Atlas Shrugged [165]
"Want to come to my place and have a drink with me?" he asked.
She nodded silently, solemnly, as if not trusting herself to find the right words of acceptance. Then she said, not looking at him, as if stating it to herself, "You didn't want to see anybody tonight, but you want o see me. . . " He had never heard so solemn a tone of pride in anyone's voice.
She was silent, when she sat beside him in the taxicab. She looked up at the skyscrapers they passed. After a while, she said, "I heard that things like this happened in New York, but I never thought they'd happen to me."
"Where do you come from?"
"Buffalo."
"Got any family?"
She hesitated. "I guess so. In Buffalo."
"What do you mean, you guess so?"
"I walked out on them."
"Why?"
"I thought that if I ever was to amount to anything, I had to get away from them, clean away."
"Why? What happened?"
"Nothing happened. And nothing was ever going to happen. That's what I couldn't stand."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, they . . . well, I guess I ought to tell you the truth, Mr. Taggart. My old man's never been any good, and Ma didn't care whether he was or not, and I got sick of it always turning out that I was the only one of the seven of us that kept a job, and the rest of them always being out of luck, one way or another. I thought if I didn't get out, it would get me-I'd rot all the way through, like the rest of them. So I bought a railroad ticket one day and left. Didn't say good-bye. They didn't even know I was going." She gave a soft, startled little laugh at a sudden thought. "Mr. Taggart," she said, "it was a Taggart train."
"When did you come here?"
"Six months ago."
"And you're all alone?"
"Yes," she said happily.
"What was it you wanted to do?"
"Well, you know-make something of myself, get somewhere."
"Where?"
"Oh, I don't know, but . . . but people do things in the world. 1
saw pictures of New York and I thought"-she pointed at the giant buildings beyond the streaks of rain on the cab window-"I thought, somebody built those buildings-he didn't just sit and whine that the kitchen was filthy and the roof leaking and the plumbing clogged and it's a goddamn world and . . . Mr. Taggart"-she jerked her head in a shudder and looked straight at him-"we were stinking poor and not giving a damn about it. That's what I couldn't take-that they didn't really give a damn. Not enough to lift a finger. Not enough to empty the garbage pail. And the woman next door saying it was my duty to help them, saying it made no difference what became of me or of her or of any of us, because what could anybody do anyway!" Beyond the bright look of her eyes, he saw something within her that was hurt and hard.
"I don't want to talk about them," she said. "Not with you. This-my meeting you, I mean-that's what they couldn't have. That's what I'm not going to share with them. It's mine, not theirs."
"How old are you?" he asked.
"Nineteen."
When he looked at her in the lights of his living room, he thought that she'd have a good figure if she'd eat a few meals; she seemed too thin for the height and structure of her bones. She wore a tight, shabby little black dress, which she had tried to camouflage by the gaudy plastic bracelets tinkling on her wrist. She stood looking at his room as if it were a museum where she must touch nothing and reverently memorize everything.
"What's your name?" he asked.
"Cherryl Brooks."
"Well, sit down."
He mixed the drinks in silence, while she waited obediently, sitting on the edge of an armchair. When he handed her a glass, she swallowed dutifully a few times, then held the glass clutched in her hand. He knew that she did not taste what she was drinking, did not notice it, had no time to care.
He took a gulp of his drink and put the glass down with irritation: he did not feel like drinking, either. He paced the room sullenly, knowing that her eyes followed him, enjoying the knowledge, enjoying the sense of tremendous significance which his movements, his