Dark Passage by David Goodis Page A

something. He didn't tell Gert about it. He wanted to surprise
her. She would have a birthday in four days and he would have that
flame opal in three. When he went back to the credit jewelry store
they had the flame opal, a fairly large stone set in white gold
with a small diamond on each side. They wanted nine hundred
dollars. Parry had figured on about four hundred dollars and he was
telling himself his only move was to turn and walk out of the
store. Then he was thinking the flame opal would make Gert very
happy. She hadn't found any flame opal in Crater Lake National
Park. It ruined the honeymoon. She was always saying how badly she
wanted flame opal. Parry made a down payment of three hundred
dollars, which reduced his bank account to one hundred dollars. He
told them to wrap the ring nicely. He took the ring home and on the
following day, which was Gert's birthday, he presented her with the
flame opal. She snatched it out of his hand. She broke a fingernail
tearing off the wrapping. Parry was in the room but Gert was all
alone in the room with her flame opal and she had a magnifying
glass and she studied the stone for twenty minutes. Then when she
saw Parry was there she asked him how much he had paid for the
stone. He told her. She asked him where he had bought the stone. He
told her. She started to carry on. She said he didn't have any
sense. She said the credit jewelry store was a gyp point and
anybody with half a brain wouldn't put out nine hundred dollars for
a flame opal in a place of that sort. She told him to take the ring
back and demand his money. She said the flame opal was full of
flaws and the diamond were chips and at the very most the ring was
worth two hundred dollars. She hopped up and down and made a lot of
noise. He asked her to quiet down. She threw the ring at him and it
hit him in the face and cut his cheek. Gert started to sob and yell
at the same time and Parry begged her to quiet down. He said he
would take back the ring and try to regain his down payment. She
laughed at him. On the following day he took the ring back but they
wouldn't return the down payment. When he became insistent they
told him to get a lawyer. He said the ring wasn't worth nine
hundred dollars. They told him to go get a lawyer. He walked out of
the store and he was very weary and he knew he was out three
hundred dollars. He wanted to go home and tell Gert he had regained
the three hundred and put it back in the bank. He knew that
wouldn't work. He had never been much good at putting a lie across.
He told himself Gert was right. He didn't have any sense. He should
have used his head and taken her with him when he went to purchase
her birthday gift. She was absolutely right. He didn't have any
sense. It was for his own good she had carried on like that. She
wanted him to be something, not a nothing. She wanted him to be
something she could respect. He put his hand to the cut on his
cheek. She hadn't meant to do that. She hadn't meant to hurt him.
It was for his own good. Maybe this would be the beginning of a
change in his life. Maybe from here on he would start to use his
head and make something of himself, climb out of that
thirty-five-a-week rut in the investment security house. Maybe this
was all for the best. He went to the bank and took out fifty of the
remaining hundred. He went into a large, dignified jewelry store
and asked if they had anything in the way of flame opal. A man
wearing white and black and grey looked Parry up and down and said
they didn't have anything under six hundred dollars. Parry walked
out of the store. He went into another store and they didn't have
anything under seven hundred dollars. He went into a third store
and a fourth and a fifth. He was forty minutes past his lunch hour
and he hadn't eaten yet and he was getting a fierce headache. He
made up his mind he wouldn't go back to the office until he had a
flame opal for his wife. He went into a sixth store. A seventh and
an eighth. The headache