I slipped off my shoes at the end of the sidewalk and my heart sank even lower when I spotted a light in Ma's room. I had my foot out on the bottom step when a voice spoke out of the darkness from the other side of the porch where the porch swing shone palely. “Didn't choir practice run a little late, Buddy?"
I came up the steps fast with my finger to my lips, but Mrs. Salome paid no mind. “Your mother was looking for you."
"I was just getting some air. It's a warm night, isn't it? Almost too warm for sleeping.” I went over and sat in a rocker. “Is my mother asleep?"
"I don't think so. I thought I heard her out in the kitchen."
"Mrs. Salome, I was wondering—is there any work to be had at the Hindustani Palace? For me, I mean?"
"I wish you'd call me Lurlane, Buddy. Mrs. Salome makes me feel ... I guess I could ask Mr. Max Henry. He's the manager and he would have to be the one to say so."
"I wish you would put in a good word for me. I really need a job and I'm willing to do anything. Thanks, Mrs., ah, Lurlane."
The screen door opened and closed quietly and made me jump. “Hot night tonight,” Mr. Hall said. Mrs. Salome—Lurlane moved over on the swing. She was wearing something ruffly; it trailed onto the porch floor. He sat down beside her, and I got the sudden feeling I wasn't wanted.
"Good night,” I said loudly and got up. I let the screen door slam and went right down the hall into the kitchen; heck, I was the man of the house now and so what if my mother did holler at me. I'd just take it like a man and tell her, “Ma, I'm not a little boy anymore..."
Except there wasn't anybody in the kitchen, no one at all. The lights were on and the back door was open, nothing between the house and the night but the screen door. I stepped out onto the porch and tried to see out. I called, “Ma,” but the only answer I got was busybody Mrs. Hennessey's fox terrier yapping next door.
I started down the back steps. The yard was full of black shadows. Suppose Ma had come out with the garbage (because I was off drinking home brew with Jimmy Crosby) and something happened to her? Between the dog's yaps I thought I heard a whisper that might have been a breeze and might have been voices speaking very softly. I made my way across the yard to the back gate. It was open. Something caught my eye down at the end of the alley, and I thought it was maybe someone walking quickly away.
I was scared. I didn't reason it out, I just knew I was scared of the dark figure at the end of the alley, a shadow now gone or blended with other shadows. I turned quickly and nearly stumbled back to the lighted square at the end of the kitchen door. I jumped and let out a little sound as my mother spoke up from the darkness. “Francis, what are you doing out here? Where have you been, anyway?"
She startled me so that my voice didn't sound as I'd meant it when I snapped back, “Where have you been?"
"Why, in the kitchen, of course. Baking bread. Feeding seven people isn't like rolling off a log, you know.” She had some words about how I hadn't been home to help her and how tired she was, but I hardly heard her because for the first time in my life I had caught my mother in an outright lie.
The next morning Ma had fire in her eyes and manpower on her mind—the manpower being me. She gave me another lecture on how much work it took to run a boarding house and right after I had my breakfast I was to go up and do the rooms.
"But what if they're still in bed, Ma?” I wanted to know.
She glared at me. “No decent sort of person lays in bed past seven o'clock.” This because she knew I could sleep till noon if I ever got a chance to.
But nobody came to breakfast, and I got to blame her for that because she never told them what time she planned to have breakfast. “Besides, they're show people—except Mr. Hall—and they're not used to getting up. How about the preserves pantry? I could clean that.” There was an old mattress stored in the back that might do for a little catnap.
But my mother didn't go for cleaning the preserves pantry. Instead she sent me to clean the windows in the front of the house—inside and out. There were a lot of windows, five big ones and three in the bay, which caused me to spend half the morning on a ladder giving Mrs. Hennessey a good opportunity to spend half her morning watching me. I waved to her just for spite and the dog yapped louder, just for spite too, I figured. All the time I'd lived there, which was all of my life, Mrs. Hennessey had never spoken to me except to tell me to get off her grass or out of her apple tree. She lived all alone, except for her dog, and looked older to me than God, and nobody came to see her except when her married son brought his family from Omaha, and that was maybe once a year. I'd have thought she'd be lonesome, glad to talk to somebody to pass the time of day with somebody like Ma, but no. Maybe because Ma called her a busybody. All Mrs. Hennessey ever did was peek out, then duck back behind the curtains. She must really be enjoying the view now, I thought, with all the different people coming and going.
