528
PARTISAN REVIEW
greedy. You don't really want me, and yet you want every last bit
of me.
EITEL:
You bitch, you worship stupidity as if it were your patron saint.
ELENA:
You call me a bitch.
If
tonight had turned out better for you,
you would
be
pimping me all over again, you would be telling me
how wonderful I am. Well, let me tell yOU ... maybe I want other
rhythms in my body besides yours.
EITEL:
I'll never touch you again.
She is about to say one thing, she is about to say another. Sud–
denly, it is gone-he has won for the moment.
ELENA:
Oh, Charley, touch me . .. oh, lover, touch me ... oh, lover,
please believe that I am in love with your touch.
A silence.
Oh, Charley, don't you see, they wanted to give, they had to have
me, and I was the center of attention. Oh come here, love, come to me.
But
EITEL
remains unmoving, and in so refusing to come to
her, she goes away from him and lights another stick of tea.
You wanted to go, didn't you? You took a wife away from Don
Beda, didn't you?
She grasps his head, holds his hair so that he
is
obliged to
turn and face her.
Listen, I don't love you. I never loved anybody. I'm too conceited. So
don't feel guilty. You don't owe me ... nothing.
EITEL:
Stupid!
ELENA:
Want to know how stupid I am? I tried to commit suicide the
day Collie told me he was tearing it. Yes. He said, "Sweetie, this is
it," and it sure was. I sat in that lousy cheap hotel room he had
rented for me, and I started to drink- alone--and I drank until the
room wouldn't stand still- I thought I was going to die if the room
didn't stop moving. "Collie," I kept saying, "you and me were just
an old sewer."
EITEL:
Shut your mouth!
ELENA:
I'm just getting started, Charley boy. How do you like my crude
manners, hey sweetheart?
EITEL:
I loathe them.
ELENA:
Well, who could have guessed? ... ''Collie,'' I said over the
phone, I called him at your place--at this place-"Collie," I told
him, "this is going to be a nice quiet sophisticated little call-I took
a package of sleeping pills-I'm going to die, buster," ohhhhh, and
then I started to scream. When he came to my room, I saw the execu–
tive
in
Collie, magnificent lover, he said hello, and slapped me a few
