Boys and Girls Together by William Saroyan

that has made any money since we
met
, have you?’
    â€˜No, I guess I haven’t. The money all came from stuff I wrote before we met.’
    â€˜I’m hurt. Aren’t I inspiring?’
    â€˜Awe-inspiring.’
    â€˜I thought a wife always inspired her husband.’
    â€˜To think about money.’
    â€˜Do I spend as much as all
that
?’
    â€˜You don’t spend much. I just don’t write anything. All I do is think about money.’
    â€˜Do you love money?’
    â€˜I
need
money. I don’t hate money, but I hate to need it so badly.’
    â€˜Well, what are we going to do?’
    â€˜Be poor, I suppose. Wear out our clothes. Make the most of everything we have. Enjoy the things that don’t cost anything or cost only a little. Improve our health. Be happy. Forget money and remember everything else.’
    â€˜How are we going to pay the debts?’
    â€˜Maybe we aren’t. At least not for a while. Not until we’ve forgotten about money for so long that all of a sudden we find that I’ve written a few things that are worth something.’
    â€˜Will that happen?’
    â€˜It
could
happen, it used to happen all the time.’
    â€˜I don’t like to be poor.’
    â€˜I know you don’t. But it’s not nearly as bad as you think.’
    â€˜I hate being poor.’
    â€˜It’s not so bad. It makes people more alive. Even when I used to get money I never stopped being poor.’
    â€˜That’s silly.’
    â€˜What happens is that if you let yourself get rich in money, you get poor in living.’
    â€˜No, you don’t. The richer you get in money the richer you get in living and everything else.’
    â€˜You get poor in living. You get poverty-stricken. The more money you get, the more like a beggar you become. A man who doesn’t think about money is alord. A man who does is a cripple with his hand held out. I think about money all the time. It’s humiliating.’
    â€˜Don’t you sometimes think about something else, too?’
    â€˜No. Everything else I think about turns out to be money, too.’
    â€˜
Everything
?’
    â€˜Everything.’
    â€˜Last night? The first time?’
    â€˜The first and second both.’
    â€˜I think about money a lot, too,’ the woman said, ‘but I think more about other things, too.’
    â€˜It’s all money you think about,’ the man said. ‘You think you think about other things, too, but you don’t. You never do. If you did, you’d be a different person.’
    â€˜Don’t you like the person I am?’
    â€˜The person you are isn’t an easy person to like.’
    â€˜Well, you can get a divorce, then.’
    â€˜No, I can’t.’
    â€˜You can get a divorce any time you feel like it. Get it tomorrow. I don’t want to be married to a man who doesn’t love me. I don’t want a man to make love to me who doesn’t love me. Get a divorce tomorrow. Why can’t you get a divorce tomorrow?’
    â€˜I can’t afford it.’
    â€˜Get a divorce tomorrow.’
    â€˜I can’t leave the kids, either.’
    â€˜You can leave
me
, but you can’t leave the kids. Get your lousy divorce tomorrow.’
    â€˜I can’t, and shut up.’
    He left the table, walked around in the living-room, poked the fire and put some more wood on it.
    â€˜I don’t want a man to love me who doesn’t love me,’ the woman screamed.
    He went into the kitchen. The woman got up from her chair and ran to the other side of the table, away from him.
    â€˜If you don’t love me, get out!’
    â€˜I told you I don’t want the kids to hear that screaming.’
    â€˜Get out!’ the woman screamed, then fell to the floor, sobbing the way that made him think of money all the time and wouldn’t let him think of anything else.
    He lifted the woman and held her in his