Barbary Shore Read Online Free PDF Page B

had the passing idea she expected a kiss.She continued, however, to talk. “Now, I don’t know anything about politics, but it seems to me that everything’s going wrong today. Everybody’s turning his back on the Lord. We’re going to Gethsemane, that’s the truth. We’re going to be destroyed.”
    I listened to an automobile roar through the street below. Its muffler was broken, and the blast of the exhaust quivered through the warm evening and stirred the air in my room. I could see the royal blue of the summer sky as it deepened into night. I sat there trying to remember the biblical meaning of Gethsemane. “Yes,” she continued sadly, “you’re all goners because you’ve deserted the true way. I tell you there’s going to be a world catastrophe.” In the same tone, without transition, she asked, “What religion are you?”
    “I don’t have any,” I told her.
    “Then you’re damned.”
    “I’m afraid so.”
    She shook her head. “Listen, I used to be like you, but I found out there’s going to be wars and plagues and famines, and the Witnesses’ll be the only ones saved because they bear true witness to the ways of the Lord, and they don’t have false idols. You know I won’t salute the flag, and nobody can make me cause it’s in my religion.”
    “The Witnesses are the only ones to be saved?”
    A fair question. She seemed perplexed. “To tell you the truth, I’m not sure.” She could have been a clubwoman discussing the best method of running a benefit. “Probably it’s just going to be our organization, but there might be a couple of other organizations, and maybe, this could be, a combination of our organization and a partial membership of one or two other organizations.”
    Guinevere lit another of my cigarettes. “It’s funny you being here,” she said casually; “I mean just taking this room.”
    “Have to live somewhere,” I murmured.
    “Yeah.” She considered this. “You writers are weird guys.Never know what to make of you.” Her speech completed, she dumped the sheets on her arm, and stood up. “I got to go,” she told me. “Pleasant talking to you.”
    I tried to detain her. “How would you like to clean up the room for me?” I offered.
    “Clean the room?” she asked flatly.
    “I know you’re not obliged to do it, but I was wondering—is it worth a buck to you?” Immediately, I was horrified. The dollar would come out of my meals.
    “It isn’t the money. You know I’m very busy,” she said. “This place may not look like much, but it’s a man-sized job.”
    “You can find time.” Now that she was reluctant I had lost my regrets over the dollar.
    “I don’t know. I’m going to have to think about it, Lovett.”
    Merely by using my name, she created another mood between us. Suggestions of her rough intimacy with Dinsmore were bandied. “I don’t know, you crazy guys, didn’t you ever hear of cleaning your own room and saving a buck?”
    “We’ll talk about it,” I said smoothly. “I’ll see you in a day or so about this, I suppose …”
    She nodded with disinterest. “I’m not hard to find. I never go any place.” Kicking the open door with her foot, she mumbled something about, “Work, work, every goddamn day.”
    On the stairs she called back a last time.
    “You better clean the room yourself.” I could hear Guinevere clumping down in her bedroom slippers.

FIVE
    M Y friendship with McLeod progressed in no familiar way. I grew to like him, but I learned no more than he had told me the first time. I knew where he worked, I thought I knew where he had been born, and with dexterity he managed to offer nothing else. It seemed as if we always ended by talking about me; to my surprise I discovered myself telling him one day about the peculiar infirmity I was at such pains to conceal from everyone else. He heard me through, nodding his head, tapping his foot, and when I was finished he murmured, “I suspected as much, I have to