Shabby Street

by Orrie Hitt

  “Always breaking your neck to be funny!”

  “Not me. I’ll be around.”

  “Well, I won’t be here,” she said. “I’m going to get myself a little room, cheaper than where I am, and rest and think things over. That’s why I called you. To say good-bye.”

  “Good-bye,” I said.

  “You’re a stinker, Johnny.”

  “I know it.”

  “If I make up my mind that I really love you, you won’t ever hear from me again.”

  “That’s crazy,” I said.

  “But if I can make myself realize that you’re just a heel — a no-good, stinking heel — I’m going to forget what I promised you and I’m going to Mr. Connors.”

  “Hey, now!”

  “You’ve made my life hell, Johnny! You’ve slept with me and lied to me — and, I think, hated me. Nothing you’ve ever done, nothing you’ve ever said — ”

  “Cut it out!”

  “ — has ever had any truth in it. All you ever wanted from me was — ”

  “Shut up, you little bitch!” I shouted into the phone. “Shut up and listen to me, will you? If you try — if you think you can — ”

  “Good-bye, you bastard,” she said and hung up.

  I stood there holding the phone, cursing her out loud. I’d called her a bitch and I’d been right. All of her innocent, make-believe, I-love-you-only-you slush had been so much crap. Of course, I’d lied to her and I’d slept with her and, sometimes, I’d hated her. She’d been playing it all the way and I’d only been fooling around, afraid of what she might do, but we’d both known that. She had no right to blow a fuse just because I’d been hung up higher than a tree limb the last few nights. I’d left notes for her that I’d been busy. I hadn’t lied to her. I’d been so busy that already I needed a vacation.

  Before I returned to the party I called Beverly out at the lake.

  “I’ll be a little late,” I said. “We’ve got a rat race going on down here.”

  She laughed.

  “Maybe I’ll run in to the movies.”

  “Okay.”

  “Want me to meet you in town for dinner?”

  “I might not get out of here very early,” I said. “If it’s all right with you, I don’t think I’ll come out tonight.”

  “What about tomorrow?”

  “Well, say, around noon. We could have a picnic some place. How does that sound?”

  “Lovely!”

  “Fine. Now, give me a kiss.”

  She gave me a kiss over the wire. I gave her one in return. We both laughed and hung up.

  It was a real pain going out there to see her all the time but it was something that had to be done. She wasn’t worried about that night on the raft, or what had happened on the beach and in her bedroom afterward, because she said that we were in love and that it wasn’t anything to be ashamed of. But she made it real plain that she didn’t want it to happen any more — not until her mother and father were home and we could get married and climb into bed legally. All of which suited me fine. If things went all right, by the time her old man got home she could sleep by herself and I wouldn’t even miss her.

  I grinned and went back to the party.

  Somebody had borrowed a record player from the five-and-ten downstairs and there was a real hot number going on it. Skippy was out there in the middle of the floor, bumping them out. Her dress was up high and the room was shaking because she was so heavy. One of her heavy breasts had slipped its moorings and I thought it was going to spill out of the top of her blouse at any moment. She looked like all the whores in the world put together.

  “Take the girdle off!” somebody shouted. “Take everything off!”

  I went over and knocked the needle away from the record.

  “Simmer down,” I told them. “You want to throw it all away in five minutes?”

  Sammy Grick put his hand in the wrong place and Skippy belted him one. Then she went over and sat in a chair and started to cry. I guessed that she was drunk.

  Julie came up and took hold of my arm. Her lips were moist and freshly painted and her face was flushed.

  “Why don’t you break this up, Johnny?”

  “Okay.”

  “It can’t go on forever.”

  I looked around at the empty beer cans on the floor and the place where a bottle had been kicked over.

  “Puts me in mind of the front yard back home,” I said.

  “I’ll help you clean it up.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “I haven’t got anything else to do.”

  I told them all to have one for the road and then to get the hell out. The girls got Skippy off into a corner and tried to straighten her out. She got sick in a wastebasket and somebody slapped her across the face. She got up and jammed her hat down over her head and left under her own power.

  The guys hung around a while longer, talking about how much business they had lined up for the next week. The six o’clock whistle blew and they began thinning out. By six-thirty Julie and I were all alone.

  “I don’t know where to start,” I said, glancing at the junk all around.

  “Well, you pick up the bottles and I’ll get a broom.”

  We worked at it steadily and it didn’t take us very long. The floor needed mopping but the night man could do that. I left a note for him by the door and an envelope with five bucks in it.

  “I’m pooped!” Julie said and dropped, slightly sprawling, into a chair.

  “Maybe we should have a drink for the road.”

  “Just a small one.”

  I fixed a couple of balls and carried one over to her.

  “I didn’t know you drank whiskey, Johnny.”

  “Only on special occasions.”

  “Is this one of them?”

  I put one of the glasses in her hand. She lay far back in the chair, not moving. The thin dress slid down between her legs, forming a long wide canyon. Her face was still flushed and her eyes were alive with sparkle.

  “Maybe,” I said.

  “It is for me.” She sat up quickly and tasted her drink. “I think I’ll celebrate. You going to drink with me?”

