Galatea by James M. Cain Read Free Book Online Page A

changed when this subject came up, and how even Bill, much as he seemed to love her, never said any different. I studied her, and all of a sudden remembered a guy I had trained, who also had a taste that had to be treated. I said: “You mean, Dr. Semmes made tests? That you wanted kept from Marge? That you rang him just now, after Bill and Marge left, to get the answer in private? Is that it, Mrs. Val?”
    “What do you mean, tests?”
    “You’re throwing sugar, aren’t you?”
    “Sugar? Sugar? ”
    “In your water, sugar.”
    “You dare say that to me?”
    “I do, yes.”
    “Duke, you may go.”
    “I won’t.”
    She reached for the phone, which I had put beside her, but I covered it with my hand and set it out of her reach. She started to cuss, sounding much like Bill, and I hardly knew the sweet person I loved so deep. She asked: “Are you by any chance insinuating that I have the diabetes?”
    I told her, quite slow, taking my time: “I’m not. I’m insinuating a whole lot worse. At your age, which Bill says is twenty-three, you have, or should have, a hundred per cent normal pancreas, able to supply the juice, or insulin as it’s called, for a normal woman. A woman of one hundred and twenty pounds. Short as you are, one hundred and ten. But it cracks up supplying insulin to four hundred pounds of blubber. I didn’t say diabetes, but the windup’ll be the same. Lady, you’re going to die.”
    “I don’t weigh four hundred pounds!”
    “What do you weigh?”
    “None of your damned business!”
    “Over two hundred and sixty, though. That was the first thing I noticed, when I got the first aid from your bathroom—the pair of identical scales, tucked under the cabinet. Because two hundred and sixty is as far as one scale goes, and to weigh, you had to have two. I bet that was a sight, you standing sprat-legged, weighing yourself by halves.”
    She got so furious she cried, but I kept driving them in. I said: “As a matter of fact, you’re dying now. Your heart nearly went out when you fell in the hole. It’s laboring now, supplying blood to all that lard, though from your looks I would say it was normal. Your pancreas can’t take it, your ankles are near the end, and your kidneys will make the K. O. One of these days you’ll topple on your face, and Mr. Val will go around bragging of the custom-made casket he got you, as of course no regular casket would fit.”
    For some reason that reached her, and she moaned and closed her eyes. Then: “I’ve known I must die, I’m resigned. I do the little I can, my mite of good on this earth, until I hear the call. I’ve asked you: isn’t that enough? Do I everlastingly have to be told? Can’t I die in peace? How often do I have to say it? It’s glandular! It’s an affliction! There’s no cure , and—”
    “It’s not glandular.”
    “ ... What? ”
    “You heard me, I think.”
    “And what, then, is it?”
    “You. You and your dishonest soul. You, that haven’t the guts to say no to your gut.”
    “Listen, I may be weak, and we’re right back where we started. If it’s not glandular, why can’t they find any cure?”
    “They can. They have.”
    “Funny they wouldn’t tell me.”
    “They have, I think. As Dr. Semmes tried to tell you today. But you can’t hear them, can you? You kid yourself they may mean pie, but not ice cream—oh no.”
    “And what is this wonderful cure?”
    “Don’t eat so goddam much.”
    She turned white, not at the words, but the sense, at the fear of not having food. I wouldn’t have been human then if I didn’t go get her lunch. I heated her up two take-outs, warmed her ice cream, found some chocolate sauce, melted it, poured it on top of the cream, found maraschino cherries, put them on top, so I had a tray that looked like something in movies. I set it beside her and said: “There you are, meat, cream, sugar, everything. You’re trying, as you lie there, to make yourself heave it at me, but with the