From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [143]
“That was a terrible way to have acted,” she rebuked him, smiling. “What you did.”
“I know it was,” he said. “I didnt mean to do it.”
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
“I am,” he said.
“At least you have the money. Poor Bill wanted to stay all night and didnt have the money. I think that this was even his last three dollars, from the way he acted, and now he’ll have to walk clear out to Waikiki.”
“Poor son of a bich,” he said. “I feel for him, and I’m sorry I was bastardly.” He was thinking of himself, broke and on KP, only this afternoon. This afternoon seemed a long way back now, he thought, at least thirty pages back, a thing that happened to another guy. Maybe it happened to poor Bill.
“Before you came over,” Lorene smiled sadly, “poor Bill was so desperate he even asked me to loan him the fifteen dollars until Payday. And then you sit there and try to needle him like that.”
“I was jealous,” he said.
“Jealous?” She smiled serenely. “Over me? A common whore? Dont try to flatter me. You still ought to be ashamed.”
“I am,” he said. “I said I was. But I’m still jealous.”
“You have no right to be.”
“I know it. But I am.”
“Poor Bill even wanted to give me five dollars interest, and offered to teach me to ride a surfboard, free. I wouldnt even have to rent one, I could use his.”
“That takes a lot of guts,” Prew said. “Brass guts.”
Lorene smiled sadly. “Just the same, I felt bad about it, especially when you came over and started picking on him.”
“Why dint you loan it to him then?”
“Well, it wasnt because of you,” she said. “How could I loan it to him? I’m in business just like a grocer. I’m here to make money, not because I love the work. You dont run this business on charge accounts. Where would I be? if I let every fellow I liked or felt sorry for open up a charge account with me? I felt like a heel. And you didnt make me feel any better.”
“I know it,” he said. “But he had to have a brass gut to even ask you a thing like that. These people who have always done everything—surfing, mountain climbing, flying, deep sea diving, anything you mention they’ve done some of it—that kind always got a pure brass gut. And they’ve never done anything. I’ve seen them before.”
“Well he knows surfboarding. Because I’ve seen him on his board at Waikiki, and he’s good. He spends all his money on surfing and spear fishing, and to stay in the Outrigger Club. He’s always in debt three months ahead. Thats another reason I couldnt loan it to him.”
He was getting tired of Bill the surfboard rider.
“Sandra said to tell you they were goin around back, over the outside stairs. She said you’d know. Angelo sneaked in a bottle and we all want to use it.”
Lorene looked at him steadily, her eyes very cool, and very serene. “Oh, all right,” she said. “I know where. Come on.”
“Wait,” Prew said. “Are you still mad at me about this other?”
“No,” she said. “I’m not mad.”
“I think you are. And I had to ask you. Because if you’re still mad I’d just rather we called the whole thing off.”
She looked at him again, steadily, then she smiled. “You’re a funny one. No, I’m not mad. I was, but I got over it.”
“I dint want you to be mad at me. I had to ask you.”
It was hard to say these things, without feeling foolish, hard to make them seem believable. So many fellows probably said them without meaning them.
“Flatterer,” Lorene said coquettishly. It was the first time he had seen her be coquettish and it startled him.
She took his hand and swung their arms together gayly, coquettishly, as they walked across the entryway and around the double corner to the hallway that went back over the stairs, and that had still more doors of tiny bedrooms. She led him gayly, him embarrassed by her sudden gaiety, along the worn carpeting down the narrow dimness that was lighted by a single bare bulb in the ceiling halfway down, to