  “Sure.”

  We lifted our glasses.

  “To me,” she said. Her smile slipped away and her eyes clouded over. “To a Clarke Street whore!”

  I knocked the glass out of her hand and she screamed. The liquor sloshed down the front of her dress, soaking in. She jumped with the cold of it and then she started to laugh.

  “So you wouldn’t drink to that?”

  “Of course I wouldn’t.”

  “Well, that’s what Dooder called me last night.”

  “Who’s Dooder?”

  “He wanted to marry me.” She choked up for a moment. “Until he found out about the baby. He changed his mind.”

  “The guy with the pipeline?”

  She nodded.

  “To hell with him.”

  She nodded again.

  I stood there watching her, afraid of what I wanted to do, scared of how I felt about her. She was all the good and all the bad of all women in one package. I didn’t try to think of any lie I could tell her so I could get what I wanted. I didn’t grab her and try to find out how far I could go. I just felt so damned sorry that she’d been kicked around and I wanted her to know it and I didn’t know now to tell her.

  “The world’s just one big Clarke Street,” she said miserably.

  I took out my handkerchief and bent down, trying to wipe some of the liquor off her dress. I touched her breasts, one at a time, and they were full and soft. Later, I used the handkerchief to get the sweat off my forehead.

  “You’ll meet some real jerks,” I told her. “A good guy wouldn’t let a thing like that stand in his way.”

  “You know what he said — after he asked me and I told him?”

  “No.”

  She put her head down in her hands and I knew she was crying. A kid from Clarke Street didn’t c
ry unless she’d caught it right in the teeth.

  “He said I ought to give him some.”

  “The dirty bastard!”

  I got down on my knees, beside her chair, and I pulled her head over onto my shoulder. I could feel the wet of her tears through my seven-fifty shirt. I held her like that for a long time.

  “You know something, Johnny?” she asked, straightening, putting a wrist up there and digging the rest of the tears out of her eyes. She bent over and kissed me lightly on the cheek. “You’re not such a bad guy, after all.”

  “It took you a long while to say that.”

  “Maybe I’ve kept remembering too much — about how you used to be.”

  “That could be it.”

  “I guess the army did you some good.”

  “Yeah.”

  It had taught me how to polish my shoes and shine buttons — and kill. It had taught me how to take the consequences when a lie came out the wrong hole.

  I fixed another drink and we talked some more about it, the warm summer nights when we used to play along Clarke Street, the pennies we used to pick up off the lot after the carnival had been to town, the gypsies who used to come through with long cars and light fingers.

  “And you used to fish a lot,” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  “I remember how sick your mother got.”

  It all came back, how scared I’d been, and I wanted to slam her one in the mouth. I’d gone fishing, one June day afternoon, and my luck had been lousy and I’d started home without anything. Then, in a tiny cove along the river bank, I’d found a fish. A bass. A great big dead bass. I’d thought about it a long time and how drunk the old man was and that there wasn’t much to eat in the house. I’d been fourteen and I’d been afraid of being hungry and I’d taken the bass home. That night we’d been sick, throwing up all over the place, and the doctor had blamed the water and the cesspool next door.

  “I saw you take that fish out of the water,” Julie said. “That’s how I knew.”

  “We don’t have to talk about it.”

  “And there were other things, Johnny — like the time you worked for that awful woman down the street. The fellows used to know and they used to tell about it, laughing, bragging about how reckless you were. It — sort of scared me. It made me think that there wasn’t anything you wouldn’t do.”

  She was almost right but I didn’t think I’d bother telling her so.

  “It’s great to know I can forget all that,” she said. “It’s nice to see a person come up from the street and get to be somebody. Why, almost any college man would be crazy to have a job as good as yours!”

  “You can say that again.”

  I started to pick up her glass but she shook her head. We were real close and she smiled at me and I knew that she meant it. Her lips were red and her teeth were white and her eyes were the color of a sun drenched sea.

  “And you mean it, Johnny — to make good?”

  “I mean it all right.”

  “I guess you know what you want.”

  She breathed deep and her breasts billowed up hard and pointed. She moved slightly and the dress rode down between her legs and I could see the gentle swell of her stomach. I put my hands on the back of the chair and bent over her until my mouth was only a couple of inches from her rounded nose.

  “You’re damned right I know what I want!” I said.

  She tried to get away but I grabbed her and held her fast. It was like one of those nights along the street when I’d pulled her back between a couple of houses, reaching inside her blouse with one hand and holding the other over her mouth. Only now I was trying to make the grade with the passion of a gentleman and she was fighting me off like a lady.

  “Johnny! Somebody’s at the door!”

  “Damn the door!”

  “Please!” she whispered, holding my hand. “Let’s not spoil it.”

  She didn’t turn her head as I kissed her lightly on the lips.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  She laughed and stood up.

  “It’s not a bad routine,” she said. “Only I get tired of it after a while.”

  “Maybe I’ll change it some day.”

  “How?”

  “I’ll stop losing.”

  She picked up the glasses and put them out of sight.

  “Don’t count on it,” she said.

