Shabby Street

by Orrie Hitt

  Janet slid around the desk and grabbed up my coat. Before I realized what she was doing she had it on.

  “Everything all right, Johnny?”

  Janet went out and slammed the door.

  “No!” I shouted. “The shingles are blowing off my roof. Call me back.”

  I hung up, cutting her off in the middle of a squeal. I ran to the door, jerked it open, and tore off toward the elevator. It was on its way down already.

  I punched the button until my thumb got sore. Pretty soon the elevator started up and I stopped chewing my fingernails.

  The elevator halted and the doors opened.

  “Good-morning,” Cynthia Noxon said. “May I see you for a few minutes?”

  “I’ll be right back.”

  Her stare was cold.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Reagan, but I’m in a bit of a hurry.”

  I got the very definite impression that some of my luck was running at low tide.

  “Well, okay.”

  “Over coffee? I haven’t breakfasted yet.”

  “Suits me.”

  She didn’t say anything more until we were seated in a booth, across from each other, in the restaurant down the street.

  “Where were you yesterday, Mr. Reagan?”

  “Getting married,” I said.

  Her smile was almost a sneer.

  “Who was the lucky girl? Miss Connors?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, isn’t that sweet?”

  I stirred my coffee, looking at her. There wasn’t anything soft about her face; it had the hard veneer appearance of a mahogany table top. And her eyes had larceny in them, the kind of larceny that burns down inside of a person, scorching everything in sight.

  “Look,” I said, “I’m sorry about making you wait and all that. It was — one of those things. I wished to God I’d stayed here. Maybe I could have kept out of some trouble.”

  “And maybe you’d have gotten into it quicker,” she said.

  She was plenty touchy and I wasn’t in any position to argue with her, so I let it go.

  “This Janet,” I said. “This Janet clipped me for over six thousand bucks. You know what that means? It means some of those last checks I sent you are going to bounce higher than a balloon in the wind.”

  Cynthia Noxon lit a cigarette and spit the smoke right at me.

  “That makes my job a hell of a lot easier,” she said.

  I didn’t have to ask her what she meant by that because all of a sudden I knew how the strings had been tied. She’d only been feeding me, sucking me in, and now that the melon was getting ripe she was going to cut it herself.

  “What was your job?” I asked her, softly. “What were you going to do, Miss Cynthia Noxon?”

  She spread her painted fingernails on the table top. She had nice hands. Long, slim hands. Hands that would strangle a guy at a moment’s notice.

  “I should have told you about our inspection,” she said. “We put on general agents here and there and we have to check on every one of them.”

  “Go on.”

  “If we had signed up with the Connors Agency that would be a different thing. But we didn’t. We signed with you. Johnny Reagan. Johnny Reagan who’s a nobody.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You didn’t pass our inspection, Mr. Reagan.”

  “Get to the point, baby.”

  “That’s all,” she said. “I’m giving you thirty days notice of voiding your contract and then we take over.”

  She tried to get up and leave the booth but she didn’t have a chance. I grabbed hold of her hands, hurting her, and then I slid around the table and moved in beside her. She started to yell but I slapped one hand across her mouth and jammed her head into the corner, tight against the wall and the end of the booth.

  “Listen to me, you dirty bitch!” I told her. “I know what you’re doing. You’re moving in because of all those renewals I’ve built up. I won’t get a nickel. You’ll get the whole works.”

  She fastened her white teeth into my fingers and I took my hand loose. I could see that she wasn’t going to do any yelling. We both looked down at my hand and watched the blood drip onto the top of the table.

  “You’re awfully smart,” she sneered. “You ought to be an insurance man.”

  “There’s just one thing I want to tell you,” I said. “You’re going to regret this caper for a long time to come.”

  “In six months you’ll be out of the seat of your pants,” she told me. “You’ll be busted and you’ll be in trouble with the bonding company. They’ll own every nickel you make for the rest of your life.”

  “Keep spinning the wheel, baby.”

  She pushed out against me and I didn’t try to fight her any more. A lot of the coffee club had drifted into the restaurant, yelling and making wise remarks. There was no use arguing with her about it. She owned the scissors and she could cut up our contract any time she felt like it.

  “You never had a lousy dime that belonged to you,” she said. “We checked you good and you always owed somebody — a finance company, or a store for a suit, or something like that. Then all of a sudden you get a big chance with this Connors outfit and you break out with a lot of cash. Enough to start an agency of your own.” She paused and pushed against me some more. “Enough so I know you’re a louse, Johnny Reagan.”

  I let her go and she didn’t waste much of her time getting up.

  “Thank you, Mr. Reagan,” she said.

  I sat down and ordered some more coffee. But I didn’t drink it. I just sat there swearing and hating them all. It was funny, but I wasn’t so mad at Cynthia Noxon. That was her business, getting other people to be dumb and staying smart herself. All the time I’d been doing it so smart I’d been so dumb I should have drowned myself. But that Janet was quite another angle. She’d twisted me out of shape until I was bent double and still going further. She’d been my girl and I’d tried to make it up to her and she’d turned out to be a pirate.

