The Grifters

by Jim Thompson

  “Never mind,” he said quickly. “Forget it.”

  “It was there.” She extended the tattooed arm. “There also I was made sterile.”

  “There?” he frowned. “I don’t…What’s that, anyway?”

  She explained absently, her smile fixing; the tilted-up eyes looking at him and through him toward something far, beyond. Seemingly, she was speaking of the abstract, a dull and tenuous theorem scarcely worthy of recital. Seemingly, she was reading from a fairy tale, a thing so filled with terrors that they clung stagnating to one another; never advancing the plot or theme, physically motionless, merely horror piled upon horror until they sagged slowly downward, drawing the listener with them.

  “Yes, yes, that is right.” She smiled at him as though at a precocious child. “Yes, I was very young, seven or eight, I think. That was the reason, you see: to discover the earliest possible age at which a female might conceive. It can be very early in life, as young as five, I think. But an average minimum age was being sought. With my mother and grandmother, it was the other way; I mean, how old could the female be. My grandmother died shortly after the beginning of the experiment, but my mother…”

  Roy wanted to vomit. He wanted to shake her, to beat her. Standing apart from himself, as she was standing from herself, he was furious with her. Subjectively, his thoughts were not a too-distant parallel of the current popular philosophizing. The things you heard and read and saw everywhere. The pious mourning of sin; the joyous absolution of the sinners; the uncomfortable frowns and glances-askance at those who recalled their misdeeds. After all, the one-time friends, poor fellows, were now our friends and it was bad taste to show gas-stoves on television. After all, you couldn’t condemn a people, could you? And what if they had done exactly that themselves? Should you make the same regrettable error? After all, they hated the reds as much as we did, they were as eager as we were to blow every stinking red in the world to hell and gone. And after all, those people, the allegedly sinned-against, had brought most of the trouble on themselves.

  It was their own fault.

  It was her own fault.

  “Now, listen to me,” he broke in on her angrily. “No, I don’t want to hear any more, damnit! If you’d told me about it in the first place instead of just saying that—letting me think that—that—”

  “I know,” she said. “It was very bad of me. But I too was thinking something else.”

  “Well, now,” he mumbled, “I don’t want to put you in the wrong. I like you; I think the world of you, Carol. That’s why I asked you what I did, told you it was important to me. I can see now how you might have taken it the wrong way, and I wish to God there was something I could do to square things up. But—”

  But why did she keep looking at him that way, smiling that totally vacant smile; waiting for him to fill the vacuum with life? He had said he was sorry, apologized for something that was partially her own fault. But still she sat there waiting. Did she seriously expect him to give up his life, the only way of life acceptable to him, merely to correct a mistake? Well, she had no right to do so! Even if he could give what she had expected and apparently still desired, he would not do it.

  She was a nice girl, and it wouldn’t be fair to her.

  “Now, I’ll tell you what,” he said, smiling ingratiatingly. “We can’t change what’s already happened, so why don’t we just pretend it didn’t happen? How will that be, hmm? Okay? We’ll just forget this, and make a brand new start?”

  She looked at him silently.

  “Fine,” Roy said briskly. “That’s my sweet girl. Now, I’ll skim on out of here, and let you finish dressing and—and, uh…”

  He left, pulling on his robe as he went out of the room. Returning to the den, he flopped back down on the hospital bed, stared out unseeing at the panorama to the south; still seeing the girl in the bedroom. He’d put things very badly, he guessed. His usual glibness had failed him, just when he needed it most, and he’d sounded peevish and small-time.

  What had happened to him? he wondered. What had gone wrong with his pitch?

  It had been an honest mistake. She’d suffered no actual loss because of it. Why couldn’t he make her understand that? Why, when he could so easily pull a real swindle without a kickback?

  You can’t cheat an honest man, he thought. And was unreasonably irritated by the thought.

  He heard her approaching, the starchy rustle of her uniform. Working up a smile, he sat up and turned around.

  She was wearing her coat, a quaintly old-world garment. She was carrying her small nurse’s kit.

