Blue Money

by Janet Capron

Sufficiently mangy and drug-ridden, Felix’s was the only saloon left worth drinking at on the Upper East Side, but it had its drawbacks. The men were vicious; they hated women, and they weren’t afraid to show it. Working-class, streetwise gamblers, they would just as soon bet on two drops of beer sliding down the back mirror as talk to the likes of me, with a couple of exceptions, one being Felix himself, a Damon Runyon throwback with a lopsided grin who lived for women, and the other his right-hand man, the bartender Charlie Mooney. Charlie was about six-foot-four and gaunt with high cheekbones and dark, almond-shaped eyes that made him look like a Hun. But Charlie was a dreamer, another Irish dreamer, and I had discovered a few years before that he loved to read. His height and his intriguing face made it difficult for him to effectively ignore women. I, for one, was extremely fond of Charlie. And there were others like me happily willing to wait for him until closing time, minus the one or two Felix managed to pick off first.

  When I wandered in on this particular evening, Mean Bob, as he was called, sat alone at the bar having a quick pop before he went to work up the street at Irene’s.

  “How about a blow job?” he said over his shoulder by way of greeting.

  “Not if you paid me.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  This is what I didn’t like about hanging out at Felix’s.

  Charlie stood back listening. He had just set up and we were his first customers. After we finished our exchange, Charlie waited awhile before he came over to me with a Dewar’s and soda. There was always the possibility that Mean Bob would scare me off. Not tonight, though. I couldn’t think of an alternative. Besides, I knew Mean Bob had to be at work at Irene’s soon. Moments later, he polished off his drink and slammed the glass down.

  “Time to go babysit,” he said, addressing himself to Charlie exclusively.

  Then he dropped a twenty-dollar bill on the bar and swaggered out the door. This was the custom; the guys who worked behind the stick around town pooled their money, meaning they drank at each other’s saloons and left a tithing instead of a tip.

  Once Charlie and I were alone, he leaned over the bar slightly. “Did you hear about 4-H Jimmy?”

  “I was just in there to see him last week.”

  “He got busted.”

  “Busted? Jimmy doesn’t deal anything.”

  “Passing counterfeit bills. It’s a federal rap.”

  “Four-H Jimmy? He didn’t know what he was doing. He’s been duped.”

  “Don’t worry. He won’t go up. They got him a couple of hotshot lawyers.”

  “They? Who’s they?”

  Charlie leaned over the bar a little more. “You know: they.”

  “No, I don’t know.”

  He looked impatient. “Wise guys, Janet.”

  “Four-H Jimmy and the Mob?”

  Charlie threw up his hands. “Whaddya expect from a guy who voted for Nixon?”

  “Jimmy voted for Nixon? I don’t think I’ve ever known anyone who voted Republican.”

  “That’s because the crooks you know are honest crooks.”

  “What have you got against Jimmy, Charlie?”

  “Jimmy? I love the guy.” He thumped his chest. “Love him. I’m just pissed off at his stupidity, that’s all. Anyway, he’s not working at the Show anymore. Gone”—he sliced the air—“out . . . Laying low for now.”

  “Charlie, is he going to be OK?”

  “Yes, yes. He’ll be OK—this time. God protects fools.” He straightened himself up and shook himself off slightly as if he’d just come in from the rain. Then he took a bunch of quarters out of the till. “Here, Janet. Play the jukebox.”

  Charlie tucked in his chin and folded his arms across his chest in that parody he did of a complacent burgher, which is exactly what Charlie wasn’t. He explained it to me once. After he graduated from college all set to go get a straight job, he went along to work one morning with his father, who had been employed by the same chemical company as a bookkeeper at that time for nineteen years. They boarded the subway in Queens. The car was filled to bursting. Charlie and his father had one stop to make it across the aisle to the exit on the far side so they could change trains. Charlie followed his not-so-big father as he frantically pushed and shoved his way across the car to the other door. Then it struck my friend that his father had been doing this five days a week for the past nineteen years.

  “Not me,” he said.

