by Packer, Vin
“Hello, Perrez. Long time no see,” she laughs. Her height is below medium; her legs are fat and wide. She wears a beige kimono. Her hair is badly hennaed, and the part in the middle is black.
“Hello, Hazel,” Tea says, following her into the second room. A convertible bed is pulled down, unmade. There are playing cards spread on it, a couple of crumpled Kleenexes, a nail buffer, a half-eaten candy bar. Beside the bed on a glass table is a bottle of gin, and a plate filled with pickles and sandwich crusts. A phonograph whines out a scratchy blues song.
Hazel flops on the bed. Tea sits in the chair next to it.
“Business good?” he asks.
“Can’t complain.”
Hazel has some nice rackets. She runs El Palacio for a smart money man who knows some other uses for a movie house besides showing movies. People who ask for reserved seats can arrange for a game, play a number, score, buy a girl who’s game, or some “sneak” for one who’s not, read the latest news, or report it — depending on their fancies — and accomplish sundry other illicit tasks. Besides these, Hazel occasionally makes the scene as “the unknown blonde woman” found in the husband’s hotel room when the wife and the private detective walk in. For this service, Hazel charges New York’s incompatibly married couples fifty dollars, which is cheap enough in a state where divorce is dependent upon one-half of the couple being caught in a compromising situation.
“I need to score, Hazel,” Tea says. “I’m all hung up.”
“It’s true what they say about Latin lovers, Perrez,” she answers, reaching over to put the phonograph needle back at the start of the record. “They’re smooth. They walk into a lady’s bedroom, and they know just the right words of passion to turn on.” She stretches her feet out on the bed, kicks off a pair of soiled white mules. Her body bulges under the kimono.
“I’m not much of a cat on the flesh kick,” he says. “I live to boot!”
“You’re a tough little man, aren’t you, sonny?” She smiles at him, pats the bed with a pudgy hand. “Come on. Sit over here. I like tough little men. Like to see their eyes when they get sugared-up.”
Tea goes over and sits on the bed. “Something happened to Ace,” he says. “Know anything about it?”
She reaches back for the gin bottle, swigs, brushes off some that runs down her chin, and sets it back. “Oooh, sonny, you’re such a serious little Latin. Look at your eyes.” Her own eyes slide up and down Tea’s lithe body, and her mouth makes a lopsided grin.
“How’d you ever get the name Hot Hazel, anyway?” Tea says in mock dismay.
She reaches forward and pinches his chin. Her kimono falls open and Tea sees her breasts heaving like melons, the nipples awake. She watches his face and laughs.
“It’s hot,” she says. “Why do you wear your jacket?”
“I look good in it.”
“It’s hot for a leather jacket like that, King Perrez.” She runs a finger along his name on the jacket. It slips down to his thigh. She says, “If it’d stopped raining, I would have gone out tonight, down to the soda fountain where all the little tough boys make the lights go on and the bells ring in the pinballs. But it didn’t stop. So Hazel had to stay in. No little tough boys. No pretty lights.”
Tea knows what she means.
He never would have come to El Palacio if it were not the only place left him. Everywhere else he has tried. Hazel is why the usher at El Palacio is as old as Moses. But even a younger man is safer than a boy. Hazel’s kick is kids.
Tea tries earnestly, “I’ve got to score, Hazel. I’ve got one cap home between me and a cold turkey, and half a dozen hopheads eating their knuckles right now waiting for me.”
“I think that leather jacket’s what makes you so tough. Using all those tough expressions. You’re just a little boy, aren’t you?”
She places her hand on him.
“Hazel, I’m in trouble! Don’t you see!”
She lets her kimono fall all the way open. The whole soft round fatness of her churns. “So am I,” she croons. “Don’t you see?”
• • •
Beppo Ventura pounds his stomach until a belch roars up out of him. Dinner is over in the de Jarro flat.
In the kitchen, the occupants sit around listening to the rain. The Ricos occupy the army cot, upon which they have spread crumpled dollar bills and silver, and they count it out. It is rent night. They owe Mrs. de Jarro $50 a week, room and board.
