Whosie

"Yes, sir, Whosie, you're a real sweet kid," Margaret tells him.

"Pay no attention, Harry," Tothero says, "that's the way tramps talk."

Margaret hits him: her hand flies up from the table and across her body into his mouth, flat, but without a slapping noise.

"Touché," Ruth says. Her voice is indifferent. The whole thing is so quiet that the Chinaman, clearing their dishes away, doesn't look up, and seems to hear nothing.

"We're going, by jingo," Tothero announces, and tries to stand up, but the edge of the table hits his thighs, and he can stand no higher than a hunchback. The slap has left a little twist in his mouth that Rabbit can't bear to look at, it's so ambiguous and blurred, such a sickly mixture of bravado and shame and, worst, pride or less than pride, conceit. This deathly smirk emits the words, "Are you coming, my dear?"

"Son of a bitch," Margaret says, yet her little hard nut of a body slides over, and she glances behind her to see if she is leaving any-thing, cigarettes or a purse. "Son of a bitch," she repeats, and there is something friendly in the level way she says it. Both she and Tothero seem calmer now, on the move.

Rabbit starts to push up from the table, but Tothero sets a rigid urgent hand on his shoulder, the coach's touch, that Rabbit had so often felt on the bench, just before the pat on the bottom that sent him into the game. "No, no, Harry. You stay. One apiece. Don't let our vulgarity distract you. I couldn't borrow your car, could I?"

"Huh? How would I get anywhere?"

"Quite right, you're quite right. Forgive my asking."

"No, I mean, you can if you want =" In fact he feels deeply reluctant to part with a car that is only half his.

Tothero sees this. "No no. It was an insane thought. Good night."

"You bloated old bastard," Margaret says to him. He glances toward her, then down fuzzily. She is right, Harry realizes, he is bloated; his face is lopsided like a tired balloon. Yet this balloon peers down at him as if there was some message bulging it, heavy and vague like water.

"Where will you go?" Tothero asks.

"I'll be fine. I have money. I'll get a hotel," Rabbit tells him. He wishes, now that he has refused him a favor, that Tothero would go.

"The door of my mansion is open," Tothero says. "There's the one cot only, but we can make a mattress -"

"No, look," Rabbit says severely. "You've saved my life, but I don't want to saddle you. I'll be fine. I can't thank you enough anyway."

"We'll talk sometime," Tothero promises. His hand twitches, and accidentally taps Margaret's thigh.

"I could kill you," Margaret says at his side, and they go off, looking from the back like father and daughter, past the counter where the waiter whispers with the American girl, and out the glass door, Margaret first. The whole thing seems so settled: like little wooden figures going in and out of a barometer.

"God, he's in sad shape."

"Who isn't?" Ruth asks.

"You don't seem to be."

"I eat, is what you mean."

"No, listen, you have some kind of complex about being big. You're not fat. You're right in proportion."