Appointment in Samarra - John O'Hara [61]
Well, I don t think he d be making out a slip for seventy gallons. A car doesn’t hold that much gas, said Julian. Besides, that s not your headache. Let Bruce worry about it.
Mary turned to look at him. Sure, but you forget. You told Bruce he could go to Lebanon over the week-end. She spoke as a woman who was carrying on in spite of all injustice. Bruce Reichelderfer was the bookkeeper, and Julian had given him the week-end. That s right, I did. Well, let me see it.
She handed him the slip. She was right as usual; you could not tell from the figures whether Lute had meant 10 or 70. We ought to use the French seven, he said. Then we d always know. However, I guess we can take a chance that he meant ten gallons. He wouldn’t be signing for seventy gallons all at once.
Well, I just wanted to be right on it. Sixty gallons of gas, that costs money, and we can t just
I know, Mary. You’re right. Somehow her tone filled him with terror, the kind that he felt when he knew he was doing something bad. It was an old experience; he still thought of it in the terms of boyhood: when I m doing something bad. And it wasn’t her tone alone; it was her manner, and it was not a new manner. For weeks, and probably months, she had behaved like someone, a school teacher, who was meaning to speak to him about his lessons or conduct. She was Right, and he was Wrong. She could make him feel like a thief, a lecher(although God knows he never had made a pass at her), a drunkard, a no-good bum. She represented precisely what she came from: solid, respectable, Pennsylvania Dutch, Lutheran middle class; and when he thought about her, when she made her existence felt, when she actively represented what she stood for, he could feel the little office suddenly becoming overcrowded with a delegation of all the honest clerks and mechanics and housewives and Sunday School teachers and widows and orphans all the Christiana Street kind of people who he knew secretly hated him and all Lantenengo Street people. They could have their illegitimate babies, their incest, their paresis, their marital bestiality, their cruelty to animals, their horrible treatment of their children and all the other things which you could find in individual families; but collectively they presented a solid front of sound Pennsylvania Dutch and all that that implied, or was supposed to imply. They went to church on Sunday, they saved their money, they were kind to their old people, they were physically clean, they loved music, they were peace-loving, they were good workers. And there they sat, with their back curved in at the small part, their oilcloth cuffs covering their sleeves, their fresh blouse as neat after five hours wear as Julian s shirt after two. And they were thinking what a pity it was that this wonderful business wasn’t in the hands of one of their own men, instead of being driven into the ground by a Lantenengo Street wastrel. And yet, Julian made himself admit, Lute Fliegler is a Pennsylvania Dutchman and one of the swellest guys that ever lived. Thinking that over Julian returned to his old theory: it was possible, wasn’t it? that Lute s mother had had a quick one with an Irishman or a Scotsman. A hell of a thing to think about that old Mrs. Fliegler, who still baked the best pie crust Julian had ever tasted. Every few minutes Julian would jot down some figures as they came into his head. All the time he looked very busy, and he hoped he was making a good impression on Mary Klein. The sheets of paper that lay before him were filling up with neat, engineering style lettering and numerals. Addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. & He did. What s the use of trying to fool myself? I know he did. I know he did and no matter what excuses I make or how much I try to tell myself that he didn t, I ll only come back to the same thing: He did. I know he did. And what for? For a dirty little thrill with a woman who oh, I thought he d got all that out of his system. Didn