  Now with his arms folded across his chest, Charlie marched solemnly to the far end of the bar, where he looked out the big front window for customers. I went over to the jukebox, which was one of those new machines, no more languid bubbles of incandescent color, only dull fluorescence behind the banners of commercial hits. The jukebox had been neglected here at Felix’s. Music was too emotional for the regulars. I played “Bright Lights, Big City,” by Jimmy Reed, and “The House of the Rising Sun,” as covered by the Animals. After that, I had a few drinks, to clear my confusion about Jimmy.

  When I got to Corinne’s, she was already in bed with someone, but forever good-natured, she greeted me at the door in her negligee with her always professional, welcoming, dimpled smile and led me over to one of her slippery chairs, where she then sat me down and poured me a snifter full of Grand Marnier. I could hear the toilet flushing in the bathroom behind the closed bedroom door.

  “All right, as I said on the phone, I have an idea. If you’re going to do this, do it in style.”

  Corinne pulled me out of the chair as she said this and turned me in a full circle. Then, with her knees bent and her head at an angle, she peered at me from below, making a frame with her hands as if she were a photographer. She stood up, lifted my now long, limp brown hair away from my face and let it drop lifeless to my shoulders. I winced; comparing myself with Corinne—with her luxurious auburn hair floating down her back; the slinky, translucent negligee, her august ripeness underneath and the way her nipples poked through the lace; the smooth skin on her face so artfully made up, her lips glistening a soft watermelon color that contrasted with her hair in a provocative way—I was made to feel like the waif that I was.

  “I think it’s time you went to school. So tomorrow, come by at noon and we’ll start. A makeover. We’re going to turn you into a real call girl. That is, if you truly want to do this.”

  “Of course I do! A makeover! Just like in the magazines. I hope I look better afterward. Sometimes those women look worse, you know? Hey, just kidding. I really am excited. A makeover! Thank you, Corinne. I mean it. I can’t get over it.” I paused, and then asked, genuinely curious: “Why are you willing to do this for me?”

  “Somebody did it for me once. Besides, I’m not going to lose anything by it. What goes around comes around.”

  “Corinne, you’re really something, really terrific. I sincerely mean it. Listen, I’m sorry I showed up so late. But you know, I just heard 4-H Jimmy got busted, and it threw me, I guess.”

  Corinne was as incredulous as I had been and made me repeat everything Charlie Mooney had told me about 4-H Jimmy.

  “OK, I’m going to leave right now. I don’t want to keep you any longer,” I said when Corinne was finally satisfied I had shared every detail I knew.

  “Don’t worry about him.” She cocked her head in the direction of the bedroom. “He’s a football player and it’s off-season—we’ve got all night. You don’t have to rush away.”

  “No, no, another time. I’ll be here at noon,” I said as I weaved my way across the room. The Dexamyl was wearing off and I was feeling tipsy—dizzy, actually. Corinne followed me to the door.

  I had been dying all this time to ask her about Michael, because I was sure they were still in touch, but I didn’t want to seem too curious. I wanted to be certain I could convey the right off-hand tone, and I was afraid an irrepressible note of anxiety, or eagerness, might give me away. The more I delayed, the harder it got. Finally at the door, I realized this was my last chance.

  “Have you been to see Michae
l yet at Slim’s?” I asked.

  “Haven’t you, Janet?”

  “Not yet.”

  “What kind of friend are you? I mean, you’ve been back a long time. What’s keeping you?”

  Corinne was one more person who had not heard about how I went crazy and preyed on Michael. Whew. What a relief. That’s the great thing about New York: if you wanted anybody to know your business, you practically had to take out an ad.

  “I heard he had a baby...thought maybe he was being domestic or something,” I said.

  “What, who, Michael? You’ve got to be kidding.” Corinne chuckled deep in her throat. “Michael being domestic, that’s a good one... Listen, that poor girl, Roseanna, she has to look after the baby all by herself and pay the rent. The only time he babysits is when she has to go stand in line for food stamps. I know this because he told me so himself...I think her parents help out some, but they’re in Milano, of course...Can you imagine having Michael’s kid? I feel so sorry for her.” Corinne shook her head. “You really should go by and see him, Janet. The music’s great, too...well, you can imagine, the whole scene’s great,” Corinne said, encouraging me to go as if my not having done so were just an oversight.

