A New World. Robert M. Keane

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      “Nah.”

      “Why don’t you come over?” Jim asked. The bathroom would go easier with someone to talk to.

      “Okay. In a minute.”

      Back in the bathroom, Jim spied the diary. Florence had left it out again, on the small table, with the clasp hanging loose. Putting the seat cover down over the toilet, he sat down and paged through it to see what was new with Florence’s private life. It was a disappointment: she hadn’t entered anything for two weeks. He skipped back to the entry in January where she had given him a slam. It always gave him an odd feeling to be reading about himself.

      Furious at J. at dinner. He can be so cruel.

      Wanted to know how old Ralph was. I told

      him, 33. He said parents will turn out to be

      nice to me because they probably want to get rid of him.

      He really hurt. A professional man shouldn’t marry

      before thirty.

      The best entry in the book was the one for the following Wednesday:

      Hi/ Dinner at Luchow’s with R. He was

      delighted when I told him Mr. Haskings

      was nice all day when I made believe I

      liked him. He said psychology teaches a

      lot. I guess so. I wish I went to college.

      Dinner terrific. Chateaubriand (sp?) Blue

      cheese salad. Wond. coffee. R. decides he

      will not go skiing now, wants to go out Sat.

      night. Told him I didn’t think so. On the

      Central he asked me for Sunday. I said I

      wasn’t sure. He sulked the whole ride.

      Very jealous. Said that four out of five

      times I turn him down, which isn’t true.

      We go out almost every weekend. He

      asked me if he should call anymore since

      it just made him frustrated and resentful to be

      refused. I told him he was acting like an ass.

      But we made it up at the door. Show Boy

      Friend. Very funny. Daddy mad when I got

      home. J. ate at Nora’s but Daddy said she

      fries everything. R. is certainly acting very

      Silly. Is ten years too much difference?

      Jim could picture the scene of Florence calling Ralph an ass, and he laughed out loud. There was another entry somewhere where Florence had written: “Ralph has beautiful hands.” He looked for that one, but he couldn’t find it.

      Jim heard Cricket downstairs. Florence was questioning him and he heard her say: “Jim has to do the bathroom, Edward.”

      Jim ran to the hallway and yelled down, “He’s not going to bother me.”

      “Well, make sure you do it right,” she shouted back.

      Cricket came up. He was a slight youth, a full head shorter than Jim, with a mischievous face. He had a receding chin, and his eyeglasses were thick as the bottoms of milk bottles. He had brought his trick smoking pipe with him. It had a stem two feet long, patched with adhesive tape where it had snapped in the middle. This was only one of his oddities. Back in his room he had a goat-skin wine bag, a leopard-skin vest, and a white woolen cap with an elongated top that hung over his shoulder and had a white pompom sewed to it.

      “Take a look at this,” said Jim, handing him the diary, open to the entry describing the fight with Ralph. Cricket read it and then hunched his shoulders and squinted his eyes and let go with his staccato giggly laugh.

      “Isn’t that something?” Jim asked, grinning broadly. “She calls the guy an ass. And he’s back for more.” He threw the book on the table.

      “What do you want money for?” Cricket asked.

      “I’m supposed to go out with Eva.”

      Florence came up to find out what was going on. She stood in the doorway, and spied the diary, and rushed over and grabbed it from the table.

      “Have you been reading this?”

      “You know I wouldn’t do a thing like that, Flo.”

      She looked at them both suspiciously. Cricket gave it away with a giggle.

      “That’s terrible,” said Florence. “It’s not even honorable.”

      “What, Flo?”

      She went to her room to put the book away. She came back and she looked at the two of them, not saying anything right away. “You read it, didn’t you?”

      “Read what?”

      “Aren’t you ashamed?”

      “Ashamed of what?”

      “Ashamed to read something personal like that?”

      “I thought you were like Anne Frank: you wanted everybody to read it. You leave it around all the time.”

      “You’re so witty.” She swung around to go downstairs.

      “Hey, Flo.”

      “What?”

      “Can you lend me a couple of bucks for tonight?”

      “No.”

      “Thanks a lot,” he called after her.

      “You’re welcome.”

      Jim came back to the bathroom. He had finished the sink. Now there was only the commode left, the most distasteful part of the job. He turned his back so he wouldn’t have to look at it, and took the brush and gave a few fast sweeps around the inside of the bowl, then flushed. “That’s that.”

      “What are you going to do for money?” Cricket asked.

      “Change bottles, I guess.”

      They went downstairs. Florence was hammering a carpet in the backyard. Jim found seven nickel bottles and ten three-cent milk bottles. “I’ll see if there’s any in your kitchen,” he said to Cricket.

      Florence stopped them as they crossed the backyard. “Did you finish?”

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