Properties
- end_line
- 3367
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T03:41:20.744Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 3325
- text
- "I said no, there wouldn't be marvelous places to go to after I went to college and
all. Open your ears. It'd be entirely different. We'd have to go downstairs in elevators
with suitcases and stuff. We'd have to phone up everybody and tell 'em good-by and send
'em postcards from hotels and all. And I'd be working in some office, making a lot of
dough, and riding to work in cabs and Madison Avenue buses, and reading newspapers,
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and playing bridge all the time, and going to the movies and seeing a lot of stupid shorts
and coming attractions and newsreels. Newsreels. Christ almighty. There's always a
dumb horse race, and some dame breaking a bottle over a ship, and some chimpanzee
riding a goddam bicycle with pants on. It wouldn't be the same at all. You don't see what
I mean at all."
"Maybe I don't! Maybe you don't, either," old Sally said. We both hated each
other's guts by that time. You could see there wasn't any sense trying to have an
intelligent conversation. I was sorry as hell I'd started it.
"C'mon, let's get outa here," I said. "You give me a royal pain in the ass, if you
want to know the truth."
Boy, did she hit the ceiling when I said that. I know I shouldn't've said it, and I
probably wouldn't've ordinarily, but she was depressing the hell out of me. Usually I
never say crude things like that to girls. Boy, did she hit the ceiling. I apologized like a
madman, but she wouldn't accept my apology. She was even crying. Which scared me a
little bit, because I was a little afraid she'd go home and tell her father I called her a pain
in the ass. Her father was one of those big silent bastards, and he wasn't too crazy about
me anyhow. He once told old Sally I was too goddam noisy.
"No kidding. I'm sorry," I kept telling her.
"You're sorry. You're sorry. That's very funny," she said. She was still sort of
crying, and all of a sudden I did feel sort of sorry I'd said it.
"C'mon, I'll take ya home. No kidding."
"I can go home by myself, thank you. If you think I'd let you take me home,
you're mad. No boy ever said that to me in my entire life."
The whole thing was sort of funny, in a way, if you thought about it, and all of a
sudden I did something I shouldn't have. I laughed. And I have one of these very loud,
stupid laughs. I mean if I ever sat behind myself in a movie or something, I'd probably
lean over and tell myself to please shut up. It made old Sally madder than ever.
I stuck around for a while, apologizing and trying to get her to excuse me, but she
wouldn't. She kept telling me to go away and leave her alone. So finally I did it. I went
inside and got my shoes and stuff, and left without her. I shouldn't've, but I was pretty
goddam fed up by that time.
If you want to know the truth, I don't even know why I started all that stuff with
her. I mean about going away somewhere, to Massachusetts and Vermont and all. I
probably wouldn't've taken her even if she'd wanted to go with me. She wouldn't have
been anybody to go with. The terrible part, though, is that I meant it when I asked her.
That's the terrible part. I swear to God I'm a madman.
- title
- Chunk 12