Shabby Street

by Orrie Hitt

  She had red hair, blue eyes and a cheap little body in a high class dress.

  “Mr. Reagan?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m Gail Dawn.”

  “Came the dawn,” I said.

  “That isn’t very funny. I’ve heard it before.”

  “After a long, hard night, probably.”

  She stood up and her face looked hurt.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I talk too much sometimes.”

  She didn’t look knocked up. She looked plenty round and soft and ready to spin. That day I’d been in New York, signing contracts with Cynthia Noxon, I’d hung around until after six waiting for this Gail Dawn to show. It’d taken her half a week to make it.

  “You’ve got a program tomorrow,” I told her. “I hope you brought your voice.”

  She started to give me a blast of “It’s Lamp Lighting Time in the Valley,” but I shut her up.

  “I don’t go for that kind of muck,” I said.

  “But that’s the stuff I sing.”

  “I don’t care what you sing. I don’t want to hear it.”

  She put her lipstick on while she talked.

  “Then don’t listen to my program.”

  “I won’t.” I went over and stood beside her.

  “Baby, I don’t care what you do as long as you sell insurance. You can do handsprings in every bed in town and I wouldn’t bat an eye.”

  “I’ll bet you wouldn’t. As long as I didn’t miss yours.”

  “Just sell insurance,” I told her. “Get them writing in and you can name your own ticket.”

  She put the lipstick away, took out a face tissue and pressed it to her mouth.

  ‘I’ll take you up on that, Mr. Reagan.”

  “Okay.”

  I went over and sat down on the edge of a desk, watching her. She had a good selling record on the radio and I was lucky to have her show up in a hick town like Waymart. If I’d known the guy who’d fixed things up for her I’d have thanked him. He’d driven her right out into the bushes.

  She’d left her luggage down at the railroad station.

  I drove her there, picked up the stuff, and then cruised uptown to the Hotel Dillion. A fifty-year-old bus boy came out and lugged her junk inside.

  “I’ll be over early in the morning,” I said.

  “Suit yourself.” She paused on the hotel steps and looked back, smiling. “But it isn’t necessary. I’ll find the radio station and get to work. I think I know what you want, Mr. Reagan.”

  The wind caught at her dress and she didn’t look so bad standing there in the half-light.

  “What?” I wanted to know.

  “Suckers,” she said, still smiling. “By the truck-load.”

  I drove down Main Street to Route Seventeen, turned right and burned the tires up going south.

  It was a good night and the road was wide and clear. The duals under the Ford snarled as the needle climbed around the clock.

  I grinned and lit a cigarette. I was in business.

  There’s a lot of headaches in starting an insurance agency on somebody else’s money. You have to play the angles tight to your chest and you can’t let yourself become nervous. Maybe that’s why I was driving so fast, so that I didn’t have much time to worry about what Connors might do if he ever found out that I’d short changed his bank account twelve thousand bucks. Besides, I didn’t have to worry about that. If things went okay I’d get it back to him before it was ever missed. If things went okay. If Beverly didn’t start getting ideas from someplace and began writing the wrong kind of letters to her old man.

  “The little bitch!”

  It’s funny the feeling a guy gets when he has to make time with some dame he hasn’t got a real yen for. It’s like strangling yourself with one hand. It feels so good when you can stop doing it.

  She hadn’t called me and I hadn’t called her and I was getting worried about it. Although Waymart was twelve miles away there was bound to be some noise about my agency, sooner or later. I was getting set to run right through the middle of it. She’d listen a whole lot better if I could throw the sheets back and tell her about it in the dark. And, of course, I could do worse. I could sleep alone.

  I hadn’t heard from Janet since the night we’d talked on the phone. I was crying about it. For joy.

  When I got back to town I stopped around at the Connors office. There was still a light up there and I guessed that the old guy was up there scrubbing the floors. He wouldn’t bother me any and it wouldn’t take me long to jockey the books around so that they were running straight. I reminded myself to give Julie a job sitting out front, looking pretty. I’d have to work out sufficient time so that I could do the final pencil work myself. There were enough booby traps around without building another one.

  I stepped out of the elevator and went through the darkened front office; the light that was burning was the one in on my desk. I wondered who’d left it on.

  She didn’t hear me come in. She had her head down on the desk, resting in the middle of a mess of papers, and she was crying like a kid.

  “Hey, now, baby!” I stuck my hand under her chin and pulled her head up. “Cut it out, will you?”

  Julie’s lips quivered and her eyes filled up with more tears. I could see dark, wet spots down the front of her blue blouse. She turned away, jerking herself loose, sobbing bitterly.

  I walked around the office, smoking, waiting for her to calm down. I knew what had happened. I’d been a damned fool. My feet froze fast to the bottom of my shoes.

  “Johnny?”

  “Yeah?”

  She was standing up now, but I didn’t look at her. She’d stopped crying, almost, and her voice was steady.

  “You’re a thief, Johnny.”

  “Take it easy, kid.”

  “You know what I found?”

  “Never mind.” I looked out of the window, down at the lights. “I told you to knock it off, didn’t I? You sit here and beat your brains out, trying to figure something you don’t understand, and then you flip your buttons.”

