I thought some more about New Orleans. It was going to take one hell of a good binge to get the taste of this business out of my mouth. Oh, well, I thought, I’ve got that money I’ve hardly even touched, and the time, and nothing stopping me. Except a wife, of course. Don’t forget the young bride.
I heard a padding of bare feet behind me. The young bride was out of the tub.
A voice said happily, “Well, aren’t you going to turn around? I want to show you the rest of my new clothes.”
I turned around and she was standing near where my feet extended over the side of the bed. I dropped the cigarette I had in my hand and it fell on the bedspread and started to burn it and I picked it up and ground out the coal between my fingers without feeling it.
I saw the rest of her new clothes, which weren’t extensive. She had on a pair of very brief pants and a thin robe of some sort and her hair was down around her shoulders. She smiled gently at me and said, “I think they’re awful nice, don’t you?”
I turned back to the window and said, “They’re very nice.”; I must have said it, for there wasn’t anybody else in the room, but it didn’t sound like my voice. It sounded like someone being strangled.
Remember, that’s Angelina. She’s a snotty little brat and you don’t like her and you’re just over here to marry her to untangle a messy situation that you don’t want to get any worse. You can’t stand the sight of her. You can bet your life on that, brother. You can’t stand many more sights of her like that.
“Go put your damn clothes on,” I said. I wondered how my voice sounded to her. It didn’t sound so promising to me.
She reached down and took hold of my ankle and shook it. “You turn around, Bob, and tell me what you think of them. You didn’t say a word, and you bought them for me, and I want you to like them.”
I turned around and she was smiling teasingly. I tried to put the drink on the window sill but I dropped it and the glass broke and the ice skidded across the rug. I got off the bed and caught her, roughly, as you would any old bag, not half knowing what I was doing and not caring much, heedless of anything but the wildness of having to get my hands on her. She took the first kiss without much more than a gasp, but the next time she hit me and she hit me hard, with her fist doubled up, and then she was pounding on my face with both hands and struggling. I let go of her and she ran back and picked up a glass off the dresser and threw it at me. It bounced off my neck and hit the wall but it didn’t break.
Her eyes were hot as she glared at me like a female wildcat. “I’ll teach you,” she said. “I’ll teach you how to grab me like that, like a crazy man.”
“O.K.,” I said. “Keep your shirt on. I ought to break your damn little neck.” I went back and lay down across the bed and lit another cigarette and looked out the window.
There was a long silence, as though she hadn’t moved, and I began to wonder what she was doing back there, but I was so angry I didn’t care. To hell with her.
Suddenly she was there beside me on the bed, facing me with her head cradled across her folded arm and looking at me contritely.
“I'm sorry,” she said. “I’m awful sorry, Bob. Will you forgive me?”
“O.K.,” I said. “Forget it.”
“Not until you say you forgive me.” Her eyes looked at me pleadingly and her hair was spread out across her arm within inches of my face. It was beautiful hair, a little darker than golden, and I was thinking it was just the color of wild honey.
“It wasn’t anything,” I said. “And it was my fault.”
“No. It was mine. But you scared me and made me mad, the wild way you acted. You were so rough.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
She regarded me a moment, wide-eyed, and then went on softly, “You don’t have to be that rough, do you?”
She didn’t hit me this time. She put her arms up around my neck and pulled my head down like a swimmer who was drowning.
We lay side by side on the bed for a long time afterward, not saying anything and just being quiet under the cool breeze from the overhead fan. She sighed after a while and murmured something.
“What?” I asked.
“I said it’s nice here, Bob. Don’t you like it?”
“It’s nice anywhere,” I said.
She ignored it. “You know what I mean. Our room is nice.”
“Why did you do it?” I asked. I was beginning to think that Angelina was something I wouldn’t ever understand. There were too many of her.
“Do what?” she asked quietly.
“You didn’t do anything?”
“I just wanted you to see my new clothes. Because you were so nice and bought them for me.”
“Yes, I know,” I said. “And then the strangest thing happened. You just can’t account for it.”
She turned her face and smiled lazily.
“If you’re really interested in an unbiased and analytical criticism of those tag ends of clothes,” I said, “let me give you a little advice. Display them unoccupied. When you get in there you only confuse the issue.”
“I didn’t think you liked me.” She always got back to that.
“It isn’t a question of liking you, any more than of liking being hit between the eyes with a sledge hammer. It has the same effect.”
“You know something?” she said suddenly, raising up and resting her elbows on my chest and looking at me with little devils of mirth in her eyes. “Someday you’re going to slip and say something nice about me.”
“No doubt.”
“We’re getting to be better friends, aren’t we?”
“Sure, sure,” I said. “If we just keep on breaking the ice with these friendly little gestures. May I call you by your first name, now that we’re sleeping together? I somehow feel as if I knew you.”
I could have kicked myself after I’d said it. Why did I have to keep on riding her? But she didn’t flare up as I expected she would.
“You think I’m pretty rotten, don’t you?” She wasn’t angry that I could see. She was just quiet and her eyes were a little moody. I hated the thing I had said for the way it had driven the laughter out of her eyes, and I hated myself for saying it.
“No,” I said. “And I apologize for that last crack. It was just from habit, I guess. But I didn’t mean it.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “We don’t have to pretend anything, do we?”
We were quiet for a long time and finally I said, “How do you feel about getting married? Have you ever thought about it before?”
“What girl hasn’t?”
“Anybody in particular?”
“No-o,” she said thoughtfully. “But then, I don’t know many men. Papa would never let me go anywhere or have dates. The only way I could go out with boys or even meet ‘em was to sneak out. And you know what they expect right away if you do that.”
“What could he have done if you’d just told him you were going to a dance or something in spite of his orders?”
“He would have whipped me with a leather strap.”
“You mean, when you were little?”
“No. I mean in the past two months.” She said it quietly, but with an unforgiving bitterness.
“Doesn’t he know you can’t raise a girl that way? You can’t even treat a dog like that.”
“I know. But he understands dogs. He says you mustn’t break a dog’s spirit if it’s going to be a good hunting dog.”
“I don’t think he ever broke your spirit.”
“No. He never would have. I guess I’m just as tough as he is. I sneaked out and I’m not ashamed of it. I guess I’m no good, the way you think, but I’d rather be that than the way he wanted me to be. I’m away from him now and I’ll never go back.”
“But what about your mother? She’s never been like that to you, has she? And you didn’t even say good-by to her when we left.”