From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [194]
“You didnt need to say that,” Karen said. She laid his hand down carefully.
“Oh, yes I did. You’ll never know how much.”
“All right,” she said. “Maybe you did. But not like that. You shouldnt have said it like that, Milt. Not without giving me my chance first.”
“He also mentioned that Champ Wilson probably had too. Thats the current story. Not to mention Jim O’Hayer. Not to mention Liddell Henderson.”
“So I’m the company whore now?” she said. “Well, thats what I get, I guess. I guess I laid myself open for it, didn’t I? I asked for it when I first went out with you.”
“Nobody knows you been out with me. Nobody,” Warden said.
“Only you would really think I would have known, wouldnt you?” she said. “But not me. Oh no, not me. I had to convince myself you were different. I had to go and forget you were a man. And being a man, had the same rotten filthy mind the rest of them have. The same proud rooster masculinity of conquest. Oh, I bet you and Stark had a fine time I bet, talking it over, comparing notes on how good it was. Tell me, how do I stack up, anyway, with the professionals? I’m still an amateur, you know.”
She got out of the bed and fumblingly started gathering up her clothes. They were still strewn across the room. She had to sort them out from his. She had trouble with them. Her hair kept falling into her eyes. She had to keep brushing at her eyes with first one hand then the other.
“Leaving?” Warden said.
“I’m considering it. Have you any other suggestions? After all, its over, isnt it? You cant really expect it could ever be the same again, now, do you? It was a nice ride while it lasted. But I think this is where I get off.”
“Then I think I’ll have a drink,” Warden said, feeling sick, feeling castrated. Well, what did you think would happen? How is it people can never talk? Why cant they speak? How come they always say something else than what they mean? He got up and got the bottle from the dresser. “Will you have a drink?” he said.
“No thank you. I’m having all I can do to keep from puking now.”
“Oh,” he said. “It makes you sick. Dirty little Warden and his nasty little mind. Filthy men whose brains hang between their legs. Did you ever hear the old adage that where there’s smoke there must be some fire?” he said viciously.
As he said this viciously, he was looking at those soft tipped breasts that had the sag, the full-bodied necessary little sag of maturity that the virgins and the young stuff never had and always lacked something in not having.
And as he said this viciously, he was feeling the sickness, the scrotum-shriveling pecker shrinking eunuch-making sickness, blooming and ballooning through him.
“Yes,” Karen said. “I’ve heard it. Did you ever hear the one about how every living woman dies three times? Once when she is seduced of her virginity, once when she is seduced of her freedom (I believe they call it marriage), and once when she is seduced of her husband. Did you ever hear that one?”
“No,” he said. “I never heard it.”
“Neither did I,” Karen said. “I just thought of it. You might add a fourth one: when she is seduced of her lover. I ought to send it in to the Reader’s Digest, dont you think? Maybe I’d get five bucks for it. But of course they’d have a man for editor.”
“You dont like men any better than I like women, do you?” Warden said, leaning on the dresser and not offering to help her.
“Why should I? If they’re like you and your filthy friends? That was a pretty rotten thing to say to me, you know. Especially since that about all those other men is a lie and isnt true.”
“Okay,” he said. “But its true about Stark though, isnt it?”
Karen turned on him, her eyes starting and blazing. “You came to my bed a virgin, didnt you?”
“Then it is true,” he said. “Well?” he said conversationally, “how was it? Did