by Orrie Hitt
He buttoned the shirt across his broad chest and thought about Mrs. Thelma Reid. She wasn't too old, under forty, and she was rather nice looking in a sharp, refined sort of way. Maybe sometime if he got the chance—but, no, he wouldn't do that. Why should he knock himself out on an old hag like that when he could have something young? Anyway, she probably never thought about anything except collecting rents from the girls, and of her husband who had died and left her without any insurance.
"Not a dime," she often said. "Not a dime. It was a good thing for me when they started this community college or I'd have been out on the street."
Jerry had been with her two years, ever since he had come out of the army.
"You'll like it," she had told him. "You do the heavy work around the place and keep the yard cleaned up and I'll give you your board and room and forty a week."
It wasn't much, of course, but when he added it all together, the room and the board and the forty dollars, it was more than he would have made in a factory. He wasn't trained to do anything, except in the use of missies, and civilization didn't pay off on that, not a cent to a twenty-two-year-old guy who didn't know right from left.
Of course, he had graduated from high school but that didn't mean much. Everybody graduated from high school these days. He could run a typewriter but didn't want to run a typewriter. He could keep a simple set of books, if they were real simple, but he didn't want to keep books for anybody. He didn't, as a matter of fact, know what he wanted to do. And Mrs. Reid's was a good place for him to be, a wonderful place to remain stupid and have fun.
Down along the river, where he had been born and raised, he had been known as Studs. But up here on the hill, where the girls were more discreet in their language, he had lost the name and he was glad of it. Maybe it fit and maybe it didn't but it was a heck of a thing to have people shout at you along the street.
He had been seventeen when his mother and father were burned to death in a tarpaper shack. The only reason he had escaped the same fate was because he had been out on the river fishing for pike. There had been no other relatives, no aunts or uncles, no brothers or sisters, and during his last year in high school he had lived in a tiny room in the slums, cooking his own meals over a sterno stove and working nights in the stinking fur factory, sometimes until midnight and sometimes until three or four, never getting enough sleep, never getting enough to eat, never getting enough of anything—except Ellen.
Ellen had been good and soft and sweet and he guessed he had loved her. She had been a child of the river front, too, a beautiful child with wide blue eyes and soft blonde hair and a lovely, lovely body. She was sixteen when he met her, a little wild and looking for the love away from home that she had not been able to find there. On their third night together he had taken her to his room and he made love to her. He was the first. She had come to him every night after that, loving him, and when he went into the army she had cried. Four months later, when he learned that she had died as the result of an attempted abortion, it became his turn to cry. Her death had taken something from him, left him empty. No one since, and nothing that he had done, had completely filled that hollow spot. He supposed it was one of the reasons he lived on at Mrs. Reid's, that he didn't give a damn, that he went from day to day as though tomorrow would never come.
He worked his way into his pants and sat down on the bed and put on his shoes. He had to forget about Ellen. She was dead and nothing could change that.
He left his cellar room, just off the furnace, and climbed the stairs to the kitchen. He was glad that it wasn't cold or he'd have to start shoveling coal into that furnace. And that furnace used up coal fast. It went through coal the way the sun cut through a cake of ice.
The kitchen was big and far from modern, with a high ceiling and yellow walls and wooden cabinets all over the place. Beyond the kitchen was the dining room where some of the girls ate. Not all of the girls ate at the house; a few of them took their meals in restaurants and diners downtown. But the girls who wanted to live reasonably, who had to cut corners, ate at the house. Mrs. Reid, who had had a maid before her husband's death, wasn't much of a cook. She bought a lot of canned and frozen stuff and she managed to throw something together.
"I make good coffee," she frequently bragged. "The best in Youngsville."
Jerry looked for coffee and found none. He hadn't expected to find any. Mrs. Reid cleaned up everything before she went to bed, which was seldom before one or two in the morning. He wished that she went to bed earlier, or that she watched television, or that she went out, or that she did anything except run all over the house. A guy couldn't skip around the bases during the early evening in the Reid house; if he tried that he'd get thrown out almost before he left home.
He walked through the house, down the long, high hall to the stairs. At one time the stairs had creaked but he had fixed them and he didn't have to worry about that any more. Mrs. Reid slept in the rear of the house, over the kitchen, and she always kept her door closed.
He climbed the stairs and paused at the second floor landing. There were twelve rooms on this floor, not including Mrs. Reid's, and none of them were occupied yet. The ten girls who had arrived early were already assigned to rooms on the third floor. He had carried up all of the luggage and knew where each girl was located. That, of course, was important. There would be the devil to pay and nothing to pay him with if he got into the wrong room.
Jerry grinned and started up the stairs again. He knew where he was going. She would be waiting for him, just as she had waited for him during the past year, and now he could start making some money again. Real money. And boy, he could use it. The dame over on the West Side, a girl whose family had dough, was costing him a fortune. But she was worth it. Marrying her, love or not, was the only chance he had of getting any place at all.
