“I s’pose it’s my fault, too,” she said. “I don’t love you, Lou, but I do like you lots. Maybe I will some time. How c’n any girl be sure about that? I don’ want to stop going with you ’f you’ll just try to be friends with me, Lou.”
He stood for a moment without answering—discouraged and resentful. Somehow he never seemed to get anything that he really wanted—what was the use of it all. She li-iked the way he talked, oh, yes, but she preferred to save herself for some empty-pated cake-eater, some know-it-all fellow with a straight nose and a bunch of bum jokes and a string of promises about what he was going to do for her.
“Oh, I’ll try,” he said at last, “but I can’t see why you don’t care for me. I’ve got just as good a head as any one else you know, and I’m not so terrible looking, and I know you wouldn’t turn me down just ’cause I’m poor.”
“I cert’nly wouldn’t,” she replied. “I can’t tell you why I don’t love you—it’s just not there, that’s all. I think you’re a nice boy, really I do, and I want to keep seeing you, but what’s the use of letting you do things to me when it don’t mean nothing?... I’ve got to go upstairs now—I feel like I could sleep ten hours. We sure did dance a lot to-night. Listen, call me up next Thursday noon, at the caf’, and we’ll go some place Thursday night.”
“All right, I’ll give you a ring,” he answered, dully. “I guess you can’t help how you feel, Blanche.”
He kissed her good-night, and she let his lips stay for a while, out of pity, and then broke away from him. As she went to bed, she had a muddled, wondering feeling—why did she always turn down boys that were “good” and willing to marry her, and why didn’t she object to the embraces of “bad” men, who were just looking for an easy prospect? Maybe she was a little “bad” herself—a little like May Harrigan, whose name was the jest of the neighborhood, and who grabbed any young fellow that came along.... Her perturbations faded out into sleep.
On the next morning she was still a bit glum at the cafeteria, but it was no more than the least of shadows as she exchanged glances and repartee with various customers who paid their checks. When she sat before the cash register, her business-like tension extended even to the sexual side of her, and she uttered her set phrases merely to dispose of the men who talked to her, and with little interest in their faces and words. During the lull-hours, however, between two and four in the afternoon, she relaxed, and the appraising tingles of her sex came back, and she entered into badinage with the proprietor and the counter-men and stray customers whom she knew. Her confined perch on the cashier’s stool had to be forgotten in some way.
The cafeteria had rows of brightly varnished chairs with broad arms, and tables with white, enameled tops, and a sprinkle of sawdust on the tiled floor. Pyramids of oranges and grapefruit stood in the windows, and the glass-walled food counters were heaped with pastry, cold meats and trays of salads and puddings. The smell of soggy, overspiced food and body-odors possessed the air, and a spirit of dreamless, hasty, semidirty devouring hung over the place. On this afternoon, Blanche was chatting with the proprietor, a tall Jew of forty years, with a jowled, bloodless face, killed black eyes that were always shifting about in the fear that they might be missing something, and the thickest of lips. His coat was off and he wore an expensive, monogramed silk shirt of green and white stripes, and had a cigar forever in his mouth or hand.
“Check up yet on the accounts?” he asked.
“Yep, ev’rything’s straight,” she answered.