by Orrie Hitt
“Can’t sway you?” he asked after a while.
“No.”
“You can be very stubborn when you want to be.”
“It isn’t that, Tom. It’s just that I want to do the right thing for once.”
“Well, if you won’t move into the house get a room downtown so I can come and see you.”
“No.”
“Why?”
She was becoming impatient with him.
“How many times do I have to tell you? I have to be absolutely certain that I’m doing what I should do. Sneaking our love in a cheap room doesn’t appeal to me.”
“You’re fighting yourself and me.”
“Maybe so. But going to your house in the first place was wrong and it was wrong for me to pose for those pictures. If our love was real we wouldn’t have done either of those things.”
“I can see you don’t believe that I love you.”
“It isn’t that, Tom. I believe you. You have no reason to lie to me. Yes, I believe you. But I know what I feel inside.”
He started to get up.
“There’s no point in trying to convince you?”
“No.”
Cherry watched Tom, her eyes misty, as he walked toward the dressing rooms. Things would be so simple if she could only see them his way. But she couldn’t. She was willing to wait for the right time and he should be willing to wait, too. But it was obvious that he didn’t want to wait. He wanted her now.
It was after five when Cherry went to the dressing room. There was nobody there when she changed into her shorts and halter. She was still thinking of Tom. Perhaps she had made a mistake. If two people loved each other they had a right to share that love, to enjoy every passionate moment of it. She would have to think more about his offer. She yearned to be with him, to feel his arms around her, to know the glory of his manliness seeking her flesh. She hadn’t recognized it before but he had awakened something, had brought to life for her the full meaning of being a female.
As she walked to the bus she still thought about him. He would wait. Of course he would wait. They could go out together and behave like any other normal couple. That was the best way. They would go to shows and dance and have a few drinks. If the moment arrived when she couldn’t stand it any longer they could drive up into the hills and know love in his car. It wouldn’t be as it had been with Joe, something to hide and to be ashamed of. With Tom love would be beautiful.
The bus was crowded and she had to stand. She didn’t mind. There was so much to think about, so much to decide. It would only take six weeks for his wife to get a divorce and then Cherry would belong to him, belong to him forever. He would give up his dirty business and they would be able to hold their heads high. Until she became pregnant and could no longer work she would help him in the photo shop. Things would work out well for them. Very well.
She got off the bus at Orange Street. The boys were no longer playing ball in the vacant lot and the street was quiet.
She was almost at the house when she saw that Joe was sitting on the front steps, obviously waiting for her. She sighed. He would ask to take her out and she would refuse. He would be angry and hurt but she couldn’t prevent that. The interlude with him had ended and he should be man enough to realize it.
“Swimming?” he asked as she approached.
“Just getting some sun.”
“You could have gotten that here.”
“Well, I like the pool.”
She walked up and sat down beside him and it was only then that she noticed he had a can of beer. In back of him there were three empty cans.
“Beer,” she said. “You shouldn’t be drinking it. You know how drunk you get on beer.”
“Maybe I want to get drunk.”
It was obvious that he was drunk already.
“Maybe I want to get stinko,” he said. “My folks took off for the weekend and so did yours. We can have a ball, the kind we used to have.”
She wished that she had stayed at the pool or stopped in at a bar for a drink. She wasn’t in any mood to argue with him.
“Thanks, no, Joe.”
“Too good for me, huh?”
“It isn’t that. Things have changed for us, that’s all.”
“I guess they have.”
“We were crazy to do what we did but that’s finished now. No harm has been done.”
He drank some of the beer.
“You don’t like me,” he said.
She turned and threw her suit on one of the chairs.
“Yes, I like you, Joe, but it doesn’t go beyond that.” Then, she added hurriedly, not wishing to hurt him, “It isn’t your fault and it isn’t mine. Times change and so do people. I’m afraid a person doesn’t always have very much to say about it.”
“I’m doing well on the bread route. A hundred and sixty this week.”
“That’s fine.”
“But I didn’t come here to talk about that. I came here to talk about us.”
“There’s nothing to say.”
He emptied the beer can.
“The hell there isn’t. There’s lots to say. Plenty.” He reached inside his shirt pocket. “But these might tell you more than any words I can use.”
He handed her some photos and even before she looked at them she knew what they were. It was one of the sets she had posed for, one of the sets in which she was nude.
“Where did you get these?” she managed to say.
“From another truck driver. He buys them. I don’t. But I recognized you right away and I asked for the loan of them.” He laughed. “Pretty, aren’t they?”
She made no reply. She felt frozen inside. Tom had said they wouldn’t be distributed locally but if he sold them to someone else he lost control over that.
“Aren’t you going to say anything, Cherry?”
She had the urge to rip the photos to shreds, but that wouldn’t do any good. There were probably thousands of sets.
