The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain Page B

you."
          "I could use some of our inside tables."
          "I said try it, didn't I? Come on. We'll have a drink."
     
          What we had the big blow-off over was the beer license, and then I tumbled to what she was really up to. She put the tables out under the trees, on a little platform she had built, with a striped awning over them and lanterns at night, and it went pretty good. She was right about it. Those people really enjoyed a chance to sit out under the trees for a half hour, and listen to a little radio music, before they got in their cars and went on. And then beer came back. She saw a chance to leave it just like it was, put beer in, and call it a beer garden.
          "I don't want any beer garden, I tell you. All I want is a guy that'll buy the whole works and pay cash."
          "But it seems a shame."
          "Not to me it don't."
          "But look, Frank. The license is only twelve dollars for six months. My goodness, we can afford twelve dollars, can't we?"
          "We get the license and then we're in the beer business. We're in the gasoline business already, and the hot dog business, and now we got to go in the beer business. The hell with it. I want to get Out of it, not get in deeper."
          "Everybody's got one."
          "And welcome, so far as I'm concerned."
          "People wanting to come, and the place all fixed up under the trees, and now I have to tell them we don't have beer because we haven't any license."
          "Why do you have to tell them anything?"
          "All we've got to do is put in coils and then we can have draught beer. It's better than bottled beer, and there's more money in it. I saw some lovely glasses in Los Angeles the other day. Nice tall ones. The kind people like to drink beer out of."
          "So we got to get coils and glasses now, have we? I tell you I don't _want_ any beer garden."
          "Frank, don't you ever want to _be_ something?"
          "Listen, get this. I want to get away from this place. I want to go somewhere else, where every time I look around I don't see the ghost of a goddam Greek jumping out at me, and hear his echo in my dreams, and jump every time the radio comes out with a guitar. I've got to go away, do you hear me? I've got to get out of here, or I go nuts."
          "You're lying to me."
          "Oh no, I'm not lying. I never meant anything more in my life."
          "You don't see the ghost of any Greek, that's not it. Somebody else might see it, but not Mr. Frank Chambers. No, you want to go away just because you're a bum, that's all. That's what you were when you came here, and that's what you are now. When we go away, and our money's all gone, then what?"
          "What do I care? We go away, don't we?"
          "That's it, you don't care. We could stay here--"
          "I knew it. That's what you really mean. That's what you've meant all along. That we stay here."
          "And why not? We've got it good. Why wouldn't we stay here? Listen, Frank. You've been trying to make a bum out of me ever since you've known me, but you're not going to do it. I told you, I'm not a bum. I want to _be_ something. We stay here. We're not going away. We take out the beer license. We amount to something."
          It was late at night, and we were upstairs, half undressed. She was walking around like she had that time after the arraignment, and talking in the same funny jerks.
          "Sure we stay. We do whatever you say, Cora. Here, have a drink."
          "I don't want a drink."
          "Sure you want a drink. We got to laugh some more about getting the money, haven't we?"
          "We already laughed about it."
          "But we're going to make more money, aren't we? On the beer garden? We got to put down a couple on that, just for luck."
          "You nut. All right. Just for luck."
          That's the way it went, two or three times a