Jesus Ventura squats on the floor by the potbelly stove, drinking and watching his youngest niece as she clears the table and stacks the dishes in the sink. Her sister, Jo, primps before a cracked mirror hanging on the back of the door, and Mrs. de Jarro, Carlos Ventura and Eyes sit around the table. In the back room, eating her meal slowly on the mattress, is Grandmother Ventura.
“You going out, Dom?” Dolores asks Eyes as she passes by him.
“Yeah, I got to see Flash. He’s lending me a clean shirt for tomorrow night.” Eyes emphasizes the clean shirt and glares at his mother.
She says, “I don’t wash shirts for dirty pigs to put on!”
“You be back early, Dom?”
“It’s late now, Lorry.”
“You’re outa luck tonight, Dolores,” Uncle Jesus laughs.
Mrs. de Jarro says, “Tonight I’m going to take a walk over to the police station. I’m just going to go by that way. See what they say about someone on probation start out at ten o’clock for a night. That’s what I’m going to do tonight.”
“Go ahead,” Eyes says. “Get your head soaked!”
“I shoulda drowned you the day you came outa me! No wonder your father took to his heels. Nick took one look at your ugly puss and it was too much for him!”
Eyes gets up. “I’m blowing. I ain’t got the rest of my life to sit and hear you sound off because you jiggled when you was drunk one night fifteen years back!”
Jesus Ventura says, “Is that that noise I hear coming from the back bedroom nights, ah? Jigglin’?”
“What you saying, Jes?” Carlos Ventura asks.
“Nothing.”
“I catch them at it, I kill them!”
Dolores Ventura’s face is crimson. She turns her back on the room, and runs the water in the sink, full force.
“Kill him!” Mrs. de Jarro points a finger at her son. “He’s the one with the ideas. He’s the smart one, he is! When I take my walk by the police station tonight, we’ll see how smart he is.”
Carlos Ventura repeats, “I’ll kill them! I swear to that! If I ever hear that!”
Jo Ventura, his older daughter, struts across the room to him. She is his favorite; a shapely, long-legged, black-haired girl in her late teens. She runs her hand through her father’s hair. “You make a fuss when there’s nothing to fuss over, Pa. You listen to Uncle Jes, you believe next the stars fall in the ocean.”
Carlos laughs and pulls her down to his lap. “Ah! Ah! Ah!” he says, “You’re the one like your mother. A beauty who could charm vipers. You’re the honey-tongued one.”
In the background, the Ricos count, “… quince, diez y seis, diez y siete, diez y …”
• • •
Later, while Eyes is in the bedroom stuffing cardboard into the soles of his worn-down everyday shoes, preparing to go out, Dolores comes in and sits on the mattress. Grandmother Ventura leans against the wall still chewing her food, swallowing it, raising the fork again, and staring ahead of her blankly. She understands no English.
“Dom?”
“Yeah, honey?”
“I wish I could go with you.”
“It’s raining, f’Chrissake. And it’s ten-thirty. Since when?” He looks at her with a puzzled expression. “Uncle Jesus bugging you, is that it? Talking that way.”
“I’m just so sick of it all. This place. This kind of life. This talk. It’s like everyone here hates everyone else, and just stays together to see how much worse they can make it for the others. I don’t know. I’m just sick, Dom.”
“Yo
u’re really bugged, aren’t you, baby? It’s the rain.”
“Remember how you felt when you found out that song business was a racket the other day?”
“Sure. It hit me below the waist. But I don’t let it get me, Lorry.”
“I feel that way about everything — everything — today.”
Eyes stands up and pushes his feet into the shoes, squeezing them around, forcing the cardboard to fit. “I don’t let it get me,” he says, “for the simple reason it don’t do no good. I don’t let it get me, and I don’t give up. Like, tomorrow night I go to that musical, I maybe learn the angles I need to know. You don’t know.”
“You’re really looking forward to it, aren’t you, Dom?”
“Sure. I wish you was going. Flash is lending me the works. Suit, shirt, tie — the works!”
