take pity on me," Dallas said piously, "but that's just exactly it."

And his friend, with a sudden scheming glint in his eye, leaned forward and said, "Dallas old man, you name the stakes and I'll name the subject."

"That ain't a fair offer," Dallas said, seeing all sides of it at once. "But I opened my mouth, son, and I'll stand by it. For, say, a thousand dollars."

"Right," his old friend said. "You're on for a thousand."

"All right, son," Dallas Smith said. "But you haven't named the subject."

"Just a minute," his friend said, because the doorbell was ringing. He got up and it was his wife, coming home from a bridge party or something. With (continued on page 38) Decent Thing To Do (continued from page 24) her there. Dallas figured they might not ever get back to the bet. He didn't much are, seeing as how he was on the short end of it.

Anyway, they sat around together for a while, the three of them listening to the Bessie Smith tapes. This friend's wife was a very pleasant girl, one of those tall willowy girls who seem born to be the wives of young executives, cool but friendly, with a good appreciation for a story and a drink, the kind we all marry or would like to.

After a little while, though, she excused herself and as soon as she was out of the room this friend of old Dallas leaned forward and the scheming glint lighted up a great big crafty smile.

"There's the subject for our bet," he said. "My wife."

Well, old Dallas was pretty nearly stunned.

"You must be funnin' me, son," he said. "That ain't nowise a fit and proper subject for serious gamblin'."

"The heck it isn't," his friend said, chortling. "You brought this up and you set the stakes. If you can't make your theory stick in one case, you can't make it stick at all."

"Nossir," Dallas said. "That ain't right at all."

"Don't try to back out of this wager, old man."

Dallas went a mite quiet. It wasn't meant to be fighting talk. Matter of fact, it really looked as though old Dallas was trying to wiggle loose.

"All right, son," he said. "It's a bet. But if I win, I don't want nowise to take your money. That wouldn't be right. If I win, I'll just pay my thousand to – oh, how about poor old Tanya down there at the Alumni Club."

"It's all right with me," his friend said. "And since this is only a practical settling of an abstract theory anyhow, I don't want your money, in case I win, as I'm sure going to. So I'll agree to pay off to old Tanya too."

So that's how it came about. This friend of Dallas had a business trip coming up that weekend, so before Dallas left he called his wife and told her that good old Dal had suggested taking her out to dinner on Saturday night and she said, "You're so thoughtful, dear," and kissed him on the cheek. Her husband, that is, not Dallas. Old Dallas might as well have been a faithful old sheep dog standing there.

The rest of the week, Dallas sort of studied the whole thing. Since it seemed he was about to spend a thousand dollars for nothing but proving someone else's theory, he figured he might as well spend both the evening and the thousand as pleasantly as possible.

So he laid himself out a series of events, sort of an interlocking schedule that if you managed to complete one phase successfully you were borne over into the next one. That way, with any kind of a start at all, you could arrange quite an entertaining evening even though you knew you were going to wind up nowhere.

Anyway, when he swung his gold Cadillac around to pick her up he felt something like a man about to take his grandmother out for a hell of a time. When she came out, though, in one of those mysterious smoky dresses that looks something like a tennis cup with the edges furling and a good deal of gorgeous woman standing up all smooth, honey-colored in the center, he revised what he was thinking. More like a sister than a grandmother, he thought.

For dinner they went to a quiet, plush little place where the maître knew what hand-tooled Texas boots meant showing under a tuxedo cuff, and knew what was stuffed in the tops of them, and that's what it took in this place to get past the plush ropes.

Dallas seated this girl who was going to cost him so much money at a table that was just right for being in the shade, and she said in that cool tinkly wife's voice, "This is so good of you, Dal darling."

He spent a lot of time ordering dinner, after she said that. A man had to pleasure himself in something. He asked the maître about the oysters and a waiter went to get a sample and Dallas was beginning to relax a little when the girl said, "Are we going to have bourbon with them, Dal?"

"Ma'm," Dallas said, "I'm about to show you that a Texas man is a right smart well-turned gentleman."

And he did. He never mentioned bourbon all the time he was ordering. He wanted a Bernkasteler Doktor Moselle with the oysters, and Amontillado with the soup. They had to send a man down to the sub-basement for a white Côtes-du-Rhône Hermitage to go with the perch, and a Château Haute-Brion Rouge for the filet to keep in harmony with the white Bordeaux. And with the dessert, when the maître and the waiter and the girl all expected him to ask for a cooled Château Yquem, he wanted instead a Château Rieussec at cellar temperature.