He reached the third floor and walked down the hall, moving slowly. Mrs. Reid had been there when he had brought up the girl's things and they hadn't had a chance to talk, but he wasn't worried. Girls like Helen never changed. Once they started working their way through college on the flat of their back they graduated on the flat of their back. He smiled as he considered the situation. A girl with Helen Lee's talents should get a degree in sex, a degree that said she knew as much about sex as there was to know.
When he reached room thirty-three, he entered without knocking, closing the door behind him and throwing the bolt. Not many girls prowled around the house at five in the morning but a guy could never be sure. Once he had been caught in bed with a girl, by another student, but he had solved that problem and taken the second girl to bed, too. There was, however, no sense in pressing his luck; a locked door was safer than an unlocked door.
Except for two windows instead of one and the big double bed pushed up against one wall, room thirty-three was the same as the other rooms—blonde birch dresser, red rug on the floor and a chair that could break a person's back in one brief sitting.
He walked to the side of the bed and stood looking down.
Even in the dim light he could see her red hair, long and flowing around her face. One of her arms was outstretched, palm upward, and the sheet was low enough so that he could see that she was sleeping in the raw.
"Hey," he said, bending close. "For Pete's sake, wake up."
The girl stirred.
"You aren't asleep," Jerry said, "Stop trying to make it romantic. It doesn't become you, baby. It just doesn't."
Helen yawned and opened her eyes.
"You'd spoil anything," she said. "You're the world's worst."
"What's there to spoil?" Jerry wanted to know.
The girl sat up, careless about the way the sheet fell down around her middle.
"Nothing," Helen Lee said. "You saw to that."
Jerry sat down on the bed and reached for cigarettes. He lit two and put one between her lips. She inhaled and watched him through the smoke.
"I didn't teach you anything that you didn't already know," Jerry reminded
her. "It was you who asked me, not me who asked you. Just remember that."
"Let's not fight," she said.
"All right."
She took one of his hands and kissed the back of it.
"What kind of a summer did you have?" she asked him.
"Lousy."
"Miss me?"
"Sure. And the dough," he admitted frankly. He filled his lungs with smoke. "The guys have been asking for you, lots of them. You can keep busy every weekend and every night that you can get free."
"That's good."
"I'll get you the same room on Kennedy Street and you can use that."
"Fine."
He tried not to look at her, but he couldn't help himself. She was anybody's woman for a price. But she was his for nothing.
"You have a good summer?" he wanted to know.
"So-so. I worked in Sullivan County."
"That should be a hot spot."
"It was in some ways but I would have done better in Atlantic City. Up there you've got every dame in the country chasing men and during the week the loose wives are all around. But it was okay. I could have done worse, but I sure could have done better."
Jerry stubbed out the cigarette in an ash tray, did the same with hers, and then lay down beside her.
"I don't like the idea of you having this double room," he said. "It's the only one in the house and you had to draw it."
Helen nodded. "I told the old bat I didn't want it but she said I was the oldest one here and that she might get in some young kid who needed company." She laughed. "Can you imagine me playing nursemaid to some silly dame who doesn't know what it's all about?"
Jerry laughed. "I can imagine it, but it doesn't fit. Besides, I just don't like this double room business," he said, kissing her lightly on the mouth. "I won't be able to come up here after you get a friend. It's going to be pretty inconvenient."
"I know where you sleep," she said softly.
"Or we can go out to the garage."
"I don't like the garage. It reminds me of that awful old man."
The garage reminded Jerry of the old man, too. He had met the guy in an uptown bar and the old guy had been so drunk he hadn't been able to get up the stairs to the room on Kennedy Street. Mrs. Reid had been away for the night, visiting a sister, so they had used the garage in back of the rooming house. The old man had been too drunk to get what he was paying for and just slept on the cot until noon the next day. But he had paid fifty dollars for all the trouble he had caused.
"I'm no old man," Jerry told her, feeling her mouth, wet and hungry, beneath his lips. "And I can prove it."
She put her arms around his shoulders and pulled him down to her.
"Prove it," she whispered.
And he did.
Later that morning, at breakfast in the kitchen—he never ate with the girls—Mrs. Reid told him what he was to do that day.
"Wash the car," she said.
"Sure."
"And dry it off after you do. I don't want a lot of spots on it."
"Okay."
"At one you go down and meet the bus. There're two girls coming in on it."
"Who are they?"
"Patty Cain. You remember Patty from last year?"
"Yes."
Patty was a serious-minded student who wore thick glasses, still showed the effects of braces on her teeth, and who had the shape of a wet shirt hanging on a washline.
"The other girl is Peggy Markey."
"A new one?"
"A new one. I might put her in with Helen."
Jerry drank his coffee and watched Mrs. Reid move around the kitchen. She had a young shape for a woman almost forty, and he liked to watch the movements of her breasts under the house dress when she bent over the table to pour herself a cup of coffee.
"You can do the lawn after that," she said. "I think it's the last time you'll have to mow it this year."
"I hope so."
