CHAPTER EIGHT
“I think I’m going crazy,” Flo remarked in a pleased tone. “I’ve thought so several times lately and there’s no possible doubt.”
“Huh?” said Gin. She turned a page of the new “Photoplay” and cried suddenly, “Look at this! I’ll never speak to him again!”
“Who?”
“Clive Brook. Oh, dear, he’s wearing the most godawful waistcoat. Look.”
“Tasty, I think. Pour me some tea, that’s a good girl.”
“Why do you think you are going crazy? I want some more chocolate cake. Where is that girl?”
“She’ll be here in a minute.... Because I keep forgetting things: today I forgot to say anything to my people all the way back to Puye. I didn’t go to sleep exactly: I just forgot. I didn’t tell them to turn their tickets in to the office and Margaret was furious because she had to call up all the rooms, and some of them weren’t in their rooms and she had to write dozens of notes.”
“Lazy old thing. It’ll do her good. I get those vague streaks sometimes myself.”
“Oh, you, it’s always a hangover with you.... Who’s that across the street?”
Gin stood up to see over the drapes. “It’s that new fiancee of Bill Trewarth’s. She comes from Carolina or somewhere.”
“She looks cute. I wonder what it would be like to go visiting for a whole summer just because you are somebody’s fiancee.”
“I think it would feel very musty. You would be going to teas with his mother most of the time and on Sunday if you were very good he’d take you out to watch the polo.”
Flo powdered her nose and considered. “I think it would be nice,” she said. “No responsibility.”
“My God! You don’t mean it.... Hey, you, I want another piece of cake. You can’t mean it. Did you ever hear them talking?”
“Sure I have. Well, what else is there to do?”
“This, or something like this in some other place. Why not?”
“But then what about men?”
“Haven’t you enough men, for heavens’ sake? Those dumb brutes.”
“No, I haven’t, and neither have you. You know perfectly well I haven’t: there aren’t enough to go round in this town.”
Gin admitted that there were not enough men. “But,” she added, “it’s a law of nature in resort places. You can always go somewhere else if that’s all that’s worrying you. The question is, what do you really want?”
“Oh,” said Flo, passionately, “I want a lot. I want to be rich and stupid like that little beast over there, and I want to be intelligent and interesting and comfortable like lots of the people around, and I’d very much like to be wicked and always wear black. The question is, what am I going to get? I’m tired of this sort of thing. At this rate I’ll start looking for Life, and then I’ll be a dirty little pushover like Rita.”
“Why, Flo. Such language. You couldn’t be anyway, you’re not the type; you’re older than Rita. Anyway, she’s not a dirty little pushover. She just doesn’t worry about things. She has a good time.”
“Really. I suppose you’d say I’d be better off if I were the type?”
“Good heavens,” said Gin impatiently. “I’m not advising you. I feel like a mess myself, lots of times. I hate Rita as much as you do, and you know it. Even if I could act that way I wouldn’t: I’m not sure I even want to. But what can you do about it? The trouble with you is——”
“Your cigarette went out,” said Flo. “Yes, darling, what is the trouble with me?”
“You’re feeling your oats,” said Gin. “It makes you expect too much of the world, feeling your oats. You can’t help thinking there must be something to do about it. There isn’t; because whatever you do about it, it’s not settled.”
“Where did you find all this out, Grandma?”
“Well,” said Gin. “I tried a lot of things and what I didn’t try, somebody else did. This town is full of people who try to do something about it. Only the dumb ones have a good time at all. People who believe they are being noble, like Rex and Ada living together. Just the idea that they are being bad keeps them going: they won’t have to do another thing all their lives. They’re living up to a principle.”
“But nobody cares.”
“Well, how do they know that? They’re happy and they give us something to tell the dudes about. I’ve got to go home. Where do you go tomorrow? Have you looked at the chart?”
“They haven’t decided yet about Mesa Verde. If I do go, I won’t have enough clean shirts. How many could you lend me in an emergency?”
