John Updike - Rabbit, Run

"Say. Who's in charge here?" the kid asks, drawing his shoulders up and making his lips thicker.

Harry reaches over, hooks his finger around the kid's striped necktie, and snaps it out. It flies up and hits his thick mouth and makes his manicured face go slightly fuzzy. He starts to rise and Rabbit puts his hand on top of his tidy haircut and pushes him down again and walks away, with the hardness of the kid's brushcut head still tingling in his fingertips. At his back his sister halfcalls, "Harry!"

His ears are so good he hears, as he rounds the bar, junior explain to her, in a voice husky with cowardice, "He's in love with you."

To his own table he says, "Come on, Ruth. Get on your motorcycle."

She protests, "I'm happy."

"Come on."

She moves to collect her things and Harrison, after looking around in doubt, gets out of the booth to let her up. He stands there beside Rabbit and Rabbit on an impulse puts his hand on Ronnie's unpadded would—be—Princeton shoulder. In comparison with Mim's kid he likes him. "You're right, Ronnie," he tells him, "you were a real play—maker." It comes out nasty but he meant it well, for the sake of the old team.

Harrison, too slow to feel that he means it, knocks his hand away and says, "When are you gonna grow up?" It's telling that lousy story that has rattled him.

Outside on the red—painted steps of the place Rabbit starts laughing. "Looking for my motorcycle," he says, and lets go, "Hwah hwah hyaaa," under the castanet neon light.

Ruth is in no humor to see it. "Well you are a nut," she says.

It annoys him that she is too dumb to see that he is really sore. The way she shook her head "No" at him when he was gagging it up annoys him; his mind goes back over the minute again and again and every time snags on it. He is angry about so many things he doesn't know where to begin; the only thing clear is he's going to give her hell.

"So you and that bastard went to Atlantic City together."

"Why is he a bastard?"

"Oh. He's not and I am."

"I didn't say you were."

"You did too. Right back in there you did."

"It was just an expression. A fond expression, though I don't know why."

"You don't."

"No I don't. You see your sister come in with some boyfriend and practically pee in your pants."

"Did you see the punk she was with?"

"What was the matter with him?" Ruth asks. "He looked all right."

"Just about everybody looks all right to you, don't they?"

"Well I don't see what you're doing going around like some almighty judge."

"Yes sir, just about anything with a pecker looks all right to you."

They are walking up Warren Avenue. Their place is seven blocks away. People are sitting out on their steps in the late spring air; their conversation is in this sense public and they fight to keep their voices low.

"Boy, if this is what seeing your sister does to you I'm glad we're not married."

"What brought that up?"

"What brought what up?"

"Marriage."

"You did, don't you remember, the first night, you kept talking about it, and kissed my ring finger."

"That was a nice night."

"All right then."

"All right then nothing." Rabbit feels he's been worked into a corner where he can't give her hell without giving her up entirely, without obliterating the sweet things. But then she did that by taking him to that stinking place. "You've laid for Harrison, haven't you?"

"I guess. Sure."

"You guess. You don't know?"

"I said sure."

"And how many others?"

"I don't know."

"A hundred?"

"It's a pointless question."

"Why is it pointless?"

"It's like asking how many times you've taken a crap. O.K. I've taken a crap."

"They're about the same to you, is that it?"

"No they're not the same but I don't see what the count matters. You knew what I was."

"I'm not sure I did. You were a real hooer?"

"I took some money. I've told you. There were boyfriends when I was working as a stenographer and they had friends and I lost my job because of the talk maybe I don't know and some older men got my number I guess through Margaret, I don't know. Look. It's by. If it's a question of being dirty or something a lot of married women have had to take it more often than I have."

"Did you pose for pictures?"

"You mean like for dirty books? No."

"Did you blow guys?"

"Look, maybe we should say bye—bye." At the thought of that her chin softens and eyes burn and she hates him too much to think of sharing her secret with him. Her secret inside her seems to have no relation to him, this big body loping along with her under the streetlamps, hungry as a ghost, wanting to hear the words to whip himself up. That was the thing about men, the importance they put on the mouth. Rabbit seems like another man to her, with this difference: in ignorance he has welded her to him and she can't let go.

With degrading gratitude she hears him say, "No I don't want to say bye—bye. I just want an answer to my question."

"The answer to your question is yes."

"Harrison?"

"Why does Harrison mean so much to you?"

"Because he stinks. And if Harrison is the same to you as me then I stink."

They are, for that moment, the same to her – in fact she would prefer Harrison, just for the change, just because he doesn't insist on being the greatest thing that ever was – but she lies. "You're not at all the same. You're not in the same league."

"Well I got a pretty funny feeling sitting across from you two in that restaurant. What all did you do with him?"

"Oh, I don't know, what do you do? You make love, you try to get close to somebody."

"Well, would you do everything to me that you did to him?"

This stuns her skin in a curious way, makes it contract so that her body feels squeezed and sickened inside it. " Sure. Ifyou want me tó." After being a wife a whore's skin feels tight.

His relief is boyish; his front teeth flash happily. "Just once," he promises, "honest. I'll never ask you again." He tries to put his arm around her but she pulls away.

Up in the apartment he asks plaintively, "Are you going to?" She is struck by the helplessness in his posture; in the interior darkness, to which her eyes have not adjusted, he seems a suit of clothes hung from the broad white knob of his face.

She asks, "Are you sure we're talking about the same thing?"

"What do you think we're talking about?" He's too fastidious to mouth the words.

She says, "Sucking you off."

"Right," he says.

"In cold blood. You just want it."

"Uh—huh. Is it so awful for you?"

This glimmer of her gentle rabbit emboldens her. "It's not so bad. May I ask what I've done?"

"I didn't like the way you acted tonight."

"How did I act?"

"Like what you were."

"I didn't mean to."

"Even so. I saw you that way tonight and it put a wall between us and this is the one way through it."

"That's pretty cute. You just want it, really." She yearns to hit out at him, to tell him to go. But that time is past.

He repeats, "Is it so awful for you?"

"Well it is because you think it is."

"Maybe I don't. Maybe I think it'd be nice."

"Look, I've loved you."

"Well I've loved you."

"And now?"

"I don't know. I want to still."

Now those damn tears again. She tries to hurry the words out before her voice crumbles. "That's good of you. That's heroic."

"Don't be smart. Listen. Tonight you turned against me. I need to see you on your knees. I need you to" – he still can't say it "do it."

The two tall drinks have been a poor experiment; she wants to go to sleep and her tongue tastes sour. She feels in her queasy stomach her need to keep him and wonders, Will this frighten him? Will this kill her in him?