Fellow Travelers

by Thomas Mallon

She feared that Jerry would be crushed to realize the paltriness of her “extraordinary” action, but he now looked at her with an enormous smile—at which she felt obligated to throw cold water. “Jerry, he’s never going to make that call.” “Oh, I know that,” he replied, his smile undiminished. “But you were swell to do what you did. When Beverly said you’d done something great, I never figured it was this great. It’s the first fine thing I’ve heard since I started looking for work. Which, by the way, I’ve found. At a hardware store in Falls Church. The job pays two dollars an hour. Think I’ll get to use that master’s degree in French?” The smile was coming, Mary realized, not only from sincere gratitude, but also from his now being drunk. He put his glass down a little harder than was necessary and, with a glazed look that could almost have been construed as romantic, asked her: “Do you know what they do with guys like me in Russia?”