Shabby Street

by Orrie Hitt

  “Why don’t you take the afternoon off, Johnny? Go out and see a movie. Go out and get drunk. Go out and get — ”

  “Sure,” I said, grinning. “It’d be fun, wouldn’t it?”

  She got real busy with the deposit.

  “Sometimes you say the jerkiest things.”

  I lit a cigarette and went over to the window. The snow was coming down harder, clinging to the ledge on the building, painting the cars white in the street below.

  “Maybe I will,” I said.

  I thought of getting back to Middlesville early, wandering around Connors’ office, listening to all the smart remarks about where had I been and all the phony advice about what I should do. It came from the girls and it came from the agents and I didn’t listen to any of them. I knew that lapses were up, production down. Business stunk over there — they didn’t have to tell me that. But they did. They told me how it used to be and how it was now and they were sore about it. They didn’t know what they were talking about. They didn’t know I owned the Family Protective Agency or that I’d grown bigger in two months than most of them would grow in a lifetime. But they’d find out — some day. And when they did all hell would break loose.

  “I’ll leave a number for you to call,” I told Janet. “In case you want me.”

  “All right. Have a good time.”

  I didn’t have to look up the number or anything like that. I just wrote it down on a piece of paper and left it there. I’d been going to call her a lot of times, drunk and sober, but I’d never finished the job. I’d dialed the number and listened to the phone ring and then I’d hung up. Somehow, talking to Julie on the phone hadn’t seemed to be quite right.

  It was still snowing hard but the roads were good and I took it easy.

  A half hour later I parked the car in front of the restaurant. I left the motor running. I sat there for a long time before I got out.

  It was one of those days, white like Christmas, with things quiet and easy all around you. You get to thinking back, thinking back a long ways, and you get a little scared and angry because it hasn’t been better.

  There was the street — Clarke Street — cold, miserable, desolate. It was a street sitting at the edge of the world and the rim of hell. You grew up, hating it, promising all the time to make it better some day. And you missed. You missed because you stayed yourself. You became part of the street and it became part of you. You only saw the difference when you noticed the changes around you, like Julie — like a star in a clouded sky suddenly lighting up. You stood in the glow, watching the beauty, and for a while you were afraid. Then you weren’t afraid any more and you began reaching for it, chasing it through the shadows of the alleys, driving yourself crazy with the want of it. When you were out of breath you started to walk, not running at all, and the light got closer, almost near enough to touch. Pretty soon you thought the light was on you, too, and you felt better and you tried to reach all the way. For just a second you stood there, washed naked by the brightness of it. Then the clouds came up again, rolling fast and dark, and suddenly the light was gone. The light was gone and you went back to doing what you had done before. Watching. Hoping. And dying just a little inside while you waited.

  I got out of the car, cursing, and went into the restaurant.

  She was in back of the counter, wiping off the coffee urn, and she didn’t turn around when I came in. The only other person in the place was a skinny guy in white slacks who sat at a far table reading a newspaper. I walked over to the counter and sat down.

  “Coffee,” I said.

  She put the cloth aside and picked up a cup.

  “Hello, Johnny.”

  “A little on the light side, huh?”

  “I know.”

  She swung around, puffing a strand of hair away from her face, and put the coffee in front of me. She had on a black uniform that fit pretty good; it made her hair look real blonde, almost the color of dead grass.

  “How have you been, Johnny?”

  There was nothing in her face or eyes, nothing at all to tell how she felt. She just stood there with her hands on the counter, her fingers moving slowly up and down, staring past me.

  “Okay. And you, Julie?”

  “Fine.” Her lips twisted and she folded her hands together, fingers tight. Her breasts rose sharply and I could see the wet gathering in the corners of her eyes. “You had no business coming here,” she said. “You ought to leave me alone, Johnny.”

  “I came to eat crow,” I said.

  She went back to polishing the urn.

  “I don’t care what you came for.”

