Free Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathanael West Page B

failed still more
miserably. He had substituted the rhetoric of Shrike for that of Miss
Lonely-hearts. He felt like an empty bottle, shiny and sterile.
    He closed his eyes. When he heard
the cripple say, "I love you, I love you," he opened them and saw him
kissing his wife. He knew that the cripple was doing this, not because of the
things he had said, but out of loyalty. "All right, you nut," she
said, queening it over her husband. "I forgive
you, but go to the drug store for some gin."
    Without looking at Miss Lonelyhearts , the cripple took his hat and left. When he
had gone Mrs. Doyle smiled. "You were a scream with your fly open,"
she said. "I thought I'd die laughing."
    He did not answer.
    " Boy, is he jealous," she went on. "All I have to do is point to some big
guy and say, 'Gee, I'd love to have him love me up.' It drives him nuts."
    Her voice was low and thick and it
was plain that she was trying to excite him. When she went to the radio to tune
in on a jazz orchestra, she waved her behind at him like a flag.
    He said that he was too tired to
dance. After doing a few obscene steps in front of him, she sat down in his
lap. He tried to fend her off, but she kept pressing her open mouth against his
and when he turned away, she nuzzled his cheek. He felt like an empty bottle
that is being slowly filled with warm, dirty water.
    When she opened the neck of her
dress and tried to force his head between her breasts, he parted his knees with
a quick jerk that spilled her to the floor. She tried to pull him down on top
of her. He struck out blindly and hit her in the face. She screamed and he hit
her again and again. He kept hitting her until she stopped trying to hold him,
then he ran out of the house.

 
MISS LONELYHEARTS ATTENDS A PARTY
     
    Miss Lonelyhearts had gone to bed again. This time his bed was surely taking him somewhere, and
with great speed. He had only to ride it quietly. He had already been riding
for three days.
    Before climbing aboard, he had
prepared for the journey by jamming the telephone bell and purchasing several
enormous cans of crackers. He now lay on the bed, eating crackers, drinking water and smoking cigarettes.
    He thought of how calm he was. His
calm was so perfect that he could not destroy it even by being conscious of it.
In three days he had gone very far. It grew dark in the room. He got out of
bed, washed his teeth, urinated, then turned out the light and went to sleep.
He fell asleep without even a sigh and slept the sleep of the wise and the
innocent. Without dreaming, he was aware of fireflies and the slop of oceans.
    Later a train rolled into a station
where he was a reclining statue holding a stopped clock, a coach rumbled into
the yard of an inn where he was sitting over a guitar, cap in hand, shedding
the rain with his hump.
    He awoke. The noise of both arrivals
had combined to become a knocking on the door. He climbed out of bed. Although
he was completely naked, he went to the door without covering himself. Five
people rushed in, two of whom were women. The women shrieked when they saw him
and jumped back into the hall.
    The three men held their ground.
Miss Lonelyhearts recognized Shrike among them and
saw that he, as well as the others, was very drunk. Shrike said that one of the
women was his wife and wanted to fight Miss Lonely-hearts for insulting her.
    Miss Lonelyhearts stood quietly in the center of the room. Shrike dashed against him, but fell
back, as a wave that dashes against an ancient rock, smooth with experience,
falls back. There was no second wave.
    Instead Shrike became jovial. He
slapped Miss Lonely-hearts on the back. "Put on a pair of pants, my
friend," he said, "we're going to a party."
    Miss Lonelyhearts picked up a can of crackers.
    "Come on, my son," Shrike
urged. "It's solitary drinking that makes drunkards."
    Miss Lonelyhearts carefully examined each cracker before popping it into his mouth.
    "Don't be a spoil-sport,"
Shrike said with a great deal of