  “Listen, Johnny, I took bookkeeping in school.”

  “Yeah?” I said. “I had six months of Latin but I couldn’t read what’s on King Tut’s tomb.”

  Her high heels snapped on the linoleum as she came over by me.

  “Johnny Reagan,” she repeated, “you’re a common thief!”

  I stopped looking at the empty street. I swung around, catching her by the shoulders. My fingers dug down into her flesh, hurting her, making her cry out.

  “I told you to take it easy!”

  “Please, Johnny!”

  “That wasn’t a nice thing for you to say.”

  She tried to twist loose.

  “You’re hurting me, Johnny. Let me go.”

  I let her go.

  “I don’t want to fight with you, Johnny.”

  She went over to the desk and pushed the papers together in a pile.

  “You won’t need them,” she said. “You know what’s there, anyway.”

  We stood there, looking at each other, the silence riding around the room on all four walls.

  “I’m quitting, Johnny.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  Her smile was bitter and broken. I wanted to go over there and tell her that I’d make it right and that I’d change it all in the morning. But I couldn’t do that. There was that office in Waymart, the money that was already spent, and the road was wide ahead.

  “I wish I’d gone when you told me to,” she said. She shook her blonde head and bit her upper lip.

  “I wish I had, Johnny.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And I stayed for you. Just for you.”

  “Thanks, anyway.”

  “You don’t have to get mad.” She picked her little gray jacket up from the back of a chair. “I’m such a fool, really. I wanted to do it right — everything right — just for you. Ever since the other night I’ve lain awake thinking about what a
great guy you are, Johnny!”

  “Cut it!”

  “I’ve been there in bed, with my window open, listening to the sounds of the street. Hearing them fight, hearing them swear, hearing their feet running fast into the shadows. And I felt good. I felt good because I thought of you, and how you’d come up from the street, shaking it off. How wrong can you be?”

  “You don’t have to tear yourself apart. What the hell — ”

  “But I want to. I want to leave it all right here.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  She put on the jacket. She buttoned it and it pulled in tight over her breasts. Her tummy was flat and her legs were long and straight and I didn’t want to look at her any more.

  “I kept telling myself that you’ve got this good job and that things have to be right. I didn’t even go out for supper. I just worked, trying to find it — and I did. For God’s sake, Johnny, what are you thinking of?”

  “Shut up!”

  “Holding back the advance payments, not putting them in the bank.” Her voice rose, steadier now, whipping across the room. “Holding ordinary premiums and running them out to the end of the grace period. No wonder you fired Mr. Collins!”

  I lit a cigarette. The smoke shot down my throat and boiled around inside my chest.

  “Drop it!” I said. “Forget it. Tomorrow you start out front, gassing with the people that come in. Don’t worry about the money. I’ll do that.”

  I saw her coming, slow and straight and moving all over. I saw the hardness in her eyes and the way her lips twisted. I saw her hand, too, but I didn’t even bother getting out of the way. It cracked alongside my face and I hardly felt it.

  “You changed me the other night,” she said. “You showed me in the alley how it felt to be someone and how it could be for us. I kept thinking about you, after, and hoping — and wanting you. I’d have kissed you. I’d have gone to bed for you. I’d have had a kid for you!”

  A wild sensation shot up my spine, roared across the top of my head and then sat down, pounding, between my eyes. I tried to get my hands on her but she was moving away.

  “But it’s all over,” she said huskily. “I won’t steal for you. And I won’t hurt you. I won’t even remember you. Oh damn you, Johnny Reagan, I never want to see you again! You and your cheap lies and your rotten tricks! You and your — ”

  I hit her hard, clean across the face. She went backwards, bumping into the desk, her eyes deadened with fear and pain. She screamed once and ran out to the elevator, still whimpering.

  I sat down, feeling sick. I thought about what lousy luck I was having at a time like this. I’d chased her like a pup in spring, ever since I’d been smart enough to follow the trail. And when I’d had her sitting out on the end of a limb I hadn’t even known enough to bark at the tree.

  Well, a guy has to lose once in a while.

  I found a bottle of Old Grandad in the desk and belted that around for a while. I had an idea that Julie wouldn’t give me any trouble, like going to Connors or starting a chain-reaction story around town. She wouldn’t talk about anybody else. She’d had enough of that herself.

  I was part-way through the bottle when the phone started jumping around on the desk. At first I wasn’t going to answer it because nobody in his right mind calls an insurance agency after five but it kept chattering away at the ragged edges of my nerves and I finally gave in.

  “St. Vincent Hospital,” some cutie said.

  “I’m not that sick,” I said. “I’m just drinking. Stick around and I’ll call you later.”

  She thought I was real wise so she shifted her voice up into high.

  “Mr. Reagan, please.”

  “He’s not here. But I can take a message for him.”

  It’s easier when you do it that way.

  “I’m calling on behalf of Miss Janet Hobbs.”

  That really tore the night wide open. I was ready to rip the phone out and ask for a refund.

  “Okay, sister. I take shorthand.”

  “Well, gee, aren’t you clever?”

  “I could show you.”

  She let that one ride past the end of the wire.

