by Robert Lowry
“You know you’re going to the bullfight with me this afternoon, don’t you, darling?” She sat down on the bed. “Now don’t muss my hair!”
So Red got dressed and they went out in the kitchen and she sure looked swell, sitting across the breakfast table from him in that flowered kimono, her little sharp face sort of turned to one side, smiling and talking to him. He couldn’t take his eyes off her.
“You know . . . I like you a lot,” Red said.
“Want some more toast, darling?” she answered.
“I never thought I had a chance with you on the train.”
“I told you to be good last night,” she said. “And you just wouldn’t.”
“I think you’re really . . . really a swell girl.”
She didn’t seem so old to him now. Everything he was saying just slipped out; he just listened to it and it didn’t sound like him speaking at all.
“I guess you got lots of guys crazy about you,” he said. “But I could really go for you.”
“Oh, you’ll go home to that little girl in Tennessee and forget all about me,” she said. “You won’t even be able to remember the color of my eyes, darling.”
“They’re blue,” Red said automatically. He hadn’t really noticed the color before and he felt a little ashamed.
Watching her over there at the sink rinsing the dishes, he couldn’t help it—he went over and grabbed her clumsily and tried to kiss her. But the look that came over her face made him let go quick. “Go away,” she said, really mad. “Can’t you see I’m busy?”
“I’m sorry,” Red said, and got the towel and began drying.
He was just finishing up when Georgie and Boots came out; they were both all dressed and feeling pretty good about something. While they ate, he sat in the front room and read the funnies, and Kay filed her nails and talked about how, terribly boring she found Sundays. If it weren’t for the bullfights, she didn’t know what she’d do—she got so tired of movies. That was the reason she traveled so much, she said.
Red couldn’t keep from stealing glances at her all the time; she looked so pretty, sitting over there. And he got that sick, lonely feeling inside and he didn’t know what to do about it.
Walking along beside her in Juarez he felt very proud of himself, and kept looking at her out of the corner of his eye. He still couldn’t believe a woman like her would really have a guy like him—she was sure something, prancing along down there in her oxfords and her green plaid suit. When he looked at the couple ahead he thought, Georgie got the short end of the bargain this time, all right, even if Boots does keep throwing her arms around his neck and laughing at him with her big teeth every other minute.
“There’s the bull ring!” Kay said, and Red looked and there it was: the dirty white curved front of the bull ring. He felt desperate.
“Let’s not go to the bullfight, Kay,” he said.
That crease was between her eyes when she looked up at him. “Why, darling, whatever do you mean?” she asked.
For a couple steps he couldn’t say anything; he felt all hot and there was a tightness in his head.
“It’s just”—he swallowed—“it’s just that I’m pretty crazy about you, that’s all. I don’t think you know how crazy I am about you, Kay.” He was looking straight ahead with a blank scared expression; his mind was running wild and he didn’t know what he was saying, but he was going to let it all come out anyhow—the way it all felt like coming out. “I wish we could ditch Georgie and Boots and go somewhere and be all alone together, even a restaurant, and just talk. God Almighty, Kay,” he swallowed again, “I’m crazier about you than I ever——”
“Why, Harry!” Kay screamed.
It scared Red so he jumped and turned white. She was running wildly across the street toward a dapper middle-aged fellow in a pepper-and-salt suit. Red watched them embrace, then stand there holding hands while they talked and smiled.
In a minute she came rushing back across the street. Georgie and Boots had stopped: they were watching to see what was up.
“Do you mind awfully, Red?” Kay asked
“Mind what?” Red said.
“But I haven’t seen Harry in such a long time and he wants me to have a drink with him. Do you mind?”
“No,” Red said.
“You go on to the fight with Georgie and Boots and we’ll see you there.”
“Okay,” Red said.
He watched her run across the street away from him. He felt rotten all the way down to his shoe soles.
Georgie and Boots came on over.
“She’s just that way, Red, don’t pay any attention to her,” Boots said.
