Marry Me by John Updike Read Free Book Online Page A

that good enough?’
    ‘Whatever is possible will be fine,’ she said curtly. Their conversation was beginning to distract the man behind her from his own difficulties.
    Jerry tugged the money from her hand and irritably motioned her out of the line. ‘I might as well buy both the damn tickets. I don’t know what the hell we’re trying to establish.’ He looked the Newark-bound man full in the face and recited, ‘Travel by air, and swear.’ This was like him, this impudence; he was pleased to have people guess he was with a mistress.
    All the plastic chairs were occupied. A young Chinese sailor rose to offer her his seat, and she stepped across his duffel bag to take it. Usually she disliked being treated as weak, but now she was willing. She wished herself away. She concentrated into the Camus. The gun in his hand, the blinding light. The Arab in dungarees. Thewhiplike gunshot. The unreality. Jerry came to her with two yellow tickets and said, ‘What a mess. Apparently there aren’t any reservations to be had on anything to New York tonight; we’re all standbys. But they’re expecting word on an extra section any minute now. I’m sure you’ll get home by six.’
    ‘Shhh. You’re talking too loud.’
    ‘Too loud for what?’
    ‘Oh, never mind.’
    Chastened, he said, ‘I got these numbered boarding passes.’
    ‘What name did you put on them?’
    ‘Mine. O.K.?’
    She had to smile. ‘It seems illegal,’ she said, because this was so clearly what he felt.
    The loudspeaker left off a Muzak version of ‘Easter Parade’ and burbled unintelligibly. A fresh wave of weary travellers came down the ramp and washed up to the ticket counters. The personnel behind the counters, uniformed in aeronautic blue, seemed very young, and frightened. They stapled tickets with an exaggerated precision and answered questions in an emphatic way that reminded Sally of her own lies to Richard. ‘You lie like a man,’ he had once told her. ‘You pick an incredible story and keep repeating it.’ So Richard knew something about her that Jerry didn’t. She never lied to Jerry. This realization made him seem hopelessly innocent, helpless; she went to the counter herself, bypassing the lines of men. There must be some advantage to being a woman; it can’t be all waiting and wanting.
    The girl handling tickets was so young she had dared bleach her hair white; Sally felt haughty towards her, awoman above her. This child had no children, no married lover she could not marry. She had frosted her hair in play. ‘I must get home by six o’clock,’ Sally told her. But her voice came out fragile and shy, whereas the girl’s answering was professionally firm.
    ‘I’m very sorry, Miss,’ she said. ‘The next LaGuardia plane departs at four-fifteen. Standbys are advised to be at Gate Twenty-seven with their numbered boarding passes.’
    ‘But will we get on?’ Sally asked.
    ‘The next scheduled flight to LaGuardia is at four-fifteen,’ the girl repeated, stapling a ticket smartly.
    Jerry had come up behind Sally. ‘We were told there would be a section.’
    ‘We’re waiting for word on that, sir,’ the girl said. Her doll-like eyes, cleverly enlarged by the company’s official make-up, took in Jerry and Sally together but did not change expression. Sally wondered if she should say ‘we’ or ‘I’. Other people, overhearing the conversation and scenting preferred treatment, had begun to bunch behind them. ‘Hold your lines, please,’ the girl called, her voice rising. ‘Please do not get out of line.’ Suddenly Sally felt only sympathy for this girl: while she and Jerry had been making love, children had been compelled to assume management of the world. And now the grownups, returning from their selfish beds, were angry to find that the world had fallen apart. How greedy we all are, how pushing! Ashamed, Sally closed her eyes and wished she were herself a child. A child before her father failed to return. All