  But I knew she did. The way she said it, low and soft and not full of anger, told me how it was with her. She wanted me there just as much as I wanted to be there. Only she wanted the pieces to fit, to be right.

  “I came to apologize,” I said. “And to ask you something else.”

  “I’m listening,” she said.

  I told her how it had been for me — or, at least, I told her almost all of it. I told her about Family Protective and how good it was going, only I said that it wasn’t my kind of a business and I was getting out. All the time I was talking I kept wondering how I could sell the agency and get enough out of it to make things square with Connors. Of course, I didn’t tell Julie about Beverly but that wasn’t necessary. What she didn’t know couldn’t cause me any trouble.

  “I’m not sure,” she said after I finished talking.

  “Not sure about what?”

  “That you have half an idea what you’re saying.”

  She made me so crazy mad I wanted to hit her over the head with a stool.

  “You want me to go back outside and come crawling in through the door on my hands and knees?”

  She turned around slowly and smiled at me.

  “You’ve just done that,” she said.

  That made me mad some more. I asked myself how I could figure a dame like Julie. Here I was wearing my conscience on my sleeve and she couldn’t see it for wise cracks. I got up and pushed the cup toward her.

  “Shove it,” I said.

  I walked toward the door.

  “Johnny!”

  “Yeah?”

  “Come back here, Johnny. Please come back!”

  So I went back and sat down again. The guy at the table in the rear was sound asleep and he didn’t hear her crying or the things I said. There were just the two of us and I kissed her when I got the chance. She didn’t mind a bit. She came at me across the counter and kissed me without even asking.

  “Maybe we can get someplace,” I said, running my hands through her hair. “Only you have to stop being so damned sassy. We have to figure this thing out.”

  “I guess we know what we want,” she said.

  The guy in the rear continued to sleep and we talked some more. We didn’t say anything about marriage, not in so many words, but we both knew it was right there, staring at us. She worried about her kid and how I felt about that.

  “Look,” I told her. “Don’t worry about anything, Julie. We start out fresh. Anything that’s happened before to either of us is cancelled out. We just accept each other for what we are now, not condemn each other for what we might have done before.”

  “Gee, Johnny, you’re sweet!”

  I kissed her again.

  “Just one thing, Johnny.”

  “Sure.”

  “This is for keeps?”

  “You can say that over and over!”

  “Johnny!”

  This time she did the kissing. Some guy out on the street looked in and saw us and knocked on the window. We laughed and waved back at him.

  “There’s something else, Johnny.”

  “Okay.”

  “You have to be all straightened up — before. With Mr. Connors. With yourself. We can’t go into this all mixed up.”

  “No.”

  She had something there. I couldn’t excuse myself from Beverly’s bed and cause a rumpus while I was on her
old man’s hook. And I couldn’t get squared off with him until I did something with Family Protective. I started to sweat. I had so much work to do I was tired already.

  “It may take a little while,” I admitted.

  She shrugged those beautiful shoulders and went back to polishing the urn. Every time she moved her arms she shook all the way down across her hips. And every time she shook I shook with her.

  “That won’t stop us from seeing each other,” I said.

  She cocked her ‘head and gave me a sly smile.

  “We’ll give it a try,” she promised.

  I ordered another coffee and she fixed it for me. A couple of railroaders came in and yelled for eggs and bacon. The little guy at the back table shuffled toward the kitchen. The pay phone in the corner started ringing and Julie went to answer it.

  “For you,” she said.

  I crossed to the booth and wedged myself inside.

  “Hello.”

  “Oh, Johnny!” It was Beverly. She was crying so hard the phone almost dripped tears. “Oh, Johnny!”

  “What’s up?” I shouted.

  “I — I just got a cable from mother. Oh — Johnny!”

  The temperature inside the booth shot up fifty degrees.

  “They aren’t on their way — home?”

