Only Pretty Damned

by Niall Howell

  “New Orleans?! That long? What the hell am I supposed to do it the meantime?”

  Rowland shrugs. “What do I care? Play Tiddly Winks, do whatever you want. Just make sure whatever you do, you’re taking it easy.” He stands, gives his lapels a quick tug, and buttons his coat. “You’re here because of you, Toby, understand that,” he says. “I feel bad that you took the pounding you did, but this,” he points at my face, “is on you. You’ve got to keep yourself in check. You can’t be pulling this kind of shit. Picking a fight—come on, man. This place is hanging by a thread. You know that, right? We’re hanging by a thread, and the last thing I need is having my top performers tearing strips off each other.”

  “You wouldn’t have a fucking thread to hang by if it wasn’t for me,” I growl. I’m careful not to raise my voice, but unable to keep the venom in.

  Rowland says nothing, just turns from me and heads for the door, moving with the pathetic lumber of a man who’s had enough.

  Just as he reaches for the handle, I say, “Too bad Julian was there at all, hey?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “I said it’s too bad Julian was there to pull that animal off me. A few more hits to the head and maybe we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now. Think of the bread you’d save.”

  He gives me this look like he feels sorry for me or something, then opens the door and leaves without speaking another word.

  Bad rubbish, good riddance.

  I stay in bed for another minute or two, then decide I should wash away the residual sand in my throat. A sharp pain in my lower back catches me by surprise as I get up. Maybe Andrew took a few kicks at me when I was down and out—something he would do—or maybe I landed funny after that third punch knocked me into the dark.

  My bed is in the corner opposite the door. The headboard sits against a wall that extends halfway across the trailer, partitioning the room. The jug of water I normally keep within reach of my bed is nowhere to be seen, so I assume that Harriet Lane left the jug on the other side of the partition, since that’s where the cupboard I keep my glasses and dishes in is.

  I walk around the partition, empty glass in hand, but the second I turn the corner, the glass drops and explodes across the floor, sending a hundred little bits of shrapnel in every direction. Maybe I gasp or maybe I scream, I’m not sure which, but holy hell, am I startled.

  “I didn’t mean to intrude.”

  “Funny to hear that coming from an intruder, Gloria. You scared the shit out of me!”

  “I’m so sorry. When—after Miss Lane left, I thought I should come check on you. The door was left open, so I came in. I…I know I shouldn’t have, but I was so worried for you, after hearing about what that bastard did.” She reaches to touch my face, but I jerk away. “When I came in, I noticed the cloth on your head wasn’t cold anymore, so I soaked it in cold water and filled the glass for when you woke up.”

  I say nothing.

  She’s looking at me with wide, wounded eyes, her fingers laced as if caught mid-prayer, her mouth pulled into an anxious downward curve.

  It’s then, noticing her unease, her hand-in-the-cookie-jar demeanour, that a question occurs to me. A question that I know the answer to, but a question I need to ask: “How much did you hear?” I ask her.

  Wider eyes, tighter fingers. “Everything, Toby,” she says. “I was right here. And I heard everything.”

  THERE WAS LOTS OF SHOUTING. PEOPLE SHOUTING AT each other and people shouting at the radio. Mostly the radio.

  A hockey game happening on the other end of the country was being broadcast, the Toronto Maple Leafs against the New York Rangers, and the way everyone in the tavern was hollering, you’d think they’d all bet their mortgages and maybe a couple kidneys each on the big matchup.

  It didn’t matter what city—or, I suppose, even what country—you were in, Wally always knew where to get the cheapest drinks. His spidery red nose could sniff out cut-rate booze anywhere and any when, and that night in Calgary, his bulbous beak led us to the King Edward. Both of us having only the slightest interest in hockey, we sat at a table near the back, glasses clasped, hunched forward, like a pair of gossiping vultures.

  From September until mid-March, the circus stayed in the southern half of the United States on account of the weather. Once March hit, we’d begin making our way up the west coast, stopping in Portland, Seattle, and Bellingham, zipping up to Vancouver, from there moving to Spokane, Butte, and Great Falls, and finally heading north again, into Alberta. Timing was always important when it came to Calgary, because the city has a big Stampede every July, so if we get there any later than mid-April, we’ll see a drop in attendance, since a lot of people will be hanging onto their money, saving it for the Stampede.