“Yeah,” Red said.
“Come on along, Red,” Boots said, taking his arm.
He looked at her and suddenly he liked her. He hadn’t liked her much before, but she didn’t seem so ugly and loud now. He went along with them to wait in line and get the tickets. Afterward they stopped in a café and had a drink—it would be an hour till the bullfight started.
Boots tried to be gay, but pretty soon even she got quiet and the three of them just stared at the rest of the people. There was a little excitement over in the corner where a Mexican kid was trying to sell a banderilla—dried blood, hair and all—to a drunken GI. The kid was giving his sales-talk plenty of punch by using the table top for the bull’s hump and pretending he was inserting the banderilla. After gazing dreamily at the performance for a while, the GI finally jerked off the tablecloth and started acting like a bullfighter and a bull both at once. He ran all around the room, making faces and waving the cloth and imitating the bull with snorts and stomps.
“You think we’ll see Kay at the fight?” Red asked.
“Sure,” Boots said. “We’ll look for her. You’ll probably get to sit with her.”
“Yeah,” Red said. He finished off the tequila with one gulp, feeling at that moment like running out of the café and taking the first train east. But somehow he went on sitting there: he couldn’t pull himself together. How could Kay be so swell to him one minute and then just turn around and leave him like that the next?
They went to the bullfight and Red kept looking all around, but he didn’t see her. There were a lot of Americans at the fight and they were all pulling for the bull—everybody yelled and screamed when the bullfighter got scared and hid behind a kind of wooden backstop down there. Then when he tried to sneak up behind the bull and jab him with a knife, people went hog-wild, standing up and throwing stuff and booing. Red didn’t want to look at the fight. He felt lousy. He wanted to get out of there.
The three of them ate supper together in an El Paso restaurant. Red couldn’t eat all of his steak; he just sat looking out of the window. The little big-eyed waitress took a shine to him and acted hurt that he didn’t eat, but he was feeling too rotten even to pay any attention to her. All he wanted to do was stare out the window at the sign across the street. It went off and on and off and on forever, saying: LOANS.
“I guess I oughta be movin on,” he said, when they got back to the apartment and Kay wasn’t there.
“Hell, you can’t shove off without tellin Kay goodbye,” Georgie said.
“I oughta be goin soon, though,” Red said. “I let my folks know I was comin.”
They sat in the living-room. Georgie and Boots were over on the couch together; he was fooling around with two pieces of string, trying to show her how to tie the different kinds of knots. But when he’d get one made for her, she’d giggle and look at his face instead of at the knot.
Red got the idea and said, “Think I’ll go out and walk around a little bit.”
He walked around the dark streets. A dog barked at him and he didn’t even tell it to shut up. When he got back to the apartment, Georgie and Boots were gone.
He lay down on the couch and closed his eyes. He didn’t know how long he’d been sleeping, when he woke up and there she was standing over him.
“Hello, darling,” Kay said.
&n
bsp; He sat up and rubbed his eyes like a little kid.
“But you’ve been sleeping and you’ve forgotten all about me, darling,” she said. Her hair was mussed—he could see she was tight.
“Naw,” he said.
She sat down on his knee and ran her fingers through his hair. “You’ve forgotten all about little ole me.”
He started to say something, but she was kissing his mouth so he couldn’t. He kissed her too. He tightened his hold on her. “Oh, Red,” she said, lying back in his arms and giggling up at him, “you sure do things to me.”
He didn’t know what to say. All of a sudden, looking down at her like that, he began to bawl. He tried to stop himself but couldn’t.
“Now, now, Red baby,” she said, smiling, and dug his handkerchief out of his pocket and dabbed at the tears. He felt ashamed of crying.
“I never did that before,” he said when he got himself in gear again.
She grinned at him, making a tck-tck noise with her tongue, and moved her head from side to side. “Red baby,” she said. “Tck-tck-tck.”
