From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [307]
“These heres so you can start right in to work today,” the trustee explained happily, “without havin to wait till we paint yours. Then we’ll issue yours out to somebody else later, see?” he explained.
Spitefully he grinned wider, as if it warmed the cockles of his heart, when Prew stripped off his suntans and turned them in and put on the fatigues. His own had fitted him, as well at least as the sacklike GI denim jackets ever fitted anybody; these, the shirt hit him almost to the knees, the sleeves dangled down over his fingertips, the shoulder seams hung almost to his elbows.
“Jeez, thats too bad,” the supply trustee grinned happily. “And thats the nearest thing to your size I got on hand. Maybe someday later on we can change them for you, hunh?”
“Thats all right,” Prew said.
“Well,” the trustee consoled, “aint no women going to see you anyways for a while, less they officers’ wives ride up past the rockpile. And you couldnt never get into them anyway. So dont let it worry you.”
“Thanks for the tip,” Prew said. “I wont.”
The two giants were grinning above their cigarets.
“May worry you for a little while,” the trustee advised. “You may have a little trouble at first. Specially if you’re use to gettin yours wet every night. You’ll get over it though,” he said confidently. “It wont kill you. You’ll just think it will.”
One of the giants snorted. Prew thought of Alma and felt a wave of sickness go down through his belly into his thighs, at the picture of her on the bed in the room three steps up from the tiled living room in the house on the edge of the hill over Palolo Valley. He had not seen her for over two weeks now. Three months was six times two weeks. Fourteen weeks, of not seeing her or knowing where she was or what she was doing with whom.
“Also,” said the trustee from the height of his superior experience, “you get to wondering what they’re doin all this time.”
“Yeah?” Prew said. The picture of the man lying beside Alma on the bed was a blank (he looked at it closely) a silhouette. It was not Warden. It was not Prewitt, either. As he watched, the blank of the man moved over her. No, he told himself, no, you know she doesnt like sex for sex sake she’s told you that herself hasnt she? Sex for sex sake bores her doesnt it? This is only your own mind tricking you with your own like of sex for sex sake. What she likes is to have you near her, the personality interest, the warmth of the companionship and understanding, the being loved, the not being lonely. He went on naming them. It wasnt working. Three months was too long. Maybe she’d stumble onto somebody else interesting, just for the interest maybe, just to keep herself occupied you know, not to be lonely. Lots of interesting guys around. Lots of them more interesting than you.
He hoped Warden would not forget to call her up. At the same time he dreaded the thought of Warden calling her up. A man was only human. And Warden was an attractive man. Big, and husky, and masculine, and—interesting.
Memories of what he would lose ran through his mind. Sharp, clear, personal pictures of Alma like candid camera snaps. The pictures ran through his mind like negatives flashed on a screen, ten times life size in magnification, all the most intimate details (every pore, every hair, every wrinkle, of her body that he knew as well as his own, he could suddenly visualize them all perfectly) he stood and watched the pictures. And in each picture moved the same tin blank, the same two-dimensional black silhouette, the same black seducer, standing where Prewitt had stood and