The Grifters by Jim Thompson Read Free Book Online

at the corners, seeming to set a pattern for her eyes, her mouth, her brows, and the tips of her short bobbed hair. All her features had an amusing turnedup look, and no amount of inner solemnity could conquer it. In fact, the more solemn she was, the more determinedly severe, the greater was the effect of suppressed laughter: a child playing at being a woman.
    Entering the cafeteria, she moved straight to the long serving counter. Blushing self-consciously; careful to avoid looking at anyone who might be looking her way. Several times, here and elsewhere, she had been drawn into joining other diners. And the experience had been painfully awkward. The men, interns and technicians, made jokes which were beyond her limited idiom, so that she never knew quite what her response should be. As for the other nurses, they were nice enough; they wanted to be friendly. But there was a great gulf between them which only time could bridge. She did not talk or think or act as they did, and they seemed to take her ways as a criticism of theirs.
    Carol took a tray and silverware from the serving counter, and studied the steamy expanse of food. Carefully, weighing each item against the other, she made her selections.
    Potatoes and gravy were eight cents. Then the twoorder would be fifteen, yes? A penny less.
    "The two-order-?" The fat counter woman laughed. "Oh, you mean a double?"
    "A double, yes. It is fifteen?"
    The woman hesitated, looked around conspiratorially. "Tell you what, honey. We'll make it the same price as a single; hmm? I'll just go a little bit heavy with the spoon."
    "You can do this?" Carol's turned-up eyes rounded with awe. "It would not cause trouble?"
    "For me? Hah! I own this joint, honey."
    Carol guessed that that made it all right. It would not be stealing. Her conscience comfortable, she also accepted the two extra sausages which the woman buried beneath her order of knockwurst and sauerkraut.
    She was hesitating at the dessert section, about to decide that she could have a strudel in view of her other economies, when she heard the voices back down the line: the fat woman talking to another attendant.
    "… Kosher Kid can really put it away, can't she? "
    " When she gets it for nothin sure. That's how them kikes get ahead ."
    Carol froze for a moment. Then, stiffly, she moved on, paying her check and carrying her tray to a table in a distant corner of the room. She began to eat, methodically; forcing down the suddenly tasteless food until it once again became tasteful and desirable.
    That was the way one had to do. To do the best one could, and accept things as they were. Usually, they did not seem so bad after a while; if they were not actually good, then they became so by virtue of the many things that were worse. Almost everything was relatively good. Eating was better than starving, living better than dying.
    Even a simulated friendliness was better than none at all. People had to care-at least a little-to pretend. Her own kith and kind, immigrants like herself, had not always done that.
    She had come to the United States under the auspices of relatives, an aunt and uncle who had fled Austria before the anschluss . Now well-to-do, they had taken her into their home and given her probationary status as a daughter. But with certain unstated stipulations: that she become one with them, that she live as they lived, without regard to how she had lived before. And Carol could not do that."
    The ritual dining, the numerous sets of dishes, each to be used only for a certain kind of food, were almost offensive to her. So much waste in a world filled with want! Contrariwise, it seem foolish to fast in the midst of abundance.
    She was repelled by the bearded, pink-mouthed Shiddem for all his Judaic learning. To her he seemed a parasite, who should be forced to work as others did. She was shocked to find stupidity masquerading as pride-or what she thought of as stupidity: the imperviousness to a new language, and a new and