Appointment in Samarra - John O'Hara [54]
Because I love you. I always loved you.
Oh, love! Sweetheart?
What, darling?
I can t help it. Have you got a thing? You know?
Yes.
Do you think it d be all right? I m so afraid, but it s just as wrong to stop, isn’t it? Isn’t it just as wrong to stop?
Yes, darling.
I m so crazy about &
CHAPTER 6
THERE were Lute and Irma Fliegler, Willard and Bertha Doane, Walter and Helen Schaeffer, Harvey and Emily Ziegenfuss, Dutch (Ralph) and Frannie Snyder, Vic and Monica Smith, and Dewey and Lois Hartenstein. From where he sat, at the side and to the rear of the orchestra, practically in the drummer s lap, Al Grecco could see them all. He knew all the men by sight, and Lute Fliegler and Dutch Snyder he knew by their first names, and the others he knew to say hello to without his using any name on them and without their calling him Al or Grecco or anything but Hyuh. He knew Irma Fliegler to speak to; he called her Mrs. Fliegler. He knew Frannie Snyder to speak to; he could have called her Frannie or Baby or practically anything that came into his mind, but he never said more than hello, with a distant nod, to her. What the hell; she was married, even if that was no bargain she was married to that Dutch, and for all Al knew she had been straight as a dye (Al sometimes wondered how straight straight as a dye was; a dye wasn’t straight) for close on to two years. So there was no sense speaking to her. That loud-mouthed punk she was married to, if he saw her speaking to Al Grecco there was no telling what he would think. And do. And anyhow, you couldn’t judge a baby by just one night two years ago. Maybe that had been the only time she ever cheated on that loudmouth, and you couldn’t hold that against her. She had been the easiest job of work Al ever had, or one of the easiest. He had known her in sisters school and then as they grew up he hadn t seen much of her around town; just see her on the street now and then, and she d say Hello, Tony Murascho, and he d say Hello, Frances. And he read in the paper where she got married to Dutch Snyder and be felt sorry for her, because he knew what Dutch was: a loud-mouth Kluxer, who was always getting his face pushed in for making cracks about the Catholic church, but was always trying to get dates with Catholic girls and getting them. When Al read about the marriage he figured Frances had got herself knocked up, but he was wrong: what had happened was that Frances s father, Big Ed Curry, the cop, had caught his daughter and Snyder in an awkward position and had given Snyder the choice of marriage or death. Al did not know this. He did know that it wasn’t long after the marriage before Dutch, who was known as Ralphie to some of the girls at the Dew Drop Inn, was around the Dew Drop again, a sucker for cigarette money and one of the most unpopular customers of the institution. So one afternoon, two years before the night at the Stage Coach, Al was driving through Collieryville and he saw Frances waiting for a bus and he stopped his car. You want a ride? he said. No oh, it s you, Tony, she said. Are you going back to town?
Nothing else but, said Al. Get in.
Well, I don t know
Okay. No skin off my ass, be said, and reached for the door to close it. Oh, I don t mean I ll go with you. Only, will you leave me off somewhere
Get in and do the talking on the way, he said. She got in and he gave her a cigarette. She had been to her grandmother s in Collieryville and she wanted a cigarette and accepted a drink and was easily persuaded to go for a short ride. The short ride was short enough: half a mile off the main road between Gibbsville and Collieryville to a boathouse on the Colliery Dam. There was something queer about the whole thing, like going with your cousin or somebody. He had known Frances as a little girl in school, and then all of a sudden one day you discover that she is a woman that has had her experience and all that it was queer. It was like finding money on the street; you didn’t have to earn it, work for it, go on the make for it.