From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [252]
In fact all of it, when he thought about it, seemed to have a great deal of the fairy tale about it. That same thinness and unreality of great gentleness and leisurely beauty that he could believe as long as he was still reading the story but that when he put the book down afterwards, reluctantly, he no longer could believe, to his unassuageable disgust. It was, he felt, a very fitting place for The Princess to live; Alma thought so too; and he wondered if all rich men’s lives were always as beautiful as this.
The house had a little roofless side porch on the very lip of the drop that fell straight down at least a hundred feet where you could stand and look far down into the streets of Palolo Valley as if you were God, and further west the buildings of St Louis College off by themselves and still further west, a little hazy across the valley, and still below you, St Louis Heights, elev. 483 ft. It was a beautiful little porch and behind it were two solid plate glass doors you could look out of from the big sunken living room three steps down, if you were not inclined to go outside. It was on this porch in the late afternoon of a Saturday, when the sun was just beginning to light everything a crimson gold preparatory to dropping in the sea, the first time that he was ever up there, that Alma Schmidt first told him she was in love with him. He made his first mistake immediately.
Remembering the little permanent-party post under the ancient elms and maples, and fatuously attempting in his mind to favorably compare that way of life with this, he told Alma he was in love with her too and asked her to marry him.
It was his first mistake in judgment since the inauguration of the $60 planned economy. If he had brought a musette bag full of live grenades he could maybe have done as good a job of blowing up his own investment, but he doubted it.
It might have been the sunset, sunsets always stupefied him. Or it might have been the nearness of her body, the head of which just topped his shoulder. He had noted in the past that the nearness of women’s bodies had a tendency to upset his mental processes, and he could not control it, sometimes they even stupefied him more than sunsets, a reaction which he had found over a period of years was usually not reciprocal, giving them a certain initial advantage over men. Or, it might have been just the overwhelming newness of all this that he had not had time to get adjusted to. Even so, whatever it was, there was no excuse for such dangerous stupidity.
For a while there it was touch-and-go, and he could see the reflections of decisive action passing and repassing across her face, whether to kick him out now or to make it a slow gradual withdrawal of interest. It was only this doubt as to which way to get rid of him that saved him. It gave him time to salvage what he could by looking slyly at her and laughing out loud, and then lighting a cigaret to show her that his hands were not shaking. The lighting of the cigaret was unadulterated brilliance. But even so, he knew it was only luck he thought of it, the catching at straws of a man paralyzed by his own chuckleheadedness.
She watched his hand not shaking, and finally began to look relieved. Then she even joined in the laughter. She led him back inside and mixed them both Martinis, before she put the New England boiled dinner that she had had ready, on the stove. Then while it cooked and filled the place with the homey smell of the cooking she mixed them both more Martinis. They were good Martinis. One of the things he had found out when the planned economy first began to work was that Alma did like to drink some after all, it was just that she did not like to drink when she was working. She would even drink straight whiskey, now and then, if the occasion were propitious. Drinking made Alma much more likeable. It loosened her up. Or maybe it was just that drinking made him more prone to like Alma. Whichever it was, he still