“Your hands are cold,” he said. “Are you cold?”
She went on grinning, raising her eyebrows and narrowing her eyes. “You’re sweet . . . and you’re a Red baby,” she murmured, shoving her cold hand inside his shirt so that he jumped a little.
God, she was nice when she was like this. He’d never known a girl as nice as her. He forgave her for running off—forgave her for everything. There was just one thing: he wanted to ask her who Harry was, but he couldn’t bring himself to. She’s pretty pie-eyed, he thought. God, she’s nice.
She jumped up. “Oh come on, you old Red,” she said, swaying a little. “I thought you were a great big strong man. Come on, let’s see you catch me!”
And she took off into the kitchen, with him after her. She ran first one way around the table, then the other, laughing shrilly when she knocked over a chair. He heard a lamp crash a minute after she’d dodged into the living-room again, and he went bounding in there just in time to see the door to her room slam closed. He heard the key turn in the lock and he heard her giggling softly.
Breathing hard, feeling all excited, he stood up close to the door. “Let me in, Kay.”
She didn’t answer.
“Please let me in.”
He couldn’t hear her at all now. He waited maybe five minutes, then he knocked timidly. She didn’t make any sound. He knocked louder. Still no answer.
He waited a long while outside her door. Gradually his heart calmed down and he went over and sat on the couch.
He sat there for half the night, just looking at the design in the rug. He didn’t think of anything at all.
She woke him next morning.
“Is it late?” he asked.
She was wearing her flowered kimono. She gave him her smile. “Did you sleep well, darling?”
She even buttered his toast for him at the breakfast table. Why in hell was she so kind to him now, he wondered, after the funny way she’d acted last night? He kept looking at her, trying to find the answer in her face.
“I was a little high last night, wasn’t I,” she said. “I hope I didn’t seem too silly.”
“That was okay,” he said. “I thought you were swell. I don’t mind anything you do.”
She was studying him, looking so nice and pert-like with that smile lingering around her mouth. “You don’t?” she asked.
“Ah, Kay.”
But even as his insides dissolved at the contact her hand made with his, it flashed across his mind that he was really supposed to be getting home about this time. He reached in his pants-pocket and felt the thirty-thirty shell he was bringing for his brother Jack.
“What have you got there? Secrets?”
He brought out the shell. “I was just bringing it home for my brother; he wrote and said to.”
“You have a brother?” she asked. “Redhead like you?”
“Yeah,” he said. “He’s only fifteen, crazy about guns and huntin. I used to hunt some too.”
Her fingers slipped in against the palm of his hand; she leaned a little toward him. “What’d you hunt, baby?”
“Oh . . . like rabbits . . . squirrels . . .” But his voice trailed off—she was smiling at him in such a peculiar way and squeezing his hand.
“Love to see you shoot your gun sometime, honey,” she murmured, and her fingers slipped in under his shirtcuff, pulled at the hairs on his wrist. Then suddenly she jumped up and made him get up too and put his arm around her. Like that she led him into the bedroom and closed the door.
“Undress me, baby,” she whispered, standing close against him. “Do everything for me.”
He didn’t say a word. He did what she said.
In the afternoon they went to a movie that had Cary Grant, and Kay said she just loved Cary Grant. When they got back to the apartment, Georgie and Boots were leaving. Georgie looked pretty worn out, but Boots was still wearing her big toothy smile.
“I feel almost ashamed of myself going out for breakfast this time of day,” she said to Kay, and Kay said, “Well, I’d think so.”
Alone with him in the living-room she said, “I’ve just got to leave you by yourself tonight, darling. You don’t mind, do you?”
“No,” Red said.
She gave his hand a squeeze, ran off to take a shower, and came out in a plain black dress with a high collar that made her look like a queen or something.
He read magazines all evening, looking up vacantly every now and then to wonder where she was. He felt angry, but at the same time he didn’t know what to do about it. Once he went into her room and stood there in the darkness wishing she’d come back and be with him.
