From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [428]
She came back and sat down across from him again.
“Well? What do you plan to do?”
“Nothing,” he said, wishing now he had got up for the book. “Why worry about it? I’m doing all right.”
“Yes,” Alma said. “Yes, you are. But in less than a year I’m going back home to the Mainland and home. You’re going to have to figure out something before then.”
“All right,” he said. “I’ll work on it. A year is a long time off yet. Now why the hell dont you lay off of me?”
“You certainly cant go home with me to Oregon,” Alma said coolly, too coolly, “if thats what you’re thinking.”
He had thought about it, sketchily. But he had given it up, even sketchily.
“Did I ask you to go home with you?”
“No,” she said, “but I wouldnt be surprised to find you with your bag already—”
“Then why dont you wait till you’re ask? Before you start tossing refusals around?”
“Because I dont intend to wake up on the boat and find you in the bed.”
“Okay; you wont. Believe me, you wont. Now why dont you relax and wait till that time comes, to worry about me? I said I was doing all right.”
“You sure are,” Alma snorted. “You’ve done nothing for the past three weeks but sit around here in a trance and read books and get drunk and make a big play for Georgette. I’d say you were doing fine.”
“Is that whats been eating you?”
“Maybe you’d like to live on here and just switch over to Georgette, after I leave, and shack up with her?”
He had already thought of that, too. He had, in fact, thought of a lot of things. But it made him mad to hear her say it out loud.
“Maybe thats not such a bad idea at that,” he said.
“Perhaps not,” Alma said coolly, “at first glance. But in the first place, Georgette might not be able to keep this place and support you in the style to which you are getting accustomed. It takes both of us to pay for it. And you’re already beginning to run me in over my budget.”
“We could probly figure something out,” he said.
“And in the second place,” Alma said, “if thats what you’ve got in mind, you can get the hell out now and wait till I’m gone before you come back. Because I dont want to live in the same house with such a bad smell. And—if it comes down to it—I think Georgette would prefer me to living with you.”
“She probly would,” Prew said. “She’s known you longer.”
“I’m quite sure she would,” Alma said. “Completely apart from the fact that I help pay for the house.”
“Okay,” he said, and crawled out from behind the table and got up. “You want me to leave now?”
Alma’s eyes widened perceptibly, and she had to make a big effort to keep from catching her breath. She did not say anything.
Prew watching her in silence, feeling quite proud.
“Where would you go?” Alma said.
“What difference does it make?”
“Oh, be sensible,” Alma said, irately.
Prew grinned, knowing that somehow he had suddenly finally gained the advantage. It was getting to be more and more every day like a tight tennis game: your ad; my ad; your ad; my ad.
“Theres lots of places I could go,” he said, not wanting to lose it again now that he had it. “I could go on the beach. I might even find another whore in the market for a pimp. I might even turn back into the Army; they probly dont know I killed Fatso anyway,” he lied.
The whore part, of course, did not touch her. It never did. “You’d be putting your head in a noose,” she said irritably, “and you know it.”
“I might even ship out on a tramp,” he said, remembering Angelo Maggio, “and go to Mexico and be a cowboy.”
“I didnt mean you had to leave until you’d found someplace to go,” she said irritably. “What do you think I am? You know me better than that. You dont have to leave at all, unless you want to. I want you to stay.”
“You sure as hell act like it.”
“Well,” she said angrily, “its just that it gets under my skin, seeing you sitting around ogling Georgette all the time, knowing