  “I am leaving now,” she said. “Is there anything you want before I go?”

  “Leaving! But—Oh, now, look,” he said winningly. “You can’t do that, you know. It’s not professional. A nurse can’t walk out on a patient.”

  “You do not need a nurse. We both know it. At any rate, I have ceased to be a nurse to you.”

  “But—but, damnit, Carol—”

  She turned away from him, started for the door. He looked after her helplessly for a moment, then caught up with her and pulled her around facing him.

  “Now, I’m not going to let you do this,” he said. “There’s no reason to. You need the job, and my mother and I both want you to have it. Why—”

  “Let me go, please.” She pulled away from him, again moving toward the door.

  Hastily, he placed himself in front of her. “Don’t,” he begged. “If you’re sore at me, okay; maybe you think you’ve got a right to be. But my mother’s involved here. What will she think, I mean, what will I tell her when she comes home and finds you’re—”

  He broke off, reddening, realizing that he had sounded fearful of Lilly. A ghost of a smile touched Carol’s lips.

  “Your mother will be disappointed,” she said, “but not surprised, I think. I have thought your mother did not understand you, but now I know that she does.”

  Roy looked away from her. He said curtly that that wasn’t what he meant at all. “You’ve got some money coming to you, your wages. If you’ll tell me how much…”

  “Nothing. Your mother paid me last night.”

  “All right, then, but there’s still today.”

  “For today, nothing. I gave nothing of value,” she said.

  Roy let out an angry snort. “Stop acting like a two-year-old kid, will you? You’ve got some money coming to you, and, by God, you’re going to take it!” He snatched the wallet from his robe pocket, jerked out its contents and extended it toward her. “Now, how much? What do I owe you for today?”

  She looked down at the money. Carefully, shuffling through it with a finger, she selected three bills and held them up.

  “Three dollars, yes? I have heard that was the usual price.”

  “You seem to know,” he snapped. “Aah, Carol, why—”

  “Thank you. It is really too much.”

  She turned, crossed the carpet to the door and went out.

  Roy raised his hands helplessly, and let them drop to his sides. That was that. You couldn’t square a beef with a stupe.

  He went into the kitchen, warmed up some coffee and drank it, standing up. Rinsing out his cup, he glanced at the clock above the stove.

  Lilly would be home in a few hours. There was something he must do before she got here. It wouldn’t make this Carol thing all right with her, and it would mean tipping his hand, but it had to be done. For his own sake.

  Dressing and going down to the street, he was just a little rocky. But not because there was anything wrong with him, only from his long inactivity. By the time he had gotten a taxi and reached his hotel, he felt as strong as he ever had.

  He was a little embarrassed by his reception at the hotel. Of course, he’d always worked to make himself likable; that was an essential part of his front. But he was still warmed and vaguely discomfited at the way he was welcomed home (home!) by Simms and the owner’s employees. He was glad that he didn’t have to chump them; leave them up the cree
k, paddleless, where people who liked him were customarily left.

  Flustered, he accepted their congratulations on his recovery, reassured them as to the present state of his health. He agreed with Simms that sickness came to all men, always inconveniently and unexpectedly, and that that was how the permanent waved.

  At last, he escaped to his room.

  He took three thousand dollars from one of the clown pictures. Then, having carefully replaced the picture on the wall, he left the hotel and went back to Lilly’s apartment.

  The place seemed strangely empty without Carol. Hungeringly empty as it always is when a familiar something or someone is no longer where it was. There is a haunting sense of wrongness, of things amiss. Here is a niche crying to be filled, and the one thing that will fill it will not.

  Roaming restlessly from room to room, he kept listening for her, kept seeing her in his mind’s eye. He could see her everywhere, the small stiffly-starched figure, the glossy tip-curling hair, the rose-and-white face, the small clean features, upturned in childlike innocence. He could hear her voice everywhere; and always he, you, was in what she said…Did he want something? Was there something she could do for him? Was he all right? He must always tell her, please, if he wanted anything.

