Properties
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- 3358
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-27T17:16:48.808Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 3307
- text
- 3166 "You can't just do something like that," old Sally said. She sounded sore as hell.
3167 "Why not? Why the hell not?"
3168 "Stop screaming at me, please," she said. Which was crap, because I wasn't even
3169 screaming at her.
3170 "Why can'tcha? Why not?"
3171 "Because you can't, that's all. In the first place, we're both practically children.
3172 And did you ever stop to think what you'd do if you didn't get a job when your money ran
3173 out? We'd starve to death. The whole thing's so fantastic, it isn't even--"
3174 "It isn't fantastic. I'd get a job. Don't worry about that. You don't have to worry
3175 about that. What's the matter? Don't you want to go with me? Say so, if you don't."
3176 "It isn't that. It isn't that at all," old Sally said. I was beginning to hate her, in a
3177 way. "We'll have oodles of time to do those things--all those things. I mean after you go
3178 to college and all, and if we should get married and all. There'll be oodles of marvelous
3179 places to go to. You're just--"
3180 "No, there wouldn't be. There wouldn't be oodles of places to go to at all. It'd be
3181 entirely different," I said. I was getting depressed as hell again.
3182 "What?" she said. "I can't hear you. One minute you scream at me, and the next
3183 you--"
3184 "I said no, there wouldn't be marvelous places to go to after I went to college and
3185 all. Open your ears. It'd be entirely different. We'd have to go downstairs in elevators
3186 with suitcases and stuff. We'd have to phone up everybody and tell 'em good-by and send
3187 'em postcards from hotels and all. And I'd be working in some office, making a lot of
3188 dough, and riding to work in cabs and Madison Avenue buses, and reading newspapers,
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3189 and playing bridge all the time, and going to the movies and seeing a lot of stupid shorts
3190 and coming attractions and newsreels. Newsreels. Christ almighty. There's always a
3191 dumb horse race, and some dame breaking a bottle over a ship, and some chimpanzee
3192 riding a goddam bicycle with pants on. It wouldn't be the same at all. You don't see what
3193 I mean at all."
3194 "Maybe I don't! Maybe you don't, either," old Sally said. We both hated each
3195 other's guts by that time. You could see there wasn't any sense trying to have an
3196 intelligent conversation. I was sorry as hell I'd started it.
3197 "C'mon, let's get outa here," I said. "You give me a royal pain in the ass, if you
3198 want to know the truth."
3199 Boy, did she hit the ceiling when I said that. I know I shouldn't've said it, and I
3200 probably wouldn't've ordinarily, but she was depressing the hell out of me. Usually I
3201 never say crude things like that to girls. Boy, did she hit the ceiling. I apologized like a
3202 madman, but she wouldn't accept my apology. She was even crying. Which scared me a
3203 little bit, because I was a little afraid she'd go home and tell her father I called her a pain
3204 in the ass. Her father was one of those big silent bastards, and he wasn't too crazy about
3205 me anyhow. He once told old Sally I was too goddam noisy.
3206 "No kidding. I'm sorry," I kept telling her.
3207 "You're sorry. You're sorry. That's very funny," she said. She was still sort of
3208 crying, and all of a sudden I did feel sort of sorry I'd said it.
3209 "C'mon, I'll take ya home. No kidding."
3210 "I can go home by myself, thank you. If you think I'd let you take me home,
3211 you're mad. No boy ever said that to me in my entire life."
3212 The whole thing was sort of funny, in a way, if you thought about it, and all of a
3213 sudden I did something I shouldn't have. I laughed. And I have one of these very loud,
3214 stupid laughs. I mean if I ever sat behind myself in a movie or something, I'd probably
3215 lean over and tell myself to please shut up. It made old Sally madder than ever.
- title
- Chunk 7