“What is there to say?”
“Can’t you say you’re sorry?”
“I’m sorry. You’ll never know how sorry I am.”
He took another can of beer and opened it.
“That’s what you were doing when you were away from home,” he said. “When I took your things down to Gordon Road I wondered how you could afford the rent for the apartment. Now I know. You were doing this all along and I never guessed.”
“It’s all over now.” She returned the pictures to him. “I learned my lesson the hard way.”
“I’ll bet you did. Who was the guy?”
“Don’t be nasty.”
She started to get up but he grabbed her by the arm.
“What about tonight?”
“No.”
“If you’d pose for pictures like that you should be willing to make love with me, your old buddy.” His tone was sarcastic.
“Please, Joe. You’re hurting my arm.”
“I don’t care if I am. What I should do is twist the arm clean off you. You don’t know how I felt when I saw those pictures. That guy was showing them around and I only glanced at them at first. Then I saw that it was you. Hell!”
“I’m not proud of it,” Cherry said. “Don’t think I am.”
“What other stuff were you doing while you were away from the house?”
“Nothing.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I wasn’t.” She tried to twist free of him. “You’re going to bruise me,” she said.
“I’m going to do more than that to you. We’re going upstairs and I’m going to get what somebody else has been getting.”
Her arm hurt where he held her but she felt an even greater hurt inside. He thought she was a bum, a tramp, and he was treating her as he would a girl off the streets. There was no love here, none at all. Here was only the pride of the wounded male asserting itself.
“Nobody has been getting anything,” she said.
“Don’t hand me that.”
She m
ade an effort to jerk her arm free but his grip was too strong.
“And you won’t either,” she said. “I won’t be forced. There’s nothing you can say that will convince me.”
“I’ll bet your folks would like to see these.”
“You wouldn’t do that!”
“I’d do anything to get what I want. You were mine before and you should be mine again. But there’s no possible marriage involved this time. I’m only taking what others have had.”
She thought of how love-making would be with him now and revulsion seized her. She would never go that far with him. Never.
“You’re wasting your time,” she said.
“Am I?”
“Yes.”
He released her arm but she continued to sit there. She told her legs to move but they wouldn’t. If Rita and Oscar ever saw those pictures there would be the devil to pay — and nothing with which to pay him. Some of the men at the factory bought sexy photos. What if they bought some of her?
“Either we go upstairs or your people get the pictures.”
“I can’t stop you.”
“There’s one way that you can.”
“It’s the one way I won’t take.”
“There were plenty of other times when you didn’t object.”
“That was a long time ago.”
He drained the can and placed it beside the others.
“What are a few minutes of loving?” he demanded. “Tomorrow you won’t know the difference. Who knows? You might even enjoy it.”
With a great effort Cherry rose to her feet. She was taking a chance in turning him down but she couldn’t see any way out. She had thought of him as a decent person but he was like many men. He knew what he wanted and cared very little how he got it.
“I’m going in,” she said, picking up her suit from the chair. “If you want to ruin me, go ahead.”
“You’ve ruined yourself.”
She left him on the porch and when she was in the house she ran up the stairs. She flung herself on her bed and gave in to huge wracking sobs.
Chapter Fourteen
RITA HAD Cherry’s things packed when the girl returned home from work on Monday.
“These things came in the mail today,” Rita said, displaying the pictures. “I don’t know who sent them. Cherry, if I had known what you were doing you wouldn’t have been welcome back here. What do you say, Oscar?”
“She might be able to explain,” Oscar said.
“Explain? How can she explain this filth? She’s like her mother, I tell you. Bad blood. Bad blood all the way through. Even worse — I don’t think her mother would have done a thing like this.”
There was nothing for Cherry to say, nothing for her to do. Her bags were by the door and she had to leave. She would find a room and someday they might forgive her.
She picked up the bags and carried them outside.
“Now, look,” Oscar said.
She kept on going and they began to argue as she started down the steps. It was apparent that Oscar was more tolerant than his wife.
The kids were playing ball and the big boy whistled at her again. She didn’t even glance at him. She couldn’t see clearly because of the tears in her eyes.
She waited on the corner for the bus, wondering where she would go and what she would do. She was still standing there when Joe pulled up in his new car.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I mailed those things when I was drunk. I didn’t mean to cause any mess.”
She refused to look at him.
“Leave me alone, Joe. You’ve caused me enough trouble.”
“I said I was drunk, didn’t I?”
“Leave me alone.”
The bus came along and Cherry got on, leaving Joe parked at the curb. She wanted nothing to do with him. She had refused him her body and so he had invaded her private life. He wasn’t, she decided, much of a man.
She rode the bus as far as Central Square and got off. There was a hotel on the opposite corner and she walked toward that. She would stay at the hotel for a few days and then find a room that was more reasonable.