  I paid my check, went out to the street and down to a bar a couple of doors away. I sat down and began to play tag with Old Grandad. And I began to get sore all over again.

  They were all in the same class, the three of them. Cynthia and Janet and Beverly. They all spelled money troubles. Two were crooks and the other was too dumb to have any money.

  I had two more quick jolts.

  There was Julie, only Julie, and now she probably wouldn’t touch me with a five foot stick. I’d gone into Connors deep and hard and now these dames were throwing the dirt in the hole, covering me up.

  The guy behind the bar ran out of Old Grandad so I switched to scotch. I put the first one away, neat, and my brain rolled over on its side. The bartender poured another and some of it slipped out of my mouth and ran down my chin. I pulled my knees up and pressed them in against the bar, hoping that would help me to stay aloft of a stool that changed sizes every once in a while.

  “You don’t want any more, Mac.”

  “Shut up, damn it, and get to work.”

  “Okay, okay.”

  I kept on drinking and thinking of just one thing. Everything else was scrambled up and hazy but I was real clear on that one. I had to beat them.

  And I knew how.

  CHAPTER XVIII

  Caught Short

  THE DAYS of the next month twisted together like a cob web. Cynthia Noxon was the spider and I was the fly. I kept running around that web, studying the angles. And when I moved in I tore the web wide open. It wasn’t easy.

  “I wish you’d stay home once in a while,” Beverly complained. “You’re never here. You’re always on the run.”

  “A couple of weeks more, and it’ll be all over.”

  “I wonder.”

  We were living in her parent’s town house, rattling around in those big rooms like dice in a wooden box.

  “You’ll see, baby. Just wait.”

  “I’m waiting.”

  There was always something tense between us.
Maybe it was the result of that first night when I’d had to leave her. I’d tried to make it up to her, bringing her flowers and candy and stuff like that. Sometimes she seemed to act the part of a wife. Sometimes she didn’t. I didn’t worry about it. I was only passing by her corner, anyway.

  “You’re a great one,” she’d say. “You marry me and then you don’t show again for three days afterward.”

  “I guess I got a snoot full. I never got married before.”

  “Just enjoyed all the privileges.”

  That’s the way it would start. She’d remind me of the night on the raft, and of other nights, and she’d say I’d only wanted one thing and now I was sorry I’d ever got it. She didn’t get any argument from me on that. When I didn’t say anything she’d go on raving about the kid and how her friends would count backwards on their fingers after it was born.

  She told me that she’d written to her father and mother about the marriage and that the first letter she’d received from them afterwards had been filled with good wishes. But the next letter had been short and curt. They’d said they wouldn’t bother writing again. The old guy was getting up and around and as soon as he could travel they were going to fly back. That one bothered me. It was the same as sitting in a card game opposite a dealer from hell. You either took the pot or you crapped out.

  After three weeks I was ready to make a play for the pot.

  The day I signed the deal with the Provider Insurance Company I sat down in the office all alone and laughed. I was laughing at Connors and his pregnant daughter — I was laughing at Janet and the two days I’d spent looking for her — and I was laughing at Cynthia Noxon and the way she’d come back to me, later, with her skirt under her arm.

  They could all go pound sand.

  The guys in the office didn’t like it when I cut out the radio program. That is, they didn’t like it at first. But when I told them how it would work, how they could knock their old customers off again right and left, they went all out for it.

  It was just as simple as tying a noose around somebody else’s neck. The Provider Insurance Company was a little old outfit located in central New York State. It was chartered by the state, it had plenty of contracts to sell, but it was dying up there because nobody knew what they were doing. They grabbed for my idea like sharks after a corpse.

  They had a clip policy called The Provider, a real dilly that sold for eighteen dollars the first year and fifteen the second year. It didn’t pay for a thing but it was put up on good quality paper and it looked as straight as a lifetime contract with one of the big outfits. It was easy for my agents to call back on their old clients, tell them they could save money and get something better. In less than a week I knew it would be a smasher.

  Several times I went around looking for Janet but she had packed in and nobody had heard from her. Once, I found a letter from a dress house in her mail box and three days later it was still there. I gave up going around. But I didn’t give up thinking about her.

  I could see myself lifting six grand and hitting the high road. I’d been brought up to take what I wanted and pay it back when I felt it wouldn’t bother me any. But Janet was different. She’d seemed straight to the point of being pathetic. I couldn’t figure her. She was a dame and I was stuck.

  Cynthia Noxon called me twice during that month. The first time to sneer and the next time to sneer again.

  “You have everything mailed down here before your time’s up,” she said. “Don’t try any schemes with me, Johnny Reagan. I’ll beat you every time.”

  “You’d think I didn’t know that already,” I said passively. “You’ll get them even if I have to crawl down there with them on my back.”

  She hung up, laughing. Then I laughed. I laughed so hard I thought my head would break. Just wait until she began mailing out those renewal notices and she got lapses instead of dollars! The little bitch!

  I spent a few bucks and got a report on Family Protective. It was what I wanted to see. The company had been going good at first but now it was listing the other way. No reason was given for this but it didn’t matter. All I needed to know was that she would be hurt if her gold mine in the hills turned out to be lead.

