much."
"You're saying it, not me."
"How's business, George."
"Depressingly full of insult."
"O you poor ruthless thing, let me get something cold to put on your head."
"I think Til be going. There's no point having you irresponsibly get at me. As regards cost, I'm indifferent."
"So funny how you changed. You must have been the tightest guy I ever met. Remember the time -"
"Now shut up."
"Gee."
The time was a dance. Not long after I met her on the train. I was leaning out with my hand to touch her on the eight o'clock summer evening like to take a handful of that brown thatch. She said don't touch me. She saw what this remark did to my face. She said O touch me, but later tonight when the dance is over, I don't want to look mussed. Touch me then, then I'll love being touched. She said people will have to see me tonight, I want to look well groomed, just that I hate being touched, well like a meal on the table before everyone is ready to eat, you don't want me to feel all tampered with, don't you want to save it all for later. I took my hand away, and wore it in my pocket. I went standing around the dance, along the edges when the couples glided by and she smiled over the shoulders. The music stopped, she ran right across the floor, grabbed me, hands on the lapel and said we're all going road housing and wild and ending up at the country club, it'll all be crazy hitting the golfballs in the lake, and crazy when we get really crazy. I put my other hand in my pocket and was wearing them both there, she said what's the matter, I said I didn't know, she said you do, I said it's expensive a night like this. She just said there's Claude. And Claude never wilted at expense, just went into his thin folder and took out a single note of massive denomination. I should have turned then for home. But I couldn't because she would have gone with them and what if the night were crazy and she could say when she was a meal ready to eat, grab me by my brown thatch. I went in an-c other car, she was a plaything for the crowd. At the top of a table suggesting all the songs. Dripping candle wax on Claude's hair and he worshipped her for it and it just made him look like the victim of some crime following after of course the crime his father and mother committed getting him. She made him open his mouth and she dripped it down his throat. I thought she was carrying my being a cheapskate too far. I got up, walked across the maple, stepped through, and on the flag stones looked out at the shadows of the hills and down over the trees to the long lake. Hands flat out on the wall and she came out and saw me and thought I was vomiting. I said I ought to be. She said you have no rights on me, I'm not your possession, these are my friends, I've known them most of my life, if anything they have more claim on me than you have, but if you'd stopped your little act of silence and sulking and joined in the fun or if you just said you had no money, that you couldn't afford, or said something like that, why wouldn't I understand, I know some poor people too, but they don't mind spending money. She stepped back, put her hand under my chin and lifted it up. She said look at me, I want you to look at me, I'm commanding you to look at me, now smile, smile, bigger, O.K. you can take a handful of my brown thatch.
And today ten years later and three days before silent night holy night when business volume is at a peak and downstairs a loud bellowing noise in the cellar with four kids pounding on the pipes. And Shirl swirling with her new cocktail dress. And I told her to shut up, and wham she goes all silent. My how things have changed. There was reason for my being the way I was. When I was young. When Shirl one weekend fell for some big blond brute who she said lifted her up and kissed her against a wall with her feet dangling. But we had got