And she would get Jim Phelps and Hugh Parker to bring her a drink of whisky as well: she had begun to depend on small potations of alcohol for the stimulus it gave her fevered body—a small drink was enough to operate electrically in her blood: it renewed her, energized her, gave her a temporary and hectic vitality. Thus, although she never drank much at a time and showed, beyond the renewed vitality and gaiety, no sign of intoxication, she nibbled at the bottle.
“I’ll take a drink whenever I can get it,” she said.
She liked, almost invariably, young fast women. She liked the hectic pleasure of their lives, the sense of danger, their humor and liberality. She was drawn magnetically to all the wedded harlotry, which, escaping the Sunday discipline of a Southern village, and the Saturday lust of sodden husbands, came gaily to Altamont in summer. She liked people who, as she said, “didn’t mind taking a little drink now and then.”
She liked Mary Thomas, a tall jolly young prostitute who came from Kentucky: she was a manicurist in an Altamont Hotel.
“There are two things I want to see,” said Mary, “a rooster’s you— know-what and a hen’s what-is-it.” She was full of loud compelling laughter. She had a small room with a sleeping porch, at the front of the house upstairs. Eugene brought her some cigarettes once: she stood before the window in a thin petticoat, her feet wide apart, her long sensual legs outlined against the light.
Helen wore her dresses, hats, and silk stockings. Sometimes they drank together. And, with humorous sentimentality, she defended her.
“Well, she’s no hypocrite. That’s one thing sure. She doesn’t care who knows it.” Or,
“She’s no worse than a lot of your little goody-goodies, if the truth’s known. She’s only more open about it.”
Or again, irritated at some implied criticism of her own friendliness with the girl, she would say angrily:
“What do you know about her? You’d better be careful how you talk about people. You’ll get into trouble about it some day.”