"That's lovely," the girl said and the maître beamed. "So few people really know the Rieussec."

"It's right nice," Dallas said. "I learned about that from my daddy, settin' on his knee around the chuckwagon fire when we were bringin' in our first wildcat field."

After that things went much better. They spent a long time with the champagne fine and the coffee, getting up to dance, although there was very little room to dance and they had to stand very close together, even not dancing. Once he nibbled tentatively at her ear and she laughed throatily, moving against him.

"You'll have to hold me a little while after the music stops," she whispered, "or they'll arrest you for carrying concealed weapons."

That was when he stopped thinking about sisters, as well as grandmothers. Later, outside, he let down the top of the gold Eldorado, and turned it out on the beach road instead of toward her apartment. She leaned back in the seat close to him, letting the wind tumble her hair.

They drove slowly, watching the moonlight on the water and seeing occasionally the cars of lovers on the wide beach. Once they passed a motel and Dallas saw immediately that she noticed it, in the way women have of noticing something without noticing it.

But old Dallas didn't say a word. He just let the Caddy hum along until finally he swung it into a smaller road and then into a private drive that led through the woods and came out suddenly beside a cantilevered beach house hanging out over the blazing sea of moonlight.

"Oh it's magnificent, Dal," she said breathlessly.

"There's a right nice view," said Dallas, "from inside."

The fire was all laid in the grate; the people who took care of the place for old Dallas always did that before they left. They laid the fire and swept up the potato chips and radish tops from the bear rug in front of the fireplace, and they put all the Brahms quartets on the changer so that all a man had to do for several hours of soft, restful music was hit the starter button on the hi-fi.

Dallas did. That was the first thing he did, on his way to the fireplace. One match, and the fire was warming up the inside of the room, mellow on the big throat of the fireplace, and the first strains of the violin sounded from the speakers around the room.

She sat on the couch in front of the fire, not noticing the bearskin rug in the way that women have, and so on, while old Dallas poured lemon juice and brown sugar and cloves and a fifth of Five Dagger from Barbados into the silver pitcher on the hearth. Then he put the old Confederate cavalry sabre into the fire to heat.

"I'll float a mite of butter on the (concluded on page 46) Decent Thing To Do (continued from page 38) top," he said.

"What in the world is it, darling?"

"Beats me," Dallas said. "But it's a mighty warming potion. My old daddy used to stir up a mess of this every Sunday noon when we were picnickin' down by the oil derricks."

They sat quietly, drenched with firelight and Brahms, watching the sabre heat up. Through the window, the moonlight burned whitely on the placid water. In front of the fire it was very warm.

Looking through the window, old Dallas said, "Looks right invitin', doesn't it?"

She sat up suddenly. To some men this would have been a blow, but old Dallas planned things this way. A Texas man wants to get some place in a hurry, he buys himself an airplane. Otherwise he takes it slow, and pleasures himself in the traveling.

"Dal darling," she said. "Could we go in for a dip?"

"Why honey," Dallas said as though the though never occurred to him before, "I reckon we could, providing that old moon there wouldn't offend your modesty."

"Modesty hell," she said sweetly.

"Where can I undress?"

One thing about old Dallas, he was a proper host. He got a couple of big towels and draped himself in one and handed another in to her, then he went out on the sun deck and dived cleanly into the water. It was about eight degrees above freezing, but you have to hand it to a Texas man.

"Come on in, honey," he shouted. "The water's fine."

Some 25 seconds later, they were back in front of the fire, getting the circulation restored where they'd started to turn blue. The fire was roaring now, and the Brahms was going beautifully and the bearskin tickled their bare feet and suddenly she said, "Look, Dal, the sabre's cherry-red."

"Just right," old Dallas said. He hung onto his towel and took the red hot sabre out of the fire and plunged it into the silver urn. There was an explosive hissing and a burst of blue alcohol flame that puffed up over them and made the girl shriek, but it died instantly in the steam.

"Some folks put hot water in this stuff," Dallas said. "It tastes right nice that way, too, but it sure knocks hell out of the proof."

