Boys and Girls Together by William Saroyan Read Free Book Online Page B

stopped so you could sleep, didn’t I? Of course I love you. But don’t you love anything else?’
    â€˜
Than
what?’
    â€˜Than me or you or whatever it is that you keep asking all the time?’
    â€˜I love you and that’s all.’
    â€˜If you love somebody, you love other things, too, don’t you? You love everything, don’t you?’
    â€˜Not me. Just you, just me, just Johnny, just Rosey, but mainly you, or mainly me, or you
and
me. Isn’t that what it comes to?’
    â€˜Yes, I guess it is, at that. Even so, I never saw a place like this before. A man could look for a place like this his whole life and never find it.’
    â€˜It
is
nice, but I’m hungry.’
    â€˜We’ll eat at the next town. But don’t rush me. I want to stay here a while. I like it here. I don’t suppose I could buy this cove.’
    â€˜Would you like to buy the ocean, too?’
    â€˜Yes, I would.’
    â€˜And the sun. Would you like to buy that, too?’
    â€˜Yes, the sun, too.’
    â€˜Well, when you get to Hollywood, just go out and meet the clever agents who are always talking so big and sit down with them and let them be clever for you, so you can get a lot of money and buy anything you want.’
    â€˜If money could do anything like that for anybody, I’d go after it harder.’
    â€˜Are you trying to tell me to be satisfied with the ocean and the sun? I’ll bet that’s what you’re trying to do, and I thought I was kidding
you
.’
    â€˜I’m not kidding. I’d like to buy this cove, that’s all.’
    â€˜It doesn’t belong to anybody anyway. You can have as much of it as you like any time you like.’
    â€˜It’s the nicest place I’ve ever been. I wish I could stay here.’
    â€˜Well, you can’t.’
    â€˜I know.’
    â€˜I’ll gather some, too.’
    She gathered a couple of dozen small ones, but they weren’t very good because she hadn’t had any experience with pebbles and didn’t know what to look for. The ones that were immortal were the ones to look for, the ones colour and shape
said
were immortal. The ones that were art, that were sculpture, that were whole.
    She was a good girl, though, she just didn’t know about pebbles. She wanted him to like the ones she’d gathered, so he did, he liked them, he told her they were great; she hadn’t gone back to the car and turned on the radio, she had put up with it, she had tried, she was great sometimes, sometimes she could be something made out of light and time and water, like one of the pebbles, sometimes she could shut up and go along, tag along with him even when her common sense toldher he was going nowhere, sometimes she thought about things and decided there might be something to them at that, nothing much but something, a little something, and she looked fine, she looked younger than her few years, sleepy and grave and troubled and thoughtful, the way the little girl always looked when she went to sleep.
    â€˜Are they really good ones?’
    â€˜They are.’
    â€˜What makes the good ones?’
    â€˜Picking them up. Noticing them and picking them up and keeping them, that’s what does it.’
    Now, in the upper flat he put the big porous brown rock aside and took up the papers that were the work he was doing. It was desperate work and it stank. He put the work back on the table and went to the window to look down at the street. The street stank, too. He just didn’t know where to start. What he wanted was money. What they needed was money. What they didn’t have was money. What they had was the kids and debts.
    He dialled the number of the telephone downstairs and when the woman got on he said: ‘I’ll tell you what. I’ve just figured but how we can get hold of all the money we need. We can sell the kids.’
    â€˜Do you love me?’ the woman