Free The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy Page B

the equivalent of what we call in Europe a dowry?” He said this perfectly seriously, and then broke off, puzzled to find me roaring with laughter.
    I howled and howled. In fact, I fell off the arm and into the sofa almost on top of him. “Oh, no, no, no,” I gasped. “This is too much.”
    “What is it?” he asked. He was getting worried.
    I tried to tell him three times and each time I collapsed. I finally pulled myself together.

    “Please forgive me, but I’ve never had to change my mind so often at such short notice in my whole life. It’s quite breathtaking. You see, first I thought you wanted my body, then I thought you wanted my love, then my
life
even, happily-ever-after and all that sort of thing, and now it turns out it is merely my money. Oh, Teddy, darling, thank you, thank you.” I was practically sobbing.
    “For what?” he asked patiently.
    “For restoring my cynicism. I was too young to lose it.”
    He laughed at that and I laughed. We both laughed. We shared a moment of mutual omniscience; we had each other’s number.
    “Delicious,” he murmured. “My dear, you are delicious. There is no one quite like you.” And we smiled at each other.
    Now here is what gets me. With anybody else I know, it would have all ended in a lot of civilized laughter and exchanges of everlasting friendships. But not with me. I may be carping but I don’t seem to be let off anything; if a bad time is to be had, I
have
it.
    So what happened was, he stood up and took me by the shoulders and the next thing I knew, instead of being chastely kissed on the forehead and decorously wished a good night, I was being savagely pressed against his chest and peremptorily ordered to get into bed.
    “Hey, wait a minute,” I protested. “Now just take it easy——” And in less time than it takes to tell we were at it tooth and claw. Or rather I was at it tooth and claw. He was growing violent and it was becoming harder and harder to defend myself. The strange thing was that we were still more or less
laughing
through all this, until suddenly as his hand, ice-cold like that damned ice cube, slid under my dress, I panicked and bit him very hard on the nearest available piece of flesh. It turned out to be his ear.
    To my amazement, and no doubt his credit, he didn’t cry out in pain. He fell softly against me for a moment, his arms limp at his side, and then he straightened up. He appeared to be thinking, at least that’s what I could have sworn, but before I knew what was happening he had struck me across the face. Then,cool as a cucumber, he walked toward the door and held it open for me.
    I didn’t quite see why I, who had done nothing wrong, so to speak, who at any rate most certainly hadn’t started all this, should wind up crushed and disheveled, with a torn dress, a burning cheek and lipstick all over my face, while he, the real culprit, was suavely ushering me out, and I strove to correct this injustice.
    “Now that you’re free,” I said on my way to the door, “you must come to America. I’m sure you can fortune-hunt on a much larger scale there than you’ve been able to over here. Only you’d better start quickly before you turn into just another dirty old man.”
    The blow commonly described as below the belt really went home. “You little slut, get out,” he shouted, his face all awry, “and take care. Nobody insults me like that and gets away with it. You will see. I can promise you.”
    With these words singing in my ears as I felt my way down the stairs, too discouraged to find the minuteries, I reflected wearily that it was not easy to be a Woman in these stirring times. I said it then and I say it now: it just isn’t our century.

FOUR
    A FTER ALL THAT , getting down to work seemed like a pretty good idea.
    Frankly, there didn’t seem to be too much else left to do. “Fame is the spur,” I kept saying to myself, “that the something something doth raise, dot, dot, to scorn delights and live