The Beautiful and Damned - F. Scott Fitzgerald (best fiction books of all time .txt) 📗

I kept up the stubs in my checkbook pretty regular. Well, I went in there today to cash a check, and Halloran came up and told me they’d have to close my account. Too many bad checks, he said, and I never had more than five hundred to my credit⁠—and that only for a day or so at a time. And by God! What do you think he said then?”

“What?”

“He said this was a good time to do it because I didn’t have a damn penny in there!”

“You didn’t?”

“That’s what he told me. Seems I’d given these Bedros people a check for sixty for that last case of liquor⁠—and I only had forty-five dollars in the bank. Well, the Bedros people deposited fifteen dollars to my account and drew the whole thing out.”

In her ignorance Gloria conjured up a spectre of imprisonment and disgrace.

“Oh, they won’t do anything,” he assured her. “Bootlegging’s too risky a business. They’ll send me a bill for fifteen dollars and I’ll pay it.”

“Oh.” She considered a moment. “⁠—Well, we can sell another bond.”

He laughed sarcastically.

“Oh, yes, that’s always easy. When the few bonds we have that are paying any interest at all are only worth between fifty and eighty cents on the dollar. We lose about half the bond every time we sell.”

“What else can we do?”

“Oh, we’ll sell something⁠—as usual. We’ve got paper worth eighty thousand dollars at par.” Again he laughed unpleasantly. “Bring about thirty thousand on the open market.”

“I distrusted those ten percent investments.”

“The deuce you did!” he said. “You pretended you did, so you could claw at me if they went to pieces, but you wanted to take a chance as much as I did.”

She was silent for a moment as if considering, then:

“Anthony,” she cried suddenly, “two hundred a month is worse than nothing. Let’s sell all the bonds and put the thirty thousand dollars in the bank⁠—and if we lose the case we can live in Italy for three years, and then just die.” In her excitement as she talked she was aware of a faint flush of sentiment, the first she had felt in many days.

“Three years,” he said nervously, “three years! You’re crazy. Mr. Haight’ll take more than that if we lose. Do you think he’s working for charity?”

“I forgot that.”

“⁠—And here it is Saturday,” he continued, “and I’ve only got a dollar and some change, and we’ve got to live till Monday, when I can get to my broker’s.⁠ ⁠… And not a drink in the house,” he added as a significant afterthought.

“Can’t you call up Dick?”

“I did. His man says he’s gone down to Princeton to address a literary club or some such thing. Won’t be back till Monday.”

“Well, let’s see⁠—Don’t you know some friend you might go to?”

“I tried a couple of fellows. Couldn’t find anybody in. I wish I’d sold that Keats letter like I started to last week.”

“How about those men you play cards with in that Sammy place?”

“Do you think I’d ask them?” His voice rang with righteous horror. Gloria winced. He would rather contemplate her active discomfort than feel his own skin crawl at asking an inappropriate favor. “I thought of Muriel,” he suggested.

“She’s in California.”

“Well, how about some of those men who gave you such a good time while I was in the army? You’d think they might be glad to do a little favor for you.”

She looked at him contemptuously, but he took no notice.

“Or how about your old friend Rachael⁠—or Constance Merriam?”

“Constance Merriam’s been dead a year, and I wouldn’t ask Rachael.”

“Well, how about that gentleman who was so anxious to help you once that he could hardly restrain himself, Bloeckman?”

“Oh⁠—!” He had hurt her at last, and he was not too obtuse or too careless to perceive it.

“Why not him?” he insisted callously.

“Because⁠—he doesn’t like me any more,” she said with difficulty, and then as he did not answer but only regarded her cynically: “If you want to know why, I’ll tell you. A year ago I went to Bloeckman⁠—he’s changed his name to Black⁠—and asked him to put me into pictures.”

“You went to Bloeckman?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he demanded incredulously, the smile fading from his face.

“Because you were probably off drinking somewhere. He had them give me a test, and they decided that I wasn’t young enough for anything except a character part.”

“A character part?”

“The ‘woman of thirty’ sort of thing. I wasn’t thirty, and I didn’t think I⁠—looked thirty.”

“Why, damn him!” cried Anthony, championing her violently with a curious perverseness of emotion, “why⁠—”

“Well, that’s why I can’t go to him.”

“Why, the insolence!” insisted Anthony nervously, “the insolence!”

“Anthony, that doesn’t matter now; the thing is we’ve got to live over Sunday and there’s nothing in the house but a loaf of bread and a half-pound of bacon and two eggs for breakfast.” She handed him the contents of her purse. “There’s seventy, eighty, a dollar fifteen. With what you have that makes about two and a half altogether, doesn’t it? Anthony, we can get along on that. We can buy lots of food with that⁠—more than we can possibly eat.”

Jingling the change in his hand he shook his head. “No. I’ve got to have a drink. I’m so darn nervous that I’m shivering.” A thought struck him. “Perhaps Sammy’d cash a check. And then Monday I could rush down to the bank with the money.”

“But they’ve closed your account.”

“That’s right, that’s right⁠—I’d forgotten. I’ll tell you what: I’ll go down to Sammy’s and I’ll find somebody there who’ll lend me something. I hate like the devil to ask them, though.⁠ ⁠…” He snapped his fingers suddenly. “I know what I’ll do. I’ll hock my watch. I can get twenty dollars on it, and get it back Monday for sixty cents extra. It’s been hocked before⁠—when I was at Cambridge.”

He had put on his overcoat, and with a brief goodbye he started down the hall toward the outer door.

Gloria got to her feet. It had suddenly occurred to