Judith loosed a long, resigned breath.
“I don’t have anything to drink,” she said. “I have something else.”
She turned her back on the boy. Inside the chifforobe, she pried up the loose plank and selected the tin of black kif.
Judith prepared the pipe, using the penknife to split a sliver of resin from the little dark brick. She mixed in tobacco so the boy could take the drug better. She turned, and grabbed the Zippo lighter.
“Here.” Judith held out the pipe and flicked the lighter.
The boy straightened, unsure.
“What’s that?”
“Hashish.”
Josh blinked at the Zippo’s flame. He made an effort to wipe the reluctance from his face, then clamped his lips around the pipe stem. Judith lowered the lighter to the bowl.
“Breathe deep,” she whispered.
Josh coughed once; he brought up his free hand to smother the cough, polite and for that moment so young. Judith pressed the pipe back to him, urging him to inhale more.
When she saw Josh’s eyelids bat and his knees soften, she took the pipe away. Again she turned her back to set it and the lighter on the dresser.
Behind her, Josh asked, “Aren’t you going to have some?”
“No, that was for you.”
Still facing away, she dropped the quilt.
Josh cleared his throat and stifled a cough. Judith waited, listening. “Wow,” he said again.
Seconds passed. Then the floorboards squeaked under his shoes. Judith relaxed.
His right hand slipped into the bare curve of her waist, below her ribs. His left hand crept to her shoulder, almost as if, from behind, taking her in hand to dance.
Josh’s breath brushed her neck; the sweetness of the pipe blended with cigarettes on his tongue and the spicy oil in his hair.
Judith laid her open right hand over his fingers at her hip. Josh gave a little gasp in her ear.
“Josh?”
“Yeah, doll?”
“Is this going to happen more than once?”
The boy snickered. “You bet it is.”
Judith nodded against his pressing cheek. She encircled his thumb in her grip, opened her eyes, and whirled.
Still clasping Josh’s thumb, she clamped both hands around his, swiftly raising the wrist in an arch across her face, past the boy’s shocked features. She twisted his arm to bend the hand down and turn the elbow up. Josh, shocked and wrenched out of his embrace, made no move to counter. In an instant, Judith had him bent at the waist, facing the floor, the tendons of his shoulder and wrist near snapping.
“Ow, goddammit!” he cried at her bare feet. “What the—”
He did not finish his curse; Judith’s naked knee crashed into his face. She felt teeth give way and the cartilage of his nose dissolve. She tightened her grip on his hand, bent it more and held it high to increase the pain shooting up his arm, then slammed her knee harder into his head. Josh’s legs buckled, he sagged. Blood spilled from his open lips.
With the boy crumpling, she freed her right arm, reached it high, and with all her strength hammered her elbow down into the top of his neck, the spot where the spine joins the skull. Josh collapsed to the floor, five seconds after putting his hands on her.
With her foot she rolled him over. Above a smashed nose and mouth, his lazy eye dodged her, seeming to seek a way out, even while his good eye fixed on her in wild panic. His bloodied lips tried to form a word, a W sound, a Why or a What. Perhaps a Who. It made no difference.
Judith lifted her foot, sighted down the long length of her brown calf, and stomped on the boy’s Adam’s apple. The windpipe collapsed beneath her heel. The boy convulsed at the blow. She ground her heel into his throat, snuffing his breath. His body jerked again, then settled. She bent to lift one eyelid, to watch the boy’s one good pupil dilate.
Judith got dressed in the New England fisherman’s pants and shirt, then tugged on boots and the watch cap. She cut a soft slice from the black Indian kif. This piece she stuck in the boy’s pants pocket; and the rest she returned to the tin. His other pocket she turned inside out. In his shoe she tucked a hundred dollars in cash.
Judith padded into the dim hall, then trod quietly to the porch. Dawn lay five hours away; the alley remained dark, empty, and cold. She checked Mrs. R’s window to see that the old woman was not awake, then returned inside.
It was easy to heft the body across her shoulders in a fireman’s carry. Silently, to barely a creak of the floorboards, she hustled Josh outside. Twenty yards into the alley, at a pile of overturned trash cans, she laid him down.
Back in her room, Judith scrubbed her floor again.
* * * *
ONE HOUR AFTER SUNRISE, Judith pushed aside the garage door. She let the Nash warm, then drove off to follow the morning’s first streetcars down New Jersey Avenue, to New York Avenue, on to Twelfth Street. After fifteen minutes, she drove past a huge temporary building set on Constitution across from the Commerce Department. This was one of the hundreds of massive sore thumbs hastily flung up, flimsy and unadorned wartime necessities to house the sprawling administration of war. The buildings seemed even uglier among the great and arrogant Grecian temples of America’s white capital.
Judith wove through early traffic to compete for one of the parking spots beside the Commerce Building. Already, with two hours to go before the workers reported for their day, the streets thrummed with life, buses jammed, people jousting in their automobiles. Judith dove into one of the last available spots just ahead of another car, a uniformed sailor who banged his steering wheel.
