Read Online The Man With the Golden Arm by Nelson Algren - Free Book Online Page B

little bit of fun,’ she told him in her thin sing-song. ‘A little bit of anythin’, a little bit of love.’
    ‘What kind of beer you like best, Zosh?’ Trying to get her back on the rails.
    ‘“What kind? What kind?”’ she mocked him, her voice ringing as brainlessly as a ninety-eight-cent alarm clock in an unrented room running down to a whimper. ‘It’s been so long since I had a beer I just don’t know what kind I like no more.’
    With yesterday’s empties crouching behind her chair.
    ‘I don’t know , Frankie,’ she complained with a distress like a tired child’s. ‘How many kinds are there? I don’t even know what kinds there are any more.’
    ‘There’s Budweiser,’ he told her indulgently, as if enumerating distant relatives, ‘then there’s Schlitz, and Blatz, and Pabst and Chevalier—
    ‘Drink Chevalier
    The beer that’s clear—’ 
    he hummed a radio commercial that sometimes softened her. Yet himself remained tense with the sense of being cornered by more than a secondhand wheelchair.
    ‘Any kind wit’ foam on, that’s the kind I like’ – her voice was happy at last, running over with imagined foam, drooling over her tongue in her haste to tell all about it. ‘Any godamned kind wit’ lots of godamned foam – warm beer, cold beer, hot beer, winter beer – I like beer.’
    ‘I like beer too, Zosh,’ he assured her. She ignored his assent.
    ‘I like beer. I just like it. Warm beer, cold beer, old beer, winter beer, big beers, bock beers ’n them little old teensy Goebbels’ beers – I like beer, Frankie hon.’
    ‘I know, Zosh—’
    ‘I like the Great Lakes too – you know why?’ Cause the navy’s there. Godamnit, I like the navy, any navy, the Irish navy, the Mexican navy, I even like the Dago navy. I like beer, I like the navy, sunk navies ’n floatin’ navies – I like them movie actors too. Give me them movie actors – godamnit , you don’t know how I like any thin’.’ Her voice trailed off. ‘I like dancin’ too, Frankie hon.’
    ‘Should I go down ’n get a half gallon?’ Anything to get out of this corner.
    ‘You can run down ’n get me a godamned dawg like you promised , you promised , you promised ’ – abruptly she realized that he’d deliberately sidetracked her desire for a dog.
    ‘I spent thirty-four months havin’ green-ass corporals chew me up,’ he told her with a bitter wisdom: ‘“Dress up that salute, Private, no pass for you, Private, get the dust off that carbine, Private – pick up that butt you just stepped over, Private’ – you think I come home to hear you quackin’? If I don’t talk you get mad ’n if I say somethin’ you tear my head off.’ He leaned his back against the sink, looking puffy-eyed, and heard his own voice pleading: ‘I don’t know if I’m comin’ ’r goin’ no more, Zosh.’
    ‘You look to me more like you’re goin’.’ She eyed him steadily, inching up till the wheels pushed the toes of his heavy army shoes back a fraction of an inch. ‘You know what the ruination of the world is?’ And answered herself: ‘Stubbornness. You know what’s wrong wit’ you? You’re a stubborn t’ing. It’s why you’re the ruination of me . It’s why it’s all your fault.’
    ‘You don’t know anythin’ about dogs,’ he defended himself.
    ‘I know about dawgs, you don’t know about dawgs.’
    ‘He’d run away,’ he told her, his eyes half closed against her.
    ‘I’d keep him tied. The dawg’d be tied all the time.’
    ‘What you want a dog to be tight all the time for? Don’t you think dogs like to sober up once in a while too?’
    It didn’t work. She thought it over one long moment and her mind ricocheted again: ‘Honey, you know about the girl wit’ the strorberry on her behind? Whenever she ate strorberries it got real red.’
    No, he had heard about the girl with the blossoming butt.
    ‘But that ain’t nuttin ’,’ she assured him. ‘On Saloon Street was a little