It annoys Rabbit that Tothero shows no interest in him except as a partner on a joyride. “I should have gone to work today,” he says in a pointed voice, as if blaming the old man.
“What do you do?”
“I demonstrate a kitchen gadget called the MagiPeel Peeler in five-and-dime stores.”
“A noble calling,” Tothero says, and turns from the window. “Splendid, Harry. You’re dressed at last.”
“Is there a comb anywhere, Mr. Tothero? I ought to use the can.”
Under their feet the men in the Sunshine Athletic Association laugh and catcall at some foolishness. Rabbit pictures passing among them and asks, “Say, should everybody see me?”
Tothero becomes indignant, as he used to now and then at practice, when everybody was just fooling around the basket and not going into the drills. “What are you afraid of, Harry? That poor little Janice Springer? You overestimate people. Nobody cares what you do. Now we’ll just go down there and don’t be too long in the toilet. And I haven’t heard any thanks from you for all I’ve done for you, and all I am doing.” He takes the comb stuck in the brush bristles and gives it to Harry.
A dread of marring his freedom blocks the easy gesture of expressing gratitude. Rabbit pronounces “Thanks” thin-lipped.
They go downstairs. Contrary to what Tothero had promised, all of the men—old men, mostly, but not very old, so that their impotence has a nasty vigor—look up with interest at him. Insanely, Tothero introduces him repeatedly: “Fred, this is my finest boy, a wonderful basketball player, Harry Angstrom, you probably remember his name from the papers, he twice set a county record, in 1950 and then he broke it in 1951, a wonderful accomplishment.”
“Is that right, Marty?”
“Harry, an honor to meet you.”
Their alert colorless eyes, little dark smears like their mouths, feed on the strange sight of him and send acid impressions down to be digested in their disgusting big beer-tough stomachs. Rabbit sees that Tothero is a fool to them, and is ashamed of his friend and of himself. He hides in the lavatory. The paint is worn off the toilet seat and the washbasin is stained by the hot-water faucet’s rusty tears; the walls are oily and the towel-rack empty. There is something terrible in the height of the tiny ceiling: a square yard of a dainty metal pattern covered with cobwebs in which a few white husks of insects are suspended. His depression deepens, becomes a kind of paralysis; he walks out and rejoins Tothero limping and stiffly grimacing, and they leave the place in a dream. He feels affronted, vaguely invaded, when Tothero gets into his car. But, just as in a dream he never stops to question, Rabbit slides in behind the wheel and, in the renewed relation of his arms and legs to the switches and pedals, puts on again the mantle of power. His wet-combed hair feels stiff on his head.
He says sharply, “So you think I should’ve drunk with Janice.”
“Do what the heart commands,” Tothero says. “The heart is our only guide.” He sounds weary and far away.
“Into Brewer?”
There is no answer.
Rabbit drives up the alley, coming to Potter Avenue, where the water from the ice plant used to run down. He goes right, away from Wilbur Street, where his apartment is, and two more turns bring him into Central Street heading around the mountain to Brewer. On the left, land drops away into a chasm floored by the slick still width of the Running Horse River; on the right, gasoline stations glow, twirlers flicker on strings, spotlights protest.
As the town thins, Tothero’s tongue loosens. “The ladies we’re going to meet, now Harry, I have no conception of what the other one will be like, but I know you’ll be a gentleman. And I guarantee you’ll like my friend. She is a remarkable girl, Harry, with seven strikes against her from birth, but she’s done a remarkable thing.”
“What?”
“She’s come to grips. Isn’t that the whole secret, Harry; to come to grips? It makes me happy, happy and humble, to have, as I do, this very tenuous association with her. Harry?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you realize, Harry, that a young woman has hair on every part of her body?”
“I hadn’t thought about it.” Distaste, like an involuntary glandular secretion, has stained his throat.
“Do,” Tothero says. “Do think about it. They are monkeys, Harry. Women are monkeys.”