From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [220]
“Because people want to read them, and will pay for them.”
“They aint like real life though,” Prew said. “Nothing like that crap ever happens.”
“Of course not,” Tommy said, stiffly. “Thats why the people read them. You have to give the people what they want.”
“I aint so sure that they want that,” Prew said.
“What are you?” Timmy giggled bassly. “A sociologist?”
“No. But I figure I’m about like most people. I don’t know nothing about great literature, but I cant read them stories.”
“Its not the men,” Tommy said. “Its the women. The stupid, romantic, filthy, moralistic women. They’re the ones that like it. They are the book and magazine buyers. And they eat it up. They have to get their kicks some way, dont they? Their morals wont let them get their kicks in bed.”
“Oh, I don’t know. I aint convinced of that.”
“Women and their moral concepts,” Tommy said. “If they dont wake up they’ll find themselves without any men at all, someday.”
“I can see that,” Prew said. “You mean they’ll drive all the men into being homos, just to get their gun off, like Hal said.”
“No, I did not say that,” Tommy said stiffly. “I did not say that at all. The women have nothing to do with that.”
“Maybe they do,” Prew said. “I never thought of it before tonight.”
He was passing by the well-desk. Prominently displayed on one corner was a photograph in a washed gold frame. It was a snapshot of a naked woman, standing on the outside solid staircase of a stucco house, her long blonde hair reaching to her shoulders. His eyes moved over it and passed on, then startled, came swinging back. He stopped involuntarily, then stepped over to look at it more closely. Behind him he heard Tommy laugh.
“His masterpiece,” Tommy sniggered. “Isnt it filthy?”
Prew picked the picture up. Where there should have been a woman’s flattened crotch hung the genitals of a man. It made a very startling effect. He set it down and stepped back to study it. A closer inspection showed the hips were narrow like a man’s and the belly flat and hard. The breasts were woman, so was the hair, so were the arms, but there was a subtle masculinity in the jawline. There was, absolutely and utterly, no evidence of any overlay or trick photography.
“It really shocked you, didnt it?” Tommy sniggered.
“Yes,” Prew admitted. “Yes, it did.” He looked at the picture, feeling his mouth go dry and his palms begin to sweat in the old way.
Then from the bathroom he heard Maggio flush the toilet and then he heard his voice.
“Aw, Hal, cut it out. . . . Not now, Hal. I want a drink. . . . No, goddmn it, Hal. I wnt a fucking drink, god damn it. I’m going in.”
Prew turned away from the picture quickly and looked at Tommy, feeling in his belly as if he’d had too many drinks.
Tommy giggled again, the same bass giggle, something Prew had never heard before, and that in its own right was somewhat of a peculiarity.
“Make you hot, dear?” Tommy sid. “The picture?”
“No,” Prew said. “It didnt.” He picked the picture up again, feeling for some reason he had to pick it up.
“Well,” Tommy grinned disbelievingly. “You’re the exception. But I think you’re lying.”
“Frankly,” Prew said, “I dont give a fuck what you think, buddy.”
“What?” Maggio said, coming in, “dont give a fuck what who thinks?”
He walked over to where Prew still held the picture. Hal came in behind him, wearing a Tahetian pareu wrapped around him that was printed with flaming poincianas smothered in their deep green pinnate leaves. His thin spruce frame looked angular and flat and muscleless now, instead of debonair. The deep burned tan on the thick juiceless skin seemed unnatural, scaly, as if he had been painted with iodine.
“Aint that the damdest thing?” Angelo laughed over Prew’s shoulder. “I thought sure I was goin blind the first time I seen it.”
“Ah,” Hal said. “I see you’ve found my picture. Wasnt it you who was asking about what art I had produced?”
“Yeah, that was me.” Prew put the picture back on the desk. “You know, me and Tommy just been talkin about how women are romantic,” he grinned, “how they live in their fantastic dreams, t