Read Online The Lockwood Concern by John O'Hara - Free Book Online

something went wrong, I bore the brunt of it. I didn't marry you to go through that all over again. And I won't, George. Please make no mistake about that." "You're really cross?" "No, dear, I'm not cross. That's not saying I might not get cross. But let's have it understood that when I'm trying to be pleasant, which is most of the time, I don't like being snapped at. I loved every minute of last night and felt wonderfully all day. But you can make me unhappy, too. You can be very distant at times." "I'm sorry, my dear. It's been one thing after another the past day or so." "Have your bath, and then maybe you'll decide that it'd be nice to have dinner here and not go out. I'm perfectly willing to do whatever you'd like to do." "We'll see after I've had my bath." "You're the most attractive man I ever knew. You know you are." "After two years of marriage?" "You'll always be attractive. I suppose I ought to thank those hundreds of women before you selected me." "There was nothing like hundreds of women, Geraldine. A few, but not hundreds." "Well - I'm just as much of a woman as any of them, although God knows I never knew that until three years ago. Maybe that's why you're so attractive, George. Any dull woman could be the wife of Howard Duckmaster, but I know they're all saying, 'What does George Lockwood see in her? What shall I tell them?" "You can tell them that I find you anything but a dull woman." "Well, I would have gone on being one if you hadn't been so bold. 'Try me, sometime.' Who would think that a simple little remark like that could change my entire life?" "The moment was right. I decided that you must be getting ready to try someone." "That was really it. You read my mind before I was aware of what I was thinking. I was awful, wasn't I? I was so stupid. So embarrassed." "No you weren't. You were yourself, not trying to be anyone else or anything else but what you were. That's the whole secret, you know. The stupid one was Howard." "Oh, Lord. Poor Howard. Well, you go take your tub." "And you're over being cross?" he said. "I have to assert myself once in a while," she said. They dined on antipasto and spaghetti at a speakeasy in Chelsea, where they were joined by a Princeton class mate of George Lockwood's. It was a family-owned restaurant, a single, long narrow room with both walls painted to depict a street scene in a small Italian town. Over the murals was placed latticework of white wood, in the hope of suggesting the illusion that the street scenes were being observed from inside a garden. The painting was so bad that no illusion was created, but the colors were bright, the latticework was spotless, and the artistic failure mattered less than the joyful intent of the proprietor and the artist. The Chianti had a slight metallic taste, indicating that it had reposed in an iron vat before being decanted into the straw bound bottles; but the food was good and the service was kind. No one left before eleven o'clock, and only one young couple remained after twelve. Joe, the proprietor, stood behind the waiter whenever a dish was being served, supervising every last detail, then nodding and faintly smiling at the customers and leaving them to themselves. The clientele was largely middle-aged, built on the patronage of men who had so once known Joe as a waiter at the Club de Vingt. They were men who were not unaccustomed to wine at their meals in the days before the Eighteenth Amendment, and they were orderly and solvent. Joe's political connections were excellent, and no police officer below the rank of lieutenant was ever seen in the place. "George, the talk around town is that you're going to be asked to give a new dormitory," said Ned O'Byrne. "What?" "And call it Carlton-MacLeod," said O'Byrne. "Oh," said George Lockwood. "Or Carburetor Hall," said O'Byrne. "Why couldn't you have let a dear friend and classmate in on a thing like that?" "No friend or classmate in his right mind would have gone into it when Pen