“Only one. Don’t let me catch you taking more. I may be sent somewhere myself.”
They paid the bill, scrupulously dividing it, and walked home in silence. As they turned in the gate Flo said,
“Well, I’m going to do something. I’m going to get engaged.”
“Yes? Who to?”
“I don’t know. I probably haven’t met him yet, but I’m going to get engaged pretty soon. What’s more, I’m going to get married.” She threw her hat into the closet. “To the next man I meet, if I can. There must be something in it because so many people do it.”
“Well,” Gin said, “it’s a big risk, I think. But I guess it’s your own business.” She thought about it for a long time while she rubbed cold cream on her face, in the bathroom. “Are you going to get a man with a mother, so you can visit her next summer?” she called through the open door.
“If I can,” was the candid retort. Gin frowned into the mirror and began to apply a waver to her hair. After a tense moment of arranging the lock over the left temple she shouted,
“Try to get a dude.”
“I’ve never yet had an unmarried man on the Detour,” said Flo solemnly.
“Well, then, a driver. Keep it in the family. There’s always at least one who has just had a divorce.” There was no answer to this. She tried again: “Write to the papers.”
“Oh, shut up. I’m serious, I tell you.”
“Well, you should be. It’s no laughing matter. Can I borrow a brassiere?”
“No.”
“Oh, go on and get married. I think it’s a swell idea. Name the first one after me and I’ll send it a rattle. Can I borrow a brassiere?”
“There’s one in the bottom drawer.”
“You’d better start buying a lot of brassieres,” Gin called, after inspecting the supply in the lower drawer. “Most of yours aren’t the right kind.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’d better buy a lot because girls who get engaged always wear very tight ones. Haven’t you noticed? They never flop. They don’t have to.”
“You’re vulgar,” said Flo.
“No, really. It ought to be one of the first things into the hope chest.”
There was a disgusted silence. She finished dressing, though one of her stockings had a run and it took a long time to find another pair. She felt jumpy, and it wasn’t nearly seven, when Harvey was to call for her. Swishing into the living room, she picked up a “Photoplay” and tried to settle down, but she kept thinking of Flo. Flo was smoking and reading and looking very determined.
“You’re all dressed up too,” Gin said at last, trying to ignore the chill in the room. She thought that she sounded much too bright and conciliatory, but something had to be done. “What’s on?”
“Beetie wants me to come up and play bridge,” Flo said. “I don’t know who else is going to be there—one is Russell somebody, the new real estate man—but I didn’t want to take chances on looking tacky.”
There now: things were more comfortable. Gin turned back to her magazine in peace. Harvey was five minutes early, and in a jovial mood. The door was open, but he rang the shrill bell and called,
“Hello, hello!”
When he saw Flo he calmed down a little; he never seemed to like her. Gin was always nervous when they had to talk to each other; they both acted too polite. Perhaps she shouldn’t have told Flo so much about him. Flo was a prude. Now she put on her coat and hurried him out as fast as she could.
“What’s new?” asked Harvey. He turned off on the Vegas road and speeded up.
“Oh, nothing, I think they’ll send me to Albuquerque tomorrow: that means I’ll stay down overnight to meet the morning trains. I hope it won’t be too hot to sleep.”
“Overnight? I hope you don’t go. The Summerses are throwing a party tomorrow night and told me to bring you.”
“Oh, I don’t mind missing it. I get bored at those parties. The same old jokes and the same old people getting tight. Now where are we going?”
“Pecos,” he said. “I feel like having a steak. Do you mind?”
“Nope. Go ahead.”