"Let me taste," she said, and reached for one of the silver cups. They sat there, warming inside and out, and the fire turned from a roar to a murmur and the Brahms was very full and rich in the room. She was sitting there holding her towel casually and old Dallas reached over and lightly tugged the corner. The whole thing came along easily and the girl came with it, but she was not after the towel, no sir.

Some time after that, they were still in front of the fire only now the girl was lying like a big graceful honey-colored cat and old Dallas was sitting up making shadowgraph animals with the firelight for illumination. They had a lot of fun with some of the animals, especially the elephant and the giraffe.

"Oh darling," she said happily. "I'm so glad I didn't say anything about stopping at the Sleepy Lagoon."

"Sleepy Lagoon?" old Dallas was baffled. "What's that?"

"The motel we passed," she said, winding sinuously around on the bear rug. "That's where I usually go when my husband's out of town . . ."

"And there you have it," Dallas Smith said, spreading his hands wide on the table at the Alumni Club. His five friends sat hushed, thinking it over.

Finally Steve Farber cleared his throat.

"Well now, Dal, what's your problem? It seems to me that you won this wager, fairly and squarely."

"Not according to my lights," Dallas Smith said. "No sir, I don't believe so. I think I done lost my bet, and I proved my friend's point. A woman's virtue ain't got a thing to do with what you can demonstrate."

There was a chorus of objections from the philosophers.

"No," Dallas said. "I thank you all. But I got to live according to my lights. And the way I see it, I pay the bet, with the winnings going to poor old Tanya."

He stood up and said, "You fellers can discuss it. Anyhow, I thank you all for listenin'."

After Dallas left, there was another small silence around the table. Then Steve Farber said in a controlled voice,

"Remarkable fellow, old Dallas. Quite an iron code, you know. Insists on doing things precisely according to the rules."

"Yes indeed," said Les, taking his pipe from his mouth and thoughtfully blowing smoke rings at the bit. "Although I can't say that I'd be as strict as he, under the circumstances. I don't really think he lost the bet."

"Neither do I," said John, and Rod nodded agreement.

"I definitely think Old Dal was the winner," Albert said. "I really do."

"You know," Steve Farber said. "He's a very subtle fellow. He may have told us that story just so we'd discuss it here, after he was gone."

He let that sink in.

"We're his best friends, you know," Steve Farber said very carefully. "He could scarcely bring it up with only one of us, if – well . . ."

"You mean," Albert said, gesturing, "the chap he bet with might well be one of us right here. That might be old Dal's way of straightening things up."

"Of course," Steve Farber said, "if one of us here were the chap, he'd drop poor old Tanya a bit of an envelope with his stakes in it, wouldn't he?"

"Yes indeed," Albert said.

"It would be the decent thing to do," said John, and Rod nodded agreement.

"Then let's arrange it," Steve Farber said. "I mean, let's give the chap a chance, in case he's one of us."

"How?" asked Les, leaning forward and squinting through the pipe smoke.

"Let's each of us prepare an envelope, privately of course," Steve Farber said. "And each of us will hand an envelope to poor Tanya on the way out."

"Excellent," said Albert. "Really, I think that's very good. All the envelopes will have a bit of paper in, but in one of them the paper will be a check."

"In the event," said John, "that he's really one of us."

"Right," said Rod. "It's a splendid way to settle the whole thing."

And of course it worked out beautifully. Each of them retired to the lounge to prepare his envelope, then going out in a body each dropped his envelope into Tanya's withered alabaster hand.

The next day Dallas stopped back in at the Alumni Club and Tanya was waiting for him, her eyes giving off sparks of genuine old 100-proof brown and blue admiration.

"I give it to you back, Texas," she said, holding out that thousand dollar bill which had started the whole thing. Dallas had it from the time he bet Tanya he could run it up into a Jaguar for her, and he'd given it back to her the night before when he was paying off the bet with the friend he'd been talking about.

"Thank you, ma'm," old Dallas said, tucking the bill in his boot top. "I take it we're ready to go shopping for that there automobile."

"Da," Tanya said, both of her accents coming back at once, "avec red wheels. Even though last night it seems impossible, until I open the envelopes. Then I have the five lovely checks, each one for $1000."

"Yes sir," old Dallas said. "But I'm right glad you didn't have your heart set on a Rolls Royce, honey. Settin' up bets with that many of my rich, married and gamblin' friends in time for your birthday might have interfered considerable with my social life."

"Look, Dallas," she said, "the sabre is cherry-red."