Page 123 - tender-is-the-night

‘My business is to tear them apart.’
‘When you get drunk you don’t tear anything apart
except yourself,’ she said, cold now, and frightened and un-
confident. The station was filling but no one she knew came.
After a moment her eyes fell gratefully on a tall girl with
straw hair like a helmet, who was dropping letters in the
mail slot.
‘A girl I have to speak to, Abe. Abe, wake up! You fool!’
Patiently Abe followed her with his eyes. The woman
turned in a startled way to greet Nicole, and Abe recog-
nized her as some one he had seen around Paris. He took
advantage of Nicole’s absence to cough hard and retchingly
into his handkerchief, and to blow his nose loud. The morn-
ing was warmer and his underwear was soaked with sweat.
His fingers trembled so violently that it took four matches
to light a cigarette; it seemed absolutely necessary to make
his way into the buffet for a drink, but immediately Nicole
returned.
‘That was a mistake,’ she said with frosty humor. ‘After
begging me to come and see her, she gave me a good snub-
bing. She looked at me as if I were rotted.’ Excited, she did a
little laugh, as with two fingers high in the scales. ‘Let peo-
ple come to you.’
Abe recovered from a cigarette cough and remarked:
‘Trouble is when you’re sober you don’t want to see any-
body, and when you’re tight nobody wants to see you.’
‘Who, me?’ Nicole laughed again; for some reason the
late encounter had cheered her.
‘No—me.’

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