Absorbed in speeding, he grew taciturn, but Gin didn’t care. She sat back and stared at the road, trying to stop watching for bumps. That was the trouble with learning to drive; it ruined you as a passenger. With an effort she looked away from the spot of light that the car was pursuing, and stared at the side of the road. They were running by the railroad track. In the daytime, riding in the big passenger buses, the road was so familiar that she hated it, but now it was too dark to be anything but a dangerous path that might at any minute lurch towards the train tracks and carry them straight into the way of destruction. Once a bus had driven out too far on a soft shoulder, and had toppled over. The courier’s leg was hurt and a passenger broke a rib. If a train had come by.... She could hear a train chugging up the mountain. She half turned and saw a far-off glow. The road curved and looped and swept towards the track, and then away from it. The train was coming close ... closer ... closer ... perhaps now, just before it reached them, they would drive into its path. Harvey didn’t care. He went on just as fast as before.
A straining moment, then they were out of danger and the monster was neck and neck with them, puffing, shrieking, grinding, giving her a horrible close glimpse of its insides and an idea of what might have happened. Harvey stepped on the gas and for a moment they stayed together, then the train pulled ahead slowly, seemed to gather speed, marched by dragging a long tail spotted with square windows, and swung around a curve ahead to vanish forever. Only the smoke hung in the air and mixed with the smell of gasoline and burning cedar.
“What’s the matter with you?” said Harvey. “You’re pinching my arm.”
“Just playing,” she said, and moved over to her own side of the car again.
They reached Pecos hungry and a little chilled. There was a roadhouse nearby where people would stop for gas and, if they knew anything about the country, for food. They ate a leisurely dinner, chatting with the waitress and playing the two records that were not warped or cracked—“The Big Rock Candy Mountain” and “Two Black Crows, Part III.” Driving home afterwards, Harvey went slower, surfeited with beefsteak. He slowed up outside of Beetie’s house, at Gin’s suggestion, and they peered through the windows to see if there was any possibility of joining in. Beetie and Flo had their noses in their cards, and their partners were two young men that Gin had never seen before.
“Do you want to crash it?” asked Harvey. “It looks dead. I can’t get very thrilled about it myself. Let’s go home and see what Madden’s up to.”
“Oh, he’ll be up at Stuart’s.”
“Maybe not. We’ll look.”
There was no one in the little house, but a log was still burning in the fireplace and Teddy had left dirty dishes on the table. A new unframed picture was hanging on the wall. Gin examined it. There were two mountains, one leaning over the other, and three adobe houses with red chile hanging from the roofs, making bands of red.
“Oh, did you hear about that?” said Harvey. “Mrs. Lennard is buying it for a hundred dollars. At least I think that’s the one. There are so many like it, around here.”
“How marvelous for Teddy!”
“Yeah, Madden owes about three times that much. I don’t see why he doesn’t get a little sense and go to work. This new vaudeville business will keep him going for another month if they pay him anything.”
“Well, they ought to,” said Gin. “He’ll probably work his head off fixing it up.” She kicked a coal farther into the fire and stood on the hearth, musing. How did people keep going when they owed money that way? It worried her to owe money. Once when she forgot the bill for kindling they wouldn’t send the next order and she had to find another coal company until it was fixed up. It had been awfully embarrassing. Madden just went on charging things and charging things. If she could go on like that without worrying, she might enjoy things a lot more. It was partly Flo’s fault that she was that way: Flo was scared of getting into debt: she actually kept money in the bank.
“I couldn’t ever be an artist,” she said. “I’d be too worried all the time.”
“Oh, he gets along.” Harvey sat down on the camp cot nearest the fire; the one with the Yeibichai design on the blanket. “Sit down and be sociable.”
She sat next to him and he put one arm around her while he held on to his pipe with the other hand, puffing steadily.
“Slow place, isn’t it?” he said.
“I guess so. I don’t mind much. I like the country.”
“Yeah, I do too. But you ought to see Colorado; it’s got this skinned a mile.”
“You come from Colorado, don’t you?”