  A couple days earlier, the Nazis took Denmark. Food was being rationed in Britain. The world was on the edge of its seat, but that night in the King Edward, for a couple of hours, you got to forget all about humanity’s hell-via-hand-basket expedition. Heated chatter about Hitler, Stalin, conscription, and death were on a temporary hiatus, having been replaced by remarks like “Alf Pike’s a bum!” “That Kerr is a goddamned brick wall!” and “Lynch the referee!”

  Wally and I were gulping our beers down because that’s what we did whenever we had time to spend in a Canadian city. Cheap dollars, cheap booze—we always made it count. Wally, of course, made it count a little more. He didn’t have to worry about maintaining a headlining aerialist’s physique, or really maintaining any particular physique beyond simply being Wally-shaped, so he went at booze and food and pretty much everything else with the most ravenous of appetites. Before we came to the King Edward, Wally went to a tobacconist and bought himself a bunch of nice cigars, the kind that, whenever I had one myself, always made me puke before I reached the end. The game was just beginning when we took a seat and ordered our first drinks. After the Rangers and the Maple Leafs switched sides for the first time, I realized that Wally seemed to have set a one-cigar-per-period quota for himself—something that would be both ambitious and nauseating for most men, but was, for Wally Jakes, just another night out.

  I cupped my hand around my mouth and leaned forward across the table. “Aren’t those pricy ones the sort of thing you want to take your time with?”

  “Take my time with?” Wally plucked the cigar from his mouth and held it in front of his eyes. “Who’s got time to take their time with anything? All this shit happening in Europe,” which he pronounced year-up, “bombs dropping, folks being rounded up and killed, entire countries falling to the feet of that Chaplin-lookin’ pansy—the hell do I know how much time I’ve got to do anything, Toby? As far as I’m concerned, I find something I like, I enjoy it as fast as I can…and then I enjoy it again.” With that, he popped the cigar back in his mouth, crossed his arms, and leaned back in his seat. He angled his chin upwards and blew a thick, dark cloud from his mouth, then turned toward the bar and barked, “Another round over here!” loud enough to cut through all the cheering and the yelling that filled the air.

  “One minute, pal,” the bartender hollered to Wally, staring, with most everyone else, at the radio and raising a hushing finger at us.

  “Hell, you, the bartender…where is everyone getting all this time from?” Wally grumbled.

  The game ended in overtime with the New York Rangers taking the victory. The radio’s sound was cranked down, and after a few minutes of groaning and cursing, we watched a handful of patrons file out of the King Edward. Those remaining in the bar went back to their quiet conversations or their solitary drinking.

  “How’s that twist you’re flying with these days? You make it with her yet?” Wally asked me, with the same volume he’d been using when the bar was full and noisy.

  “Wally, keep it down a bit, would you?” I said in a whisper that I hoped Wally would aspire to. “I don’t need everyone in this hole knowing my business.”

  “Who gives a shit?” Wally said, just as loud as before. “You kn
ow anyone here?” Christ, you couldn’t take the guy anywhere.

  I picked up the matchbook sitting between us and lit myself a cigarette. “No, I haven’t made it with her,” I told him. “Why do you have to ask me stuff like that?”

  “I’m curious, Toby. Can’t a guy ask? She’s gorgeous. I figured you two working together, those tight outfits, all the touching that goes on—something’s bound to happen eventually.”

  “I’m not saying Genevieve isn’t a looker. She is. But we’re professionals. When we’re together, we’re working. That’s it.” Of course, that wasn’t it. In the few months that Genevieve and I had been working together, something had started to develop between us. At the time, I wasn’t quite sure what that something was—though I sure knew what I hoped it would become—but even if it were anything more than a flirtatious remark here, an ardent glance there, the last person on earth I would talk to about it was Wally. I liked the guy, sure, but he had this habit of digging into other people’s business. He was a dirt hoarder of sorts, and very much a leverage man. He was the last guy you’d ever want to have anything on you, anything to hold over you, good or bad.