  “Oh, no. Nothing like that. Dad — Johnny, Dad’s sick and he may die. He’s in a hospital in Rome.” She let out a low moan. “Johnny! Johnny!”

  My nerves backfired, kicking cold, bumpy sweat out all over my body. What a miserable thing to happen! If the old guy died now there’d be an immediate accounting of the estate. It wouldn’t take six months. It wouldn’t take three. And I needed three — at least. I was like a guy stuck in the middle of nowhere. I had to jump one way or another.

  “Johnny, didn’t you hear me?”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Was she kidding? “I’ll be right over. Just sit tight.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome, baby.”

  I hung up and pushed out of the booth. I looked at Julie. I glanced away, not meeting the question in her eyes. I had to take care of first things first. There was no compromise with disaster.

  “Call me, Johnny.” She knew I was getting out of there.

  “Or stop in again some time.”

  “Sure.”

  “I hope it isn’t anything — serious.”

  “No. It isn’t anything at all.”

  I went to the door and jerked it open. The snow came up around my ankles, falling down inside my shoes. I didn’t bother looking back.

  The rear tires snarled in the snow as I pushed the Ford down the street. It was a treacherous night, a night for accidents, but I drove plenty fast. It kept me busy, just staying on the road, and I didn’t have a chance to think about what I’d left in the restaurant.

  Which was just as well.

  I’d made up my mind about something else.

  I was going to marry Beverly Connors.

  CHAPTER XVI

  Wedding Night

  THE NEXT DAY we drove down to Elkton, Maryland, and signed a lease on each others life.

  It was easy.

  The Justice of the Peace was a short, fat man with a glass eye that didn’t fit properly. He led us into his living room and then he called his wife from the kitchen. She came in and he told her to go out and pick up another witness. Pretty soon the wife came back with a woman who had a rag tied over her head and a dust mop in one hand.

  We got through the ceremony in nothing flat. I hadn’t thought I’d be nervous, but I was. I had on a new belt and every time I took a breath I could hear the leather squeak. Beverly’s face was serious, almost reverent, as she stared straight at the Justice, listening to him spring the deadfall.

  I put a ring on her finger and she put one on mine. I was glad mine was a size too large because I’d be able to take it off anytime I felt like it. Then I kissed her, handed the Justice twenty bucks and we were married.

  “Tell your friends where I live,” the old guy said as we went out.

  “Sure.”

  After we got into the car I turned to her.

  “Hello, Mrs. Reagan,” I said.

  She leaned toward me and kissed my mouth.

  “Hello, Mr. Reagan,” she breathed.

  “Not sorry?”

  She shook her head but her face saddened.

  “Now, if dad only gets all right, why — ”

  I patted her hand and started the car. The night before we’d called the hospital in Rome and she’d talked to her mother. Her father had been resting comfortably, better than expected, and her mother said if he made the grade okay they’d cut short their vacation and come home.

  “He’ll be all right,” I assured her.

  She snuggled in close, putting her head on my shoulder, and I eased the Ford out into the late afternoon traffic.

  “I have you,” she said simply.

  We drove a couple of hours before we stopped for an early dinner.

  “I’m not hungry,” she said. “I’m excited.”

  “About what?”

  “You know what.”

  I grinned and speared a fried shrimp. She pushed her coffee aside and dabbed at her lips with the paper napkin. Her eyes were all fire.

  “We could stop some place overnight,” she said. “Maybe a tourist cabin. We won’t be able to have a — honeymoon until you can get away for a while.”

  “I’ve got to get back.”

  “The place will run itself for another day.”

  Her old man’s office had been doing that for a long time.

  “I’m talking about the deal in Waymart,” I said. “The one I was telling you about last night.”

  “Oh.”

  I’d given it to her real slow and so it sounded good. I’d told her how I wanted to get on my own two feet and the battle I was having. I told her her old man might not like it — although I didn’t say anything about the money angle, of course — and she said that we could get along even if he did get sore.

