Nathanael West - The Day of the Locust [24]
“I like that one, too,” he said when she had finished.
“Think them over and do the one that has the best chance.”
She was dismissing him and if he didn’t act at once the opportunity would be gone. He started to lean toward her, but she caught his meaning and stood up. She took his arm with affectionate brusqueness—they were now business partners—and guided him to the door.
In the hall, when she thanked him for coming down and apologized for having disturbed him, he tried again. She seemed to melt a little and he reached for her. She kissed him willingly enough, but when he tried to extend the caress, she tore free.
“Whoa there, palsy-walsy,” she laughed. “Mamma spank.” He started for the stairs.
“Good-bye now,” she called after him, then laughed again.
He barely heard her. He was thinking of the drawings he had made of her and of the new one he would do as soon as he got to his room.
In “The Burning of Los Angeles” Faye is the naked girl in the left foreground being chased by the group of men and women who have separated from the main body of the mob. One of the women is about to hurl a rock at her to bring her down. She is running with her eyes closed and a strange half-smile on her lips. Despite the dreamy repose of her face, her body is straining to hurl her along at top speed. The only explanation for this contrast is that she is enjoying the release that wild flight gives in much the same way that a game bird must when, after hiding for several tense minutes, it bursts from cover in complete, unthinking panic.
14
Tod had other and more successful rivals than Homer Simpson. One of the most important was a young man called Earle Shoop.
Earle was a cowboy from a small town in Arizona. He worked occasionally in horse-operas and spent the rest of his time in front of a saddlery store on Sunset Boulevard. In the window of this store was an enormous Mexican saddle covered with carved silver, and around it was arranged a large collection of torture instruments. Among other things there were fancy, braided quirts, spurs with great spiked wheels, and double bits that looked as though they could break a horse’s jaw without trouble. Across the back of the window ran a low shelf on which was a row of boots, some black, some red and some a pale yellow. All of the boots had scalloped tops and very high heels.
Earle always stood with his back to the window, his eyes fixed on a sign on the roof of a one-story building across the street that read: “Malted Milks Too Thick For A Straw.” Regularly, twice every hour, he pulled a sack of tobacco and a sheaf of papers from his shirt pocket and rolled a cigarette. Then he tightened the cloth of his trousers by lifting his knee and struck a match along the underside of his thigh.
He was over six feet tall. The big Stetson hat he wore added five inches more to his height and the heels of his boots still another three. His polelike appearance was further exaggerated by the narrowness of his shoulders and by his lack of either hips or buttocks. The years he had spent in the saddle had not made him bowlegged. In fact his legs were so straight that his dungarees, bleached very light blue by the sun and much washing, hung down without a wrinkle, as though they were empty.
Tod could see why Faye thought him handsome. He had a two-dimensional face that a talented child might have drawn with a ruler and a compass. His chin was perfectly round and his eyes, which were wide apart, were also round. His thin mouth ran at right angles to his straight, perpendicular nose. His reddish tan complexion was the same color from hairline to throat, as though washed in by an expert, and it completed his resemblance to a mechanical drawing.
Tod had told Faye that Earle was a dull fool. She agreed laughing, but then said that he was “criminally handsome,” an expression she had picked up in the chatter column of a trade paper.
Meeting her on the stairs one night, Tod asked if she would go to dinner with him.
“I can’t. I’ve got a date. But you can come along.”
“With Earle?”
“Yes, with Earle,” she repeated, mimicking his annoyance.