  “So, what you’re telling me is you’re a free man?”

  “I’m always a free man.”

  Wally grinned. His grin was spaced out in a way that made me think of a rural community and coloured in a way that made me think of candy-corn. It was a conniving grin, the only kind he knew, a grin that reminded me he was always a step or two ahead, always thinking. Despite appearances. “Then can we get out of this dump and find us some fun?” he asked, but the way he said it, I knew it wasn’t really a question.

  We finished the round, paid our tab, and left the King Edward, me staggering, Wally lumbering. He always lumbered, but when he was drunk, his lumber was more pronounced, almost exaggerated. We made our way up the street, me following Wally and Wally following either his heart or some other organ of equal importance. We didn’t have to walk far before we came across what he was searching for.

  She told us her name was Dot. She said, “More than you could afford,” when Wally first asked, but then she looked from Wally to me, then back to Wally and said, “Who are you asking for?”

  “For me,” Wally told her.

  “Yeah,” Dot nodded, “like I said.” She turned from us, eyeing a trio of soldiers who had just rounded the corner and were stumbling toward us with their arms around each other. She hooked a couple loose strands of hair behind her ears, smoothed her blouse down the front, and pushed out her chest. “Have a nice night, boys,” she said, making a shooing motion with her hand.

  Wally stepped closer to Dot, into her periphery. “How much for him?” he asked, nudging his head to me and fanning out a wad of cash to show he meant business. “For him, with me watching.”

  “Jesus Christ, Wally!” I said. “What’s wrong with you? I never agreed to—”

  “Shut your mouth, Toby.” He snarled and shot me a glance that left an exit wound. “I said, how much for him with me watching?”

  Dot half-faced him. She looked to the bills in his hands and then met his eyes. “I don’t like the idea of you being involved at all, mister,” she said. “Watching, listening, smelling, anything…The answer is no.”

  Wally reached into his coat, pulled more bills from his breast pocket, and started counting them out. When he got himself into these drunken states of unwavering determination, the only way to get him to back off was to distract him with another of his vices. I reached an arm around him, pulled him close, and tried to steer him away from Dot, figuring I’d try, as delicately as possible, to let him know this wasn’t something anyone else wanted to pursue. “Come on, Wally,” I said in the calmest voice I had, “she said no. Let’s quit wasting our time and get out of here, pal. The night’s young. Let’s grab some more drinks, get real sauced.”

  “I said shut your mouth, Toby! Shut it!” He shoved me so hard I landed flat on my ass. “Now look, dolly,” he said to Dot, waving his fistful of bills, “I got another fifteen here. You and the kid, and I get to watch. I’m not your cup of tea? That’s fine. You ain’t gotta lay a finger on me. Just let me have my fun.”

  Dot ignored the offer and took a step away from Wally. She was quick to ditch the look of irritation that he brought out in her in favour of a ‘why, hello there’ face for the approaching soldiers. As they neared, she waved, fluttering her fingers in a way that was probably supposed to look girlish and flirtatious, but from where I sat looked like someone checking for paralysis after a bad fall. “Evening, boys. Anyone looking for a little fun tonight?”

  The soldier in the middle—a slick, square-jawed fellow with the kind of irksome smile normally reserved for salesmen—clapped and rubbed his hands together, then elbow-nudged his pals. “Yeah, sweetheart, we’re lookin’ for some fun, ain’t we, boys?” The boys seemed to agree. They were looking for some fun. “Yeah, some fun, fun, fun,” he continued, pacing around Dot, stopping behind her with his hands on his waist, looking her up and down, his mouth going mmm mmm mmm.

  “I know where you could find some fun, fun, fun,” Dot told him over her shoulder, punctuating each ‘fun’ with a shake of her hip.

  “Do ya, now?” the soldier looked to his pals and gave them a wink.

  Dot assured him: “I do.”

  She screamed as the soldier then swung his hip hard into her hip, forcing her off balance and sending her tumbling to the sidewalk. “Because you look like you only know where to find some syph, syph, syph!” the soldier shouted, eliciting a howl from his friends and, naturally, himself.

