This Sweet Sickness Read Online Free PDF Page B

she’d known less than a month! “Well, it’s always the stranger out of the blue who carries the day in love,” his cousin Louise had written him. Louise was sixteen and she had aspirations of becoming a writer. And there had been no use in his dashing out to La Jolla at that point, because Louise said that Annabelle and her new husband had gone off on a month’s honeymoon to Canada, she didn’t know just where. “But her mother said she’d be back by La Jolla to pick up her things after the honeymoon. I’ll keep you posted, Dave. But don’t be too sad, because to tell you the truth she’s not good enough for you in my opinion. Water seeks its own level, mom says.”
    David had managed to be back in La Jolla when the month was up. He had flown across the continent for one weekend, and he had seen Annabelle at her house. She had come back to pack up a few of her things, because she was going east to live, she said. Gerald was an electrical engineer—by which lofty title David gathered that he could fix a toaster or put new plates in an electric iron. That, in fact, was what Gerald was going to do in the east, set up a little repair shop somewhere. David had been absolutely appalled.
    â€œYou didn’t know,” he had asked naively, “that I wanted to marry you, Annabelle?”
    She had looked inwardly embarrassed, like a small girl with a conscience caught out in a very minor offense. “Well, Dave—I wasn’t sure. Why should I have been?” She was taller than average and had rather large bones, though she was extremely graceful and fond of dancing. At twenty-two, an adolescent roundness still showed in her cheeks. Her lips were young, somewhat thin and soft and as honest as her gray-blue eyes. And she was very serious, seldom made a joke, not having the necessary detachment for joking. “I’m sorry, Dave.”
    â€œBut it’s not too late, Annabelle! Do you—You’re not in love with him, are you?”
    â€œI don’t know. He’s nice to me”
    â€œBut you’re not in love with him, are you?” David had asked desperately.
    â€œI don’t think I am—yet.”
    And then had followed the argument that had finally raised their voices, until some brother, awakened from a nap, had shouted down a complaint from upstairs. He had caught her in his arms—and that had been the last time—and begged her to annul the marriage with Gerald. He had told her his life was not worth living if she were not with him, and he’d never spoken a truer word. Somehow he had lost his balance and they had both fallen over a trunk on the floor, and one of his tenderest memories of Annabelle was that she had laughed at that, laughed as she let him pull her up to her feet. Then she had said he must go, because Gerald was due any minute.
    â€œI’m not afraid of him,” David had said. And at that moment he had seen a car stop in front of the house, and one of Annabelle’s brothers and a shorter man got out of it. “But I don’t particularly care to meet him either,” David had added quite calmly. “I love you, Annabelle. I’ll love you all my life.” And on those words, which are monumental or absolutely worthless, depending on how you take them, he went out the door, without even kissing her, which he certainly could have done. He still remembered the surprised, puzzled expression on her face, and sometimes he wondered, if he had stayed a minute longer, if she would have said, “All right, Dave. I’ll get a divorce from Gerald.”
    On the sidewalk he did not step aside enough for Gerald, whose shoulder brushed his—or rather brushed his upper arm. David had glanced at his face, and what stood out in his memory was the large, fat underlip, suggestive not so much of sensuality as laziness, the small, dark, simian eyes, the smooth, plump jaw that appeared beardless. In