The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [147]
had taken place before the eyes of the world, in a reception at a hotel. He didn't think of that. Instead he thought of the powerful possibility in a new Pontiac standing near Lincoln Park, and the money he had; also the things to be done in one street, building, room that need have no bearing on what came later in the day elsewhere. So he got violent and lustful, with step and sidle, and protrusion of his head that made a kind of wall of his neck, charged and hard like that of a fighter who has been hit but not damaged, only roused. There wasn't anything in his new class or of his speed at the North Avenue beach (called a beach, it was merely a stone slab waterfront); the place was rough and hard, the young fellows were tough and the girls battlesome, factory hands, salesgirls, with some dark Street sluts and dance-hall chicks. Therefore Simon said and proposed without sorting or choosing words. "You look good to me. You interested?" Direct, without game, not even nickel phrases of circumlocution. That very fact maybe made it no indecency; instead it created awe and fear, that brute charge that gave the veins too much to bear and seemed to endanger his underjaw by crowding, his eyeballs darkening with currents of heat violet and darker, to near black. The girls were not always frightened of him; he had a smell of power, he was handsome, and I don't know what floors his bare feet left in shade-drawn hot rooms. Unly a year ago he would not have given a second glance at such bims. Now, where he went, he had information unavailable to me, but e had to have advantages and prerogatives, I reckon, in exchange for scrifiees. Yes, principals like that practice an anger not everyone is 231 ' allowed. They come playing the god like bloody Commodus before the Senate, or run with jockeys and wrestlers like Caracalla, while knowing that somewhere the instrument of their downfall is beginning to gather thought to thought about them, like loops on the knitting needle. That was how it was with Simon, as I had had the chance to see before, when he put on a lady's hat at the Chez Paree and pranced around, or when he had brought me along to a bachelor's stag where two naked acrobatic girls did stunts with false tools. From circus games to private dissoluteness, then, and only doing as many others did--except that from the force of his personality he was prominent and played a leading part. "And you? Do you?" said Simon to me. "What a question! Who's that babe who lives on your floor? Is that why you don't want to move? Mimi, isn't that her name? She looks like an easy broad." I denied it, and he didn't believe me. On her side Mimi was interested in Simon. "What's eating him?" she asked me. "It was him I heard crying in the can, wasn't it? What's he want to be such a sharp dresser for? What's the matter? He has a woman on his neck, huh?" She was prepared to approve of him despite the satire, noting something extravagant and outlaw about him that she approved of. He wasn't all brashness, however, and headlong despair, Simon. No, he >vas also making a prize showing. It was summer, and slow, and naturally he was losing money. Charlotte, an excellent businesswoman, and highly important as backer, counselor, consultant, gave him just what united them closer than common conjugality. Though he fought with her and even from the very first roared and cursed her, saying astonishing things, she held on steady, A close watcher could see her recoil and then come back to the great, the all-important thing, which was that he was one of those anointed to be rich and mighty. His very outrageousness when he yelled "You goofy cow!" was proof. She took it with a nervous laugh that recalled him to his better judgment and reminded him that such things were supposed to 'come out as comedy. Whereat he almost never tailed to add the laughter drop of the entertainer, even while the glare of his eyes might remain savage. And he was made to do that even when feelings on both sides had burst out so close to injury that it was too much to try to kid them back into something