  She was going to find tough digging.

  Occasionally I’d stop around to the restaurant to see Julie but I didn’t work overtime at it. The word had drifted back from Waymart about the agency and she’d heard the worst of it.

  “Let it die,” I told her one night. “I’m trying to promote my way out of it.”

  She leaned across the counter, her mouth round and her eyes careful.

  “Honest?”

  “Yeah. I’m sick of running my legs off. I just want to cash this mess in and settle down to some real living.”

  A customer drifted in and she went down to wait on him. He was one of those kind who reads the menu as though it’s a full length novel. I glanced at the clock and saw that it was close to seven. I’d told Beverly that I’d be home to eat around six-thirty and by this time she’d probably be ripping up the floors with her hands.

  “Take it easy, Johnny.”

  I stopped by the door.

  “Okay.”

  She poured a glass of water and stopped to pick up my dime by the register.

  “I hope it works out for you, Johnny.”

  “So do I.”

  “You’ve gotta think of your wife, Johnny.”

  I went out and closed the door. She always had to prod the sore open and watch the blood run.

  It was a warm night and I drove across town through the slush. I parked the car alongside the house and got out in water half-way to my knees. I swore and went up the steps to the back porch and into the kitchen.

  She sat at the kitchen table drinking coffee. She hardly looked up when I entered.

  “Hi, Beverly!”

  There was a moment’s silence.

  “Why don’t you wipe your feet?” she wanted to know.

  I stared at the floor. All I could see were a couple of spots of water.

  “I guess I forgot.”

  “You forget a lot of things.”

  I took off my coat and carried it into the closet. When I came back to the kitchen she was washing her cup in the sink.

  “What’s for chow?”

  She looked at me steadily.

  “Nothing.”

  “Oh.”

  I went to the refrigerator and pulled the door open. I got out some lettuce and cold cuts and threw a sandwich together. The coffee in the pot was old and lukewarm but I poured it into a cup and sat down at the table.

  “I have news for you,” she said, slowly drying her hand on a towel. “Big news.”

  “Okay.”

  “I was to the doctor today. He says it’ll be a seven months baby.”

  I didn’t try to figure the exact time but that sounded pretty close.

  “Well,” I said, “you won’t get so big that way.”

  She slapped me in the face with the towel and walked on through to the living room. I ate the rest of my sandwich and finished my coffee. Then I followed her into the dark room. She was lying on one of the davenports bawling her head off. I turned on a light, picked up the evening paper and sat down.

  “I guess your nerves are all shot to hell,” I told her. “You’re blowing fuses right and left.”

  She sat up and wiped the tears out of her eyes. I could see the bulge of her belly real plain and her face was getting fuller.

  “I have some other news for you,” she said.

  “I’m listening.”

  “Dad and mother will be home in less than three weeks.”

  “You heard from them?”

  “How else would I know?”

  I grunted and studied the sports page. I read about Durocher and his next year’s Giants and I wondered if I could crawl out from under before Connors got back. It was short notice for the twelve thousand bucks I still owed, but maybe it could be done. Four thousand a week. Eight hundred ev
ery working day.

  “You’d better get yourself another job, Johnny.”

  The way she said it, plain and simple, I knew she wasn’t just batting words around. I tossed the paper aside and lit a Camel. Then I leaned forward, my elbows on my knees.

  “Baby,” I said, “you and I had better have a talk.”

  She started to cry again.

  “You’re so miserable, Johnny. So terribly miserable!”

  “Thanks.”

  “You’ve ruined — everything.”

  “Stop blaming me all the time.”

  “All right, why shouldn’t I? You don’t care about me, do you?” Her month twisted as though I’d slapped her. “Do you?”

  “I don’t know why you say that, baby.”

  “Baby! Baby!” She got up and wandered around the room. She moved with her back straight, her long neck rigid, her face lifted high. “Don’t you know any other name except ‘Baby’?”

  “Well, for — ”

  “I always hated it. Hated it, do you hear!” She swung around suddenly. Round beads of sweat clung to her forehead. “Sometimes I even think I hate you.”

  “So do I,” I said. “I’m sure you do.”

  She didn’t move when I went over to her. She just stood there waiting, her lips tight and her eyes dull.

  “I want to know what happened,” I said. “Somebody pulled a string some place. You weren’t like this before.”

  She nodded solemnly.

  “Who’s been peddling tales? You don’t want to believe everything you hear.”

  “Even from your own father?”

  I had my hands on her shoulders but she shrugged them off. She went over and stood at the window looking out. It was one of those mild winter nights when the snow melts on the roof and you can hear it dripping from the eaves outside. The kind of a dark uncertain night that makes you feel all alone and very far away.

  “Give me the rest of it, Beverly — straight.”

  “He called me this afternoon. He was — upset. He said he was coming home as soon as he could. He said he was going to let you go.”

  “Is that all?”

  “My God, isn’t that enough? Your own father-in-law — ”

  “Skip the romance and give me the rest of it.”