Free Idiots First by Bernard Malamud Page B

momentarily inattentive, vaguely looking around at the people in the bar.
    â€œHow about you?” he asked.
    â€œIn what ways?”
    â€œHow is it you started college so comparatively late?”
    She finished her drink. “I never wanted to go when I graduated high school. Instead I worked a couple of years, then I joined the Wacs.” She fell silent.
    He asked if she wanted him to order another drink.
    â€œNot right away.” Mary Lou’s eyes focused on his face. “First I want to tell you something about myself. Do you want to hear it?”
    â€œYes, if you want to tell me.”
    â€œIt’s about my life,” Mary Lou said. “When I was in the Wacs I met this guy, Ray A. Miller, a T-5 from Providence,
Rhode Island, and we got hitched in secret in Las Vegas. He was a first-class prick.”
    Cronin gazed at her, wondering if she had had one too many. He considered suggesting they leave now but Mary Lou, sitting there solidly, smoking the last cigarette in her pack, told Cronin what she had started out to.
    â€œI call him that word because that’s what he was. He married me just to live easy off me. He talked me into doing what he wanted, and I was too goddamn stupid to say no, because at that time I loved him. After we left the service-he set me up in this flea-bitten three-room apartment in San Francisco, where I was a call girl. He took the dough and I got the shit.”
    â€œCall girl?” Cronin almost groaned.
    â€œA whore, if you want me to say it.”
    Cronin was overwhelmed. He felt a momentary constricting fright and a strange uneasy jealousy, followed by a sense of disappointment and unexpected loss.
    â€œI’m sorry,” he said. Her leg was tense against his but he let his stay though it seemed to him it trembled. His cigarette ash broke, and while brushing it off his thigh, Cronin managed to withdraw his leg from hers. Her face was impassive.
    Mary Lou slowly fixed her bun, removing a large number of hairpins and placing them thickly back again.
    â€œI suppose you have a bad opinion of me now?” she said to Cronin, after she had fixed her hair.
    He said he had no opinion at all, though he knew he had. “I’m just sorry it happened.”
    She looked at him intently. “One thing I want you to know is I don’t have that kind of a life any more. I’m not
interested in it. I’m interested in taking it as it comes or goes but not for money any more. That won’t happen to me again.”
    Cronin said he was surprised it ever had.
    â€œIt was just a job I had to do,” Mary Lou explained. “That’s how I thought about it. I kept on it because I was afraid Ray would walk out on me. He always knew what he wanted but I didn’t. He was a strong type and I wasn’t.”
    â€œDid he walk out?”
    She nodded. “We were having fights about what to do with the dough. He said he was going to start some kind of a business but he never did.”
    â€œThat’s when you quit?”
    She lowered her eyes. “Not all at once. I stayed for a while to get some money to go to college with. I didn’t stay long and I haven’t got enough, so I have to work in the cafeteria.”
    â€œWhen did you finally quit?”
    â€œIn three months, when I got arrested.”
    He asked about that.
    â€œMy apartment was raided by two San Francisco bulls. But it was my first offense so the judge paroled me. I’m paroled now and for one more year.”
    â€œI guess you’ve been through the mill,” Cronin said, toying with his glass.
    â€œI sure have,” said Mary Lou, “but I’m not the same person I once was. I learned a lot.”
    â€œWould you care for a last drink before we leave?” he asked. “It’s getting late. We’ve got an hour’s drive.”
    â€œNo, but thanks anyway.”
    â€œI’ll just have a last drink.”

    The waiter brought