The Last Gentleman

be nestled so in the sweet hollow of her hand, etc.—instead she gazed boldly at him and used up their common assets, spent everything like a drunken sailor. She gazed like she kissed: she came on at him like a diesel locomotive.
    â€œOh me,” he sighed, already in a light sweat, and discarded the jack of clubs.
    â€œAren’t you picking up jacks?” he reminded her.
    â€œAm I?” she said ironically but not knowing the uses of irony.
    Look at her, he thought peevishly. She had worn leotards so many years she didn’t know how to wear a dress. As she sat, she straddled a bit. Once in a Charleston restaurant he had wanted to jump up and pull her dress down over her knees.
    Abruptly she put her cards down and knocked up the little Pullman table between them. “Bill.”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œCome here.”
    â€œAll right.”
    â€œAm I nice?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œAm I pretty?”
    â€œSure.”
    â€œI mean, how would I look to you if you saw me in a crowd of girls?”
    â€œFine. The best, in fact.”
    â€œWhy don’t I think so?”
    â€œI don’t know.”
    She stretched out her leg, clasping her dress above the knee; “Is that pretty?”
    â€œYes,” he said, blushing. It was as if somehow it was his leg she was being prodigal with.
    â€œNot crippled?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œNot muscle-bound?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œI worry about myself.”
    â€œYou don’t have to.”
    â€œWhat do you really think of me? Tell me the literal truth.”
    â€œI love you.”
    â€œBesides that.”
    â€œI couldn’t say.”
    â€œOh darling, I didn’t mean that. I mean, do you also like me? As a person.”
    â€œSure.”
    â€œDo you think other boys will like me?”
    â€œI don’t know,” said the engineer, sweating in earnest. Great Scott, he thought in dismay. Suppose she does have a date with another “boy.”
    â€œI mean like at a dance. If you saw me at a dance, would you like to dance with me?”
    â€œSure.”
    â€œDo you know that I’ve danced all my life and yet I’ve never been to a regular dance?”
    â€œYou haven’t missed much,” said the engineer, thinking of the many times he had stood around picking his nose at Princeton dances.
    â€œDo you realize that I’ve hardly ever danced with a boy?”
    â€œIs that right?”
    â€œWhat does it feel like?”
    â€œDancing with a boy?”
    â€œShow me, stupid.”
    He switched on the Hallicrafter and between storm reports they danced to disc-jockey music from Atlanta. There was room for three steps in the camper. Even though they were sheltered by the dunes, now and then a deflected gust sent them stumbling.
    She was not very good. Her broad shoulders were shy and quick under his hand, but she didn’t know how close to hold herself and so managed to hold herself too close or too far. Her knees were both workaday and timid. He thought of the long hours she had spent in dusty gymlike studios standing easy, sister to the splintery wood. She was like a boy turned into a girl.
    â€œWill I do all right?”
    â€œDoing what?”
    â€œGoing to dances.”
    â€œSure.” It was this that threw him off, her having to aim to be what she was.
    â€œTell me.”
    â€œTell you what?”
    â€œHow to do right.”
    â€œDo right?” How to tell the sweet Georgia air to be itself?
    â€œDo you love me?” she asked.
    â€œYes.”
    The storm crashed around them. Kitty drew him down to the lower bunk, which was like the long couch in an old-style Pullman drawing room. “Hold me tight,” she whispered.
    He held her tight.
    â€œWhat is it?” she asked presently.
    â€œI was thinking of something my father told me.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œWhen my father reached his sixteenth birthday, my grandfather said to him: now, Ed, I’m not going to have you worrying about certain things—and he took him to a whorehouse in Memphis. He asked the madame to call all the girls in and line them up. O.K., Ed, he told my father. Take your pick.”
    â€œDid her
    â€œI guess so.”
    â€œDid your father do the same for you?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œI didn’t know until this minute that it was hore. I thought it was whore.”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œMy poor darling,” said Kitty, coming so close that