"I guess I don't—"
"Don't apologize, don't say a word. It's a little too much for me at the moment, too. Did I ever tell you that you're beautiful?"
"No," she said. "You've never told me that. And I don't think I am."
"But you are. How would you like to have dinner with me tonight? We'll celebrate. We'll really kick over the traces."
"Ralph, I don't know. You've never asked me before. How come you've never asked me before?"
The "how come" grated on him, but he did his best not to look aggrieved.
"It's because I've been too busy—and too worried," he said. "You don't know what a writer goes through—eight, ten, twelve hours a day. The creative agony does something to you—makes you feel either detached, way off in the clouds somewhere or so nervously keyed up that you can't take down-to-earth realities in your stride. You forget things, make a fool of yourself, miss priceless opportunities. Like ... telling you how beautiful you are and how much it would mean to me if you'd say yes ... yes ... yes. You will have dinner with me."
Her surrender was complete, because it had already been decided upon. But it was the kind of surrender he hadn't expected, hadn't really wanted at all. It was physical and immediate and it appalled him, brought with it a commitment he hadn't planned on, an involvement he might have welcomed in a moment of desperation, when the sex hunger was a gnawing ache in him and loneliness was a gnawing ache, and a woman—any woman—would have been better than the gross mental images no sex-starved man can avoid conjuring up at times. But he wasn't desperate now, he'd been thrown a lifeline, and all the east was gold, bathed in the bright rays of an unexpected sunrise.
"Say what you just said again," she said. "Tell me I'm beautiful, even if we both know it's a lie. Say anything you want ... so long as you really need me, and we're not kidding each other about that part of it. Tell me I'm just a crazy kid, bitten by some kind of bug and I won't mind at all. Say I'm well-stacked even if I'm not beautiful, as if you were talking to someone about a girl you didn't respect too much. I won't care if you really need me, and do respect me, deep down...."
She was in his arms before he could say a word in reply, was straining against him, running her fingers through his hair, opening her lips and almost forcing him to kiss her with the kind of ardor it would have been impossible for him to wholly avoid. He suddenly realized that all she was wearing was a skirt and blouse, that both garments were so thin he could feel the texture of her skin through the cloth.