The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [175]
is coming for me. Who tired you out like that? It probably wasn't Lucy. It must be that other snatch. Well, go--Christ, I can't tell if you look more tired or more dumb." Simon could only vouch for himself alone as being safe from the touched mentality of our family; when he was irritated his suspicion fell on me. I lit out for home, wasting no time, and upstairs ran into Kayo Ober- mark coming out of the toilet with a wet towel for Mimi's head. He looked badly worried; his eyes, a big enough size in themselves, a few times enlarged by his specs, and his lip stuck out anxiously. His face was dark with bristle or dirt. "I think she's bad," he said. "Bleeding?" "I don't know--but she's burning up." To accept any help from Kayo she must, I thought, be in bad condition; and so she was, though talkative and of false alertness and sharpness--false because it didn't correspond to the expression of her eyes. The little room was overhot and gamy, everything about it felt stale and sickly, of swampy rottenness commencing to be dangerous. I got hold of Padilla, and he came over from his laboratory with pills for her fever, having consulted with some Physiology grad students. We wzited for results, which were slow to come, and wanting not to lose my head I agreed to play rummy. He, always alert in numbers, took every game. Until I couldn't any longer hold the cards. Toward night-- I go by the hour and not by darkness, which was the same that day at six as it had been at three, fuming and slow--her fever went down somewhat. Then Lucy phoned to ask me to come an hour earlier than arranged. I felt that there was trouble at that end too and said, "What's up?" "Nothing; only please try to be here at eight," she said, sounding a little stifled. It was already well past six and I was unshaved. I did the job quickly and started getting into my tuxedo, meanwhile consulting with Padilla and Kayo. "The big risk," said Padilla, "is if he gave her a septicemia. Suppose she has puerperal fever. That's too dangerous to keep her here with. You have to take her to the hospital." Without waiting to hear more, in the boiled shirt, I crossed the hall and said to her, "Mimi, we have to try to get you in a hospital." "They won't take me in anywhere." "We'll make them take you." "Call up and ask, you'll see." "We won't call," said Padilla. "We'll just go." "What's he doing?" she said to me. "How many people have to be in on this?" "Padilla is a good friend of mine, don't worry about this now." "You know what they'll do there, don't you? They'll try to get me to tell on the doctor. What do you think, will I keep my mouth shut?" This was a way of boasting that they could not make her squeal, even on him. Padilla muttered, "What do you waste time with her for? Get going." I dressed her in hat and coat, packed a little case with nightgown, toothbrush, and comb, and Padilla and I took her down to the car covered with a blanket. As I opened the gray car door Owens called from the porch, "Eh, March!" He had come out in his shirt and was giant and shrunkshouldered, knees together, in the cold of this bad death of the year. "Important, on the telephone." I ran up. It was Simon. "Augie!" "Talk fast. What's up? I'm in a hurry!" "It's you who'd better talk fast," he said, furious. "I just had a call from Charlotte, and Kelly Weintraub is spreading a story about you that you took a him to have an abortion." "So? What about it, Simon?" "That's the dame, isn't it, that one from your house? So you went and fixed yourself, you jazzed yourself right out into the cold. This is where I shake you, Augie, before you do worse to me. I can't carry you along any more. I'm going to have a tough time explaining this, how you were f----this girl all the time you were engaged to Lucy. I'll say you're no damned good, which is no lie since you're too dumb to live." "Aren't you even going to ask me if Kelly's story is true?" Contemptuous that I should be so simple as to think him foolish enough to believe what I would feed him, he said in an almost amused voice, "All right--what? You were