  “You are all right, yes? It would be terrible if I had given you hurt.”

  He started to enter the bathroom, then came up short in the doorway. A towel was draped over the sink. Scrubbed, rinsed, and hung up to dry, but still faintly imbued with the yellowishness of washedout blood.

  Roy swallowed painfully. Then, he dropped it into the hamper and slammed down the lid.

  The long hours dragged by, hours that had always seemed short until today.

  A little after dusk, Lilly returned.

  As usual, she left her troubles outside the door; came in with an expectant smile on her face.

  “Why, you’re all dressed! How nice,” she said. “Where’s my girl, Carol?”

  “She’s not here,” Roy said. “She—”

  “Oh? Well, I guess I am a little late, and of course you’re all right.” She sat down, made gestures of fanning herself. “Whew, that lousy traffic! I could make better time hopping on one foot.”

  Roy hesitated, wanting to tell her, glad of anything that would let him delay.

  “How’s your hand, the burn?”

  “Okay,” she waved it carelessly. “It looks like I’m branded for life, but at least it learned—taught—me something. Keep away from boobs with cigars.”

  “I think you should have it bandaged.”

  “No can do. Have to dip in and out of my purse too much. Anyway, it’s coming along all right.”

  She dismissed the subject carelessly, pleased but somewhat embarrassed by his unusual concern. As the room grew silent, she took a cigarette from her purse; smiled gayly, as Roy hurried to light it.

  “Hey, now, it looks like I really rate around here, doesn’t it? A little more of this, and—What’s that?”

  She looked down at the money he had dropped into her lap. Frowning, she raised her eyes.

  “Three thousand dollars,” he said. “I hope it’s enough to square us up, the hospital bills and all.”

  “Well, sure. But you can’t—Oh,” she said tiredly. “I guess you can, can’t you? I hoped you were playing it straight, but I guess—”

  “But you knew I wasn’t,” Roy nodded. “And now there’s something else you’ve got to know. About Carol.”

  14

  From Sunset Strip, a muted, gradually increasing clamor floated up to Lilly’s apartment, the sounds of the dinner hour and the early beginnings of the nightclubs’ day. Earlier, from about four until seven, there had been the racket of the business traffic: trucks, heavy and light pickups, making their last deliveries of the day and then turning tail toward the city; passenger cars, speeding and skidding and jockeying for position as they swarmed out from town to their own duchies of Brentwood, Bel Air, and Beverly Hills. The cars were of all kinds and sizes, from hot rods on up, but there was an awesome abundance—even a predominance, at times—of the upper-bracket makes. Caught once in the Strip’s traffic, Roy had examined its content and, except for two motorcycles and a Ford, he had seen nothing, for as far as he could see, but Cadillacs, Rolls-Royces, Lincolns, and Imperials.

  Now, listening to the night’s throbbing, Roy wished he was down there on the Strip, or practically any place but where he was. He had told Lilly about Carol as quickly as he could, anxious to get it over with. But brushed over, it had probably sounded worse than in detail. He had felt the need to go back through it again, to explain just how what had led into what. But that seemed only to worsen matters, making him appear to pose as an honest if earthy young man who had been put to shameful disadvantage by the willful stupidity of a young woman.

  There was just no good way of telling the story, he guessed. There simply wasn’t, despite her definite nonprudishness and the fact she had never played the role of mother, as he saw it.

  He gave a start as Lilly’s purse slid to the floor with a thump. He bent forward to pick it up, then settled back uneasily as he saw what had fallen from the purse—a small, silencer-equipped gun.

  Her hand closed around it. She straightened again, hefting it absently. Then, seeing his unease, her mouth twisted in a tight grin.

  “Don’t worry, Roy. It’s a temptation, I’ll admit, but it would cost me my permit.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t want you to do that,” Roy said. “Not after the trouble I’ve already caused.”

