BUtterfield 8 Read Online Free PDF Page B

before. He rumpled his hair and yawned, standing at the door and waiting until whoever it was that rang would ring the apartment bell. It rang, and he opened it half a foot.
    “Oh,” he said, and opened the door all the way.
    “Hel-lo, darling, look what I brought you.” Gloria held up the parcel, a wrapped-up bottle.
    “Oh,” he said, and yawned again. “Thanks.” He went back to the bed and lay on it face down. “I don’t want any.”
    “Get up. It’s a lovely Spring morning,” said Gloria. “I didn’t think you’d be alone.”
    “Uh, I’m alone. I haven’t any soda. You’ll have to drink that straight, or else with plain water. I don’t want any.”
    “Why?”
    “I got drunk.”
    “What for?”
    “Oh, I don’t know. Listen, Gloria, I’m dead. Do you mind if I go to sleep a little while?”
    “Certainly I do. Where are your pajamas? Did you sleep in your underwear?”
    “I haven’t any pajamas. I have two pairs and they’re both in the laundry. I don’t even know what laundry.”
    “Here. Here’s twenty dollars. Buy yourself some pajamas tomorrow, or else find the laundry and pay what you owe them.”
    “I’ve some money.”
    “How much?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Well, take this, you’ll need it. I don’t believe you have any money, either.”
    “Why are you suddenly rich? Isn’t that a new coat?”
    “Yes. Brand-new. You didn’t ask me to take it off. Is that hospitable?”
    “Good God, you’d take it off if you wanted to. Take it off, if you want to.”
    “Look,” she said, for he was closing his eyes again. She opened the coat.
    He suddenly had the expression of a man who had been struck and cannot strike back. “All right,” he said. “You stole the coat.”
    “He tore my dress, my new evening dress. I had to have something to wear in the daytime. All I had was my evening coat, and I couldn’t go out wearing that.”
    “I guess I will have a drink.”
    “Good.”
    “Who is the guy?”
    “You don’t know him.”
    “How do you know I don’t know him? Damn it, why don’t you just tell me who it is and save time? You always do that. I ask you something and you say I wouldn’t know, or you talk around it or beat about the bush for an hour, and you make me so God damn mad—and then you tell me. If you’d tell me in the first place we’d save all this.”
    “All right, I’ll tell you.”
    “Well, go ahead and
tell
me!”
    “His name is Weston Liggett.”
    “Liggett? Liggett. Weston Liggett. I do know him.”
    “You don’t. How would you know him?”
    “I don’t know him, but I know who he is. He’s a yacht racer and he used to be a big Yale athlete. Very social. Oh, and married. I’ve seen his wife’s name. What about that? Where did you go?”
    “His apartment.”
    “His apartment? Is his wife—does she like girls?” He was fully awake now. “Did she give you the coat? You’re going in for that again, are you?”
    “I think you’re disgusting.”
    “You think
I’m
disgusting. That’s what it is. That’s started again, all over again. That’s why you came here, because you thought I had someone here. You know where you ought to be? You ought to be in an insane asylum. They put people in insane asylums that don’t do a tenth of what you do. Here, take your lousy money and your damn whiskey and get out of here.”
    She did not move. She sat there looking like someone tired of waiting for a train. She did not seem to hear him. But this mood was in such contrast to her vitality of a minute ago that there was no doubting that she had heard him, and no doubting that what he was saying had caused her mood to change.
    “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m terribly sorry, Gloria. I’d rather cut my throat than say that. Do you believe me? You do believe me, don’t you? You do believe I only said it because—”
    “Because you believed it,” she said. “No. Mrs. Liggett is not a Lesbian, if you’re interested. I went to their apartment