The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [126]
He sought middie-agedness. He had decided that he could appeal to women whose taste was for experience; a little worn, somewhat bitter, debauched uncle. And that was how he tried to play it. "Well, what about you, Augie, what's the matter with you?" he said. "What are you slopping around here for? You've got more possibilities than you know what to do with. The trouble with you is that you're looking for a manager. Now you're in cahoots with this Mexican. What are you postponing everything for?" "What's everything?" "I don't know. But you lie here in a wicker chair, taking it easy, holding a book on your chest, and letting time go by when there are a thousand things you could do." Clem had a vast idea of what things there were to be had, which was quite natural when you consider how it wounded and stung him to believe that they were out of his reach. He meant, I know, money, admiration, women made absolutely helpless before you by love. The goods of fortune. He was disturbed by these thousand things, and, rometimes, so was I. He insisted that I should be going somewhere, east ^at I should be practicing how to go, that I should concentrate on how to be necessary, and not be backward but energetic, absolute, an so forth. And of course I had some restlessness to be taken up 203 into something greater than myself. I could not shine the star of great individuality that, by absorbed stoking, became a sun of the world over a throng to whom it glitters--whom it doesn't necessarily warm but only showers down a Plutarch radiance. Being necessary, yes, that would be fine and wonderful; but being Phoebus's boy? I couldn't even dream of it. I never tried to exceed my constitution. In any case, when someone like Clem urged me and praised me, I didn't listen closely. I had my own counseling system. It wasn't infallible, but it made mistakes such as I could bear. Clem wasn't fooling with me on this great topic, but it wasn't his main purpose to talk to me when he came to the house. He wasn't there to hop me up or tell me news about Jimmy Klein, who was already married, and the father of a child, and working in a department store; or about his brother's trying to get on Broadway big-time. He came because he was after a girl named Mimi Villars who lived in the house. Mimi wasn't a student; she waited on tables in a student hash-house on Ellis Avenue. I had noted her with appreciation, maybe the more fit to judge because I had no thought of making her myself. She was very fair and ruddy, of a push-faced tough beauty, long brows continued in very thin pencil slightly upward, like the lash of the euglena, away from their natural line toward tight blond ears that had to be looked for amid her curls, and a large mouth, speaking for a soul of wild appetite, nothing barred; she'd say anything, and had no idea of what could hinder her. Her hips were long and narrow, her bust was large, and she wore close-fitting skirts and sweaters and high heels that gave a tight arch of impatience to the muscles of her calves; her step was small and pretty and her laughter violent, total, and critical. She didn't much remind me of Willa from the Symington, also a waitress. Willa, whom I preferred personally, this country girl--I think I could have been perfectly happy with Willa and lived all my life in a country town if the chance had ever presented itself. Or, anyhow, I sometimes tell myself that. Mimi came from Los Angeles. Her father had been an actor in the silent movies. She'd speak of him when she wanted to say how she hated Englishmen. Originally she came to Chicago to study, but she was expelled from the university for going past the bounds of necking at Greene Hall, in the lounge. She was a natural for being bounced. You wouldn't doubt that she was capable of the offense, if it was one, and as for the penalty, it was a favorite subject of her ferocious humor. I knew that Clem didn't stand a chance with her. The cause of her strong color was not sheer health or self-excitement: love also con204 tributed to it. By a coincidence her lover was one of the