From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [67]
Warden shook his head, seeing in his mind a picture of her lying on a bed inviting him, now that his first insecurity was gone. “No she wont,” he said. “Thursday’s her day off. Today is Thursday.”
“You think of everything, dont you, Sergeant?”
“I try,” he said. “In my position you have to.”
Karen Holmes picked up the papers from the table. “I guess we can dispense with these now, cant we? They’re nothing, are they?”
“Yes, they are,” he said. “They’re letters. You dont think I’d bring something worthless, do you? so Holmes might see them? so you might use them as evidence when you turned me in? And you can call me Milt, now we’re intimate.”
“Thats what I like about you, Sergeant: You have confidence. Its also what I dislike about you.” Slowly she tore the papers into little bits and dropped them in the wastebasket behind her. “Men and their confidence. You can consider these as the payment you had to make. You always pay, dont you?”
“Not if I can help it,” Warden said, wondering again what all this amounted to anyway, not expecting anything like this. “I got carbons of those back at the office,” he grinned, “so it wont be much work to fix them up.”
“At least your confidence is real,” she said. “Not false confidence, or bravado—many men have that. Pour me another drink. Tell me, how did you acquire it?”
“My brother is a priest,” he said, reaching for the bottle.
“Well?”
“Thats all she wrote,” he said.
“What has that to do with it?”
“Everything, baby. In the first place it isnt confidence, its honesty. Being a priest, he believes in celibacy. He has a very heavy beard shaved very close and he believes in mortal sin and he is worshipped by his adoring flock. Makes a very good living at it.”
“Well?” she said.
“Whata ya mean, well? After watching him a while, I decided to believe in honesty, which means the opposite of celibacy. Because I did not want to hate myself and everybody else, like him. That was my first mistake, from then on it was easy.
“I decided to not believe in mortal sin, since obviously no Creator who was Just would condemn His creations to eternal hellfire and brimstone for possessing hungers He created in them. He might penalize them fifteen yards for clipping, but He wouldnt stop the ball game. Now would He?”
“You wouldnt think so,” Karen said. “But where does that leave you? if there is no such a thing as punishment for sins?”
“Ah,” Warden grinned. “You went right to the heart. I dont like this word ‘sin.’ But since there is obviously punishment, I was forced by irrefutable logic to accept the weird outlandish idea of reincarnation. That was when my brother and I parted. I had to beat him up, to prove my theory; it was the only way. And, to date, the reincarnation is as far as my philosophy has gotten. What do you say we have another drink?”
“Then I take it you dont believe in sin at all?” Karen Holmes said, a kind of interest flickering for the first time in her eyes.
Warden sighed. “I believe the only sin is a conscious waste of energy. I believe all conscious dishonesty, such as religion, politics and the real estate business, are a conscious waste of energy. I believe that at a remarkable cost in energy people agree to pretend to believe each other’s lies so they can prove to themselves their own lies are the truth, like my brother. Since I cannot forget what the truth is, I gravitated, naturally, along with the rest of the social misfits who are honest into the Army as an EM. Now what do you say we have another drink? Since we’ve settled the problems of God, Society, and the Individual I really think we rate another drink.”
“Well,” the woman smiled, and the momentary flick of interest had gone out, replaced by the old flip and coldness. “He’s smart as well as virile. Lucky little female, to be allowed to enclose the erect pride of such virility. But since you believe the conscious waste of energy is a sin, dont you believe the loss of semen is a sin? unless accompanied by impregnation?”
Warden grinned and dipped