He nodded. “Dad’s there now. I’ve got an old horse that I broke in myself; he’s still up there.” He took his arm away to light his pipe again, then put it back and squeezed her under the arm with his hand. As if he didn’t notice.... “When I go back he always knows me. I taught him to dance: I used to have ideas about taking him on the stage. He sure was a pretty pony. Getting old now.”
She was drowsy from looking so long at the fire. There was nothing to say anyway. Harvey had told all the stories that you tell people you’ve just met; they knew each other too well to have any conversation. Unless they talked about philosophy, and he didn’t like to do that. He always said she thought too much, probably because he didn’t want to bother about thinking. She yawned; he went on smoking. The room was getting warm and pleasantly stuffy.
When his pipe was finished he knocked it out on the edge of the fireplace and put both arms around her. They kissed, and he hugged her tighter and tighter and then, just as their lips separated, he tried to make her lie down.
“No,” she said uneasily, and pushed him away. He stopped and she felt ridiculously stiff and upright. She leaned forward with her elbows on her knees.
“What’s the matter with you tonight?” he asked, not unreasonably. She didn’t say anything because she didn’t want to explain this sensation of wariness. Two or three times before she had spent the whole evening lying with him on the couch, fondling more or less innocuously. She felt now—she didn’t say it even to herself, but she felt that it was time for something more to happen. She had been brought up in the belief that it was up to her, as the control element in the game, to keep a watchful eye on developments and to manage when it came to necking. They started it and did their best to let it run its own course. They deliberately forgot what they were doing. And then if anything definite happened, everybody knew they always felt sorry and wished it hadn’t happened. So it was up to her to remember.
“Well?” said Harvey.
“I don’t feel like it,” she said.
“Sure you do. Come on.” He pulled her down and she lay next to him rigid and watchful. He kissed her again.
“God, you’re cold tonight.”
“Well, I told you.”
“Want a drink?”
“No.”
He tried to make her open her lips. She was stubborn and in the struggle they both laughed and she relented a little. In a stupid, urgent way he made love to her while she waited passively and grew more and more irritated. He was so easy to see through. Trying to make her forget, trying to deny all her intelligence, trying to sneak. It was worse than when he just sort of went to sleep and breathed hard and forgot anything except that she was a body next to him to clutch and hold tight. She suddenly jerked away from him and sat up, patting her hair. Her cheeks burned because his whiskers had scratched them.
“Aw, Gin!” He lay watching her for a minute, and then he too sat up, with his necktie all crooked. She was angry and a little disgusted.
“Damn you,” he said.
“Well, I told you. I told you.”
He didn’t answer. Feeling miserable and guilty, she walked over to her coat and rummaged in the pocket for a comb. She primped and patted herself with defiant jerky movements, and wished that he would speak. He didn’t. It swept over her that she didn’t really know him at all. She didn’t really know anyone. She was alone in Santa Fé, in the universe. Everybody else was hostile and stupid and silent.
“I’m going home,” she said at last.
“I think I’d better not see you any more,” he answered, as if that were an answer.
“All right, if you think so,” she said coldly. “It’s up to you.” It would be dull, not having him around to take her to parties.
“No, it’s up to you.”
“Well, then, why shouldn’t we see each other? I’m not mad.”
“That isn’t it,” he said. “We’ve got to do something about it.”
“About what?”
“Don’t be dumb.” He seemed to feel more cheerful now. He was filling his pipe again, but was still sulky.
“Well, we aren’t ever going to do anything about it, then,” she said decidedly.
He shrugged his shoulders. “Good-bye, then, I guess you can get home all right.”
“Good-bye,” she said. In a rush of remorse, she paused at the door. “Honestly, is that the way you feel about it?” she asked. “Didn’t you ever just like me?”
“Well, Jesus Christ, Gin,” he cried. “You’re a girl. How did you expect me to feel?”
“I don’t know,” she said miserably. “I thought maybe it wasn’t bad, just playing around. Can’t I ever have any friends unless I sleep with them? You pretended to like me.”