Eyes takes his King jacket from the soot-covered, rain-splashed window sill. He says very seriously, “Lorry?”
“Yes?”
“You remember that part in my song went like this — ” He stands stiffly in the posture he always assumes when he sings:
Your lips are the sweetest lips
I’ve ever tasted
For your lips, for your kiss,
I’d even get wasted.
“Remember, Lorry?” he says. “Yes, Dom.”
“Well — Dan tells me he thinks the words are too vague. I mean, he says people aren’t gonna know what it means to get wasted. You know?”
“Yes, Dom. You told me about it.”
“Yeah. So, I says to Dan,” Eyes grins at Lorry, who smiles back faintly, “I says, who knows what ko-ko-mo means. You know? Ko-ko-mo I love you so. You know how Perry Como’s always coming on with that. I says, who’s going to know what that means?”
Grandmother Ventura bangs her spoon on the plate. “Take it away!” she cries in Spanish.
“All right, Nannie, for heaven’s sake. You just this second finished.”
“Dan had to admit I had a point,” Eyes says.
“Come home before midnight, Dom? Hmmm?”
“Lorry, Lorry — you’re the only one that really wants me around, aren’t you?” Eyes touches his fingers to her cheek gently.
“Take it away!” Grandma Ventura squeals again.
“Whenever it rains in here,” Babe Limon says, “the whole place stinks of oilcloth!”
She and Marie Lorenzi sit in the striped canvas deck chairs in the Limon flat, chewing on popcorn and watching television, but they are growing restless now and bored. They began their viewing at 7:30; they have swallowed down three bottles apiece of No-Cal, and four bags of popcorn. The ashtrays overflow with butts, and they have both given their finger and toe nails four coats of red polish.
“I think I seen your old lady twice in my life,” Marie says to Babe.
“Staying home gives her ants in her pants. Mom’s a chick’s gotta be on the go.”
“Where’s she go?”
“Works all day. Then goes downstairs to the bar, over to my aunt’s, around. My aunt and her’s real close. Born one right after the other.”
“Twins?”
“Naw. Just one right after the other. That’s why my dad cut out. He was mad the way she never stayed home. Always over to my aunt’s. He says to Mom, ‘So why didn’t you marry Flora, you spend so much time there!’ “
“You get along with her?”
“Mom? Sure. I do what I want. Last Christmas she gets this set for the place. She can’t stand TV herself. Can’t sit still without getting up and running around unless she’s gossiping. That’s why she likes my aunt. They never run out of gossip. They can’t think of any that happened recent, they gossip about things happened ten years back. This set wasn’t a used set, either.”
Marie reaches for more popcorn and looks carefully at Babe’s face as she leans forward.
She says, “Babe?” “What?”
“You’re not still steamed or anything at what I brought up earlier?”
“I was never steamed, Marie. I just refuse to have anything to do with that. What my best girl friend does I don’t care. That’s the way it has to be between best girl friends, but take me, Marie — I never done anything like that before. I never even been in a line-up.”
“I told you that confidentially, Baby-O. Not to have you throw it in my face.”
“Well, the facts are in. I never could see lowering myself.”
“Flat Head says all the Junglettes got to go along with this bit. It’s not like a line-up. I mean, there’s nothing public about it.”
“Marie, how can you ask a thing like this? What you want to do, you got every right, and I give you no argument. But you and me don’t see eye to eye on matters of this nature.”
“Then I got to tell Pontiac that?”
“You can tell Pontiac I consent so far as playing up to him in front of the Kings at the dance, so they can have their rumble and get it over with. But then is when I draw the line. You can tell Pontiac I am flabbergasted with this new twist you inform me of, and I punk out all the way down the line on it!”
