Shabby Street

by Orrie Hitt

  “Shoot!”

  “No more of the — other.”

  Was she kidding?

  “Whatever you say, baby.” I went over and sat down beside her again. I held her face between my hands and looked right down into her eyes. She blinked back the wetness and gave me back a smile. “Look, Janet, we’ve been a couple of kids and we both know it. I’ve been sort of — lousy. I won’t be that way any more. All I want is for you to be happy and have a job and have a chance to live like a person.”

  That was a big speech for me and I said it low and intimate, just as though I meant it. I wanted to get in a corner and heave. The way she kept smiling at me, her lips pink and her teeth white and her eyes bright, made me think of somebody else for just a second. Somebody I didn’t want to remember.

  “I won’t be out of the hospital for a couple of days.”

  “Stop worrying about it. Whenever you get ready.”

  “And the bill — you’ll help me with that, Johnny?”

  “I’ll take care of it on the way out.”

  “Thanks, Johnny.” She put her head down on the pillow and I knew she was going to bawl. “Thanks a lot.”

  When I got downstairs I stopped in the office and told them to ante up the fine. The old bag in there tried to nick me for an extra ten but I pulled some addition on her and left her flat.

  It was still early in the morning but I stopped in at the nearest bar and had one for luck. Putting Janet in the office at Waymart should prove to be a smart thing. There wouldn’t be much come through there, except new applications, money and claims. The applications would go straight to the New York office to be written up. The money was to be forwarded once a month, after I’d taken my cut. And nobody worried about the claims. What could Janet do that could be wrong?

  I had another drink and decided that I ought to drive over to Waymart and see what was going on. That thrush was supposed to have her first program that afternoon and some of the guys might show up with a few applications. I went to the phone and called the Connors office. I was told that a Miss Cynthia Noxon was waiting to see me.

  I drove over there in a hurry.

  I tried to get the elevator but it was on its way down and I had to wait. It finally stopped, the doors opened and Cynthia stepped out.

  “Well!” she said. “The mid-morning executive!”

  “Skip it,” I told her. I got her by the arm and pushed her out into the street. “Don’t come looking for me here again.”

  She pouted prettily.

  “You didn’t tell me not to.”

  “Well, consider yourself told.”

  It was one of those good fall days, with the early morning fog gone and the sun sinking in. She took off her coat and hung it across one arm.

  “I tried to call you in Waymart, but no one answered the phone.”

  “That’s a hot one,” I said. “No one was there.”

  “It’s a hell of a way to run an office.”

  “But cheap.”

  She had her car parked at the curb, a big red Caddy with the top down. She got in and told me to get in. It was a pleasure.

  “Gail get there all right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You said her first program was today.”

  “At three-fifteen.”

  Cynthia Noxon sighed and started the Caddy. She gave it the gas and we barreled off down the street. I wondered where we were going and decided to find out.

  Waymart. I want to see what you’ve got over there.”

  “Okay.”

  She flipped the radio on.

  “I’ll bet you’re wrong about the program time. I’ll bet it’s either right now or late tonight.”

  “All right, so I don’t know what time of the day I bought,” I grumbled.

  She looked at me and smiled graciously.

  “Forgive me, Johnny, but I don’t think you know anything at all about radio times — or, especially, Gail Dawn. If there’s a sustaining program that can be moved, she’ll move it — even if she has to get herself raped by the program director.”

  “I could think of a worse fate for him.”

  “You’re not funny.”

  “Hell, I wasn’t kidding.”

  We drove on a ways in silence. The air was clean and warm and the countryside sparkled in the sun.

  “I’m serious about that,” Cynthia said. “This Gail Dawn is a real pro. She knows that her best time is around noon or at night. It’s family people she has to sell and that’s when they’re home. You won’t find her burning up your money in the middle of the afternoon. Not that she cares about you, or me — or anybody else, really. It’s a matter of pride with her. She wants to be the best damned salesman on the air. And someday she will be.”

  “If she doesn’t stop sleeping around,” I said, “she won’t have time for it.”

  The radio came on and Cynthia began punching at the stations. She didn’t get anything but news and halitosis and some dame chasing the father of her kid. The road was winding now, boring up into the mountains, and I took over as radio operator. She drove fast and the wind came in and hoisted her skirt up over her knees. She had a couple of good knees and what she had above them wasn’t so bad, either. I took quite a while to find the station.

  “That’s her!” Cynthia shouted excitedly. “Listen to that!”

  To me it sounded like somebody was throwing pots and pans around a room and somebody else was yelling. But I never had gone much for that ride-the-range, light-a-candle-in-the-window stuff and I wasn’t going to do any back flips just because this Gail Dawn was wearing the lining off her lungs doing it.

  “Shut it off,” I told her. “You want me to have a stroke?”

  “They’ll buy insurance from you now.”

  “Maybe if they thought she’d stop that screeching they would.”

  She started to turn the radio off, but I stopped her. I was paying that dame a hundred and fifty a week to make a public nuisance of herself. If nobody else would listen to her I might as well work overtime at it and try to get my money’s worth. Pretty soon she stopped singing and I began to feel better.