  “Miss Hobbs is a patient in the hospital and she wanted us to get in touch with Mr. Reagan. She’d appreciate it if he would visit her as soon as possible.”

  “What’s wrong with Miss Hobbs?”

  “I’m sorry but I’m not at liberty to tell you. If you’d be kind enough to have Mr. Reagan stop around tomorrow, why — ”

  I hung up and tipped the bottle again. What had had happened to Janet? I had another drink. Maybe she’d bent an axle, or something. I had another short one and forgot about it.

  At ten o’clock I finished up the bottle and decided to stop playing around with fate. I called Beverly.

  “I don’t know whether I want to talk to you or not,” she said.

  I was drunk enough to be independent.

  “Well, hang up,” I told her.

  “Same old Johnny!”

  “That’s more like it.”

  We used up a half a minute saying nothing.

  “Sore?” I wanted to know.

  The way she laughed I knew she wasn’t.

  “Just sorry,” she said. “Sorry I scolded you.”

  “How sorry?”

  “I’ve been waiting for you to call, Johnny. I feel like such an awful — fool.”

  “Okay.”

  The bottle was empty and the night was young and she was out there by herself.

  “Pull the lock off the door,” I said. “I’ll be right out.”

  “You’re very blunt.”

  “It’s been a long time.”

  “I’ll wait,” she said softly. “I’ll wait for you, Johnny.”

  I kept her waiting about an hour. I stopped at the diner on the way out of town and had ham and eggs. After four cups of coffee I began to think straight again.

  I drove carefully, keeping the Ford under fifty, thinking about things. Apparently I was all square with Beverly and I shouldn’t have any trouble from that quarter. But if I knew what was going on at the hospital with Janet I’d feel a hell of a lot better. Maybe she was just sick and wanted to see me — and maybe she’d be like a boomerang sailing back from nowhere. That, I decided, was the trouble with a dame like Janet. You couldn’t tell which way the sparks might fly — or who might get burned.

  I kept driving, feeling tired and disgusted about what had happened with Julie in the office. Then I told myself that it was over, that it was finished, that I couldn’t do a thing about it. After a while I had myself sold on the idea that that’s the way it would always stand.

  I parked alongside the cottage and went up the steps to the porch. The front door was unlocked so I went in and closed it after me.

  She lay sprawled on the davenport, reading a book. She had on a thin negligee and it slid down as she put the book aside.

  “Hi,” she said.

  She moved her legs around, making room for me. The negligee slipped some more as she reached up and turned off the light.

  “You know where to find me,” she said.

  I took off my clothes and left them in a heap on the floor. My eyes were heavy and I wanted to lay down almost any place and go to sleep. I went over and grabbed squatter’s rights on my half of the davenport.

  “Kiss me, Johnny.”

  I kissed her.

  “Once again, darling.”

  I did it some more.

  “You act tired.”

  “I am.”

  I might as well have saved my breath. She wouldn’t let me sleep all night long.

  Sometimes life can be rugged.

  CHAPTER XIV

  Selling Talk

  I FOUND JANET lying in a narrow white bed playing solitaire.

  “Cripes,” I said. “I thought you had the seven year crud, or something.”

  She smiled and stuck the cards under her pillow. She looked real dark, lying there against all that white — her
hair, her eyes, the nut brown of her skin.

  “What happened, baby?”

  She glanced down at the foot of the bed, studying the way her toes stuck up in the air and made twin tents.

  “I had a miscarriage,” she said demurely.

  I almost went out of the window on my back. Then I stopped worrying because it was all over and I guess that was the way it happened sometimes.

  “I didn’t know I was that way. The doctor said I — couldn’t.”

  She’d been wrong so many times I didn’t know what to think. If she was trying to cut my mortality table down five or ten years she’d made a first class start. I decided to give up on this one. She was past history.

  “Well, that’s too bad,” I told her.

  Her stare was steady and wise.

  “I wish you wouldn’t talk just to hear what you can say.”

  “All right.” I sat down on the edge of the bed. “What’s up? What do you want with me?”

  The old hurt clouded her eyes.

  “I thought you might pay the hospital bill.”

  “Okay.”

  “I don’t have any hospitalization and I don’t have any money.”

  I lit a cigarette and she told me to put it out. I kept smoking, anyway.

  “You ought to have a Family Protective policy.”

  “You needn’t sneer.”

  I took her gently by the shoulders and brought her around. I bent over and kissed her on the cheek. She didn’t try to get away and she didn’t move in any closer.

  “Listen,” I said, “you twist up everything I say. I’m talking about a new insurance agency I started over in Waymart. That’s the name of it. The Family Protective. It’s going to turn into a gold mine.”

  I got up and walked around the room, talking fast, and she kept watching me. I’d been tired before but now I was wide awake and I wondered why I hadn’t thought of this plan right at the start. I ought to have somebody over in Waymart, watching things in my new office, and Janet didn’t have any place else to go. She could answer the phone and days when I didn’t get over there she could bank the money. Later on she might need some help and I could get a couple of jerky kids to work for her.

  “It doesn’t sound so bad,” she said when I’d finished. “Only there’s one thing about it, Johnny.”