  “You bastards!” Dot shouted. “You lousy bastards! I hope you’re blown to hell out there! You hear me? I hope they ship you out and the first Nazis you meet shoot you to shreds and piss on your stinking carcasses!” But the soldiers were already moving on, continuing up the street. Their laughter only seemed get louder the farther they got, compensating for the swelling distance between us, until the distance opened wide and swallowed them right up.

  The makeup around Dot’s eyes had become blotted and runny. She was catching her breath and staring in the direction the soldiers had walked, as if, by staring long and hard enough, her stabby eyes might find them and teach them a lesson. The hurt on her face was almost masked by her burning anger. But only almost.

  Wally slapped his bills against the palm of his hand and Dot looked up to him, then over to me. “How much you got there?” she asked. That pleased Wally.

  Dot and I dusted ourselves off and the three of us made our way to a nearby bridge. The bridge stood over a river whose edges were still thawing out. It was dark, but if you looked over the side and gave your eyes a few seconds to adjust, you could make out the form of ducks gliding across the water’s surface. Wally gave the steel a knock as we crossed. “Camelback truss,” he said. “Nice and sturdy.” No one responded or, for that matter, said anything at all for the rest of the walk.

  You couldn’t tell from the outside of the house that it was that kind of place. Not only did it appear well maintained, but it had an old-fashioned, elegant look to it—I’d call it Victorian, but what do I know? We walked up the steps onto the porch, Dot leading. She grabbed the door knocker and gave it three stern pounds, then paused and gave it another pound, followed by two soft knocks and then another three pounds. A moment later, the door squeaked open a crack. Dot held up two fingers and the door opened the rest of the way. Dot entered, and when Wally and I tried to follow, a colossus stepped in front of us. This wall of a human made no attempt to hide the fact he was sizing us both up. I found I was unable to look him in the eye. And it wasn’t because I didn’t feel like craning my neck that far back.

  “You don’t pull any shit here, you understand?” His voice was the sort of thing that came out of a deep pit and ate your first born if your village didn’t meet its sacrificial quota. “The ladies call the shots. What they say goes. What you say means shit. Understand?” Wally and I both nodded. “We’re not gonna have any t
rouble from you two, then?” Wally and I shook our heads ‘hell no,’ and after another few seconds of consideration, the big guy stepped aside.

  A burgundy carpet adorned with golden trim and an explosive floral pattern covered the mahogany floor of the foyer and continued up the stairway in front of us. To our right was an arched doorway that led to what looked like a drawing room where I could see a few men who looked maybe a little better off than Wally and I sitting in cushy chairs, drinks in hand, mesmerized by the lingerie-clad women orbiting them. Dot emerged from the room with a bottle of scotch in one hand and two glasses in the other. The makeup around her eyes had been fixed, her face a veneer of composure. She walked past us and headed up the stairs. Once she was about halfway up, it dawned on us that we ought to follow. So we did.

  “I don’t like this, Wally,” I whispered. “This whole thing creeps me out. I-I don’t want to…I can’t do it. I’ve never paid for it before and the whole—I mean, you watching? Hell, Wally, this just isn’t right.”

  “Shut it,” Wally, who had now found his whisper, replied. “We do each other favours, kid. I’ll owe you one. Think of it like that.”

  “Owe me one? For Christ’s sake. This isn’t the sort of thing you just owe someone for. This is sick, Wally. I-I’m out.” I turned around with every intention of walking down the stairs and marching right past colossus and out the door, but Wally grabbed a fistful of my collar, whipped me around, and pulled me close.

  “You’re doing it,” he hissed. “We’re here, and I said we’re doing it, and that’s that. Partners in crime, you and me.”

  I said nothing in reply, but something in my eyes must have told Wally he’d won because he loosened his grip, turned from me, and continued up the stairs.

  Partners in grime.

  We followed Dot down a dim corridor, passing three closed doors before reaching our room at the end of the hall. She stopped at the open door and motioned for us to proceed. My heart was thrashing against its bars. I felt queasy, I felt weak in the legs. I wanted to be a hundred miles in any direction from here.