“He’s going to be a big man, Baby-O. Already he has his foot in important doors. S’afternoon I heard him on the phone down at that Larry’s store, and he is sounding off like a smart money man. When he brings me home after, and my old man looks out the window and sees me stepping out of that sweet car of his, my old man almost croaked. I got some respect around the place tonight. Before I come over here, my old man asks where I’m going? I says, ‘I got a date,’ see? And I know from his big mouth hanging open he thinks I got a date with that Buick. And he comes on with this — he says, ‘I always did my best for you, Marie. I did what a father can do!’ So my old lady tells him to put down the violin, because she knows like I do the old man thinks I might be going to hook something with loot and fix him in a better pad some day. I hadda laugh at that!”
“Whatta we watching this crumby play for Marie?”
Marie reaches down on the floor under the canvas chair for the newspaper. “I’ll see if there’s a movie on.” She adds, “You’re not steamed at me, though, are you, Baby-O?”
“No. Just make it plain to Pontiac my feelings. I think we can find out faster if there’s a show, turning the dials.” She gets up and crosses to the television set and switches stations.
• • •
Enid Roan sits listening to her husband talk. His raincoat is tossed across his lap, his hair still damp from the downpour. He lights a cigarette and continues: “… so everything is in a big mess. I can’t locate the Gonzalves kid or the Perrez kid. I know the Jungles and the Kings will rumble, but I don’t know when. Then to top it off this girl gets herself pregnant. I thought I’d never get home tonight.”
“I thought the same, Dan. I don’t know.” She sighs and fiddles with the wedding band on her finger. “Sometimes I think it’s all futile. All of it!”
“And you think I don’t?”
“Yes, but you seem to be drawn toward jobs like this. Before this, there was that miserable counselor’s job in the reformatory, before that the summer at the training camp — and now gangs!”
“You certainly sound sour tonight.”
“Perhaps.”
“Look, Enid. I don’t expect you to be as concerned with this business as I am, but it doesn’t help to have you disenchanted with it, either.”
“All right, I’m enchanted again. That’s pretty hard too, on an empty stomach.”
“When I called, I told you to eat.”
“Food doesn’t taste like anything when you eat it alone.”
“So what am I supposed to do, Enid? Shall I neglect that Ventura girl, who’s half out of her mind with worry over being pregnant?”
“She’s the girl friend of Red Eyes de Jarro, isn’t she? The one you’re taking to the show tomorrow?”
“Yes … I thought of telling him, even though she doesn’t want him to know. Then I decided she was probably right. First we’ve got to work out something for her, perhaps enter
her in a home until the baby’s born. She’s sixteen, a young sixteen, but he’s an even younger fifteen. And then there’s the family to cope with. Her father — Boy, it’s a mess, Enid. I just go in circles some days.” “Ummm.”
“And I know this Perrez kid, the addict. I know he’s lost his source, and he’s off somewhere trying to connect with someone who’ll give him more heroin. And Gonzalves — I want to make him see the idiocy behind this oncoming rumble, and to make him — ”
Enid Roan gets up abruptly. “I’ll fix something to eat, Dan,” she says, but her voice breaks, and as she turns to leave the room, she hurries, hiding her face.
“Enid.” Dan Roan follows her, his expression puzzled.
In the kitchen, her back to him, she cries.
“Enid, what’s the matter? I’m sorry I was late, honey. I told you why. You could see what I was up against, couldn’t you? You know — ”
“I know. I know. Rumbles and dope addicts — and the final irony. A pregnant girl who needs your help!”
“Enid, I never saw you carry on like this. Honey, what’s the matter?”
“Dan, you’re always so busy putting out the fires in other peoples’ homes, you can’t tell if something is burning in your own.” She turns and faces him, tears streaking down her face. “Dan, look at me. Look at me good.”
“Honey, what is it?”
“Don’t you see anything different?”
“No … No — you’re upset, of course — ”
“And I’m also three and a half months pregnant, Dan.”
“Enid!”
“I’ve been trying to think of some way to tell you. Some way to make you glad we’re going to have a child we can’t afford; some way maybe to make you love it enough to want to get into some decent, respectable work, with real people — not with Black Eyes, and Tea House, and Two-gun Charlie — but with people worth saving. Not these beasts, not these gangs and their silly rumbles! Dan, we’re going to have a child — and I’m fed up to my teeth with the Kings of the Earth!”
• • •