“I feel sorry for her. She hasn’t got any mind of her own any more. And I didn’t say good-by to her because I was afraid I’d cry. I hated you and I hated him and I would have died before I would have let either one of you see me cry.”
“But you don’t hate me so much now?”
“No. Because you were nice to me. And because you bought me those clothes. Maybe it wasn’t just the clothes themselves, but the idea of anybody doing anything that nice for me. I know I’m letting you believe you just bought me with them, but I guess you’ll just have to think that, and maybe it’s true.”
“Did they really mean that much to you?”
“Yes, Bob. There isn’t any way I can make you understand just how much they do mean. You’d have to be a girl to understand.”
“Are you in love with Lee?” I asked.
“No.”
“Weren’t you? Not at all?”
“No. I like him, and he can be awfully sweet to you, but that’s all it was.”
“Did you think he was in love with you?”
“He said he was going to divorce his wife and marry me.
“He would,” I said. “And you believed him?”
“No. Of course not.”
“Not at all?”
“You don’t think I’ve got much sense, do you, Bob? Of course I didn’t believe him. I knew what he wanted, and that was all he wanted.”
“Then, in Christ’s name, Angelina, why did you do it?”
She was quiet a long time and I thought she wasn’t going to answer. After all, it wasn’t any of my business. Then she said quietly, “Does there have to be a reason?”
“Well, hell, there ought to be a reason for everything.”
“Maybe I just wanted somebody to say he loved me, even if he was lying. And I guess I didn’t care much, anyway.”
I lay there for a while, wondering what it was like not to care when you’re eighteen.
I got up and mixed another drink and sat in the chair by the window while she was getting ready to go out. After I finished the drink I got a clean shirt out of the bag and put it on and finished dressing and wandered impatiently around the room waiting for her, feeling irritable about the heat but not quite as savage about it as I was a while ago.
When she did come out I wasn’t quite prepared for the shock of her altered appearance. I don’t know whether it was the new clothes or the new expression in the eyes, but Angelina had a different look. And that look was lovely.
She had on the brown linen suit and it fitted her perfectly. She was wearing a soft yellow blouse with the suit and had on a pair of very sheer nylons and the high-heeled white shoes. She could have been any girl you’d see on a college campus except for the hair. She had it rolled into a soft knot at the back of her neck, and while it was difficult to get used to the idea of a young girl with long hair, I found myself wondering why women had to cut it off anyway.
She turned completely around, turning her head to keep watching me, and there was that teasing smile in her slightly almond-shaped eyes. “Well, how do I look?”
“Wonderful,” I said.
“How do you like my stockings now?”
“Fine, You have beautiful legs.”
“Thank you. You know, Bob,” she went on, “you’re nice. Why are you so hard to get to know?”
“I’m antisocial. Let’s get going. You remember, don’t you? The justice of the peace?”
“Do you still want to do it?”
“What do you mean, do I still want to? I never did.”
“Well, thanks a lot! If I’m so repulsive, why do you insist on going on with it?”
So we’re going through all that again, I thought wearily.
“Come on, for Christ’s sake,” I said. “Let’s get married.”
She looked at me distastefully and turned toward the door. “I give up,” she said. “I’ll never understand you. You say something nice about me with one breath and then get mean again with the next.”
It was three o’clock and the streets were scorching under the midafternoon sun. We walked slowly along toward the courthouse with Angelina craning her neck to catch glimpses of herself in shop windows. She couldn’t get over the way she looked in her new clothes.
The J-P.’s office was hot and not very clean, and he mumbled on forever through a ragged mustache that was brown-stained on the bottom, and there were two political hangers-on for witnesses. When the mumbling was over I handed him an envelope with ten dollars in it and we came back out on the street. We stood for a minute on the courthouse steps in the shade and I began to realize it. I wasn’t a single man any more. I was married. I laughed, and Angelina looked at me queerly.
“What’s so funny?” she asked.
“I just thought of a funny story, that’s all,” I said. “It seems there were two Irishmen and one of them was named Pat and I’ve forgotten the name of the other one but I think it was Morris—”
“Do you realize that we are married?” she interrupted.
“Why, no,” I said. “I hadn’t given it a thought.”
“Sometimes I think you’re as crazy as a bedbug.”
“Where do we go from here?” I said.
She looked at me blankly and I knew that neither of us had thought of what was going to happen after the ceremony. The thing had been forced on us and we had been rushing toward it to get it over, or at least I had, and now that we had reached it and the marriage was an accomplished fact we were left standing there on the steps with nothing but an empty feeling. There was nowhere to rush to now.
“I guess this is as far as we go, isn’t it?” she asked emotionlessly. She was looking out into the street.
“I guess so. Are you going back home?”
“No.”
“Well, you’re your own boss.”
“Yes, I know.”
We were silent for a moment and then she said, “Where are you going? But I guess it isn’t any of my business, is it?”
“New Orleans, I think.” But that part of it seemed to have lost its interest. I couldn’t work up any enthusiasm for it. “I’ll start on tonight. You can stay at the hotel. I’ll go back and get my stuff and clear out.”
She shook her head, still not looking at me. “No. It’s your room and I don’t want to owe you anything. I owe you too much now.” She gestured toward the linen jacket.
“You don’t owe me anything.”
“Yes, I do too. I would promise to pay you back for it, but I don’t know whether I’ll ever be able to.” There was a queer streak of stubborn honesty in her, I thought.
We stood there uncomfortably a little while longer. Then she turned to me and said, “Well, thank you for everything. Good-by.”
“Good-by,” I said.
She turned and walked down the steps and out into the traffic on the sidewalk, paused for a second as if undecided which way to turn, and then went on up the street. I watched her, feeling like hell for some reason, noticing how straight she held her shoulders and the clean, beautiful lines of her legs as she walked and the proud tilt of her head. She was a lovely girl and very proud and stubborn, and more alone than anyone else in the world, and she probably had about twenty dollars. She wouldn’t ever go home and she didn’t know any way to earn her living except the way she would probably wind up by earning it, and there was something too tough in her to let her cry.
Well, what the hell, I thought, it’s no skin off my nose. Am I supposed to be running a girls’ school? She got herself into it; let her worry about it. But did she? What about Lee? Well, what about Lee? It takes two to get into a mess like that. If she hadn’t been willing to string along, he couldn’t have got anywhere alone. Yeah, with her experience, she had a lot of chance against Lee, didn’t she?