  She gave them the commercial herself and it was a dilly at misrepresentation. No one, unless they were familiar with Family Protective’s contract, could have spotted the phony lines. She told them, in a soft and low personal way, that the policy covered everything — all kinds of sicknesses and accidents. She told them it only cost twenty-three bucks the first year and twenty after that. She was telling them the truth. That’s what it cost and everything was covered — with exclusions and fine print.

  “They’ll indict me for robbery,” I told Cynthia Noxon. “I’ll wind up in jail.”

  “And that’s probably where you belong.”

  We both laughed. It was great to be going at last, to have the fat in the pan, to watch the flame of success burn higher.

  We went straight to the office in Waymart. Even before I unlocked the door I knew that the two phones inside were hopping around like frogs in a rainstorm.

  “Listen to that money rattle!” she said, grabbing up the nearest one. “Let’s get to work, Johnny!”

  And it was work. All afternoon those phones kept barking. Dozens of leads. Good leads. People wanting to snap into line so they could have first crack at this great big insurance bargain. People waving their pocketbooks around so you had to trip over them. Fools. People. Jerks. The colossal jackpot.

  “What an afternoon!” Cynthia said, checking the name list.

  It began to slack off after five. We started putting the names and addresses on cards to be distributed amongst the agents the next morning. Around five-thirty the agents started calling in. Up until now they’d been cold canvassing — knocking on doors and yammering in the dark — and their haul had been modest. But the program had changed that. They were getting better receptions, more money, and they were hotter than shotguns after a turkey shoot.

  “This is a real fertile field around here,” Cynthi
a said, leaning back in her chair. “Real fertile, Johnny.”

  She leaned back nicely. She had a suggestive shape, full and soft looking, and she didn’t seem to mind how many times she was undressed by my eyes.

  “Well, there’s a lot of coal miners around here,” I said.

  “And they can’t get insurance of this kind anyplace else?”

  “Yeah. There’s farmers, too. And ordinary guys working up in the woods. All kinds.”

  It got dark but we didn’t bother turning the lights on. We sat there talking about it and smoking. She told me how I should list the applications when I sent them down to her. She knew her business all right and she gave me a couple of angles I hadn’t thought about before. It was easy to see how she had gotten so far. She hated people who were dumb — and she thought everybody was built that way.

  “You ought to get some people here in the office,” she said. “To help you out. There’s going to be plenty for you to do.”

  “I’ve got that taken care of.”

  “Your job’s to keep after the salesmen, Johnny. You can’t let up on them for a minute. And you’ve got to watch them all the time. I’ve got a guy who used to take my leads and use them to sell silverware.”

  “Pretty smart.”

  Her cigarette bobbed around in the dark.

  “Until I had him arrested.” She got up and the cigarette went with her. “I don’t fool around, Johnny.” She kept walking around, like she didn’t know what to do. “Remember that, Johnny. Always remember that.”

  “Sure.”

  We locked up the office and went out for supper. She seemed to prefer drinking to eating and that was all right with me. We put them away, one after the other, and pawed the food around a little bit. She had a wild glow in her face and eyes by the time we went out to the street and got into the car. She told me to drive and I didn’t argue with her.

  The Caddy had plenty of get up and go to it but I took my time. The top was still down and the night air slid down from the hills, feeling cool. She moved across the seat, a little at a time, until finally she was right up close where it was warm and I could get my hand on her.

  “You keep out in center field,” she said, laughing and patting my hand. “Don’t try any home run stuff the first time up.”

  “Okay.”

  “You know what I mean?”

  “Hell, no. Show me.”

  We were almost into town when I decided to get that car off the road. We’d been riding along, talking about business, and she’d crept up on me all of a sudden. Maybe it was the drinks, or the warmth of her, or something like that.

  I parked at the mouth of a wood road, under some pines.

  “I don’t think I like this,” she said.

  I tried to kiss her but she wouldn’t let me. She fastened her teeth alongside my cheek and I thought I’d been shot. I watched her move through the shadows to the other side of the seat and I could hear how heavily she was breathing.

  “There’s something you should understand,” she told me, her voice sharp and tight. “I’m not everybody’s whore, Johnny.”

  The way she said it, it made it seem wrong and dirty and awful that I’d ever stopped the car. I rubbed my cheek and lit a cigarette.

  “You’re a nice guy, Johnny. I like you. You’ve got guts and you’re a hard worker and, I suppose, you’d make a fine stud.”

  “Yeah?”

  “It’s nothing to be ashamed about, Johnny.” She laughed and I could tell that she wasn’t mad any more. “You like your women and they like you. Only don’t count me on your fingers. It’s strictly business with us, Johnny. You haven’t got anything I want. Remember that. And you won’t ever get anything from me. Remember that, too.”

  The night was all around us, deep and dark. The smell of the pines filled the air and it was so quiet you could hear the field mice mooching around in the leaves. A car came along, ripping up the road. It went on past, its radio playing loud and clear.

  “Okay,” I said.

  I started the Caddy and backed it onto the highway. We drove in silence until we reached the city limits.

