The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [238]
"It won't bounce--you don't have to worry about that!" "No, no. I'll just take your word for it. I meant that you don't have to give me any check at all." "What I thought of asking was whether you'd take me to Mexico City," she said. This I had been expecting, though I don't think I ever intended to do anything about it. Now, when it came, it did something to me. I shivered, as if my fate had brushed me. Admitted that I always tried to elicit what I hoped for; how did people, however, seldom fail to supply it so mysteriously? "Why--why, where does that suddenly fit?" I said, treating it not merely as a plan for her safety but as a proposal involving me. The holleration and screeches of the party were loud and the narrow grove of oranges where we were seemed like the last strip of field the harvesters are cutting. Any minute I awaited some drunk interrupter or a blazing couple crashing in. I knew I had to get out and start looking for Thea. But first this had to be attended to. "You don't have to put it to me that way," I said. "I'll help you anyway." "You're getting ahead of yourself. I don't blame you, but you are. Maybe I'd even feel bad if you didn't, but... I can't be as vain as to think I deserve the very best way of escaping from my trouble. You don't even know me. And all I should think about now is getting away from this poor guy who's lost his mind." "I'm very sorry. I apologize. I talked out of turn." "Oh, you don't have to apologize. We know what the score is here, pretty much. I admit I was often looking, and I have thought of you. But one of the things I thought is that you and I are the kind of people other people are always trying to fit into their schemes. So suppose we didn't play along, then what? But we don't have the time to go into it now." To these words that she spoke I responded tremendously, I melted toward her. I was grateful for her plain way of naming a truth that had been hanging around me anonymously for many long years. I did fit into people's schemes. It was an emotion of truth that I had, hearing this. Mainly of truth. For I will admit that among other things I considered that here was a woman who wouldn't put me on trial for my shortcomings or judge me. Because I was tired of being socked on the head and banged by judgments. But that was all. However, we had no time to go into this further. Oliver would be coming back right away. He had packed her things and taken them away, all but a few articles she had hidden from him. "Listen," said I, "I can't take you to Mexico, but what I can do is take you a good way out of town, where you'll be safe. Meet me by the station wagon in the zocalo. Which way was he going? You can trust me. I don't especially want to see him get caught. I have no reason to." "He was going toward Acapulco." "Okay, that's fine. We'll go the other way." So he wanted to catch a ship at Acapulco, did he, the poor jerk! Or was he plotting to escape through the jungle into Guatemala, as brainsoftened as that? Why, if the Indians didn't murder him for his black and white sport shoes he'd die of exhaustion. I hurried to find Thea. She had gone, Iggy told me, leaving Moulton in the middle of the floor. "She was quite in a mood," said Iggy. "We looked for you. Then she said for me to tell you she was pulling out for Chilpanzingo first thing in the morning. She was all nervous and shaking, Bolingbroke. Where did you disappear?" "I'll tell you some other time." I ran down to the zocalo and opened the station wagon. Soon Stella arrived and slipped in. I threw off the brake and twisted the ignition key. From disuse the battery was low; and the starter chattered but the motor failed to turn. Not to run the battery any lower I nervously took to the crank. As I began to turn it I right away had a crowd to watch me, that unfailing bunch of a Mexican square that comes to maintain its secret view of life. Sweating with the crank, I was in a furious rage, and I said to a few of them, "Beat it! Scat, goddam you!" But this fetched only jeers and scorn, and I heard my old title, el gringo del