“Or if the couriers aren’t Mexican, really. Or how many stamps to use on letters to Chicago. Well, tell your friends. They enjoy it.”
“What friends? I haven’t any.”
Gin was tired of it. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Flo. Snap out of it.”
“But I haven’t. Who on earth would take the trouble to go on being a friend of any of us when we’re always leaving town? It takes too much energy. As soon as I make a dinner date the office deadheads me to Albuquerque to wait for some railroad official who’s taking a free vacation to the canyon or something. People get tired of that. No one ever asks me for bridge any more. I never have time to write letters: I don’t even feel like it. I bet a soldier gets just this way, living in training camp.... The only people I ever see in any connected way are the other girls and the drivers and the Indians. And the nigger in the lavatory on the Chief, when I’m on the trains.” She broke off the thread and rolled up two stockings. “We’re pathetic figures. Don’t you realize it? I’ve been realizing it all day.”
“Have it your own way,” said Gin. “In my artless fashion I thought I was enjoying myself, but have it your own way. Have a drink.”
“I don’t care if I do.”
Gin went into the kitchen, knelt down before a cabinet that was shrouded in a cretonne curtain, and pulled out a glass keg of corn liquor. She poured out two small glasses and went back to the living room.
Flo tasted hers and said again, “I’m fed up.” Gin watched her curiously and felt a little depressed. Sometimes she too had a feeling of hopelessness; it was probably the same thing now with Flo. Were they coming to her more often lately? Would she too become chronically tired and aggrieved? How long before she began to indulge in that dangerous game of wondering what it was all about? She drank the corn thoughtfully, thinking about her first days here. It had all been fun, but most especially, she remembered the party the old girls had given for the new, when they had begun to tell their favorite stories about dudes. There was the girl who gave them the list of W. C.’s available for every trip, and made them practice how to ask the gentlemen if they needed them.
“You don’t really need to say anything to them. You just say to the nearest woman in a loud whisper, ‘Would you like to...?’ and they’ll watch where you go, if they have any sense.”
Then there had been the last lecture, when Mr. God gave them a little talk on the aims of the company and ended his address with a delicate plea for—well, for what? Sobriety and morality, probably. What he said was, “I need hardly add that we assume that every girl is a lady, in the best sense of the word....”