  “Mad, Johnny?”

  “Hell, no!”

  “Sometimes I talk too bluntly.”

  We went under a street light and I glanced at her. She sat there smiling at me, real sure of herself. I supposed that she was thinking about how much money she had and how smart she was and all the other stuff that might go with it. I got the feeling that she thought I was just a little guy in knee pants.

  I parked the car in front of the office. I got out and she slid under the wheel.

  “Keep in touch with me, Johnny. Let me know how things go.”

  “Sure.”

  She reached up and patted my face.

  “Luck, Johnny.”

  “Thanks.”

  She shot the Caddy down the street, pouring on the power. I watched the big red tail lights until they drifted out of sight. Then I went in the bar down the street and had a drink.

  I couldn’t put my finger on the reason, but that dame had me plenty worried.

  CHAPTER XV

  Rift in the Loot

  FOR THE NEXT couple of months I was busier than a man shoveling water uphill. I drove the road between the Connors office and Waymart so much that I could have gone in my sleep without getting off the macadam once. It was a real race, with the rats running all over the place.

  “You should get more rest,” Janet told me plenty of times. “You’re doing good. Why don’t you take it easy?”

  “Yeah.”

  There was plenty of money rolling into the Provider, but it had been necessary for me to buy fancy office machines and put on more help. The agents, of course, paid their own way but the chic dolls I had cluttering up the chairs and desks kept gnawing away at the hinges on the gravy train.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Cynthia Noxon told me during one of her visits. “Just wait until those quarterly premiums start pouring in.”

  “I wish we could sell them all annually. When it’s split up in four parts it doesn’t look like anything.”

  “You’ve got to do what they want, Johnny. You have to sell it the way they’ll pay.”

  She was right and I was right — and I wasn’t making a dime. I was a little sore at her for having changed the mode of premium payments on the policy, after we started plugging it, but there wasn’t much I could do about it. The way it was set up there wasn’t any saving if a guy paid once a year, or four times a year, so he felt his way along as cheaply as possible. Of course, in a labor area it made the insurance easier to sell but it also made you wait for the rest of your money and you were a lot less certain about getting it.

  I hoped that Connors would stay in Europe until after the resurrection.

  “They’re having fun,” Beverly kept telling me. “Big fun! They lost five thousand dollars in one week on the Riviera.”

  The old bastard!

  “They’re going to Spain and to France and — oh, just all over!”

  Well, happy days!

  The weather was getting colder now and Beverly had moved back into the house at the edge of town. Sometimes we went out to dinner, sometimes we went to the movies, or dancing, and sometimes we just went to bed. Once in a while I stayed in my own apartment, drinking. When I drank I thought of Julie and when I thought of her I got so stinking sick of the whole thing that I almost wanted to chuck it. Only I couldn’t. I’d gone into Connors for another five thousand, making a total of about seventeen, and I had to sit it out. Every day I found myself a quiet corner and figured out how much longer it would take. The same answer kept boring through to sit there on the paper. Six months. Until the new quarterly renewals rolled in. Six months of risk and, then — clover!

  In the short space of two months I’d tripled the agency force. I had guys crawling up out of barrels and swinging from the trees. The radio program came at the suckers twice a day now and Gail kept pouring the coal to a steadily blazing fire.<
br />
  “I’m worth two-fifty a week,” she told me one night.

  She’d stopped around to the office early, on her way to work. She’d been wearing a bright red wool suit that didn’t quite conceal her secret of approaching motherhood.

  “That doesn’t say you’re going to get it,” I told her.

  I’d offered her a drink and she’d shook her head.

  “Go to hell, Johnny Reagan!”

  In the end, I’d chased her down to the street and it’d cost me two seventy-five. She was worth it all right. She kept those phones humming and the money jumping. I didn’t know what the hell I’d do when she got so big she couldn’t get next to a microphone.

  “You’ll be out of the woods by that time,” Janet told me. “You can get somebody else.”

  “You find them.”

  “I will.”

  Janet was a good kid and she was working like hell. I left her alone, not trying to bother her physically, and it seemed to be a sensible arrangement. She had an apartment some place on the North Side and she kept herself dressed up like a million bucks. Most of the squawks from customers were men who came into the office — usually those who’d been turned down on some claim they’d had — and she just gave them her smile and a shake of her can and things were fine. I’d raised her salary up to a hundred a week and she earned every cent of it. Without her I’d have run myself so ragged, chasing between the two offices, that I’d have been a skeleton without half my bones.

  “It’s starting to snow,” she said one day, shortly after lunch.

  I watched the white flakes peck away at the window, then turn to water.

  “Yeah.”

  “Weather forecast says a heavy snow tonight.”

  “That’s good. Most everybody’ll be home and the fellows won’t have any trouble getting interviews.”

  “Don’t you ever think of anything except business?”

  Sure, I thought, I think about Connors and his damned money and all the things that could happen if the wheel didn’t stop spinning pretty soon.

  “No,” I said.

  She was at her desk, working on the bank deposit of the day before, but she stopped doing that for a while and just stared at me.