Miss Lonelyhearts Read Online Free PDF Page A

hollows
of her neck. No similar change ever took place in his own body, however. Like a dead man, only friction could make him warm or violence
make him mobile.
    He decided to get a few drinks and
then call Mary from Delehanty's . It was quite early
and the speakeasy was empty. The bartender served him and went back to his
newspaper.
    On the mirror,
behind the bar hung a poster advertising a mineral water. It showed a
naked girl made modest by the mist that rose from the spring at her feet. The
artist had taken a great deal of care in drawing her breasts and their nipples
stuck out like tiny red hats.
    He tried to excite himself into
eagerness by thinking of the play Mary made with her breasts. She used them as
the coquettes of long ago had used their fans. One of her tricks was to wear a
medal low down on her chest. Whenever he asked to see it, instead of drawing it
out she leaned over for him to look. Although he had often asked to see the
medal, he had not yet found out what it represented.
    But the excitement refused to come.
If anything, he felt colder than before he had started to think of women. It
was not his line. Nevertheless, he persisted in it, out of desperation, and
went to the telephone to call Mary.
    "Is that you?" she asked,
then added before he could reply, "I must see you
at once. I've quarreled with him. This time I'm through."
    She always talked in headlines and
her excitement forced him to be casual. "O.K.," he said. "When? Where?"
    "Anywhere, I'm through with
that skunk, I tell you, I'm through."
    She had quarreled with Shrike before
and he knew that in return for an ordinary number of kisses, he would have to
listen to an extraordinary amount of complaining.
    "Do you want to meet me here,
in Delehanty's ?" he asked.
    "No, you come here. We'll be
alone and anyway I have to bathe and get dressed."
    When he arrived at her place, he
would probably find Shrike there with her on his lap. They would both be glad
to see him and all three of them would go to the movies where Mary would hold
his hand under the seat.
    He went back to the bar for another
drink, then bought a quart of Scotch and took a cab. Shrike opened the door.
Although he had expected to see him, he was embarrassed and tried to cover his
confusion by making believe that he was extremely drunk.
    "Come in, come in, homebreaker ," Shrike said with a laugh. "The Mrs.
will be out in a few minutes. She's in the tub."
    Shrike took the bottle he was
carrying and pulled its cork. Then he got some charged water and made two
highballs.
    "Well," Shrike said,
lifting his drink, "so you're going in for this kind of stuff, eh? Whisky and the boss's wife."
    Miss Lonelyhearts always found it impossible to reply to him. The answers he wanted to make were
too general and began too far back in the history of their relationship.
    "You're doing field work, I take
it," Shrike said. "Well, don't put this whisky on your expense
account. However, we like to see a young man with his heart in his work. You've
been going around with yours in your mouth."
    Miss Lonelyhearts made a desperate attempt to kid back. "And you," he said,
"you're an old meanie who beats his wife,"
    Shrike laughed, but too long and too
loudly, then broke off with an elaborate sigh.
"Ah, my lad," he said, "you're wrong. It's Mary who does the
beating."
    He took a long pull at his highball
and sighed again, still more elaborately. "My good friend, I want to have
a heart-to-heart talk with you. I adore heart-to-heart talks and nowadays there
are so few people with whom one can really talk. Everybody is so hard-boiled. I
want to make a clean breast of matters, a nice clean breast. It's better to
make a clean breast of matters than to let them fester in the depths of one's
soul."
    While talking, he kept his face
alive with little nods and winks that were evidently supposed to inspire
confidence and to prove him a very simple fellow.
    "My good friend, your
accusation hurts me to 'the quick. You spiritual