The lawn was thick and rambling and there were a lot of rocks. He had wanted to take out the rocks and haul them away but she had said that the rocks kept the moisture in the ground. Keeping the rocks meant a lot of extra work for him. He had to get down on his knees to trim around them, and if he didn't do a neat job she complained.
She sat down at the table, pouring cream into her coffee, and he studied her face. It was a youthful face, as young as the students she boarded, and there was something sweet about her chin and mouth and hazel eyes. He could look into her eyes, the way he was doing now, and think of her as somebody young and fresh and very much alive.
"I got some paint for room ten," she said, reaching for a package of cigarettes. "Blue. For the walls. The ceiling is all right but the walls, where that girl taped up those Presley pictures, are a mess. As soon as you get done with the yard you can get to that."
"I'm a freak," Jerry said. "I was born with only two hands."
Thelma Reid laughed and when she laughed she looked even younger.
"Tomorrow then," she said. "Start it tomorrow."
"Yeah."
She finished her coffee and left the kitchen. He sat there for a long time after she had gone, smoking and thinking. She was a strange one all right, real strange. Sometimes she seemed warm and soft and at other times she seemed hard and cold.
Almost like Helen Lee.
CHAPTER 3
Helen Lee dressed slowly. She never ate any breakfast and consequently there was no hurry. She could take her time, unpack and then lie around doing nothing. Lie around and think. Think about what a stinking world she had been brought up in.
She was twenty years old and the people who knew her said she was as wild as a hawk. Well, maybe she was. There were few things she hadn't done and even fewer she hadn't thought about doing.
Her attitude was simple. The world gave you nothing; you had to take it by the horns and grab whatever meat there was for yourself. And you could never stop. If you did that, you were done, finished.
Helen had been born in the carnival, the daughter of Mable Lee, girlie dancer, and a magician in the side show.
"Art was a magician all right," her mother had often said. "He disappeared as soon as I got in the family way."
"For good?"
"For keeps."
Helen had been brought up in the carnival, smelling the popcorn, listening to the music and learning at a very young age about all the hates and loves that were a part of the city of tents. At ten she had seen her first man—with her mother—and at fifteen she had ceased to be a virgin. At seventeen, in an effort to remain in high school and graduate, she had gone with a man the first time for money. And she had been doing the same thing for money ever since.
She sighed and stepped into her panties, her legs long and naked and straight.
Men.
She hated them.
She hated the touch of their lips and everything they did to her. She disliked everything about them except their money. She endured them only because of that, or because they could, like Jerry, do things to help her. But some day, however, she would make it pay off. Some day she would make all of this studying and sex pay off in a big way.
She wouldn't be like her mother. She would never be like that. All her mother had was her body, and the attractiveness of that was fast leaving her. A girl couldn't count on beauty, and she couldn't count on brains. A girl had to count on money.
Money.
Helen wanted oceans of it, to swim in it, to drown in it. She wanted Cadillacs and furs and the finest clothes made. She wanted a French maid, and she wanted a home so big that she had to use a telephone to be heard from one end of it to the other.
She put on a sack dress, one of those things that so many people didn't like but which she did. It was red, red as her hair, and the belt was down below her knees. It didn't show off her bustline or her hips but that wasn't very important. The men who bought her paid for what was underneath. Sometimes she wondered if they were aware of what really was underneath—the hate and the loathi
ng.
"You love me, honey?" they would ask. And she would lie.
"Yes, I love you."
"Just for now?"
"What more do you want?"
Some of them wanted to go steady with her—going steady meant giving it away for nothing—and some of them, the married ones mostly, wanted to set her up in an apartment.
She accepted none of their offers. She was a free agent and she was indebted only to Jerry. Jerry established contacts for her, received a percentage of her earnings and treated her squarely. But she hated him, too. She hated him because of that one thing he took from her. She hated him because he was a man and, like all men, he used a woman for his pleasure.
Her lips formed an oval as she applied lipstick. Sometimes she wondered why she continued to let Jerry have her, to pay him money. She didn't need him. Youngsville was an open town—the police never bothered anybody except couples who went to the city park—and she could make as much working in one of the houses weekends as she could fooling around this way. There were three houses of prostitution in the city, maybe another one, and only one of these had a five-dollar top. The boys from the college went to this one to get their kicks, but they stayed away from the other two which charged fifteen and up. The woman had told her that she could get twenty and twenty-five, she was that young and that pretty. But she had thought about it before and she thought about it again now. But finally, she rejected the idea. She guessed she was safer this way. A house could be raided—somebody running for office might want to make a big splash —and her room on Kennedy Street was safe. Jerry watched the house when she was up there with a man and she knew that she didn't have to worry when Jerry was around. He was big and powerful, unafraid, and he could handle anybody, even a cop. One night one of her customers had tried to hurt her, get her to do something that she didn't want to do, and Jerry had busted into the room and wracked the guy up good. She had felt closer to him that night, closer than she had ever felt to any man, but in the morning it had been gone, a horrible memory that she wanted to forget.