U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [436]
hearing. " Annie," he said suddenly, "I been thinking it's about time I got married."
"Why, Charley, a mere boy like you."
Charley felt warm al over. Al at once he wanted a woman terribly bad. It was hard to control his voice.
"Wel , I suppose we're both old enough to know better, but what would you think of the proposition? I've been pretty lucky this year as far as dough goes." Anne sipped her cocktail looking at him and laughing with her hair blowing across her face. "What do you want me to do, ask for a statement of your bankdeposit?"
"But I mean you."
"Check," she said.
Farrel was yel ing at them, "How about a little game of penny ante before supper? . . . It's gettin' windy out here. We'd be better off in the saloon."
"Aye, aye, cap," said Anne.
Before supper they played penny ante and drank man-hattans and after supper the Farrel s and the Bledsoes set-tled down to a game of auction. Gladys said she had a headache and Charley, after watching the game for a
-297-while, went out on deck to get the reek of the cigar he'd been smoking out of his lungs.
The boat was anchored in a little bay, near a lighted wharf that jutted out from shore. A halfmoon was setting behind a rocky point where one tal pine reached out of a dark snarl of branches above a crowd of shivering white-birches. At the end of the wharf there was some sort of clubhouse that spilt ripples of light from its big windows; dancemusic throbbed and faded from it over the water. Charley sat in the bow. The boys who ran the boat for Farrel had turned in. He could hear their low voices and catch a smel of cigarettesmoke from the tiny hatch for-ward of the pilothouse. He leaned over to watch the smal grey waves slapping against the bow. "Bo, this is the big-time stuff," he was tel ing himself. When he turned around there was Gladys beside him.
"I thought you'd gone to bed, young lady," he said.
"Thought you'd gotten rid of me for one night?" She wasn't smiling.
"Don't you think it's a pretty night, Glad?" He took her hand; it was trembling and icecold.
"You don't want to catch cold, Glad," he said. She dug her long nails into his hand. "Are you going to marry Anne?"
"Maybe. . . . Why? You're goin' to marry Harry, aren't you?"
"Nothing in this world would make me marry him." Charley put his arms round her. "You poor little girl, you're cold. You ought to be in bed." She put her head on his chest and began to sob. He could feel the tears warm through his shirt. He didn't know what to say. He stood there hugging her with the smel of her hair giddy, like the smel of Doris's hair used to be, in his nostrils.
"I wish we were off this damn boat," he whispered. Her face was turned up to his, very round and white. When he kissed her lips she kissed him too. He pressed her to him hard. Now it was her little breasts he could feel against
-298-his chest. For just a second she let him put his tongue be-tween her lips, then she pushed him away.
"Charley, we oughtn't to be acting like this, but I sud-denly felt so lonely." Charley's voice was gruff in his throat. "I'l never let you feel like that again. . . . Never, honestly . . . never. .
. .""Oh, you darling Charley." She kissed him again very quickly and deliberately and ran away from him down the deck.
He walked up and down alone. He didn't know what
to do. He was crazy for Gladys now. He couldn't go back and talk to the others. He couldn't go to bed. He slipped down the forward hatch and through the gal ey, where Taki sat cool as a cucumber in his white coat reading some thick book, into the cabin where his berth was and changed into his bathingsuit and ran up and dove over the side. The water wasn't as cold as he'd expected. He swam
around for a while in the moonlight. Pul ing himself up the ladder aft he felt cold and goosefleshy. Farrel with a cigar in his teeth leaned over, grabbed his hand and hauled him on deck.
"Ha, ha, the iron man," he shouted. "The girls beat us two rubbers and went to bed with their winnings. Suppose you get into your bathrobe and have a drink and a half an hour of red dog or something sil y before we turn in."