“I can’t see it that way. You see,” he said carefully, “I’ve got plenty of friends. Fellows. I wanted a girl. It’s too much trouble, having a girl for a friend. That isn’t what a girl is for. I mean, why take the trouble?”
“Oh,” she said. She hesitated, looking out the open door at the road. “Well, then....” she paused. He said nothing. “Well, then. I didn’t know that was how you felt.”
“Everybody feels that way, I should think,” he said.
“Oh! I’m sorry. Well, then ... goodbye.”
“Good-bye,” he said. He didn’t even stand up. “Take care of yourself,” he added suddenly, and then he looked away for as long as the door was still open.
She walked as fast as she could, trying to start thinking about something. She couldn’t think. She was feeling numb and stupid. If she started to think there would be too much in her mind. But something must be done. Something would have to happen in a minute. She almost ran down the street, away from the house. Her own fault for going out with him at all. She should never have gone out with him or with anybody unless she was going to sleep with them ultimately. Letting them take her to dinner, fooling them and riding around in their cars just on the strength of a false promise. That was the way they all felt.... Wasn’t there anyone who just liked her? Was there anyone who felt the way she did, just going along without making plans about getting things from other people? Just talking and letting things happen? She stumbled on a rock in the road, and kicked it furiously aside. Crossing a bridge at the aqueduct, she stopped for breath, and felt tears on her cheeks. She must have been making a noise all the way along the road. How horrible. Everything. How shameful. As soon as he saw it was no use he didn’t even take her home. Well, if that was nature.... But what a lonely world. Everybody.... Perhaps even old Mr. Dunstan. After this it wouldn’t be right for Mr. Dunstan to buy her Coca Colas when she met him in the plaza.
A car ran across the bridge and almost grazed her; its driver did not see her in the dark. It was very late. She blew her nose at last and it was as if she blew all her thoughts, too, into the handkerchief. She tiptoed into the house, but Flo was awake, propped up in her bed, with a book and a Hershey bar.
“What’s the matter?” said Flo. “You’ve been crying. Or shouldn’t I notice?”
“I’m sore at everybody,” said Gin. She walked over to her bed and began to take off her shoes. “No,” she said suddenly. “I’m damned if I’ll just go to bed. Let’s go out for a walk.”
“What? You’re crazy. Tell me what’s happened.”
“Oh, Harvey makes me so sick. Everybody makes me sick. He said I was just good to sleep with.”
“Um. How does he know?”
“Don’t be an idiot. He says I’m not good for anything else.”
“Oh, never mind. I always did think he was pretty low.”
“But he’s right, Flo. He’s right.” Her voice rose to a tragic squeak. “That’s what’s so terrible. That’s the way things are.”
Flo put down her book and looked benign. “How many times must I tell you about these people? You overrate everybody. You haven’t any discrimination at all. The idea of letting a taxi-driver with the brains of a peanut get you so excited. You’re shaking all over. Why, he’s just one of those people. Good Lord, Gin.... I’ve half a mind to go with you and walk it off.”
“Well, come on. Put something on over your pajamas. Nobody’s going to see you.”
Flo, surprisingly, acted on the suggestion. She pulled on a skirt and a pair of sandals, then shrouded herself in a coat. “All right, kid,” she said. “Let’s go. You look like Lady Macbeth.”
This was better. Flo was decent all right. It was thrilling, walking through the empty streets. If anyone should stop them and see those pajama-legs dragging! She giggled. They turned to the edge of town and walked up to the top of a hill, making a dust that was invisible in the dark but tickled their noses. At the top they stopped to puff and to look back at the city. There were still some lights; the square of lights that marked the penitentiary and the dimmed lamp posts on the plaza. As they watched, even these went out and left only the moon and a few sparks from the windows of the houses. Now that Gin’s heart had stopped beating so fast, she could smell the night smells.
“Oh, well,” she said, “to hell with Harvey.”
“Sure,” said Flo.