by Orrie Hitt
“He must have had a lot of work for you to do.”
“Quite a lot.”
“Is this going to go on every night?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, you can’t give up your factory job just for that.”
“No, I guess I can’t.”
After she finished the milk she went upstairs and cleaned her room. She had to find something to do so she would stop thinking. In spite of the liquor she had gone through hours of torture the night before, torture edged with self-hate and self-pity. Once she fell asleep and had awakened in a cold sweat, remembering the heat of the lights in the photo studio, the sight of her naked body being presented for all of the world to see.
It didn’t take her long to clean the room and she was glad of that. She wanted to lie down and become so ill that she would die. What had she been thinking of, what twisted part of her brain had permitted her to pose in the nude?
She sat down on the bed, crying softly. A girl who wanted to get ahead didn’t have a chance, You went to work in a factory and they did you a favor by paying you forty dollars a week. What could you do with that? If you were able to pay your board and buy a few clothes you were lucky. But what kind of a future did it hold? She knew the answer to that one even before she asked it of herself. The future was empty, a series of blank days that jammed themselves into weeks, weeks which became months and years. If you had enough money for cigarettes the day before pay day you could consider yourself fortunate.
She got up from the bed and walked around the room. She had to do something. Posing for Tom in the nude was no way of bettering herself. She had a delightful body and one of the model agencies might be interested in her. Models, she had heard, earned good money, at least more than the factory would pay. If she could save only twenty dollars a week she would soon be able to move on to New York. Once in New York she could get a job on the side and try for a career. Other girls had done it. She had read about them. A girl had to be willing to struggle for what she wanted.
Rita didn’t approve of Cherry’s smoking in the house but she smoked several cigarettes anyway. She would go down to Tom’s that night and tell him that she couldn’t go on with it. She would ask him to return the pictures so that she could destroy them. That kind of work might be all right for a girl like Millie but she wanted no part of it. Her life had been more or less decent until this point and she wanted to keep it that way.
“I’ll even buy the pictures back from you,” she would tell him. “I’ll pay you for them. But I have to get them back.”
Once she had thought this out and settled on a plan of action she felt better. Tom would understand. He would play square with her. No man could refuse a girl this wish.
She had lunch with Rita and Oscar but she didn’t eat much. She had a dull headache from the liquor of the night before and her stomach seemed full.
“Joe has a nice car,” Oscar said.
“Very nice,” Cherry agreed. “But he didn’t need it.”
“Young people like nice things. When I was his age I wasn’t too sensible, either. I lived in the country and I bought a horse that could hardly see. The horse lived only three months.”
Oscar liked to talk about the country and sometimes he said he was going to sell the house on Orange Street and move back to the sticks. But Rita fought against this idea and prevented him from doing it. She was a city girl and she said she couldn’t imagine living out in the hills.
“I’ve heard that a thousand times if I’ve heard it once,” Rita informed him. “You used to take a girl riding with you and the horse dropped dead overnight.”
“Not overnight. Two days.”
“Well, whatever it was.”
They were still talking about the horse when Cherry left to go upstairs and change clothes. She didn’t have anything to do that afternoon and there was a model agency on Northern Avenue that she had heard about. Somebody had suggested that she stop in there after she had won the last beauty contest but she’d never gotten around to it.
She rode the bus to Northern Avenue and got off near Maple. The agency was in the next block, on the second floor, and she had no trouble finding it.
She was immediately disappointed.
There was just a bald-headed man behind a little desk and smoking a big cigar. It was hot in the office and sweat stood out on his forehead.
“Help you, girlie?”
“I’m Cherry Gordon.”
He didn’t get up from where he was sitting.
“So?”
“I was wondering if you had any openings.”
He looked her over. She felt almost naked under his gaze. His glance started at her feet and moved upward, lingering a long moment at the high points of her breasts.
“You’re stacked,” he said finally.
“Thank you,” she murmured, not sure whether she should thank him or not.
He leaned back in the chair.
“So you’re looking for work.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Know the kind of agency that I run?”
“Not exactly.”
“Bras, mostly bras. Bras and panties. I got fifteen girls and they parade around in their undies for the buyers who come to the city.”
“I see.”
“A lot of the buyers are men.” He laughed. “Sometimes they get carried away. Sometimes they want to handle the real stuff. Know what I mean?”
“I have an idea.”
“Would you have any objections to that?”
“I don’t think I would like it.”
She thought he was going to lose interest in her but he didn’t. He leaned forward, his elbows on the top of the desk.
“You’d get used to it soon enough. They all do. When you’ve got a big order hanging on a little feel you don’t back away from it. I pay my girls sixty a week but they pick up an extra bonus from the supplier for a good order. Know what I mean?”
“I’m trying to follow you.”
He leaned further forward.
