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

character you got, what you’re going to do is eat it. Aren’t you?”
    “And I thought I had a friend.”
    “Friend? What you want is a pallbearer.”
    She started to cry, and I squatted there, to be plastered with goo if that was what she wanted. She didn’t do any plastering. She ate the last slice, the last crumb, the last drop.
    I took the tray, came back, and asked if there’d be something else. She said I could pack, as she’d have to tell her husband of the things I had said, and he’d have to let me go. I felt myself go numb, as that threw me back to the officer, my confession, and what all that might mean. I hated to eat her crow, but after some seconds, when the scare of the bars had done its work, I did. I said: “I have talked very plain, but as you said just now, we once said we were friends, and I spoke for your own good. If you’re bound you must tell Mr. Val, there’s nothing I can say, but before you do, I’d like to tell you more—about myself—my days in the ring—what I learned there—so you’ll know I can help you—if you’ll only let me.”
    But her face only got meaner, and, fear or no fear, you can take just so much. I said: “How’d you like to go to hell?” Then I flung out, went to the cottage, and packed.
    But the thought of her ankles rode me, especially on certain angles, like her being helpless to get to the bath-room, and maybe needing to go, so I went back, as though to borrow the phone. I said, if Mr. Val had to be told, I’d rather do it myself, and picked up the receiver to dial. She said: “Duke, will you put that down? And sit here, where we can talk?”
    “I apologize.”
    “I had it coming, and more.”
    I put the receiver back and moved the phone where she could reach it. I pulled a chair over and sat down facing her. She touched her tongue to her teeth, said: “I have that taste again. Not sweet—just a queer, gray sensation. And my ears ring a little. As though frogs were here.”
    “The sugar in that sundae—”
    “I know, I know.” And then: “Part of it’s lying, Duke, to myself, and taking it out on you. But part of it’s fear. Of not having the food I so desperately need.”
    “You so desperately want .”
    “It’s some little bit need.”
    “It’s not.”
    “All right, then—”
    It must have been a minute before she could make herself whisper: “Want.” Then, after another minute: “Now tell me. About yourself.”
    “I couldn’t hit.”
    “I know. Not that I’d want you to.”
    “I couldn’t hit, but I wouldn’t give up, and that spells punk, or, in other words, sparring partner. But then I got the idea I’d make that racket pay. So I did. I trained guys for title fights, guys that had to make weight. You understand about that?”
    “Not very well, I’m afraid.”
    “They got divisions, each a different weight, like fly, bantam, feather, light, welter, middle, light heavy, and heavy. Each division carries a title, worth plenty of dough. But some guys, who’d be rich at 160, but are bums at 175, are like you. They can’t, or think they can’t, make the weight. That’s where I came in. I talked to doctors, read in libraries, listened to stuff, and got it down to a science. I was the guy, out there in the West, who could take that 175-pound bum, work on him five or six weeks, and make him a champ at 160. I had all the work I could do. ... Listen, stupid, for you I could do the same.”
    “I haven’t the—guts, you called it.”
    “You think you’re the only one?”
    I grabbed her shoulder, shook it, and said: “Every fatso on earth is like that from not having guts—but my business was giving them guts. I know how. Don’t you want to step out of that grease? Don’t you want to be free of it? To walk without folding up? To run? To look like other people? To be able to go in a store, see a dress that you like—”
    “Shut up.”
    “You finish it up.”
    “You got a sireen song, Mr. Webster.”
    There’s such