This Sweet Sickness by Patricia Highsmith Page A

and mentioned getting a third. The store would deliver it, he said. He opened the window to let the smoke out. Wes sat down on the floor by the girl’s chair, and now and then patted her hand or her arm as he talked. Then Effie would take her arm away and look with her pleasant smile at David. “I wish you’d tell me about your work.”
    â€œLet him tell you,” David said.
    â€œNo work. No talk of work tonight,” said Wes.
    The girl’s eyes grew a little swimmy. “I won’t be here then,” she was saying to Wes. “I’ve found an apartment, and I’m moving December first. Ten more days.”
    Wes gave a groan. “But you’ll be around. I’ll be able to see you now and then, won’t I?”
    â€œI certainly hope I’ll be able to see you both,” Effie said.
    Leaning back against the wall, David watched her casually. He realized for the first time that her hair was almost the same shade of brown as Annabelle’s. Her expression had lost its self-consciousness, but her eyes moved from David’s face to his brown loafer shoe propped up on his knee, to Wes, to the ceiling, and began the circuit again. Wes’s arm was now on her chair arm, and the girl’s hand played with the cigarette package in her lap. David was bored, and wished he were upstairs reading. The girl had even commented on his loafers, how good-looking they were, and asked him if he always wore chino pants. Who cared? He had said yes. He nearly always wore chino pants, non-white shirts and odd jackets and loafers to the lab, because it had irked him to be told by Mr. Lewissohn that he would prefer him to wear business suits, in view of the fact he would often have to talk to “clients,” a sacred word to Lewissohn. Because of all the acid sprays around the place, he wore a long white coat most of the time, and consequently nobody could see much if anything of what he had on underneath. His better clothes he kept at the house in Ballard. People in the boardinghouse, he supposed, thought he had even to economize on his clothing, in order to support his mother.
    David was aware that Wes exacted a promise from Effie to take a drive in the country one day soon.
    â€œI’ll get the car, all right,” Wes said to David over his shoulder, with determination.
    It was all so sordid, David thought. If he wanted a girl, why didn’t he go out and buy one? What else did he like about Effie except her body, what else was there of her he could use? She didn’t play the piano like Annabelle, had none of the sweetness of Annabelle—only the pseudo-decorousness of the basically coarse young female who reads the women’s magazines and the etiquette columns in cheap newspapers that tell a girl how to behave when she is out with men. They focused a girl’s mind on sex by harping on “how far” a nice girl should go. They assumed every man was a lecher. But on the other hand, was there much more to most girls than their biological urges? The only objective of most of them was to get married before twenty-five and begin a cycle of childbearing. Annabelle, at twenty-two, had a brilliant idea for a book on Schubert and Mozart, two composers with the greatest lyric gifts in the history of music, she said. David often wondered what had become of that idea and of the notes she had shown him of it? Had her inspiration gone down the drain with a lot of dirty dishwater? Or was she still thinking about it, still intending to write it, and was it mellowing with time?
    They interrupted him, gibing at him for his daydreaming. Effie was standing up, ready to leave, and protesting against Wes’s telephoning for another bottle of champagne. Wes begged David to stay on a while, but David with rare firmness toward Wes said he had to do some reading tonight. It was eleven o’clock. David and the girl thanked Wes for his hospitality, and closed the door on his smiling