He opens his eyes to the day and says, "That's a pretty big congregation."
"Sunday morning," she says. "I could throw up every Sunday morning."
"Why?"
She just says, "Fuh," as if he knows the answer. After thinking a bit, and seeing him lie there looking out the window seriously, she says, "I once had a guy in here who woke me up at eight o'clock because he had to teach Sunday school at nine—thirty."
"You don't believe anything?"
"No. You mean you do?"
"Well, yeah. I think so." Her rasp, her sureness, makes him wince; he wonders if he's lying. If he is, he is hung in the middle of nowhere, and the thought hollows him. Across the street a few people in their best clothes walk on the pavement past the row of worn brick homes; are they walking on air? Their clothes, they put on their best clothes: he clings to the thought giddily; it seems a visual proof of the unseen world.
"Well, if you do what are you doing here?" she asks.
"Why not? You think you're Satan or somebody?"
This stops her a moment, standing there with her comb, before she laughs. "Well you go right ahead if it makes you happy."
He presses her. "Why don't you believe anything?"
"You're kidding."
"No. Doesn't it ever, at least for a second, seem obvious to you?"
"God, you mean? No. It seems obvious just the other way. All the time."
"Well now if God doesn't exist, why does anything?"
"Why? There's no why to it. Things just are." She stands before the mirror, and her comb pulling back on her hair pulls her upper lip up; women are always looking that way in the movies.
"That's not the way I feel about you," he says, "that you just are."
"Hey, why don't you get some clothes on instead of just lying
there giving me the Word?"
This, and her turning, hair swirling, to say it, stir him. "Come here," he asks. The idea of making it while the churches are full excites him.
"No," Ruth says. She is really a little sore. His believing in God grates against her.
"You don't like me now?"
"What does it matter to you?"
"You know it does."
"Get out of my bed."
"I guess I owe you fifteen more dollars.'
"All you owe me is getting the hell out."
"What! Leave you all alone?" He says this as with comical speed, while she stands there startled, he jumps from bed and gathers up some of his clothes and ducks into the bathroom and closes the door. When he comes out, in underclothes, he says, still clowning, "You don't like me any more," and moves pouting to where his trousers are neatly laid on the chair. While he was out of the room she made the bed.
"I like you enough," she says in a preoccupied voice, tugging the bedspread smooth.
"Enough for what?"
"Enough."
"Why do you like me?"
"'Cause you're bigger than I am." She moves to the next corner and tugs. "Boy that used to gripe hell out of me, the way these little women everybody thinks are so cute grab all the big men."
"They have something," he tells her. "They seem easier to nail down."
She laughs and says, "To nail down or screw?"
He pulls up his trousers and buckles the belt. "Why else do you like me?"
She looks at him. "Shall I tell you?"
"Tell me."
"'Cause you haven't given up. In your stupid way you're still fighting."
He loves hearing this; pleasure spins along his nerves, making him feel immense. But American modesty has been drilled into him, and "the will to achievement" glides out of his mouth, which he tries to make look lopsided. She gets it.
"That poor old bastard," she says. "He really is a bastard too."
"Hey, I'll tell you what," Rabbit says. "I'll run out and get some stuff at that grocery store you can cook for our lunch."
"Say, you settle right in, don't you?"
"Why? Were you going to meet somebody?"
"No, I don't have anybody today."
"Well, then. You said last night you liked to cook."
"I said I used to."
"Well, if you used to you still do. What shall I get?"
"How do you know the store's open?"