“Let’s put it this way. You get a buyer who cottons to your line and he may take a shine to you. So he asks you out and you go out with him. How far you go beyond this point is up to you but most of the girls make themselves available for a price. If the guy is on an expense account, and most of them are, you can get around a hundred for a little play in the hay. Now do you know what I mean?”
“I’m beginning to understand.”
He put the cigar aside.
“You got scruples maybe?”
“I’m afraid I do have.”
“Even if you could pick up a bundle?”
“Even then.”
He picked up his cigar and returned it to his mouth.
“Then I have no time for you. When you find out that you can’t keep your clothes on and make money you can come back to see me. Right now there’s nothing here for you.”
Cherry left the office and walked along the street, thinking hard. What was wrong with her? What was wrong with the world? Was everything based on sex? How did a good girl stay good? And, more important, was she, Cherry, a good girl?
Not too good, she decided. A good girl was a virgin and she wasn’t a virgin. But, then, how many girls were? You met a guy, you liked him and you took pleasure in what you did together. You made him happy and he made you happy. Was it wrong? Was it so terribly wrong when your heart told you that it was so right?
It was the middle of the afternoon before she returned home. Both Rita and Oscar were on the porch but they didn’t ask her where she had been and she made no explanation.
Her room was warm and she took off everything she wore. She lay down on the bed and closed her eyes, though she was sure she wouldn’t sleep.
Tonight, she thought, would be the end of it with Tom. She couldn’t go on. She would have to be satisfied with the factory job and perhaps she would locate a café that could use her singing services. What if it took her a year to get out of Northtown? It was too long,
longer than she wanted to wait, but if she had to sell her naked body to do it sooner it would be worth waiting.
At four-thirty she heard Joe’s truck pull into the driveway next door. Perhaps she was making a big mistake. Marriage to him might not be so bad. She could pick up a singing engagement here and there and she could lead a clean life. Some of the girls she had known had married and they were happy.
“They wanted to give me something when the baby came,” one girl had said. “I wouldn’t let them. I wanted to live every second of it, to know every pain. God, it was wonderful. There was a mirror over me and I could see everything the doctor did. I wouldn’t trade the experience for a thousand dollars.”
The girl now had three children and they had all been born the same way. Her husband didn’t make as much as Joe made and they got along well. They didn’t have a new car or the best furniture on the street but they had their love and they had three nice kids to prove it.
Marriage to Joe …
“Well, it might be all right. He could please her physically and that part was important.
“Don’t ever marry a man who can’t take care of you,” another girl had said. “You do that and every salesman who walks into the house is welcome. All he has to do is point to the sofa and you’re on it, getting from a stranger what you can’t get from your own husband.”
This girl also lived on Orange Street, in an apartment over a garage. She didn’t have any children and she had been to doctor after doctor. She had even had a minor operation but it hadn’t helped.
“I don’t care. I have more fun this way. I can get in my licks and not worry about the consequences.”
Cherry twisted on the bed, finding a cooler spot. She was worried, very much so. Damn Joe. For all she knew she could be on her way to bearing his child. She wished that the month was gone, that she really knew. How could she ever endure the waiting, the fear that clawed at her every time she remembered what he had done to her?
Marriage …
Marriage to Joe …
Well, why not? He was honest and he loved her. She supposed, trying to be frank about it, that she was either in love with him or almost in love. When they were seeing each other she had looked forward to their hours together. There had been one night when they had parked in front of the house and she had been hungry for him.
“You are anxious,” he had said.
“Yes.”
“What if somebody comes along?”
“They won’t. And if they do it’s too dark to see inside the car.”
He had taken her there, taken her wildly, and she had responded with a wildness all her own. Even after he could no longer meet her demands she had longed for him to take her body again.
Cherry lay on the bed and looked up at the ceiling. Was she cheap? What about the other boys who had known the pleasures of her flesh, the boys who hadn’t really mattered? Was she like her mother?
Presently Cherry rose from the bed and dressed, putting on a fresh bra and new panties and the same skirt and blouse she had worn the night before. At nine she would see Tom and straighten everything out with him and the next day she would go back to her job at the factory. She would make the best of things as they were and pray for a break; someday it would come.
Rita had prepared steak for supper and it was very good. Cherry ate a large piece and could have eaten more. What was she worried about? She was only twenty and she had the time and the health to do the things she wanted to do. Everything worthwhile took time; she just had to prepare herself to wait.
At eight-thirty Cherry caught a cab on the corner and rode downtown. Tom would be angry with her but that didn’t really matter. She had made a mistake — she was glad that she had realized it so quickly.
The shop was open and Tom was waiting for her in the back room.
“Right on time,” he said, glancing at his watch. “I like girls who are on time. I’ve got one who shows up drunk and I can never depend on her. If she wasn’t so good in the movies I wouldn’t keep her.”
Cherry was uncertain how to begin.
“I’m not going on,” she said at last.
He didn’t seem surprised.
“What changed your mind?”
“I just thought it over, that’s all.”