I considered taking a walk over to the Hindustani Palace after lunch to remind Mrs. Salome to ask about a job for me. It wouldn't hurt to remind her, I figured. She'd said she had to rehearse and maybe I could catch her doing whatever she did ... but Ma wasn't having any of that. I had to do the bedrooms, she said, handing me a sandwich to speed things up. No point in arguing with my mother. I downed my fried egg sandwich and kept my pouts to myself. I climbed the stairs with a lick and a promise (Ma's expression) on my mind.
Tamara's room looked like she'd just spilled everything out of her suitcase, everything being underwear and stockings of all colors, silky as silky could be. I reached for a stocking and it felt like a cloud, so I dropped it and let it be. I didn't dare pick it up, and if I did where would I put it? Maybe when Tamara came upstairs she'd put her own stuff away. I sure wasn't going to take the responsibility.
In Al Pfenn's room everything was put neatly away. Even his bed was made. I did find one thing that shed light on the Hindustani tenor. A bottle of peroxide. Apparently Mr. Pfenn dyed his wavy gold hair.
Bert Dawes's room was a different story, though. Half his stuff was still in his grip and there was a ring on the bureau top from a now-empty bottle. I sniffed at it. It had no label and I didn't know enough about bootleg liquor to identify it. What I did know was that Ma was dead set against liquor.
Lurlane's room was neat as a pin compared to Tamara's, and it smelled extra nice. Mr. Hall's third-floor closet didn't have much in it, just a couple of suits, the pinstripe and a tan summer suit that I kind of fancied because it had a belt in the back. I went over to make his bed and found a gun under his pillow.
I quickly dropped the pillow back over it. I wouldn't make Mr. Hall's bed just then, I'd clean the bathroom instead. While I thought about it.
Lots of guys carried guns these days, there was so much gangland killing going on. Every time you picked up a paper ... If I told my mother, we'd lose one roomer and a nice piece of change, when maybe Mr. Hall had a good reason to have a gun. Or I could tell Jimmy's father ... but if Mr. Hall really was a gangster, he wouldn't be too happy to find out it was me who sicced the cops on him.
That was when the bathroom door flew open, and I turned to see Mr. Hall looking in at me with a strange look on his face. Dear Father, I thought, he knows I've found the gun!
"Hey there, kid,” he said, sounding menacing. He looked stern, very serious.
"Yes, sir?"
"I've got to use the john."
"Yes, sir. I was through anyway. Sorry, Mr. Hall.” I backed out of the bathroom as fast as I could, met up with Lurlane and Tamara in the hall.
"I've been cleaning the rooms,” I told them.
Tamara said, “You needn't bother with mine. I haven't finished unpacking."
Lurlane said, “He's done mine already and made the bed very nicely. I've got to go. I won't forget about the job, Buddy.” And she didn't. When she came back from the Hindustani Palace I was all fixed up with a job selling candy entre actes, which she explained meant between the acts.
I'd been out too. I caught up wit
h Jimmy before he left for work to tell him about Mr. Hall's gun, and he decided that Mr. Hall was actually John Dillinger in disguise hiding out at our house, and I told him he was crazy; Mr. Hall didn't look anything like the pictures I'd see in the newsreels of John Dillinger, and he said he'd probably had plastic surgery done, and I said again that he was crazy, why would a big shot like Dillinger hide out at our house, when he could stay anyplace he wanted to, like the Palmer House, and he said I was crazy, but he'd tell his father when he saw him next, although his father was very busy and he might not have time to deal with a gun under a pillow, unless the pillow belonged to somebody like John Dillinger, and I gave up the argument. I'd done what I should have done, told somebody in authority (sort of), and headed home little knowing how my life had changed because of Mrs. Salome and the job.