  “Oh, now, you shouldn’t feel that way,” Lilly said. “You’ve paid your bill, haven’t you?—tossed money at me like it was going out of style. You’ve explained and you’ve apologized; you didn’t really do anything to explain or apologize for, did you? I was stupid. She was stupid—stupid enough to love and trust you, and to put the best possible interpretation on what you did and said. We were fools, in other words, and it’s a grifter’s job to take the fools.”

  “Have your own way about it,” Roy snapped. “I’ve apologized, done everything I can. But if you want to get nasty—”

  “But I always was nasty, wasn’t I? Always giving you a hard time. There was just no good in me, never ever. And you damned well couldn’t miss a chance to get back at me!”

  “Wh-aat?” He looked at her sharply. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “The same thing you’ve spent your life brooding about and pitying yourself about, and needling me about. Because you had a hard time as a kid. Because I didn’t measure up to your standards of motherhood.”

  Roy blurted out surlily that she hadn’t measured up to anyone else’s standards, either. Then, a little shamefaced, he tacked on a half-hearted retraction. “Now, I don’t really mean that, Lilly; you just got me sore. Anyway, you’ve certainly done plenty out here, a lot more than I had any right to expect, and—”

  “Never mind,” she cut him off. “It wasn’t enough. You’ve proved it wasn’t. But there’s a thing or two I’d like to get straight, Roy. To your way of thinking, I was a bad mother—no, I was, so let’s face it. But I wonder if it occurred to you that I didn’t look on myself that way at all.”

  “Well…” He hesitated. “Well, no, I don’t suppose you did.”

  “It’s all a matter of comparison, right? In the good neighborhoods you were raised in, and stacked up against the other mothers you saw there, I stank. But I didn’t grow up in that kind of environment, Roy. Where I was raised, a kid was lucky if he got three months of school in his life. Lucky if he didn’t die of rickets or hookworm or plain old starvation, or something worse. I can’t remember a day, from the time I was old enough to remember anything, that I had enough to eat and didn’t get a beating…”

  Roy lit a cigarette, glancing at her over the match; more irritated than interested in what she was saying. What did it all amount to, anyway? Maybe she’d had a tough childhood—although he’d have to take her word for that. All he knew about was his own
. But having had one, and knowing how it felt, why had she handed him the same kind of deal? She knew better. She hadn’t been under the same ugly social pressures that had been brought to bear on her own parents. Why, hell, she was married and living away from home at about the age he’d finished grammar school!

  Something about the last thought dug into him, cut through the layered rationalizations which warmed him in their rosy glow while holding her off in outer darkness. Irritably, he wondered just how soon he could decently break out of here. That was all he wanted. Not excuses, not explanations. Because of Carol, and because he did owe Lilly something, he himself had been cast in the role of apologizer and explainer. And, manfully, he had accepted it. But—

  He became aware at last that the room was silent. Had been silent for some time. Lilly was leaning back in her chair, looking at him with a tiredly crooked smile.

  “I seem to be keeping you up,” she said. “Why don’t you just run along and leave me to stew in my sins?”

  “Now, Lilly—” He made a defensive gesture. “You’ve never heard me reproach you for anything.”

  “But you have plenty to reproach me for, haven’t you? It was pretty lousy of me to be a child at the same time you were. To act like a child instead of a grown woman. Yes, sir, I was a real stinker not to grow up and act grown up as fast as you thought that I should.”

  Roy was stung. “What do you want me to do?” he demanded. “Pin a halo on you? You’re doing a pretty good job of that yourself.”

  “And making you look like a heel at the same time, hmm? But that’s the way I am, you know; the way I’ve always been. Always picking on poor little Roy.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Lilly—!”

  “Now, I’ve got just one more thing to say. I don’t suppose it will do any good, but I’ve got to say it, anyway. Get out of the grift, Roy. Get out right now, and stay out.”

  “Why? Why don’t you get out yourself?”

  “Why?” Lilly stared at him. “Are you seriously asking me, why? Why, you brainless sap, I’d be dead if I even looked like I wanted out! It’s been that way since I was eighteen years old. You don’t get out of things like this—you’re carried out!”