This Sweet Sickness Read Online Free PDF Page A

love with him, and I wonder if you have forgotten or have you—not having anyone there to help you—succumbed to what you consider fate? Darling, it is not life that you are experiencing in Hartford. Far from it! You’re not in love with him and he hasn’t even any money. Not that I’d reproach any man for not having money if he’s not interested in it or it’s beyond his powers to earn much. It’s the drudgery and the ugliness that this implies that galls me—plus the all-important fact that there isn’t any love to make it bearable. Can you not be objective for one moment and see how it must seem to me or to anyone else looking on from the outside?
    Can it be you’re afraid to see me? [He crossed that out. He would have to copy the letter. He usually had to.] I want to see you, darling, and I think I have a better idea than Hartford. It’s very far off, which will give you plenty of time to think about it. I would like you to meet me in New York. Any day between Dec. 21 and 24 (I know you’ll have to be back Christmas). Do let me know soon, so I can be thinking about the day. Tell Gerald you have to shop for something and make it specific. I’ll arrange, if you can make it, to be staying at the Algonquin, so for future reference, meet me there on the day you can come in. Or if you prefer, I’ll meet your train if you can tell me what it is. Don’t forget, you can write me as often as you wish:
    137½ Ash Lane
    Froudsburg, N.Y.
    If you have half an hour, fine, or three hours—wonderful. We’ll have tea, lunch, dinner, whatever you like. Or we’ll sit in the lobby and talk and have nothing. I’ll be cheerful, funny, serious, or anything you like.
    Here he had a vision of Mrs. Beecham’s pink bedjacket. That was funny, but he could not tell it to Annabelle. He did not want to tell her yet about the house where he spent his weekends, about the records and books he was amassing, always with her in mind. And Christ damn it, he could not even ask her to spend a weekend with him in his house, because Annabelle would never do anything like that. Her loyalty had been bought by a pig! And not even bought, just reached out and seized. For a moment, he dreamed of proposing his house, telling her about it in his letter, dreamed of her accepting and spending a weekend of the kind he imagined every weekend here—Annabelle here in flesh and blood, able really to eat and drink with him. But it was unthinkable, and he gave it up. He signed the letter with his love, and added a postscript:
    It is all very well for you to say I have my work. But I am incomplete without you.

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    N early two weeks passed, and there was no letter from Annabelle. David tried to excuse this, but the fact remained that she could so easily write to him, even if it was only a postcard dropped in a box while she was out marketing. She simply did not realize what it meant to him to get no word from her at all, he thought, not even a word that she was considering his proposal to meet in New York. David imagined that she was considering it, and not writing until she knew for sure.
    The dreary, busy days went by. His working hours were often hectic. As the chief engineer, he was supposed to know what was going on and to supervise the work in ten or a dozen quite different departments. The electronics engineer was incapable of making the smallest decision for himself and called for David at least four times a day. Something had gone wrong with a dancer bar. Was $375 really the right price for a tube? Would he consider this plate worn out or not? The new kid had done something to a roller and it was measuring out fifteen-pound rolls instead of the required thirteen. The factory made plastic material that was used for car seats, covering for cheap sofas and chairs, baby blankets, suitcase linings, and whatever else men like Dexter Lewissohn could think up to use it for. A score of machines