Sirens of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut [19]
"Crying jag," echoed Constant. That was something new.
"Yah," said the woman. "You said you had a very unhappy childhood, and made everybody listen to how unhappy it was. How your father never even threw a ball to you once—any kind of ball. Half the time nobody could understand you, but every time somebody could understand you, it was about how there never was any kind of ball.
"Then you talked about your mother," said the woman, "and you said if she was a whore, then you were proud to be a son of a whore, if that’s what a whore was. Then you said you’d give an oil well to any woman who’d come up to you and shake your hand and say real loud, so everybody could hear, ’I’m a whore, just like your mother was.’ "
"What happened then?" said Constant.
"You gave an oil well to every woman at the party," said the woman. "And then you started crying worse than ever, and you picked me out, and you told everybody I was the only person in the whole Solar System you could trust. You said everybody else was just waiting for you to fall asleep, so they could put you on a rocket ship and shoot you at Mars. Then you made everybody go home but me. Servants and everybody.
"Then we flew down to Mexico and got married, and then we came back here," she said. "Now I find out you haven’t got a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of You better go down to the office and find out what the hell is going on, on account of my boyfriend is a gangster, and he’ll kill you if I tell him you aren’t providing for me right.
"Hell," she said, "I had an unhappier childhood than you did. My mother was a whore and my father never came home, either—but we were poor besides. At least you had billions of dollars."
In Newport, Beatrice Rumfoord turned her back to her husband. She stood on the threshold of Skip’s Museum, facing the corridor. Down the corridor came the sound of the butler’s voice. The butler was standing in the front doorway, calling to Kazak, the hound of space.
"I know a little something about roller coasters, too," Beatrice said.
"That’s good," said Rumfoord emptily.
"When I was ten years old," said Beatrice, "my father got it into his head that it would be fun for me to ride a roller coaster. We were summering on Cape Cod, and we drove over to an amusement park outside of Fall River.
"He bought two tickets on the roller coaster. He was going to ride with me.
"I took one look at the roller coaster," said Beatrice, "and it looked silly and dirty and dangerous, and I simply refused to get on. My own father couldn’t make me get on," said Beatrice, "even though he was Chairman of the Board of the New York Central Railroad.
"We turned around and came home," said Beatrice proudly. Her eyes glittered, and she nodded abruptly. "That’s the way to treat roller coasters," she said.
She stalked out of Skip’s Museum, went to the foyer to await the arrival of Kazak.
In a moment, she felt the electric presence of her husband behind her.
"Bea—" he said, "if I seem indifferent to your misfortunes, it’s only because I know how well things are going to turn out in the end. If it seems crude of me not to hate the idea of your pairing off with Constant, it’s only an humble admission on my part that he’s going to make you a far better husband than I ever was or will be.
"Look forward to being really in love for the first time, Bea," said Rumfoord. "Look forward to behaving aristocratically without any outward proofs of your aristocracy. Look forward to having nothing but the dignity and intelligence and tenderness that God gave you—look forward to taking those materials and nothing else, and making something exquisite with them."
Rumfoord groaned tinnily. He was becoming insubstantial. "Oh, God—" he said, "you talk about roller coasters—
"Stop and think sometime about the roller coaster I’m on. Some day on Titan, it will be revealed to you just how ruthlessly I’ve been used, and by whom, and to what disgustingly paltry ends."
Kazak now flung himself into