She pulled on her long overcoat, tied a kerchief around her hair, and got out to walk. A cold gust blew from the south across the Potomac and Anacostia rivers. Judith had made herself learn these and other names and locations; she’d driven behind the trolleys to grow familiar with the city. She patronized the clothing departments at Woodward & Lothrop and Hecht’s, where they saw her money and believed she was a white woman, so they let her try on items in the dressing rooms. She visited no monuments or museums. She felt no curiosity for what was here except the President. This morning, to move among the people on the sidewalks and do what they did, she wore the favored brown suit with square padded shoulders and tan leather shoes. From a corner stand she bought a Washington Post, black coffee, and an egg sandwich for fifty cents total. She did not return to her car but strolled, chewing and carrying the paper folded beneath her arm, listening to the women talk.
It didn’t take long to see that what the lady at the Public Welfare Building had said was true: Females far outnumbered males in this city. They were clerks and secretaries, assistants, couriers, and typists, civil servants in suits like Judith’s or in uniform. They called them GGs—the government girls who made the war small enough to be fought on paper by men. They’d come in tens of thousands looking for work and even, despite the slim chances, romantic matches. They found a city crammed with themselves.
Judith slowed to catch snatches of conversation. Most were laments. The women were paid far less than the men. Costs were high. Acceptable living quarters were rare and too pricey. The girls were homesick, lonely, and strapped for cash. Their jobs were boring and six days a week. Their bosses were lechers. Their typewriters were old. They had a date but their roommates wouldn’t leave them alone long enough. There were dull parties at the USO, the Stage Door Canteen, the YWCA, at churches and synagogues.
Judith circled north to Lafayette Square, then south past the Ellipse. Here men ate and smoked in their cars, waiting for their offices to open. She drew smiles from the many who looked up. She returned their smiles and strode on, driving her pumps into the hard sidewalk, making the click click noise of an American girl.
She walked until the sun rose enough to empty the cars of their men and the women finished their cold puffs of chatter, to herd to their desks and filing cabinets. Judith stood near her car. As she did every morning, she threw away the newspaper without reading a wo
rd. She cast one long glance at the White House four blocks off and made a decision.
No. Enough.
She left the Nash parked. She’d return late in the afternoon. Now, she strode away, to the corner of Fourteenth and Pennsylvania. There, she caught the trolley—a rickety wooden retrofit from the nineteenth century, taken from retirement and pressed into service to help move the masses of Washington—to go shopping.
* * * *
BY NOON SHE RETURNED to her alley. She strolled past the place where she’d dumped the boy’s body. Judith shouldered through a crowd of ogling blacks pressing against police sawhorses set as a cordon around the spot. District cops milled everywhere, fat white men with nightsticks in their belts, keeping the gawkers at bay. The boy was gone; the people were gaping at trash cans.
Judith went to her room and slept for two hours. Waking, she dressed in a plain skirt, cable-knit sweater and mittens, lace-up leather flats with a rubber cobbled heel, and a dowdy wool coat, all bought in secondhand shops. She put her hair in a ponytail to keep it out of the wind and walked back to the Nash, parked on Fifteenth. Along the way, she sensed a difference in how the people passing looked at her. Men in cars did not smile; women going in and out of shops did not allow room for her on the sidewalk. Judith walked on in her noiseless shoes.
She reached the Nash and climbed in from the cold. The city coursed past, busy and tending to itself and its war. The South Portico of the White House gleamed, patrolled and impregnable. An hour passed, watching passersby pause to raise their Brownies to snap photos of the building or barrel ahead into the wind. Judith retreated into her own singularity. She was like none of these people. She was the object of nothing from this city, not the war or the work of it, the careers crushed or made by it, not the wealth, poverty, or society of it. Another hour passed quickly in her chilly car. She turned on her radio to the station WTOP and listened to American music: “This Is the Army, Mr. Jones,” “I Left My Heart at the Stage Door Canteen,” “Der Führer’s Face,” and “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree.”
Then Roosevelt appeared.
His armored limousine emerged out of the east gate, preceded as before by one black car, tailed by another. Judith started the Nash and swung out of the parking spot; the vacant space was filled in seconds. Roosevelt’s little convoy sped past. Judith had to interrupt traffic to do a U-turn. She moved behind, three cars back, wondering where Roosevelt was headed. The President had never before emerged before three o’clock for his motoring forays. Yesterday she trailed for an hour and ten minutes while he and his guardians rode aimlessly through the city, out Rock Creek Parkway, then back to the White House. The evening before, Roosevelt had left the east gate at 7:33 p.m. Judith tailed him to the Statler Hotel where, according to a marquee, a Broadcasters Dinner was to be held. She did not wait for him to leave the dinner, and went home.
Today the ride was brief. The President’s convoy turned left on Constitution, right onto Fourteenth, headed past the spire of the Washington Monument. Straight ahead, the cars entered a garage leading beneath the Bureau of Engraving. Behind the complex lay a small railroad switching yard. This meant Roosevelt was headed north by train to his family home in New York State. He would not come back until after the weekend.
