Thinking Approach

Luciana - an excerpt from Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

Luciana

He found Luciana sitting alone at a table in the Allied officers’ night club, where the drunken Anzac major who had brought her there had been stupid enough to desert her for the ribald company of some singing comrades at the bar.

“All right, I’ll dance with you,” she said, before Yossarian could even speak. “But I won’t let you sleep with me.”

“Who asked you?” Yossarian asked her.

“You don’t want to sleep with me?” she exclaimed with surprise.

“I don’t want to dance with you.”

She seized Yossarian’s hand and pulled him out on the dance floor. She was a worse dancer than even he was, but she threw herself about to the synthetic jitterbug music with more un­inhibited pleasure than he had ever observed until he felt his legs falling asleep with boredom and yanked her off the dance floor toward the table at which the girl he should have been screwing was still sitting tipsily with one hand around Aarfy’s neck, her orange satin blouse still hanging open slovenly below her full white lacy brassiere as she made dirty sex talk ostenta­tiously with Huple, Orr, Kid Sampson and Hungry Joe. Just as he reached them, Luciana gave him a forceful, unexpected shove that carried them both well beyond the table, so that they were still alone. She was a tall, earthy, exuberant girl with long hair and a pretty face, a buxom, delightful, flirtations girl.

“All right,” she said, “I will let you buy me dinner. But I won’t let you sleep with me.”

“Who asked you?” Yossarian asked with surprise. “You don’t want to sleep with me?”

“I don’t want to buy you dinner.”

She pulled him out of the night dub into the street and down a flight of steps into a black-market restaurant filled with lively, chirping, attractive girls who all seemed to know each other and with the self-conscious military officers from different countries who had come there with them. The food was elegant and expensive, and the aisles were overflowing with great streams of flushed and merry proprietors, all stout and balding. The bustling interior radiated with enormous, engulfing waves of fun and warmth.

Yossarian got a tremendous kick out of the rude gusto with which Luciana ignored him completely while she shoveled away her whole meal with both hands. She ate like a horse until the last plate was clean, and then she placed her silverware down with an air of conclusion and settled back lazily in her chair with a dreamy and congested look of sated gluttony. She drew a deep, smiling, contented breath and regarded him amorously with a melting gaze.

“Okay, Joe,” she purred, her glowing dark eyes drowsy and grateful. “Now I will let you sleep with me.” 

“My name is Yossarian.”

“Okay, Yossarian,” she answered with a soft repentant laugh. “Now I will let you sleep with me.”

“Who asked you?” said Yossarian.

Luciana was stunned. “You don’t want to sleep with me?”

Yossarian nodded emphatically, laughing, and shot his hand up under her dress. The girl came to life with a horrified start. She jerked her legs away from him instantly, whipping her bottom around. Blushing with alarm and embarrassment, she pushed her skirt back down with a number of prim, sidelong glances about the restaurant.

“Now I will let you sleep with me,” she explained cautiously in a manner of apprehensive indulgence. “But not now.”

“I know. When we get back to my room.”

The girl shook her head, eyeing him mistrustfully and keep­ing her knees pressed together. “No, now I must go home to my mamma, because my mamma does not like me to dance with soldiers or let them take me to dinner, and she will be very angry with me if I do not come home now. But I will let you write down for me where you live. And tomorrow morning I will come to your room for ficky-fick before I go to my work at the French office. Capisci?”

 “Bullshit!” Yossarian exclaimed with angry disappointment.

 (Joseph Heller, Catch-22)