  “I wish I had some money to put into it,” Beverly said. “Like you asked me last night. It would make it so much easier.”

  “Yeah.”

  “But when you don’t have it — you don’t have it.”

  “I guess not.”

  We got up and I paid the check with some of her pappy’s money.

  “I wish there was a way of finding the money,” she said, getting in the car. “I keep thinking there ought to be an answer.”

  I kidded her about using some of the money in her dad’s agency for a little while, just to get her reaction.

  “That wouldn’t be right.”

  “No,” I said. “That would be dishonest.”

  We rode along, the night deep and dark and damp around us. She dozed once in a while, curled up on the seat, and I had a chance to think things over clearly. Just being married to her made it seem a lot easier. I’d planted the need for money in her mind, set the stage for her reaction if I ever got nailed with the shortage. In a case like that she might stick to me and she might blow up with the suddeness of a five cent balloon. But, in any case, I had an excellent chance of riding out the storm — if it ever rolled up over Reagan’s currency patch.

  “Johnny?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Turn on the radio.”

  “Okay.”

  After a while we were riding along to the tune of “Sometime, Somewhere.”

  “Love me, Johnny?”

  “You know that, baby.”

  Sometime. Somewhere. Julie. Sometime. Julie. Somewhere. Julie. Julie!

  “Always, Johnny?”

  My vocal cords knotted up like a snake around a bush.

  “Always.”

  She went back to sleep. I turned off the radio and listened to the soft top of the convertible bore through the wind.

  It didn’t have to last. I didn’t have to stay married to her after things got leveled away. I could tell her it was over and just walk
out. She didn’t have anything to say about it. Not a thing.

  The Ford plowed through the night, entering Pennsylvania, passing near the great steel works at Chester. A few flakes of snow whipped through the air and the road was icy in spots. I kept the car at fifty, driving steadily.

  “Bet you thought I’ve been asleep, Johnny?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, I haven’t.”

  We rode along for another hour, not saying anything. Finally she moved across the seat and slid in close to me.

  “There’s something you ought to know, Johnny.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’m almost afraid to tell you.”

  “You don’t have to be.”

  Maybe she was going to tell me she had twenty thousand dollars and that she’d lied about it in the first place.

  “You can always tell me anything that comes in your head,” I said.

  Her hand fastened on my arm and her lips brushed my cheek.

  “We’re going to have a baby,” she said.

  “But, Beverly — ”

  “I just found out. I couldn’t tell you before.”

  I felt like laughing. I’d been so smart, yes so damned smart, and all I’d done was beat her to the punch.

  “That’s great,” I said. “Just great.”

  It was a lousy feeling, knowing that I’d just married her and that she was sitting there beside me getting bigger all the time. It was almost the same as buying a new car and, later, discovering that there was a big dent in one of the fenders. It made your head pound, made you want to puke — and you didn’t know, not right then, what you could do about it.

  “If anything,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Hell,” I said, dully watching the snow slap against the windshield. “I guess I don’t know what I’m saying. It’s got me all worked up. A kid? It’s — well, you know.”

  I lit a cigarette and tried to think. She was right there close, her face upturned, her eyes studying me. I knew that she’d had this on her mind, trying to figure out how to say it. And now that it was said she was seeking assurance that it didn’t matter.

  “Johnny — ”

  “It’s okay,” I told her. “Don’t worry about it.”

  I tried to imagine how it would be living with her and a kid. Perhaps it would be a boy and he’d cry a lot at first. But, then, he’d get older, growing up fast, and he’d talk to me and I’d wonder where he’d learned all the words. We might be out in the back yard, or down in the cellar or no place much in particular and he’d bump his arm and run, yelling, to his mother. I got that far with it before I could see his mother or hear her giving me hell because I’d been too rough with the little guy. Only it wasn’t Beverly I saw. Maybe she was there, all right, but if she was I couldn’t see her for the shadow of Julie Wilson’s smile.