Mildred Pierce - James M. Cain [77]
"That's a lie."
Her lungs were filling with breath now, so much that she felt it would suffocate her. Her face screwed up into the squint, and the glittering tears made her eyes look hard, cold, and feline. She sat perfectly still, her legs crossed, and looked at him, where he stood facing her on the other side of the room. After a long pause she went on, in a passionate, trembling voice. "Since you've known me, that's what I've been to you, a piece of tail. You've taken me to mountain shacks and back-street speakeasies, you've never introduced me to your friends——except for a few men you've brought over to dinner sometimes—or your mother, or your sister, or any member of your family. You're ashamed of me, and now that you're in my debt, you had to say what you just said to me, to get even. It's not a surprise to me. I've known it all along. Now you can go."
"None of that is true."
"Every word of it is true."
"So far as my friends go—"
"They mean nothing to me."
"—It hadn't occurred to me you'd care to meet any of them. Most of them are dull, but if meeting them means anything to you, that's easy fixed. So far as my mother goes—"
"She means nothing to me either."
"—So far as my mother goes, I can't do anything about her now, because she's away, and so is my sister. But you may have forgotten that with this restaurant of yours you keep somewhat peculiar hours. To have arranged a meeting would have been idiotically complicated, so I did the best I could. I took your daughter over there, and if you knew anything about social conventions at all, you'd know that I was dealing in my own way with what otherwise would have been a situation. And certainly my mother took all the interest in Veda she could be expected to take—a little more interest than you seemed to be taking, I sometimes thought."
"—I didn't complain on that score."
In her heart, Mildred knew that Monty was being as dishonest about Veda as he was being about the rest of it. Obviously, he liked Veda, and found her an amusing exhibit to drag around, no doubt because she was precisely the kind of snob that he was himself, and that most of his friends were. And also, by doing so much for the child, he could neatly sidestep the necessity of doing anythin'g about the mother. But to argue about it would jeopardize the enchanted life that Veda now led, so Mildred veered off in a new direction. "Monty, why don't you tell the truth? You look down on me because I work."
"Are you crazy?"
"No. You look down on everybody that works, as you practically admitted to me the first night I was with you. All right, I work. It's nOt at all elegant work, but it's the only work I can do. I cook food and sell it. But one thing you'd better get through your head sooner or later: You'll have to go to work—"
"Of course I'm going to work!"
"Ha-ha. When?"
"As soon as I get the damned house sold, and this mess straightened out that we've got ourselves into. Until that's over, work, for me, is out of the question. But as soon as it's over—"
"Monty, you just make me laugh. I used to be married to a real-estate company, and there's no use trying to kid me about houses, and how to get rid of them. There's nothing about that place that can't be put in the hands of an agent, and handled like any other. No, it's not that. You'd rather live there, so you can, have an address on Orange Grove Avenue, and cook your own eggs in the morning, and drive over to the club in the afternoon, and have your dinner here with Veda, and take your spending money from me— than work. That's all, isn't it?"
"Sure."
His face broke into a sunny smile, he came over, roughly pushed her into a little heap, took her in his arms. "I don't know anybody I'd rather take money from than you. Your paid gigolo is damned well satisfied."
She pushed his arms away, trying to repulse him. But she was taken by surprise, and her struggles had no steam in them. Try as she