The Neon Jungle Read Online Free

kind of a reason to prop you up. You forgot how to stand up by yourself.”
    “Love. Love goes with marriage. I couldn’t love you. I haven’t got enough love left for anybody. I gave it all away. Free samples.”
    “I haven’t said a damn word about love. This is just an arrangement. Goddamn it, you go back there to Johnston as Mrs. Henry Varaki and let the name prop you up until you can stand by yourself. Or maybe you don’t go for Varaki. Too foreign, maybe. Low class.”
    “No. No.”
    “I go away and I come back. O.K. By then you know. Either way we break it up legal. And to hell with you if you let me down.”
    “You said it’s a nice business. Profitable. How do you know I won’t stay tied around your neck, lushing on your father’s profits from the store for the rest of your life?”
    His voice softened. “Bonny, I listened to you for a lot of days and nights. I listened to a lot of things. I know more about you than you know about yourself.”
    She put her head down on her wrist on the table. She rocked her head from side to side. “No,” she said in a broken voice. “No. No. No.”
    It lasted until midnight. She felt utterly drained and exhausted. She felt as though she had no more will or identity of her own, as if some great force had picked her up and carried her along. She was sick with the strain, with the long bitter hours of it.
    “All right,” she heard herself say. “All right then, Henry.”
    He looked at her for a long time and then grinned. “We Varakis got a reputation for stubbornness.”
    They went down in a taxi at ten the next morning. They filled out the application forms, had blood tests made, were told when to reappear for the license and civil ceremony. There was a great deal of constraint between them. That evening she straightened up after making up the studio couch for him and said in a deadly flat tone of voice, “You can start sleeping with me if you want to. You ought to get that much, at least, but I won’t blame you if you refuse the kind offer, because it isn’t exactly what you might call a generous offer. It’s more like maybe offering somebody a cigarette. The last one in the pack. The kind that are all…”
    “Shut up and go to bed, for God’s sake.”
    “Just drop in any time. I won’t consider it an inconvenience.”
    “Will you shut up? Or will I shut you up?”
    “Oh, goody! We’re engaged! We’re engaged!”
    “Good night, Bonny.”
    “Good night, Henry.”
    They were married on a cold rainy Thursday in late November at five minutes of noon. They taxied back to the apartment in rigid uncomfortable silence. My happy wedding day, she thought.
    Henry said he’d be back in a while and he went out. She sat and watched the rain run down the window. My wedding day. The bride carried a bouquet of raspberry blossoms. Henry came back in an hour, his clothes rain-spattered. He carried a bundle into the kitchen. He came back in and tossed a flat box onto her lap. “I put champagne on ice.”
    “Dandy. One sip and I’ll go on a nine-week bat.”
    He sat and looked gravely at her. “Why do you do it to yourself, Bonny?”
    “Do what, husband darling?” she asked blandly. “What have we here in the box, husband darling?”
    “Open it and find out.”
    “Oh, goody! A present for your winsome little wife, perhaps.”
    She took off the paper and opened the box. She looked at what it contained. She heard the rain. She knew she should look over at him. She could not quite force herself to look at him. My wedding day, I forgot that it was his, too. Selfish, self-pitying nag. She took it out of the box. The lace on the bodice of the nightgown was like white foam. She looked at it for a moment and then buried her face in it. A great raw sob hurt her throat.
    He came to her and held her. When she could speak she said, “What are you… trying to do to me?”
    “Keep you from doing too much to yourself, Bonny. I know it isn’t a marriage like in the