“And you want out?”
“Yes, Tom.”
“You could make a lot of money with me. You know that, don’t you?”
“It isn’t the money.”
“I thought you wanted money.”
“I do. But this is indecent. I was confused when I came to you or I wouldn’t have listened.”
“Go on.”
“I don’t want anything for the pictures you took. I just want them back so I can destroy them.”
He lit a cigarette.
“That’s a big order, Cherry. They came out very well.” He walked to the desk. “Care to look at them?”
He brought the pictures to her and she quickly glanced through the stack. She wanted to cry when she saw those scenes of herself naked. The pictures in the girlie magazines were shaded but these weren’t. These showed everything she had, not a curve or a line left out.
“I don’t know what got into me,” she said.
“I made you an offer and you took it. It’s that simple.”
“Can I have these?”
“Sure. I made up other sets.”
“I want those, too.”
He filled his lungs with smoke and blew on the end of the cigarette.
“That isn’t quite possible,” he said, not looking at her. “You’re a good subject and I intend to keep you. Even for a first session these pics came out fine. And you’ll get better as you go along. Once you’re used to the stills I can use you in the movies. You’ll be a knockout in films. A master film with you in it would bring top dollar.”
“Tom — ”
“Can I play it straight with you?”
“I wish you would.”
“All right. A man gets a valuable property and he hangs onto it. I’m not in this racket for pennies. I’m in it for a fortune. Give me a couple of years and I can retire. But I can’t do that unless I have beautiful girls. You’re beautiful, more beautiful than you know. If you were in Hollywood some studio would snap you up. But you aren’t in Hollywood and neither am I. We’re both here and we can help each other.”
“Tom, please — ”
“No.” His tone was firm. “You listen to me. You came to me when you needed help and I helped you in the only way that I could. Now you want to quit. Well, I won’t let you.”
She felt hot tears start in her eyes. Her voice shook when she spoke.
“You can’t stop me.”
“Can’t I?” He laughed. “Let’s look at it from the other side of the fence. There are places in town which handle this type of picture. I could put them on sale right here.”
“You wouldn’t!” she gasped.
“Don’t be too sure. And I could go one step further. I could mail a set to your parents. What would they think of you then? How would you be able to explain it?”
She saw the trap then, saw it clearly. She had sold herself to him and now she was his toy, a toy that he could do with as he pleased. She wondered, vaguely, how many other girls were kept in this foul business by the same methods. It was like becoming a prostitute. Once a girl took one step in the wrong direction she had to keep on walking.
“I wouldn’t have believed you could be like this,” she managed.
He laughed and stubbed the cigarette in an ash tray.
“Someday you’ll thank me. Someday you’ll be driving a car as big as mine and you’ll have money in the bank. Hell, don’t take this so seriously. It’s business, just plain business. There’s a market for this stuff and somebody has to supply that market. I get my share — you might as well get yours. I treat all of my girls fairly. Sometimes I go as high as five hundred bucks for a movie, a movie that takes no more than half an hour to make. Can you beat that? I
ask you. Can you beat that kind of money?”
It was big money, there was no question about that. But what did she have to do to earn it? Tom hadn’t told her much about the movies but she could guess what they would be like. The mere thought of the things she would have to do with a strange man — or another girl — revolted her. How could she ever look at herself in the mirror and feel any sense of pride? This beautiful body which belonged to her had become only merchandise to be sold. And somehow she knew that she would go down and down, sinking lower and lower, sinking so far that nothing would be able to save her.
“Be sensible about this,” Tom was saying. “You’ve gone out with men, haven’t you?”
“Of course.”
“And what did you do with them?”
“That’s a personal question.”
“Well,” he shrugged, “we both know what you did. They had their fun.”
“Thanks for the compliment,” she said coldly.
“I doubt if I’m wrong. And what did you get out of it? A thrill? Sure, you got a thrill if you were lucky. But what else did you get? Nothing, that’s what you got. These are the same slobs who buy the pictures, who sneak them into their bedrooms and drool.”
He made it all sound dirty, so terribly dirty. Cherry was sure that Joe never bought nude photos. The others? Well, one boy had owned some, that was true. He had shown them to her and she had been embarrassed.
“I wish you would listen to me,” she said.
“Anything but what you suggest. Ever since you started working here as a receptionist I’ve had my eye on you. What I saw last night convinced me that I had been right. You have all of the equipment where it’s supposed to be — perhaps more than most girls — and you photograph well. I’ve had girls who looked like two-legged dogs when the prints were developed. But you don’t. The man will get the feeling that he can reach out and touch you.”
She was still holding the pictures in her hand and she glanced through them again. She did photograph well. Every line, every curve was there and her smile was one of invitation. You can have me, the smile said. You can have me for your own.
“There doesn’t seem to be much that I can do,” she said at last.
“Not a thing,” he agreed. “We made a deal and we’re both sticking to it.”