He’d never felt this way before. He felt helpless, like a dog that’s been run over.
He read more magazines. Read the jokes in Esquire and finally got into an article about Errol Flynn’s latest yatching trip with a girl who on the first page was fifteen but who grew to be nineteen farther back in the magazine.
Yet he was always finding himself staring off at the wall.
He heard himself saying, “I oughta go home. I really oughta go home. My old man would be mad as hell if he knew I was here like this.”
He didn’t have but $5.95 left.
I’ll never get to Elder if I don’t watch out, he thought. I got to start now, beat it out of here now or I’ll never get there.
He stood up. For a single moment he was going.
Then he thought of Kay and sat back down again.
When he woke up it was morning. Georgie and Boots were eating breakfast in the kitchen, and Boots told him that Kay had gone out early. “She had to meet somebody,” Boots said. “She didn’t know exactly when she’d be back.”
He drank some orange juice. Those two were all interested in themselves—he felt glad he didn’t have to think of anything to contribute to the conversation.
He went into the living-room and stared at the wall. If I started home now, he thought, I could still make it. I could stay for a couple days and still have time to get back.
He went out at noon. Went across the line and took in the row of bars down the main street. He got so drunk he wanted to fight, and in the Chicago Club he struck out wildly at a big soldier with two girls standing next to him. Without even being hit he flopped full length on the floor, and when he came to he was in the gutter out on the street and it was night. He got up and made his way to the International Bridge. The side of his face was covered with blood, but the MP at the soldiers’ gate didn’t say anything.
He had to ring the apartment bell for fifteen minutes before Georgie came and let him in. Georgie had on one of Boots’s kimonos. It was dark in the room so Georgie didn’t see what a hell of a shape Red was in. Georgie was mad at having had to get out of bed anyhow—he beat it back into the bedroom.
Red tried to wash the blood off. But finally he settled for just getting rid of his shirt and going to sleep on the couch.
&n
bsp; When he woke up next morning his mouth was swollen big and he noticed he had one tooth missing. He stared at his face in the mirror for a while, before he realized what was different: it was all on one side. He couldn’t even laugh at himself.
After a shower he felt better . . . till he reached in his pocket and found that he had no money at all. But there was his furlough-rate train ticket—and some woman’s handkerchief, with lipstick on it. He tried to remember who’d given it to him but he couldn’t remember anything.
I’m no good at all, he thought, looking straight ahead. I’m not worth anything. I don’t even deserve to get home.
He was hungry, but there was nothing in the kitchen except some bread.
I hope to hell I never get home now, he thought. He went over and looked out the window. Nothing down there to look at.
When he went back into the living-room, he noticed that Kay’s door was a little ajar. He looked in—the bed hadn’t been slept in.
So he got his grip and put on his cap and went out the door.
I don’t deserve to get home, he thought again. I’m just about the lowest kind of heel that ever lived. They’ve got the kids up at the station every day, watching for me.
Out on the street, walking fast, he realized for the first time that he was free of that apartment, and he felt good. He hadn’t realized how wonderful it would feel, being free of that apartment. He began to run, he felt so good, and after a ride on a bus he was at the railroad station.
By God, I’m going to make it, he thought. By God, I’ll get home after all.
He ran up to the first train official he saw and asked: “Where’s the New Orleans train?”
The paunchy official took out his watch and considered it a long time before he answered. “It’s just now leaving. If you run maybe you can still make it. Got your ticket?”
Red ran out on the platform and saw the train all set to go. One door was still open so he leaped on and then the train started. I’m on the damn thing! he told himself. By God, I’m really on the damn thing!
He pushed up into the car, shoved his grip on the rack, and sat down puffing. Next to him was a man with a detective-story magazine. The man said something to Red, but Red didn’t want to talk to anybody; all he wanted to do was sit here and let this old train take him home. He didn’t want to meet anybody or look at anybody till he got there.