From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [206]
“You’re sorry? How the hell you think I feel? She’s sorry,” he said. “She’s very sorry. I only been counting on this like a goddam kid counts on Christmas.” Why dont you shut up, Prewitt? Aint you got any pride left at all?
“I am sorry. But you havent got any claims on me, mister. You’re not my husband, you know.”
“Yeh I know. I sure as hell aint, am I? Jesus Christ, Lorene,” he said.
“Listen, every minute we talk here is costing me four bits . . .”
“And thats a lot of money, aint it?”
“. . . and theres nothing I can do about the other. Do you want me to slip you in ahead, or don’t you? I’m going out of my way to do that as it is.”
Thats right, he thought. Women were so practical.
“Well,” she said, “what do you say?”
He looked at her, at the very wide mouth across the thin child’s face that was compressed into a harried impatience, now, wanting to tell her what to do with it, to take it all of it and stick it, and walk out of this ratrace. Instead, he heard himself saying, “Okay,” and hated himself for saying it.
“All right then,” Lorene said. “In number nine. And get undressed. I’ll be back soon as I take care of this.”
And she was gone then, swiftly, him watching her legging it down the hall twisting and turning through the crowd like a broken field runner. A man reached out an arm and stopped her and she smiled, talked, got irritated and went on.
Another Prewitt, Prewitt thought. He went on into number nine then, after that one, and looked at the granite basin still sitting on the floor with the used towel in the water, feeling the blankness in him slowly filling up with anger, but the anger kept seeping out the bottom where his stomach no longer was. He sat down on the bed. He could not stop seeing the mental picture he had brought with him, and it made him feel all gone inside.
He heard her coming back. But by the time he could look up the door was already shut, the unzippered gown on the chair, and she was moving fast toward the granite stand and the Vaseline. Then she stopped, looking at him stupidly.
“Why you’re not even undressed yet!”
“I’m not? By god, I’m not, am I?” he stood up.
Lorene looked like she was going to cry. “I told you to be undressed when I got back, goddam it. I’m slipping you in ahead of them, just as a favor, and you dont even try to help me any.”
Prew stood and looked at her. He could not say anything.
“Never mind that now,” he said. “Let me look at you.”
“Okay,” she said.
He handed her the three dollars and unbuttoned his fly.
She pushed the damp hair back out of the harried eyes, sweat glistening from the flat place between her chubby little breasts.
“Dont bother to undress now,” she said. “Just drop them.”
“I’ll be goddamned if I’ll do it with my pants on,” he said, and went on pulling them off over his shoes. “Payday or no payday.” He knelt to untie his shoes.
“Well at least leave your shoes on. You know there’s a time limit on Payday. Petunia will be knocking any time now.”
He straightened up, looking at her, a tightness of ache deep in his jaws that ran clear down his spine into his buttocks and knotted his belly sourly. She lay naked on the bed, waiting frenetically, her head bent forward irritably to look at him, her knees up in the proper position, the required position, the regulation position, the following exercise will be a back and leg exercise done in two counts from the position of arms at thrust, at the count of one raise the body horizontally, at the count of two recover, arms at thrust HOOV, ready HEXercise.
The springs squeaked under his knees.
“Why dont you come back tomorrow night?” Lorene said. “And stay all night tomorrow?”
He could hear this faintly through the skintight space suit of plexiglass he was encased in, sealed in, a perfect example of the Twentieth Century Man doing his calisthenics to keep healthy and not lose his figure, in his airtight, soundproof, loveproof, hateproof, lifeproof plexiglass space suit that was a marvel of modern industrial accomplishment, a masterpiece of modern industrial engineering design, there should be at least two in every home, and then one each for all the little ones, because a Twentieth Century Man looked so silly naked with his shoes and socks still on, a muscle-knotty squirrel divested of its skin but the footpads not cut off yet. But he was goddamned, stinking slucking goddamned, if he would tell her, now, how he could not come back tomorrow because he had had to borrow twenty from the twenty per cent men, also a marvel of modern industrial accomplishment, to come today at all, and that he would not have the dough to come again tomorrow. Besides, he would have to yell too loud to make it heard outside the plexiglass space suit anyway.
“You’ll have to hurry, honey,” Lorene said. “If you dont want to take a raincheck.”
It was very strange: Robert E Lee Pre