people in their best clothes walk on the pavement past the row of worn brick homes; are they walking on air? Their clothes, they put on their best clothes: he clings to the thought giddily; it seems a visual proof of the unseen world.
“Well, if you do what are you doing here?” she asks.
“Why not? You think you’re Satan or somebody?”
This stops her a moment, standing there with her comb, before she laughs. “Well you go right ahead if it makes you happy.”
He presses her. “Why don’t you believe anything?”
“You’re kidding.”
“No. Doesn’t it ever, at least for a second, seem obvious to you?”
“God, you mean? No. It seems obvious just the other way. All the time.”
“Well now if God doesn’t exist, why does anything?”
“Why? There’s no why to it. Things just are.” She stands before the mirror, and her comb pulling back on her hair pulls her puffy upper lip up so her wet teeth show grayly.
“That’s not the way I feel about you,” he says, “that you just are.”
“Hey, why don’t you get some clothes on instead of just lying there giving me the Word?”
This, and her turning, hair swirling, to say it, stir him. “Come here,” he asks. The idea of making it while the churches are full excites him.
“No,” Ruth says. She is really a little sore. His believing in God grates against her.
“You don’t like me now?”
“What does it matter to you?”
“You know it does.”
“Get out of my bed.”
“I guess I owe you fifteen more dollars.”
“All you owe me is getting the hell out.”
“What! Leave you all alone?” He says this as with comical speed, while she stands there startled rigid, he jumps from bed and gathers up some of his clothes and ducks into the bathroom and closes the door. When he comes out, in underclothes, he says, still clowning, “You don’t like me any more,” and moves sadly to where his trousers are neatly laid on the chair. While he was out of the room she made the bed.
“I like you enough,” she says in a preoccupied voice, tugging the bedspread smooth.
“Enough for what?”
“Enough.”
“Why do you like me?”
“ ‘Cause you’re bigger than I am.” She moves to the next corner and tugs. “Boy that used to gripe hell out of me, the way these little women everybody thinks are so cute grab all the big men.”
“They have something,” he tells her. “They seem easier to get to.”
She laughs and says, “I guess that’s right.”
He pulls up his trousers and buckles the belt. “Why else do you like me?”
She looks at him. “Shall I tell you?”
“Tell me.”
“ ‘Cause you haven’t given up. ‘Cause in your stupid way you’re still fighting.”
He loves hearing this; pleasure spins along his nerves, making him feel very tall, and he grins. But the American protest of modesty is instinctive with him, and “The will to achievement” glides out of his mouth mockingly.
“That poor old bastard,” she says. “He really is a bastard too.”
“Hey, I’ll tell you what,” Rabbit says. “I’ll run out and get some stuff at that grocery store you can cook for our lunch.”
“Say, you settle right in, don’t you?”
“Why? Were you going to meet somebody?”
“No, I don’t have anybody.”
“Well, then. You said last night you liked to cook.”
“I said I used to.”
“Well, if you used to you still do. What shall I get?”
“How do you know the store’s open?”
“Isn’t it? Sure it is. Those little stores make all their money on Sundays, what with the supermarkets.” He goes to the window and looks up at the corner. Sure, the door of the place opens and a man comes out with a newspaper.
“Your shirt’s filthy,” she says behind him.
“I know.” He moves away from the windowlight. “It’s Tothero’s shirt. I got to get some clothes. But let me get food now. What shall I get?”
“What do you like?” she asks.
The thing about her is, she’s good-natured. He knew it the second he saw her standing by the parking meters. He could just tell from the soft way her belly looked. With women, you keep bumping against them, because they want different things, they’re a different race. Either they give, like a plant, or scrape, like a stone. In all the green world nothing feels as good as a woman’s good nature. The pavement kicks under his feet as he runs to the grocery store in his dirty shirt. What do you like? He has her. He knows he has her.