The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [88]
and then went to dinner. I didn't do much with the food, not even the peche flambee, as didn't escape Mrs. Renling, and she said, "Augie, when is this love nonsense going to stop? You'll hurt your system. Is it that important?" Then she used her most fondling words on me, to get me around by kidding, and, as a woman, tried to put a top on my imagination of women where she thought a top should be, explaining what there was and was not to women, and praised the male in all things as if she was working for Athena. It drove me a little crazy. I wasn't right on my rocker anyway, and hearing her run down the body of womankind in her metal, bristling way made me look at her with a streak of bad blood in the eye. And I waited almost with the shakes of malaria for Esther to appear in the dining room. The old Fenchels were already at their table. Then Thea came, but her sister wasn't having supper apparently. "And you know," said Mrs. Renling after a time, "the girl hasn't had her eyes off you since she came in. Is there something between you already? Augie! Have you done something? Is that why you're low? What have you done?" "I haven't done anything," I said. "You better not!" She was on me, sharp and shrewd, just like a police matron. "You're too attractive to women for your own good, and you'll end up in trouble. So will she; she's got hot pants, that little miss." She gave Thea stare for stare. The waiter set light to the Fenchels' flambee, and there were little fires here and there in the green of twilight. I left the dining room without saying more. To walk around on the shore road and get the shameful twists out of my guts and digest my trouble. It was awful, the feelings I was having, the disgrace and anger over Esther and the desire to conk Mrs. Renling on the head. I went along the edge of the water, and then around the grounds, staying away from the porch where I knew Mrs. Renling would be waiting to pay me off for my rudeness, and then to the back, to the children's playground, and sat down on the slat seat of the garden swing. Sitting here, I started to dream that Esther had thought it over and had come out of her room to look for me, so that I had to groan over the grip my stupidity had on me and was sloshed all over with corrupting feelings, worse than before. Then I heard someone light coming near, a woman stepping under the tree into the dusty rut worn beside the swing by the feet of kids. It was Esther's sister Thea, come to talk to me, the one Mrs. Renling warned me of. In her white dress and her shoes that came down like pointed shapes of birds in the vague whiteness of the furrow by the swing, with lace on her arms and warm opening and closing differences of the shade of leaves back of her head, she stood and looked at me. "Disappointed that it isn't Esther, aren't you, Mr. March? I guess you must be having a terrible time. You looked pretty white in the dining room." Wondering what she knew and what she was after, I didn't say anything. "Have you recovered a little?" "Recovered from what?" "From fainting. Except Esther thought it might be an epileptic fit." "Well, maybe it was one," I said, feeling heavy, sullen, and crumbling. "I don't think so. You're just sore, and you don't want me to bother you." That wasn't so; on the contrary, I wanted her to stay. So I said, "No," and she sat down beside my feet, touching them with her thigh. I made a move, but she touched my ankles and said, "Don't bother. You don't have to make yourself uncomfortable because of me. What happened anyway?" "I asked your sister for a date." ' "And when she said 'No' you passed out." I thought she was warm toward me and not merely curious. "I'm all for you, Mr. March," she said, "so I'll tell you what Esther thinks. She thinks that you service the lady you're with." "What?" I cried out and jumped from the seat and gave myself a crack on the head against the dowels of the swing. "That you're her gigolo and lay her. Why don't you sit down? I thought I should explain this to you." As if I had been carrying something with special sacred devotedness