Free The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

also a Catholic, which ruined it for both of us. In addition to Socrates, I knew a White Russian named Attila at the Boston School of Business Administration.
    Gradually I realized that Constantin was trying to arrange a meeting for us later in the day.
    â€œWould you like to see the UN this afternoon?”
    â€œI can already see the UN,” I told him, with a little hysterical giggle.
    He seemed nonplussed.
    â€œI can see it from my window.” I thought perhaps my English was a touch too fast for him.
    There was a silence.
    Then he said, “Maybe you would like a bite to eat afterward.”
    I detected the vocabulary of Mrs. Willard and my heart sank. Mrs. Willard always invited you for a bite to eat. I remembered that this man had been a guest at Mrs. Willard’s house when he first came to America—Mrs. Willard had one of these arrangements where you open your house to foreigners and then when you go abroad they open their houses to you.
    I now saw quite clearly that Mrs. Willard had simply traded her open house in Russia for my bite to eat in New York.
    â€œYes, I would like a bite to eat,” I said stiffly. “What time will you come?”
    â€œI’ll call for you in my car about two. It’s the Amazon, isn’t it?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œAh, I know where that is.”
    For a moment I thought his tone was laden with special meaning, and then I figured that probably some of the girls at the Amazon were secretaries at the UN and maybe he had taken one of them out at one time. I let him hang up first, and then I hung up and lay back in the pillows, feeling grim.
    There I went again, building up a glamorous picture of a man who would love me passionately the minute he met me, and all out of a few prosy nothings. A duty tour of the UN and a post-UN sandwich!
    I tried to jack up my morale.
    Probably Mrs. Willard’s simultaneous interpreter would be short and ugly and I would come to look down on him in the end the way I looked down on Buddy Willard. This thought gave me a certain satisfaction. Because I did look down on Buddy Willard, and although everybody still thought I would marry him when he came out of the TB place, I knew I would never marry him if he were the last man on earth.
    Buddy Willard was a hypocrite.
    Of course, I didn’t know he was a hypocrite at first. I thought he was the most wonderful boy I’d ever seen. I’d adored him from a distance for five years before he even looked at me, and then there was a beautiful time when I still adored him and he started looking at me, and then just as hewas looking at me more and more I discovered quite by accident what an awful hypocrite he was, and now he wanted me to marry him and I hated his guts.
    The worst part of it was I couldn’t come straight out and tell him what I thought of him, because he caught TB before I could do that, and now I had to humor him along till he got well again and could take the unvarnished truth.
    I decided not to go down to the cafeteria for breakfast. It would only mean getting dressed, and what was the point of getting dressed if you were staying in bed for the morning? I could have called down and asked for a breakfast tray in my room, I guess, but then I would have to tip the person who brought it up and I never knew how much to tip. I’d had some very unsettling experiences trying to tip people in New York.
    When I first arrived at the Amazon a dwarfish, bald man in a bellhop’s uniform carried my suitcase up in the elevator and unlocked my room for me. Of course I rushed immediately to the window and looked out to see what the view was. After a while I was aware of this bellhop turning on the hot and cold taps in my washbowl and saying “This is the hot and this is the cold” and switching on the radio and telling me the names of all the New York stations and I began to get uneasy, so I kept my back to him and said firmly, “Thank you for