Tamara was stretched out on the divan like a baby Jean Harlow when I returned. She'd twisted her ankle, she said, and a man she described as a new boarder was now occupying my room, “So you'll have to move out of your room."
"Who? Who is this new boarder?” But she didn't know.
She patted the side of the sofa. “Sit down and talk to me. Would you like to use my Ouija board?"
"Francis,” my mother said. She stood in the doorway looking worried; come to think of it, she looked worried all the time lately. If she wasn't careful those lines would turn into wrinkles and she'd be old. “You'll have to go up on the third floor with Mr. Hall. I'm putting a new boarder in your room."
And just when I was going to ask her who the heck this big shot boarder was that I should give up my room, a man joined her in the hallway and my words dried up and my mouth fell open.
"Good day to you, lad.” He made a welcoming gesture. “Come along, I'll help you get settled.” So I followed my mother and my father into my bedroom. He looked as though he'd never been away, smoking jacket and all. Like he owned the world, that's what he looked like.
"What's going on?” I faced them accusingly. “I've got a right to know."
My father threw his arms around me, and I backed out and off. He exchanged a look with my mother, put his thumbs in his jacket pockets, a phony gesture he'd made a habit of, and straightened his shoulders. “It's this way. You see, I've been in a bit of trouble. That's why I took off. I didn't want you and your mother to get mixed up in it."
"And you're not out of it yet,” I told him coldly. Whatever it was.
"In a manner of speaking, no.” Again they exchanged that sharing of looks. “Your mother and I grew lonely for one another, and we thought that if we were discreet, if I moved back very quietly, no one would know. Especially with all these other people in residence; nobody would notice."
"You're not to let on that your father's back, Francis. Not to Jimmy Crosby or anybody else. Nobody.” And she pressed her lips together, drawing them into a thin line.
I saw his harp then, standing in the corner of my room with its green baize covering around it. Probably the very first thing she did with our hard-earned money was to get that harp out of the pawnshop.
"Has he got a job, then? Or did he just come home to get in on our newfound prosperity? You know what Roosevelt says, Happy days are here again!” And I grabbed an armload of my clothes and dragged them up to the third-floor room, where the narrow bed had a lumpy mattress and the wallpaper was peeling, and dropped my stuff on the dusty floor and lay on the lumpy bed and tried to figure things out, but I couldn't make sense out of any of it. Only that it had to do with my father. And maybe my mother.
* * * *
The Hindustani Palace wasn't anywhere as grand as its name. It held maybe a hundred people, and it had seats like a movie theater. There was a stage that extended out into the audience area, with an orchestra pit on either side underneath.
The manager, Mr. Max Henry, explained that I was to carry a big bag over my shoulder and make a spiel about prizes inside the boxes. I was to deliver a box to anybody who'd pay their quarter. I was to work with Mr. Sam Ordway, who was called a candy butcher.
Mr. Sam Ordway called me Buster even though I kept reminding him that I was Buddy. He sent me to sit in the back of the theater until my time came, and he told me most all the spectators would be men and my sales pitch would be, “Take a treat home to the little lady. Then she won't ask where you've been!"
It was the dress rehearsal, and pretty soon the lights dimmed, the orchestra played a fanfare, and Bert Dawes came out. He had a new red bulbous nose and wore loud baggy clothes and spats. He told a couple of jokes about a sheik and his wives that I didn't think were very funny. When he was done, Al Pfenn appeared under a palm tree that somebody had pushed on stage and sang about a desert moon, then Bert came back to introduce Lurlane (he called her Salomay) and her dance of the seven veils.
The orchestra started playing an Oriental dirge. Bert disappeared in a puff of smoke, and there she was in a pink spotlight, all dressed in silver gauzy stuff like clouds, looking like something off the Christmas tree. She had something around her neck, something black that moved when she moved. It had a head that came out of nowhere and danced in the air.... Holy Mother, it was a snake!
She went this side and that, shedding veils every so often, then faster and faster until she was down to one brief arrangement on the top and a single on the bottom. Suddenly, zing! Something flew through the air and fell almost at my feet. I recognized it as Lurlane's top garment, and I looked back just in time to see that all Lurlane had around her torso was the snake and that she held the seventh veil in her hand. Then all the lights went out and I began to breath again.
