Mildred Pierce - James M. Cain [12]
She ducked out the screen door, ran across the yards, and presently was back with a basket, in which were quite a few bottles. She set them out on the kitchen table, then resumed her talk. "This stuff, the gin and the Scotch, is right off the boat, and better than he's tasted in years. All the gin needs is a little orange juice, and it'll make a swell cocktail; be sure you cut it down plenty with ice. Now this other, the wine, is straight California, but he doesn't know it, and it's O.K. booze, so lean on it. That's the trick, baby. Handle the wine right and the high-priced stuff will last and last and last. Fill him up on it—much as he wants, and more. It's thirty cents a quart, half a cent for the pretty French label, and the more he drinks of that, the less he'll want of Scotch. Here's three reds and three whites, just because I love you, and want you to get straightened out. With fish, chicken and turkey, give him white, and with red meat, give him red. What are you having tonight?"
"Who says I'm having anything?"
"Now listen, have we got to go all over that? Baby, baby, you go out with him, and he buys you a dinner, and you get a little tight, and you come home, and something happens, and then what?"
"Don't worry. Nothing'll happen."
"Oh something'll happen. If not tonight, then some other night. Because if it don't happen, he'll lose interest, and quit coming around, and you wouldn't like that. And when it happens, it's Sin. It's Sin, because you're a grass widow, and fast. And he's all paid up, because he bought your dinner, and that makes it square."
"He must have a wonderful character, my Wally."
"He's got the same character they've all got, no better and no worse. But—if you bought his dinner, and cooked it for him the way only you can cook, and you just happened to look cute in that little apron, and something just happened to happen, then it's Nature. Old Mother Nature, baby, and we all know she's no bum. Because that grass widow, she went back to the kitchen, where all women belong, and that makes it all right. And Wally, he's not paid up, even a little bit. He even forgot to ask the price of the chips. He'll find out. And another thing, this way is quick, and the last I heard of you, you were up against it, and couldn't afford to waste much time. You play it right, and inside of a week your financial situation will be greatly eased, and inside of a month you'll have him begging for the chance to buy that divorce. The other way, making the grand tour of all the speako's he knows, it could go on for five years, and even then you couldn't be sure."
"You think I want to be kept?"
"Yes."
For a while after that, Mildred didn't think of Wally, at any rate to know she was thinking of him. After Mrs. Gessler left, she went to her room and wrote a few letters, particularly one to her mother, explaining the new phase her life had entered, and going into some detail as to why, at the moment, she wouldn't be able to sell the anchors. Then she mended some of the children's clothes. But around four o'clock, when it started to rain, she put the sewing basket away, went to the kitchen, and checked her supplies from the three or four oranges in reserve for the children's breakfast to the vegetables she had bought yesterday in the market. The chicken she gave a good smelling, to make sure it was still fresh. The quart of milk she took out of the icebox with care, so as not to joggle it,