The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [280]
You. You said we were getting too used to it.
Forget what I said.
Ohhhh. (Exasperation and submission.) You're just an old hound dog, that's all you are. Always wanting to put it in something. (The alloy of tenderness and irritation, unique to marriage.)
There are external shocks. His sister, Patty, gets a divorce, and he hears talk, merely the faintest suggestions, but he is worried. He asks her, subtly he thinks, but she flares at him.
What do you mean, Willie, Brad coulda had the divorce instead of me?
I don't mean anything, I'm just asking you.
Listen, Willie-boy, you don't have to be looking at me thataway. I am what I am, that's all, you understand?
The shock enters, burrows deeply, and explodes sporadically for months to follow. There are times in the middle of the day when he halts in the middle of a report, catches himself looking at his pencil. You're not such a roughneck, Patty says, slim and crisp and virginal, the older sister -- half mother.
Memory as the flagellant. I don't understand it a goddam bit. What the hell makes them change that way, why can't a woman stay decent?
You'll never be like that, will you, Beverly? he says that night.
Aw, no, honey, how can you even think it?
They are very close for the moment, and his troubles spill out. Honestly, Bev, keeping up with everything makes me go so goddam fast; I get so I just want to take a breath, you know what I mean. A man's own sister, it puts quite a stir in you.
In the barrooms, in the smoking cars, in the locker room at the golf club they are talking about Patty Brown.
I swear, Bev, I ever catch you in anything like that, I'll kill you, so help me I'll kill you.
Honey? You can trust me. But she is thrilled by the sudden burst of his passion.
I feel a hell of a lot older, Bev.
On the eighteenth he lines up the putt, estimates the roll of the green. It is a five-foot shot and he should make it, but he knows suddenly that he's going to fail. The handle of the putter thonks dully against his palms as the ball rolls short a foot.
Missed again, son, Mr. Cranborn says.
Just not my day, I guess. We might as well get back to the locker room. His palms still hold a numb uncertain feeling. They stroll back slowly. You come to Louisville, son, and it'll be a pleasure to take you out to my club, Mr. Cranborn says.
I might take you up on it, sir.
As they shower, Mr. Cranborn is singing "When you wore a tulip and 1 wore a. . ."
What're we doin' tonight, son?
We'll just do the town, Mr. Cranborn; you don't have to worry, I'll show you around.
I've heard a good deal about this town.
Yes, sir, well, most of it's true. (The lewd cackle from the adjacent shower.)
In the night club they talk business. Every time he leans back he can feel the potted palm against his hair so that he finds himself leaning forward breathing the smoke from Mr. Cranborn's cigar. Well, you got to see, sir, that we're entitled to a little profit, I mean after all that's what makes the wheels of business go round, and you wouldn't want us to be working for you for nothing with our product any more than you'd want to work for someone else. That'd hardly be business, now, would it? The fifth drink is almost empty, and his jaws clamp spongily. The cigarette is a little remote from his lips. (I gotta slow down on the drinking.)
A good point, son, a good point, but there's also the question of making something cheaper than the next feller, and that's business too, competition. You're out for yourself, and I'm out for myself, and that's the way things work.
Yes, sir, I see what you mean. For a moment the whole thing is in danger of revolving and revolving in his head, and he thinks of flailing out, breathing some air. Let's look at it from this angle.
Who's that little blonde girl in the show, Brown? Know her?
(He doesn't.) Well, yes, sir, but frankly you wouldn't be wanting to know her. She's gone to the well a little too often and, well, frankly there's doctors involved. I know a place though, sir, decent respectable.
In the lobby the hat-check girl can hear him phoning.