A voice came out of the darkness, snickered in my ear. “Gets to you, Buster, don't it?” I turned to glare at Sam Ordway. Some people can make something smutty out of anything. But I'd never, in my whole life, in my wildest imagination, seen anything more beautiful.
Mr. Max Henry wasn't satisfied. He complained that Lurlane's act had been done before and couldn't she come up with something different, with more class, like that Sally Rand down the street with her fans, and they argued until she told him, okay, she'd come up with something special, and after that when she came out in her street clothes and saw me she said, “What did you think of it, Buddy?"
I swallowed and said, “You were beautiful.” That pleased her. She patted my hand and invited me out for coffee, and we walked out into the bright afternoon sunlight.
It was hard to take in the vastness of the Fair. Everywhere I looked I could see strange shapes, great new buildings, expanses of glass and aluminum. A Century of Progress. Past and present. Such a world I lived in!
That's when I had the thought that I hadn't thanked Lurlane properly for getting me the job; heck, I couldn't even pay for our coffees in the French sidewalk café. I made up my mind that the first thing, the very first thing I'd do when I got my first pay envelope was to buy my Fair lady a thanks present.
I had to ask her where she kept the snake. If Ma knew we'd had a snake in the house she'd have fainted—well, maybe not fainted; Ma wasn't a fainter—but she would have come close to it.
"Guess,” Lurlane said with one of her dimpled smiles, “just guess what I keep in my wicker hat box. Don't worry, Buddy. I've moved it to my dressing room."
I slept late the next morning. Ma came knocking on my door at some early hour, but I told her, “I'm a working man now; let him help you with the housework.” And so when I came down to breakfast with the rest of the boarders and found him vacuuming the hall, the sight pleased me. And it surprised Lurlane. “Aren't you the new boarder?” she asked.
"I'm the man of the house, madam. Donal Carmody at your service.” Said with a half bow and a look from his black-browed Irish blue eyes.
"Why, Buddy,” she turned to me. “You didn't tell me your father was home,” and then, to my immense pleasure, she linked her arm in mine, and we went into the dining room where I'd no sooner dipped into my wheat cakes when my mother stuck her head out of the kitchen. “Francis, that Crosby boy is here to see yo
u."
Jimmy sat on the back steps boldly smoking a Wing in broad daylight. “Hey,” I told him, “I was just eating. My hotcakes are getting cold."
"That's okay. I've only got a minute myself, and I thought I should let you know. That can't be John Dillinger living in your house ‘cause he robbed a bank in Indiana yesterday, and he threw the cops off by tossing roofing nails out of the back car window so's they'd puncture their tires.” Jimmy puffed hard on his cigarette, then coughed.
"I told you it couldn't be Dillinger.” I turned back to my hotcakes.
"I see your old man's home,” Jimmy said.
"Don't go broadcasting that,” I said sternly. “I told you when he left, that's all. I didn't tell anybody else about him taking off."
"Oh, come on, Buddy. Everybody knew when he left and why."
I glanced into the kitchen. It was empty. “If you think you know so much,” I spoke loftily, “you tell me why and I'll tell you if you're right."
"Why because—” He looked at me sharply. “Hey, that's an old trick. You don't know. You really don't know."
"Of course I do. That's an old trick too, and I'm not going to tell you so you can blab it all over the neighborhood.” I started back up the steps, leaving him to speak to my retreating back.
"Jeez,” he said. “He really doesn't know about his old man. He should ask Carmine Genna."
I turned back. He'd said something about Carmine Genna before. But Jimmy was gone.
Carmine Genna ran a store a few blocks from our house, kind of a grocery store but not like the store where Ma shopped. I asked her once how come she didn't shop at Carmine Genna's, it was closer, and she said she didn't think his produce was very fresh and she didn't think he sold much in the way of groceries, and when I asked her what she meant by that, she just shook her head and changed the subject. Like almost everything, I had to find out from somebody else that Carmine Genna was a bootlegger who ran a gambling den in his back room.
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