He had not exactly forgotten her. Indeed, he had been awaiting her coming, but now he was puzzled because her return was so expected, and it ought to have been unexpected. He felt injured, that he had been cheated, that things on this side of his crisis were too much like things on the other side: a woman, habit, meals, interest in his appetite.
“Wake up, stoopid,” said Ann. “You’ll be wasting off like the niggers in Africa if you don’t wake up. You can’t go sleeping on forever.”
“Can’t I?”
“Well, you can, of course, but if you do, I’ll be thinking you’re a case. You’re not a case, are you? You weren’t last night.”
She spoke as though to be called a case was the horridest of insults, and he took it as such and roused himself not to deserve it.
“That’s better,” she said. “Nothing to eat all day.”
“No. Nothing.”
She pondered that.
“I expect your stomach knows best. Now, then, stir yourself. You got to write home.”
She gave him writing materials and he drew up to the table and sat staring at the blank sheet of paper. He took pen in hand, but could not write, could not concentrate his will even that much.