From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [429]
“What the hell do you want me to do? Sit around here and be your true love for as long as you feel like staying, and then see you off on the boat when you go home to marry a rich man? You think I like layin around on my ass livin off you so you can throw it up to me every time you get mad at me? What am I suppose to do when you marry the rich guy? go blow my brains out with a broken heart? It seems to me you ask a whole hell of a lot of a man.”
“I don’t think its too much to ask you to prefer me to other women,” Alma said earnestly. “At least as long as I’m here. I know how men are; I ought to. I’m no dewy-eyed virgin Cinderella. I dont expect miracles. But I dont think thats too much to ask.”
“Its pretty hard to prefer a woman when she plainly dont want to sleep with you any more.”
“Its pretty hard to want to sleep with a man who prefers other women,” Alma said. “Especially if he looks at you all the time from a trance as if you’re not even there.”
“Well?” he said. “Do you want me to leave or dont you?”
She was beginning to gain ground again, and he could always get back the ad there. Because she knew he would do it. He might never win the game with it, but it would take a lot of ad points.
“Oh, sit down and be sensible,” Alma said. “No, I dont want you to leave. I already told you that. Do you want me to get down on my knees and beg you?
“But Georgette is my friend,” she said, “and if it came down to sleeping with you or keeping my friendship, I think she’d prefer to keep the friendship. You might remember that, for future reference.”
He sat down. “But she’ll never see you again after you’re gone,” he said, just to let her know he was not giving ground, “and she knows it.”
“After I’m gone,” Alma said, “you can do what you want.”
“Son of a bitch if you dont demand a whole hell of a lot from a man. I’d rather earn my living soljering, its easier. Only I cant,” he said. “Your coffee water’s boiling.”
Alma got up and went to the stove to turn the heat off under the Silex hourglass. Then she stood without saying anything and watched the coffee begin to run back down the spout.
“Oh, Prew, Prew.” She turned around. “Why did you have to do it? Why did you have to kill him? We were getting along so fine. Until you had to do something like that. Why did you have to spoil it?”
He was sitting with his elbows on the table and his fists clasped, looking at them. Not staring. Just looking. As if he were examining a tool to see if it was adequate for the job.
“I’ve always done it,” he said simply, neither gladly nor guiltily, but just simply stating it. “I’ve always spoiled everything I’ve ever touched all my life. Maybe all men do it,” he said, remembering Jack Malloy. “I dont know about that. I know I have. I dont know why, though.”
“Sometimes I dont think I even know you,” Alma said. “Sometimes you’re almost like a complete stranger. When your First Sergeant Warden came down to see me, he said you wouldnt even have had to go to the Stockade. He said you could have gotten off scot free if you’d wanted to.”
Prew looked up quickly. “Has he been down there to see you again? Has he? Answer me, goddam you?”
“No,” Alma said; “that was the first time, when he told me you were in hock. He’s only been there once. Why?”
“I don’t know,” Prew said, relaxing back on his elbows to look at his hands again. “I just wondered.”
“You dont think he’d turn you in, do you?” Alma said. “You cant think that!”
“I dont know,” he said, looking at the tools his hands. “I honestly dont know. I never been able to figure out if he would or he wouldnt.”
“Thats a terrible thing to admit,” Alma said.
“You dont understand,” he said. “Sometimes,” he said simply, “I wish I was back in the Stockade.”
—Angelo Maggio. Jack Malloy. Blues Berry. Francis Murdock. Stonewall Jackson. The long dark evenings of cigaret-lighted conversations. Between them all they had covered every part of the country. Damn near the whole world.—
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