They gave her a room on the fourth floor but Cherry didn’t stay there very long. She went down to the bar. She had to have a drink. What she had done had caught up with her completely, caught up with her fast, and she was confused, defeated.
The drinks were strong but they didn’t help very much. A man sat down beside her and tried to make a date. She said nothing to him and continued to drink.
“Buy you one?” he asked.
She pushed her own money across the bar.
“A cutie,” he said. “A cutie with a buck. Well, the hell with you. For every dame like you there’s half a dozen who are just yelling for some fun.”
Several times during the evening she tried to call Tom at the shop but there was no answer. Twice she dialed the house and got the same results there. Maybe he was out with another girl or maybe he was at the barn. Each time Cherry failed to reach him she returned to the bar and resumed drinking. The man who had bothered her finally found a girl and they were laughing loudly. Once Cherry heard the girl say something about fifty dollars and the man said twenty was enough. Cherry was still at the bar when they left, perhaps for one of the rooms upstairs and a few minutes of love.
She stayed in the bar until midnight; she staggered slightly as she walked to the elevator. Drinking was a silly thing to do. It solved nothing. It numbed your mind for a few short hours and then your troubles came tumbling back, sometimes worse than they had been before.
She spent a miserable night in the room and didn’t sleep. When dawn broke she was still awake, twisting and turning on the bed. If it hadn’t been for those miserable pictures — but she had posed for them. She couldn’t deny that. She had posed for them and the sets would flood the country. Men would buy them and see her as she should be seen only by a husband. But she didn’t blame Tom. She blamed herself. She had been weak and stupid. He was angry when he released the pictures, but he had later tried to get them back. The fact that he had failed didn’t mean his intentions were bad. And the distributor — well, he was another story. He was in business to make money and she couldn’t blame him, either.
It was an effort for Cherry to go to work the next morning but she did. Of course there was the money in the bank but she had to keep her job. If she didn’t work and started using the money it would go fast. And she would feel dirty every time she touched the money.
She was early at the factory. The boss, alone on the floor, said she looked nice in a sweater and skirt. The boss was in his fifties and there wasn’t a girl who worked for him that he didn’t try to date. And he had pretty good luck.
“You busy every night?” he asked Cherry.
“Just about.”
“A pretty girl like you would be. But if you ever get a free night we might have dinner together.” He warmed to his subject. “Dinner and a few drinks. What the hell! You only live once.”
She was glad when the other girls arrived and she could start working. She had enough trouble without dating the boss. That was all she had to do — then she would be a real slut.
It was nearly noon when the boss came over to her.
“Couple of men to see you,” he said.
“Me?”
“In the office.”
“Who are they?”
“Police.”
“Police?”
“They showed me their badges.” He bit down on the cigar he was smoking. “I don’t know what you’ve done but don’t worry about your job here. You work well and there’s always an opening for you.”
“Thank you,” she murmured.
Cherry got up and followed him across the busy plant toward the office. The two men waiting for her were big and powerful-looking.
“This is Miss Gordon,” the boss said.
One cop stared at her.
“That’s her,” he said. “That’s the same face.”
The other cop nod
ded.
“Maybe we should talk in the hall,” he suggested. “This is a little personal.”
They led Cherry into the hall and closed the door. The policeman who had spoken first reached into his coat pocket and brought out some pictures.
“Recognize yourself, Miss Gordon?”
Cherry took a deep breath.
“Yes,” she admitted.
“You know Tom Lester?”
“Yes.”
“How long did you work for him?”
She tried to remember some of the things she had been taught in school.
“I don’t think I have to answer that,” she said after a brief silence. “I think I have a right to see a lawyer.”
The policeman returned the pictures to his pocket.
“You won’t need a lawyer,” he said. “Nothing’s going to happen to you. We’ve talked with the people on the block where you lived and you seem to be a nice girl. The judge will slap you on the wrist and give you a few months’ probation. We’re only trying to get to the bottom of a filthy racket. Some of the others won’t be so lucky. We rounded up one girl who has been arrested six times for the same thing.”
“I see.” But Cherry didn’t see. She only saw that she was in trouble, that the pictures had come back to torment her.
“You have a right to know what happened,” the policeman said. “There’s been a big drive on in the city against this sort of thing and they finally nailed the distributor. He passed the buck to Tom Lester and we closed in on him late yesterday afternoon. We found a book with the names and addresses of all the girls and men he had used. One of the names happened to be yours. You might be interested to know that he said he forced you into it, that what you did you did unwillingly. That will go a long way toward helping you.”
Cherry started to cry. They had caught Tom. If she could only see him, tell him that it didn’t matter, that their love was all that was important.
“He’s in jail,” the policeman said. “He’s been there since yesterday. And he’s admitted everything. He’ll get a big fine and a trip up the river.”