Читать книгу Girl Meets Body - Jack Iams - Страница 4

Chapter Two

Not Even A Haystack

“Any champagne left?” asked Sybil.

“A spot,” said Tim. He lifted the bottle out of the now melted ice and poured the faintly fizzing remains into the goblets. Sybil thrust a bare arm from beneath the green quilt and raised the glass toward him.

“Here’s to reunion,” she said.

“Here’s to it.”

“Lots to be said for it.”

“Lots.”

“Almost worth the separation.”

“Well, no.”

“I said ‘almost.’”

She smiled at him over the rim of the glass. Her face and shoulders were creamy white above the green covering, against the duller white of the pillows. It was a face that might have been of classic beauty if the nose hadn’t been a touch too short, the mouth a shade too rounded, the eyes much too mischievous. Such a face Mr. Petty might have produced if he had ever tried to copy a bust of Pallas Athene. As for her hair, it was smoothly dark, although in tumbled disorder at the moment. She pushed it back as she sipped her champagne.

Tim sipped his, too. He felt fine, so fine that he almost forgot about the bad news he had for her. He was sitting on the foot of the bed with a gray Army bathrobe draped around his lanky frame. He had a long, lean face, which had been sunburned and hardened by the past few years, and which in repose was solemn. When he grinned, though, the solemnity turned into a pleasant boyishness, better suited to his rumpled brown hair. Unlike Sybil’s, it was always rumpled.

“Well, Mrs. L,” he said, “how do you like the United States?”

“Is that where I am? All I know is that I’m with you. That’s all I want to know.”

“A pretty sentiment.”

“True, too.”

Tim glanced at her. He was smiling, but there was an anxious little wrinkle in his forehead. “I hope it’s true,” he said. “It’ll make things easier.”

“What sort of things? Maybe I spoke too soon.”

Tim swallowed and said, “Housing. We’ve no place to live.”

“Oh,” said Sybil. “I thought you meant we were going to jail together or something of that sort.”

“We’d be better off in jail.”

“Don’t be so gloomy, darling. With you, I’d live in a haystack.”

“A vacant haystack,” said Tim, “would be harder to find than a needle inside one. You’d have to buy the needle, too.”

“Then why don’t we stay right here? Right here in bed.”

“We can. For five days.”

“They’d be five lovely days,” said Sybil dreamily. “Something to look back on.”

“No doubt,” said Tim, “but I don’t want to look back on them from a park bench.”

Sybil sat up and reached for a cigarette. “Oh, dear,” she said, “I suppose we’ve got to be serious about this.”

“Yes,” said Tim, “and you’re not helping matters by popping out from under that quilt. Get back.”

Sybil wiggled her shoulders wickedly as he lit her cigarette and one for himself. “All right,” she said, slipping lazily back onto the pillows, “let’s be serious. To begin with, where is it we can’t find a place to live?”

“Nowhere. Anywhere. Maybe you’d better rephrase the question.”

“I mean, where would we live if we could find a place to live where we were going to live?”

“That’s the last time I’ll ask you to rephrase a question. I think I get the general idea, though. And the answer is that it doesn’t much matter.”

“But don’t you have to be near that college in the Midlands where you teach children to put mustaches on the Mona Lisa?”

“Midwest, not Midlands. And we needn’t live there if we don’t want to.”

“Lumme,” said Sybil, “I’ve either married into the unemployed or the idle rich.”

“It’s like this,” said Tim. “I could go back to my old teaching job tomorrow if I wanted to, but even there the housing situation is murder. One of my confreres is living in a squash court.”

“Does he like squash?”

“Not any more. And besides, even if we could find a wigwam out there, I’d still be a lowly instructor. Which, financially speaking, is very, very lowly. On the other hand, if between now and next fall, I can wangle myself a Ph.D. degree, I’d stand a pretty fair chance of landing an assistant professorship someplace.”

“Would I have to call you Doctor?”

“Oh, sure. But you got used to calling me Captain, didn’t you?”

“More or less. How does one go about wangling a Ph.D.? Is there a black market in them?”

“Probably. However, I propose to go through the usual procedure of writing a dissertation. Something hefty. The fallacy of nationalism in the one world of art, something like that.”

“Most impressive,” said Sybil. “Shall I be able to help you?”

“Yes. But not with no clothes on.”

“Tsk, tsk. Double negative. And from a man about to write a Ph.D. thesis, too.”

“In order to write this thesis, aside from grammar,” said Tim, “I’ll need a desk with a roof over it. What I’d like would be someplace in the country, not too far from a city or at least from a public library. But try and find it.”

“Even if we did find it,” said Sybil, “how would we eat? I hate to be mercenary, but I’ve been doing some awfully slim eating the last few years.”

Tim grinned at her. “I’ve got three months’ terminal leave pay and a couple of penny banks I managed to fill before the war. That ought to see us through the thesis, at least. Afterward, maybe we’ll wind up in a nice little house on the edge of some college campus with built-in bookcases and an open fireplace.”

“And I’ll have other professors’ wives to tea and flirt with the undergraduates.”

“Any undergraduate caught flirting with you,” said Tim, “will be automatically flunked.”

“Gracious,” said Sybil, “that sounds dreadful. Do you do it with a cat-o’-nine-tails?”

“It depends. But let’s not dwell on the rosy future. The question before the meeting is, do we dwell at all?”

“So what do we do about it? Aside from lying in bed and drinking champagne. Not that I’m complaining, mind you.”

“Well,” said Tim, “I’ve got a car. Not much of a car, but a car.”

“But, darling!” cried Sybil, sitting up again, “how marvelous. You know, people in England don’t just have cars. Cars impress us the way titles do you. And they’re much more useful.”

“And much easier to pick up second-hand.”

“Possibly. So we have a car. How thrilling. And what do we do with it?”

“Well, I thought we might drive around the country for a few days and see what we can find in the way of a desk and a roof.”

“And a bed.”

“Mm, yes. Maybe we could use the desk, in a pinch.”

“I hope it’s the roll-top kind. Wouldn’t it be cozy?”

“Sounds like a song title. Rolling in the roll-top. Anyway, that’s the plan.”

“And a lovely plan it is, my sweet. When do we start?”

“Whenever you like. I thought it might be fun to have an evening on the town first.”

“Oh, wonderful. A real bang-up binge.”

“Why not? A fellow doesn’t meet a new wife every day.”

“You might think it was every day,” murmured Sybil with a trace of a pout, “considering the distance between us.”