The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [290]
books; from music, piano, etcetera; from the theater inscribed photos, also a sewing machine of spidery castiron, circa 1910, which I connected with costumes; her pictures were on the walls--flowers, oranges, bedsteads, nudes in the bath. She talked about getting on the radio and mentioned the USO and Stage-Door Canteen. I did my best to follow. \ 471 "You like my house?" she said. It wasn't a house but a room, a parlor, high, long, and old-fashioned, with archduke moldings of musical instruments and pears. Plants, piano, a big decorative bed, fishes, a cat and dog. The dog was a heavy breather--he was getting on in years. The cat played around her ankles and scratched them; I quickly walloped him with a newspaper, but she didn't like that. He sat on her shoulder, and when she said, "Kiss, Ginger--kiss, kiss," he licked her face. Over the way were dress factories. Scraps of material floated and waved from the wire window guards. Planes with powerful rotary noise cut the blue air clear from Britain to California. She served the wine I brought. I drank and my head gave a throb in its injured place. Then I became very heated and filled with amorous anxiety. But I thought, There's her pride to consider. I wanted to get away from her in Cuemavaca. Why should she believe I'm falling for her now? And maybe I shouldn't fall. What if she's the Cressida type, as Einhom used to call Cissy F.? "I still intend to pay you the money you were so kind as to lend me," she said. "No, please, I didn't come for that." "But you probably need it now." "Why, I haven't even touched my last month's pay." "My father sends me an allowance from Jamaica. That's where he is. Of course I can't live on it. I haven't done any too well recently." This was not a complaint but sounded as though soon she'd do better. "Oliver set me back. I depended on him. I thought I was in love with him. Did you love that girl you were with?" "Yes," I said. I'm glad I didn't lie, I may say. "She must have hated me like poison." "She married a captain out in the Pacific."., "I'm sorry." "Oh no, don't be. It's been over for quite a while." "I felt in the wrong afterward. But you were the only person who would have helped me. And I never thought--" "I'm glad I was able to help. As far as that goes, I came out way ahead." "It's nice of you to say so. But you know--now that it's finished you won't care if I say it--I thought we were in the same boat. Everybody said how she--" "Went hunting without me. I know." I hoped she wouldn't mention Talavera.... "You got into trouble without knowing it, the way I did. Maybe you deserved it though--like me. It served me right. I was on my way to Hollywood with him. Mexico was just a side trip; he was going to make a star of me. Wasn't that ridiculous?" "No, it wasn't. You'd make a first-rate star. But how could Oliver do that to you when he knew he was going to jail?" "He put it over easily because for a while I was in love." It went to my head when she spoke that word. I was constructing higher and higher, up to the top spheres, and simultaneously committing a dozen crimes to achieve my end. The cat scratched my hand as it swung by the chair. I thought I was going to have a nosebleed also, from passion. One minute I felt gross and swollen, and the next my soul was up there concertizing among her brilliant sister souls. "Or worse than ridiculous," said she, pointedly. Worse? Oh, how she paid her way, did she mean? She didn't have to say that. It pained me that she should feel such explanations necessary. I certainly was lucky to be seated; my legs wouldn't have kept me up. "Why, what's the matter?" she said in her warmhearted voice. I begged her not to make fun, please. I said, "When I was covered with bandages and playing poker at the Chinaman's, how could you' think we were in the same boat?" "I'm sure you remember how we looked at each other that day in the bar where they had that monkey thing." "The kinkajou." Crossing her hands in her lap and bringing her knees together around them--which I admired and wished she would, however, not do--she