From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [255]
He did not care if they ever went out anyplace. He had developed a great domesticity. It was her idea to go out. She wanted to show him off, she said. Before they left the house she handed him two twenties and they went to Lau Yee Chai’s. He had never been to Lau Yee Chai’s. It took the whole forty dollars. It was worth it though. They had a fine time. She was an excellent dancer, too good for him. She said she would teach him at home.
It was not until on the way home in the cab, after spending her forty dollars, that he realized with a small shock that he was now a kept man, and had been for some time. He might even be called a pimp, by using the term elastically, although he did not solicit business. At first he felt degraded with a sinking in his stomach, but when he analyzed it he realized that he did not feel any different, that he was still the same man. So this is what being a kept man is like? he asked himself. It scared him a little and shamed him, because he did not feel any different. He felt he should have felt different.
It was not until after they got home and went out on the porch in the freshness of the night air, still in their party clothes (his that she had taken his measurements for and picked and bought for him), and stood looking down at the strings of white lights in Palolo Valley and across on St Louis Heights more strings of white lights and way off to the left the searchlights on the Royal and the red and blue and green and yellow neon flowers among the white strings that indicated Waikiki, where they had just come from; it was not until then that he asked her again to marry him. Maybe he felt it would make him not quite so kept.
It seemed it was always on the porch that he asked her. The porch and the view from it seemed to affect him that way. As he asked her, he was aware of a great delicious feeling of throwing all consequences to the winds and to hell with it; at the same time at the back of his mind a small voice told him he could get by with it without risking anything since he had been coming here so long now, if he did not do it too often.
This time he explained to her all about the little permanent-party post and the community of married noncoms, it seemed great to him as he explained it; he even included the year of waiting before he could ship Stateside and how that fitted with her plans, too. They could use some of her money to live well until he worked up into the first three graders bracket which would not be long, if he really felt like trying, and he did not give a damn about being supported by her or that the money was earned in whoring. He was, he pointed out with eloquence, doing all that right now anyway. As he talked, he was very proud of his broad mindedness.
She listened to it all intently, not once looking at him. She did not say anything for quite a while.
“You say you love me,” he summed up for the defense, “and how much you need me. Okay. I believe you. And I love you and need you just as much. Then its the only logical thing for us to do, isnt it?” he said logically.
“You’re just feeling lonely because you’re taking such a beating in the Company,” Alma said. “Lets go in and have a drink.”
“No,” he said. “Answer me.”
“You need me now,” Alma said. “But will you need me a year from now? after you’ve gotten out of this bad situation and are back in the States?”
“Of course I will. If I love you.”
“But people dont love somebody unless they need them badly. If you didnt fill a definite need in my life now, I wouldnt love you.”
“I’ll always love you,” he said. He said it because it was the logical answer to fulfill his argument, before he thought.
Alma looked at him in the dim light and smiled. He had not realized how ridiculous it would sound, or that it would be so patently