U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [469]
"But look at the company we'l have to suffer in, An-nie." Charley put his arm round her shoulders for a mo-ment as she sat beside him on the front seat. Harry who was alone in the back let out a giggle. "Wel , you needn't act so smart, mister," said Anne, without turning back. "You and Gladys certainly do enough public petting to make a cat sick.""The stern birdman's weakening," said Harry. Charley blushed. "Check," he said. They were already at the yachtclub, and two young fel ows in sailorsuits were taking the bags out of the back of the car.
Farrel 's boat was a fast fiftyfoot cruiser with a dining-room on deck and wicker chairs and a lot of freshvarnished mahogany and polished brass. Farrel wore a yachtingcap and walked up and down the narrow deck with a worried look as the boat nosed out into the little muggy breeze. The river in the late afternoon had a smel of docks and weedy swamps. "It makes me feel good to get out on the water, don't it you, Charley? . . . The one place they can't get at you."
Meanwhile Mrs. Farrel was apologizing to the ladies
-296-for the cramped accommodations. "I keep trying to get Yardly to get a boat with some room in it but it seems to me every one he gets is more cramped up than the last one."
Charley had been listening to a light clinking sound from the pantry. When Taki appeared with a tray of man-hattan cocktails everybody cheered up. As he watched Taki bobbing with the tray in front of Gladys, Charley thought how wonderful she looked al in white with her pale abun-dant hair tied up in a white silk handkerchief. Smiling beside him was Anne with her brown hair blow-ing in her eyes from the wind of the boat's speed. The engine made so much noise and the twinscrews churned up so much water that he could talk to her without the others'
hearing. " Annie," he said suddenly, "I been thinking it's about time I got married."
"Why, Charley, a mere boy like you."
Charley felt warm al over. Al at once he wanted a woman terribly bad. It was hard to control his voice.
"Wel , I suppose we're both old enough to know better, but what would you think of the proposition? I've been pretty lucky this year as far as dough goes." Anne sipped her cocktail looking at him and laughing with her hair blowing across her face. "What do you want me to do, ask for a statement of your bankdeposit?"
"But I mean you."
"Check," she said.
Farrel was yel ing at them, "How about a little game of penny ante before supper? . . . It's gettin' windy out here. We'd be better off in the saloon."
"Aye, aye, cap," said Anne.
Before supper they played penny ante and drank man-hattans and after supper the Farrel s and the Bledsoes set-tled down to a game of auction. Gladys said she had a headache and Charley, after watching the game for a
-297-while, went out on deck to get the reek of the cigar he'd been smoking out of his lungs.
The boat was anchored in a little bay, near a lighted wharf that jutted out from shore. A halfmoon was setting behind a rocky point where one tal pine reached out of a dark snarl of branches above a crowd of shivering white-birches. At the end of the wharf there was some sort of clubhouse that spilt ripples of light from its big windows; dancemusic throbbed and faded from it over the water. Charley sat in the bow. The boys who ran the boat for Farrel had turned in. He could hear their low voices and catch a smel of cigarettesmoke from the tiny hatch for-ward of the pilothouse. He leaned over to watch the smal grey