  I could see the shadow of someone on the other side of the frosted glass in the door. The knocking started again. I went across the room, swearing, and pulled the door open.

  The first thing I noticed about this girl was the way she was dressed. She wore a gray suit that was cut tight and piled up in a heap on her chest. She was fairly tall, about five-eight, and the rest of her body seemed to be all there. The next thing I noticed about her was her face, a smooth face with that country club look — not Saturday night country club, but Sunday afternoon country club.

  “Mr. Reagan, please.” Her voice was a trifle sharp and very clear. “I’d like to see Mr. Reagan.”

  “It’s late,” I said. “The office is closed.”

  “Are you Mr. Reagan?”

  “Yes.”

  I didn’t have to get out of her way. She just slid around me and came inside.

  “I’m Cynthia Noxon,” she said.

  “That’s nice,” I told her.

  Julie slung her handbag over her shoulder and waved at me on her way out.

  “See you Monday, Johnny.”

  “Yeah.”

  Another weekend shot to hell.

  “Sorry that I broke up your fun,” the girl said, shaking the curls in her dark hair so that I could see that she had some. She picked up one of the empty glasses, inspected it and smiled. “Tea and crumpets.”

  “Scotch on the rocks. Bourbon in the raw. Beer out of a can. Name it and you can have it.”

  She had a laugh that bothered me; it was like the final notes of a beautiful song, a song that leaves you sick and weak because you know, almost for certain, that there are some things you can never have.

  “Perhaps later, Mr. Reagan. After we have talked business.” She lit a cigarette, watching me through the smoke. “I’m sorry I was so late getting here, but traffic was very heavy out of the city.”

  “That’s all right.”

  “You are interested in developing an agency for the Family Protective Insurance Company, aren’t you?”

  “Sure. I talked with some guy in their home office the other day and he said the boss would be up to see me.”

  She smiled and studied the end of her cigarette.

  “That’s right,” she said. “Well, I’m the boss, Mr. Reagan. And I’m here to see you.”

  I walked across the room and stood in front of her. I found a cigarette in my shirt pocket but I didn’t have any matches. I took her hand and held it up, leaning down to meet it, and I lit mine from the one she balanced between two painted fingernails. She kept watching me, a faint smile on her lips, and I knew that she wasn’t going to be easy.

  “Okay,” I said. “Let’s talk.”

  CHAPTER XII

  Insurance Racket

  IT WAS a beautiful swindle. You could give them a transfusion of hope and bleed them of their dollars — both at the same time — and they wouldn’t know the difference.

  We sat in a little bar off Fourth Street, picking the steak out of our teeth and putting the drinks away. We kept going over it again and again, polishing it up here and there, and every time it sounded better.

  “You don’t need very much money,” Cynthia Noxon said. “Eight or ten thousand ought to do it.”

  “Hell,” I said, “you could do it on nickels.”

  “Not with a radio program.”

  “Yeah, that’s right. With a radio program you’ve got to lay out some dough.”

  “Just lay out the money,” she said. “Don’t try it with the singer.”

  “You don’t have to talk that way. I wasn’t even thinking about
it.”

  She held her head back and laughed. The soft lights rode across her face, painting it red, and I could see the little pulse in her throat. She’d removed her suit coat and the blouse she had on was so thin she might as well have been wearing a hairnet.

  “Let’s get one thing straight, Mr. Reagan.”

  “It was to be Johnny and Cynthia.”

  “Okay. Johnny. Now, let’s get one thing straight — about me and about Gail Dawn whom I’m suggesting for your program. I know your kind, Johnny. I’ve met you before and I know what you want. You’re after two things. Money and women.” She paused and let that sink in, then she went on, slowly. “In this league you only get money, Johnny. Count the rest of it out.”

  “Stop patting yourself on the back,” I told her, getting sore. “Wait until you get an offer before you start putting a fence around it.”

  “You mean — you wouldn’t?”

  I leaned across the table, staring at her.

  “That’s right,” I said. “I wouldn’t.”

  A guy had to expect something like that from a girl who’d pulled herself up by her brassiere strap. She’d told me something, during dinner, about her old man. He’d jumped into the clip insurance business when it was young and a company could get licensed without Dewey getting all excited about it. The company had been sitting on a pile of rocks when the old man took a rope he found handy and tossed it over an extra high limb. His daughter had slunk back from college, bitter and determined, and she’d put her little round bottom right down in the middle. Lord only knew how many advertising men she slept with to get all those ads in the magazines, but she must have been pretty good at it because she blew in a sizeable fortune in the first six months. She advertised accident and sickness insurance for less than the price of dirt and pretty soon they were using wheelbarrows to take the mail to the post office. A short time after that she put on agents, guys who banged on doors and smoked out those who were too stupid to send in their money. After that came the radio program and direct mail and a dozen other gimmicks.

  The waiter came over and gave us another drink. After he was gone she leaned back, stretching, letting me look at her.

  “I’m glad we got that settled,” she said. “I know you’re going to be a knockout at this stuff, Johnny.”

  “That’s some crystal ball you’ve got.”