Judith drove on, returning the Nash to its garage before the rush-hour traffic stymied every block. Her walk from the garage was through a dusk dimmer than days before; all the holiday lights of the neighborhood had finally been taken down.
Mrs. P. sat in her rocker, smoking. “Desiree.”
Judith slowed.
“Hello, Mrs. P.”
“Come over here, girl.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Judith sat on the steps below Mrs. P.’s knees.
The old woman pointed the bitten stem of her pipe at Judith’s face.
“You hear ‘bout the landlord’s boy?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“What you hear?”
“That he got himself beat to death in the alley last night.”
“You hear what he got beat for?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Police say drugs. Found some on him. And money, too.”
“That’s a shame.”
Mrs. P. sucked her pipe on this notion. “That boy won’t no harm to nobody. Couldn’t even get drafted with that bad eye. He was just too big for his britches is all. Poor soul. Who’d do that kind of mess to him? What kind of people?”
“Bad people, I suppose.”
Mrs. P. shook her head in disbelief.
“Mm-mm-mm. Don’t make sense. I never heard nothin’ ‘bout that boy doin’ no drugs. Mercy, you think you know some folks. And look what happens.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The old woman fixed her dark eyes on Judith. “Do I know you, Desiree?”
“Yes, ma’am, I think so.”
Mrs. P. whipped a hand before Judith’s face. “Go on. What you take me for? Stupid? Well, I ain’t.”
Judith blinked, taken aback. She composed herself but took care to retain the genuine surprise on her face.
Mrs. P.’s voice had grown firm. “You know anythin’ about this kind of goings on?”
“No, ma’am. Why would I?”
“You breakin’ my heart, girl.”
“How am I doing that?”
“You lyin’ to me. I know what you doin’.”
Quietly, Judith tensed.
“You think I don’ see you comin’ and goin’ all hours? You think I don’ know what you smokin’ sittin’ out here in my rocking chair? Girl, that shit be smellin’ up the whole alley. I know what it is. I been to Harlem, New York, and all over, so I know. You lucky somebody don’ tell the po-lice, what with that boy bein’ beat so bad for the same damn thing.”
Judith kept silent.
“No, you ain’t got nothin’ to say to me, girl, you just keep sittin’ there bein’ lucky.”
Judith measured Mrs. P. The old woman rocked, agitated and glaring.
“Look here, Desiree, I ain’t your mama. But your mama not here, so I got to step up for her. You listen, I’m far from stupid.”
“I never said—”
“Hush up. My reckon is you know somethin’ you ain’t sayin’, and that’s fine. You go on ‘bout your business. But it looks to me like you might be hangin’ out with them bad folks you talkin’ ‘bout. We know Josh was. You hear what I’m sayin’?”
Judith nodded, letting Mrs. P. again build for her a better cover story than she would have constructed for herself.
“I know you been out lookin’ for work every day. I see you goin’ every morning trying to look all dolled up like you ain’t colored. But them gubmint folks, Desiree, they ain’t gonna hire no colored girl outta New Orleans for no office job. Pretty blue eyes and all. They ain’t gonna look no further than your skin, and then you still gonna git some low-class work. No, child. You never gonna dress up good enough for some folk, and that’s the truth.”
Judith hung her head, portraying what Mrs. P. suggested.
“Mind, you can’t go and let them get you down so much you wind up sitting out here in the middle of the night smokin’ that nasty weed. Dealin’ with criminals and such. Them people gon’ hurt you one day, you see what they done to that white boy. If your mama knew, she’d take a switch to you. Damn, girl, you keepin’ me up worryin’.”
“I’m sorry. I’ll stop.”
“I know you gon’ stop, ‘cause I’m gon’ help you out. If you want my help.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I’m gon’ give you two choices. Number one is I’m gon’ call the po-lice and you can tell them what you ain’t tellin’ me. Young Josh didn’t deserve no killin’ like that. I reckon maybe you know some-thin’ about it. But that’s white folks and that’s they problem, ‘less you gon’ make it yours and mine. Then I got to do what I got to do. You understand me?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Mrs. P. studied Judith’s contrite express
ion skeptically. “Mmm-hmm. I think you gon’ prefer number two.”
“I reckon I will.”
“Alright. I know a white lady. She can’t keep help. But she’s alright if you stay out her way. She got a husband with some big job in the gubmint, do somethin’ for the President, is all I know. They got them a place in town nearby and another in Virginia. I do some cleanin’ and cookin’ for her couple times a week. I can’t stand her much more’n that. But you need a steady job, something to keep you busy and off that stuff you smoking. She’ll take you on if I say so. But you got to promise me you gon’ straighten up. Now, you want me to get you work?”
Judith had figured she might have to wait weeks, she was prepared for months. Only this morning, with the White House mere blocks away yet denied to her, she’d changed direction. Now, though she sat on a splintering porch in a ghetto, with the authorities sniffing the alley for the boy’s murderer and Mrs. P. dangling the police over her head, events turned the same way they had the last time she’d been in Washington. That job had moved fast, too.
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