No answer.
“What’s she look like?” Ginnie repeated.
“If she was half as good-looking as she thinks she is, she’d be goddam lucky,” Selena’s brother said. This had the stature of an interesting answer, in Ginnie’s secret opinion.
“I never heard her mention you,” she said.
“That worries me. That worries hell outa me.”
“Anyway, she’s engaged,” Ginnie said, watching him. “She’s gonna be married next month.”
“Who to?” he asked, looking up.
Ginnie took full advantage of his having looked up. “Nobody you know.”
He resumed picking at his own first-aid work. “I pity him,” he said.
Ginnie snorted.
“It’s still bleedin’ like mad. Ya think I oughta put something on it? What’s good to put on it? Mercurochrome any good?”
“Iodine’s better,” Ginnie said. Then, feeling her answer was too civil under the circumstances, she added, “Mercurochrome’s no good at all for that.”
“Why not? What’s the matter with it?”
“It just isn’t any good for that stuff, that’s all. Ya need iodine.”
He looked at Ginnie. “It stings a lot, though, doesn’t it?” he asked. “Doesn’t it sting a helluva lot?”
“It stings,” Ginnie said, “but it won’t kill you or anything.”
Apparently without resenting Ginnie’s tone, Selena’s brother turned back to his finger. “I don’t like it when it stings,” he said.
“Nobody does.”
He nodded in agreement. “Yeah,” he said.
Ginnie watched him for a minute. “Stop touching it,” she said suddenly.
As though responding to an electric shock, Selena’s brother pulled back his uninjured hand. He sat up a trifle straighter—or rather, slumped a trifle less. He looked at some object on the other side of the room. An almost dreamy expression came over his disorderly features. He inserted the nail of his uninjured index finger into the crevice between two front teeth and, removing a food particle, turned to Ginnie. “Jeat jet?” he asked.
“What?”
“Jeat lunch yet?”
Ginnie shook her head. “I’ll eat when I get home,” she said. “My mother always has lunch ready for me when I get home.”
“I got a half a chicken sandwich in my room. Ya want it? I didn’t touch it or anything.”
“No, thank you. Really.”
“You just played tennis, for Chrissake. Aren’tcha hungry?”
“It isn’t that,” said Ginnie, crossing her legs. “It’s just that my mother always has lunch ready wh
en I get home. She goes insane if I’m not hungry, I mean.”
Selena’s brother seemed to accept this explanation. At least, he nodded and looked away. But he turned back suddenly. “How ‘bout a glassa milk?” he said.