"You're exaggerating a hell of a lot and I'm sure you know it."
"Nothing of the kind. The way you were dancing wouldn't have been tolerated in half the dives in the Village. I mean the real dives—not the kind that are reserved for tourists."
"You know all about them, I suppose. Have you been to them often?"
"I've never stepped inside one. But I wasn't born yesterday. I know what goes on in such places."
"Look, we're getting nowhere. Will you believe me and listen? If I met her tomorrow on the street I'd just say hello, and smile and tip my hat and pass on. I swear it."
"I can just picture it. She'd smile back, and the way she smiles when she knows what she wants and will have no trouble getting it—doesn't require any effort on her part. It just comes naturally. And going home with her would come naturally to you, too.
"She has a beautiful place. Have you seen it? Of course you haven't ... because you met her tonight for the first time. So perhaps I'd better describe it for you. You go up in a private elevator, and you step out and there you are—in a real golden Rembrandt setting. The lighting is the newest Paris importation, and there are a lot of abstract paintings on the walls of her bedroom, you know, all little colored squares in different colors that mean absolutely nothing but only hang on the walls of the major league museums because the smaller museums can't afford them.
"'I'll be back in a minute,' she'll say, and away she'll go, tripping lightly, into the bathroom—all black onyx with gold fixtures—and when she comes out you'll be sitting with a cocktail glass in your hand—she'll have invited you to mix your own, with just the right shade of icing, at a private bar that will knock your eyes out—and when you see what she's wearing, or isn't wearing, you'll forget where you are and think you're in a kind of glorified cathouse."
She became a little frightened when she saw the way Roger was looking at her and lowered her eyes, wishing she'd kept silent. Simply had it out with him, the way she'd intended and walked out of the apartment for the last time, slamming the door behind her.
Why had she ranted on so recklessly? She'd talked like a shrew driven half out of her mind by jealousy, and that had been a mistake. It was giving him too much ammunition, giving him the kind of satisfaction he wasn't entitled to. Angering him at the same time, making him look at her in a strange way, a way new to her, as if the suggestive picture she'd painted for him of a totally shameless Lathrup had aroused in him instincts that were base and dangerous. Something about the look not only scared her, it caused her to pale a little and move further away from him.