Caine Mutiny, The - Herman Wouk [220]
May came to their table with a yellow gauzy shawl around her throat and a black velvet jacket over her shoulders. Rubin rose and kissed her cheek. “Honey, maybe you ought to have colds more often. You’re really putting out tonight.”
“I feel fine- Think I’m any better, Willie?”
“You’re wonderful, May-”
“Don’t lay it on, I’ll know you’re lying- Where are you sneaking off to, Marty?”
“I have other clients. Get her to bed after the two o’clock show, Willie.”
Willie sat on the little hard seat for five hours, talking to May or listening to her sing. Customers came and went, but it almost seemed that the departing ones handed their faces to the newcomers at the door to wear, so much alike did they all look. The air grew staler and the crowd noisier, and the fish in the tanks sank to the bottom and lay motionless, gaping and goggling in the slime. All charm had departed out of night-club surroundings for Willie. To earn a living amid such fusty make-believe struck him as a worse fate, even, than perpetual steaming on the Caine.
He told May nothing of the mutiny, though he took pleasure in making her laugh and gasp at stories of Queeg. She had recuperated startlingly. Her manner was bright and lively, and in the cellar gloom, with her make-up, she seemed rosily healthy. But Willie had been too scared in the afternoon by her appearance to feel free with her. The evening went by in restrained, good-humored, evasive chatter. May accepted his tone and followed it.
When they came into her squalid room back at the hotel, it was a quarter to three. Willie was suppressing yawns, and his eyes smarted. Without a word they took off their coats, lay on the bed, and kissed hungrily and wildly for a few minutes. Her forehead, her hands, felt hot to Willie’s lips, but he went on kissing her anyway. At last with a common impulse, they slowed and stopped. She looked him full in the face, her eyes shining in the dim light of the floor lamp.
“Willie, we’re all washed up, aren’t we?”
It is the worst question in the world. Willie didn’t have to answer. The answer was on his miserable face. May said, “Then why are we doing this?”
“You’re right, as usual. I am a swine. Let’s stop.”
“No. I still love to kiss you, unfortunately.” And she kissed him again, several times. But the spoken words had snapped the sweetness. They sat up, and Willie went to the armchair. “If only I hadn’t had a cold,” May said dolefully.
“May! May! This afternoon made no difference-it’s just the kind of guy I am-”
“Darling, you don’t know. It might have made all the difference in the world. Nobody loves a sick cat. However, it’s all past history. It was an uphill struggle. Your letters were bad-”
“What can I say, May? You’re the most wonderful girl I’ll ever know-”
“Strangely enough, that’s the truth. For you, I am. Only you’re too young, or you love your mother too much, or something.” She rose, and opened the zipper of her dress in an absent-minded way; went to her closet and changed into her bathrobe, not troubling to hide herself. The glimpse of her young body in the clinging slip was very painful to Willie. He wanted to gather her in his arms as he wanted to breathe, and he knew that it was absolutely impossible now. She faced him, her hands deep in the pockets of her robe. There was a tremor of uncertainty and pain about her eyes and mouth. “It’s all quite definite, I suppose?”
“Yes, May.”
“You don’t love me?”
“It’s all mixed up and lousy, May. Talking won’t help it-”
“Maybe, but I’d like to tie up the bundle all neat and proper before I throw it into the cellar. If you don’t love me, that does it, of course. You kiss as though you love me. Explain that.”
Willie was unable to say that he loved May’s mouth, but not enough to drag her through life with him-though that would have been putting it in the simplest terms. “I don’t know what love is, May. It’s a word. You’ll always be the image of desire for me. That’s a fact, but there’s more to life than that. I don’t think we’d be happy together. Not because of any lack in you. Call me a snobbish prig