"That wasn't why I wanted to see you. But thanks." He fumbled in his mind for some sort of beginning. "Oh, hell," he finally said. "What I want to say can be put in two sentences. And they're the hardest two I ever had to speak. I haven't tried them on anybody yet. But I've got to—with someone. Meaning you. It goes like this." For a full minute he sat there saying nothing. Then he pushed back his rather long chestnut hair and looked at me squarely—with an expression in his eyes that I would remember for a long time, if I had a long time to remember in. "I'm in love. And the girl's a whore." He turned away from me, after that, and looked toward the window, toward afternoon blue sky into which the sun still pointed. His chin was shaking.
I thought of several responses and picked one carefully. "All right. It's said—the whole thing. It leaves me fairly undisturbed, Paul."
"I guess you don't understand—don't believe me. I mean it. The girl actually was—a professional tart. A call girl. What they hold to be a high-class one."
"So I gathered. I've known several cases."
"It—" He swallowed hard a time or two. "Mind if I have another Scotch?"
I shook my head.
He ordered and began once again. "I didn't know it—like a dope—for a long time. I can't even tell whether or not knowing it right off—would have made a difference. I suppose it would. I suppose I'd just have been bitter—because I couldn't afford her. The name's Marcia."
"Nice name."
"Yeah. Look, Phil. It was last winter—after I got back from Eniwetok. Some of the directors of a big corporation where I'd been called in for a conference asked me to a party. Marcia was there. I suppose that the other girls were the same." He looked at his knuckles. "Scratch that. I know they were—now. Nobody said anything about it. Just—big corporation hospitality for people like me, whose advice might make them a few more millions. I sat around drinking cocktails and having a swell time and thinking that the girls had got prettier while I was in the Pacific, working. I didn't know they were to take home—like candy—compliments of the management. And Marcia didn't mention the fact when I asked her if she'd care to ditch the binge and have supper just with me."
"No."