From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [146]
“Not much. And never straight whiskey.”
“You dont?” Prew said.
“No,” Lorene said. “Oh, I drink a cocktail, or a bottle of beer. But I dont drink. Why? Is there any Law that says every whore must be a drunkard?”
“No,” Angelo said. “But most of them are, I guess.”
“Well, I’m not. I think it is a weakness.”
“I grant you that,” Angelo said.
“And I dont like weakness. Do you?” she asked Prew.
“No,” Prew said. “I dont like weakness. But I like to drink.”
“With you its not a weakness,” Lorene said. “With you its more like a virtue, somehow.”
“I dont get that,” Angelo said. “That beats me.”
“I dont get it either,” Lorene said. “Still, I feel it somehow.” Still holding the quilt tight up around her shoulders she turned her head and smiled at Prew. Then she wiggled her body, it hidden by the quilt, over toward the center of the bed, over toward Prew, to give Angelo more room at the edge, and smiled up at him again, snugly.
“There are some people,” she said, smiling at him, “whose weaknesses seem to be strength, instead of weakness.”
“That is a very profound remark,” Angelo said. “Maybe thats why I still dont get it.”
“Well its so,” Lorene smiled contentedly.
“Hey!” Angelo protested. “What are you gonna do, marry this guy? Way you grinnin at him you look like his wife.”
“Do I?” Lorene said. She smiled up at Prew and suddenly, momentarily, it came into both their faces looking at each other that this was just as if she were his wife, his private possession, and as if this bed were their home that an outsider, a much beloved friend but still outsider, had invaded friendlily, the Third Person, another man who did not know her, all of her, as he knew her and whom she did not want to know her as he knew her, and who because of this enhanced this privacy of intimacy.
Prew put his hand out on the shapeless mound of quilt underneath which was the solid, curved, deep-flesh quiveriness of her hip, that he felt suddenly and momentarily truly belonged to him and she seemed to purr silently under his fingers and for the first time he considered with shock the possibility that sleeping with her had not made arise at all, the startling possibility that he was in love with her.
What a possibility, he thought; man, man, what a possibility. But then why not? In this place, on this Rock, who else is it possible for a soldier to fall in love with, except a whore? This Rock, where the white girls, even the middle-class white girls, were all little snobs and where there were no white girls below the middle class. This Rock, where even with the gook girls that were the lowest class it was a disgrace to be seen talking to a soldier. So then why not a whore? It was not only possible, it was perfectly logical. Maybe it was even sensible.
And it was a possibility he was to remember all his life and wonder about often, after that. Whether this was just a sudden fleeting appreciation that just happened to hit them both because Angelo came in the room just when he did. Whether it would have happened some other way than this if Angelo had not come in, or maybe not happened at all. Whether it was just that he had not had a woman for so long that this momentary thing had sunk a hook for permanent illusion into him when he was off guard and snared him with an imaginative wishful-thinking of his own creation. Whether maybe, strangest possibility of all, it was that love between a man and a woman happened to them all this way, was born full-grown from the copulation of a chance situation with a meaningless coincidence. It seemed the original possibility opened up a lot of other possibilities, and if during the rest of his life before he died he could have ever resolved that original possibility he felt he could have understood many things.
“You people look happy,” Angelo said, sensing it himself. “Are you people happy? I’m happy. Do I look happy?”
“Happy as can be expected,” Lorene smiled, answering both at once, and Prew felt her hand under the quilt creep to him and then the fine-boned, woman’s fingers resting on the inside