The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [262]
What're we doin' tonight, son?
We'll just do the town, Mr. Cranborn; you don't have to worry, I'll show you around.
I've heard a good deal about this town.
Yes, sir, well, most of it's true. (The lewd cackle from the adjacent shower.)
In the night club they talk business. Every time he leans back he can feel the potted palm against his hair so that he finds himself leaning forward breathing the smoke from Mr. Cranborn's cigar. Well, you got to see, sir, that we're entitled to a little profit, I mean after all that's what makes the wheels of business go round, and you wouldn't want us to be working for you for nothing with our product any more than you'd want to work for someone else. That'd hardly be business, now, would it? The fifth drink is almost empty, and his jaws clamp spongily. The cigarette is a little remote from his lips. (I gotta slow down on the drinking.)
A good point, son, a good point, but there's also the question of making something cheaper than the next feller, and that's business too, competition. You're out for yourself, and I'm out for myself, and that's the way things work.
Yes, sir, I see what you mean. For a moment the whole thing is in danger of revolving and revolving in his head, and he thinks of flailing out, breathing some air. Let's look at it from this angle.
Who's that little blonde girl in the show, Brown? Know her?
(He doesn't.) Well, yes, sir, but frankly you wouldn't be wanting to know her. She's gone to the well a little too often and, well, frankly there's doctors involved. I know a place though, sir, decent respectable.
In the lobby the hat-check girl can hear him phoning. He leans against the wall in danger of supporting himself with his face against the phone. The line is busy, and for an instant he wants to cry.
Hello, Eloise? he asks. The woman's voice crackles at him from the other end.
It's more fun being out with the gang from the office on a tear.
I tell ya I never saw anything like it, picking up a half dollar like that, why, she just picked it right off the edge of the table. I suppose if it wasn't the place where I saw it you'd have to go to Paris or a nigger whorehouse anyway.
It takes all kinds to make a world.
Yeh, that's about the way I look at it, there's a lot of things go on in people's heads you don't know nothing about
What do you figure goes on in the Chief's head?
Uh-uh, we ain't talking shop tonight, that's understood. Come on, let's start a round going.
They drink up, exhaust the circle of rounds owed.
I'm going to tell you men something, Brown says, a lot of people think we might have a soft job selling, but the God's honest truth of it is that we work hard as any man jack, am I right?
None harder.
Exactly. Now when I was up at the university before I flunked out, I flunked out I want you to know 'cause I think a man's a goddam fool if he's got false pride, I don't believe in making out you're exactly what you ain't. I'm as ordinary as an old shoe and I'll admit it to anyone who asks me.
Brown, you're a good old sonofabitch.
Well, now, I'm glad to hear you say that, Jennings, because I know you mean it, and it means a lot. A man works his fool ass off and he wants to have some friends, people he knows will trust him and like him, 'cause if he ain't got that what's the point to his working?
That's exactly it.
I'm pretty fortunate, I'll say that to any man in his face, but of course I've had my troubles, who the hell hasn't, but we're not here to cry about that tonight, now, are we? I want to tell you men, I got a beautiful wife, now, that's the truth.
One of the gang guffaws. Brown, I got a beautiful wife too, but I swear after you been married two years a woman might just as well look like a coon dog for all the good it does you.
I can't quite agree, Freeman, but there's a point to what you say. He feels his words dribbling out of his mouth, lost in the babel of glasses and conversation.
Come on, let's be goin' over to Eloise's.
And the inevitable coming back.
Freeman, you said something a while ago that kinda put a stir in me, but I want to tell you I got a beautiful wife, and there's no one could improve on her a bit. I think it's a goddam shame the way we go around screwing God knows what, and then goin' back to our wives, it's a helluva note I want to tell you that. When I think of her and then what I do I'm pretty goddam ashamed of myself. It's a hell of a note.