  “I’ll do that,” I said, trying my best to sound casual. The sudden color in my cheeks as soon as the subject of Michael came up must have tipped Corinne, I thought, but if she detected strong feelings on my part, she didn’t let on.

  “In the meantime, you’re going to owe me one kid. I’m telling you, I’m going to make you a star,” Corinne said, putting her arm around my shoulders and giving me a little hug before she gently closed the door.

  Makeover

  “You’re late,” Corinne said.

  I was just a few minutes late, but late nevertheless, and bleary-eyed. The morning was so alien, I had become infatuated with the wash of light on the buildings, the cars, and the concrete sidewalk studded with shiny stones. My observations slowed my pace as I walked uptown to Corinne’s. She answered the door already prepared for the day in one of her flowing caftans, shaking her head in open disapproval.

  “There’s a few things I want to make clear to you. Then, after you’ve thought it over, if you’re sure this is the life for you, I’ll book you.”

  “Oh, Corinne, I didn’t realize this was an interview,” I said.

  Corinne ignored this and plunged on. “Number one, no decent man is ever going to marry you. Might as well kiss that good-bye. Number two, once you’re in the Life, you’re in. No way out. Blue money’s too easy and it’s too good. Understand?”

  A decent man? I had no sense of what kind of man that was. A dull man, is that what Corinne meant by “decent”? No dull man would ever marry me. Oh well.

  “But I know all this, Corinne. I’ve thought it over. Honestly I have,” I said.

  I started to look around her living room, which I had never seen in daylight. Corinne had pulled the curtains; a blast of piercing noonday sun assaulted the room, exposing every wrinkle and stain on the satin-covered furniture. The place looked like it had a hangover.

  “So you think you got it all figured. Well, I’m gonna give it to you straight: if you really did, a girl like you wouldn’t be here. I was a shanty-Irish lunk of a kid from the Jersey Shore. Grew up in a house crammed with people. I had to get out. Finally, one day, I walked onto the boardwalk and turned a trick. You, there’s no point. With your background, you should be up at Columbia or somewhere hustling the intellectuals,” she said.

  “I’m sorry if you don’t approve, but I can’t stand intellectuals. Columbia gives me the creeps. I’ll do whatever you want.”

  “All right, if you’re that determined, come back tomorrow morning at ten sharp. I mean sharp. If you want to do this the right way, not like some flake, first of all, you have got to have discipline. That means regular hours,” Corinne said as she pushed me out the door. The kid gloves were off.

  “I won’t be late again,” I called out from the hallway.

  And I wasn’t. I went on a maintenance program, confining myself to a few Dexamyl in the daytime, a few drinks and a ten-milligram Valium at night.

  Corinne visited the Coventry, and she approved. My L-shaped studio faced the East River on Sutton Place, and that was good. The dressing room, the indirect spotlights on the ceiling, and the mirrored wall, which looked out on the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge and the open sky above the river from the height of the seventeenth floor, all of that was good. But she suggested it might be time to furnish the place, especially if I planned to run a business out of there.

  My apartment still stood empty, except for a queen-sized bed, a lamp, opaque window shades, and a white Princess phone, but if anything, I thought the bareness of it, like a gessoed canvas waiting for its masterpiece, only added to the sense of impending glory. I loved to stand looking out my large, clean window at the bridge and the boats, feeling vindicated, feeling, for the first time in a long time, blessed.

  Next, Corinne took me shopping on the second floor of Bloomingdale’s, home to a maze of designer-boutiques. We tore through the racks, and I managed to spend practically all I had saved over the past few months on a summer wardrobe: designer bell-bottom jeans; fancy shorts; a formal-looking Ralph Lauren summer pants-suit of brushed cotton; a long, fitted skirt; several cotton and silk button-down shirts; a floral-print, chiffon blouse; a black cocktail dress; one midi-dress with dolman sleeves; the new cork platform sandals, and the dreaded high-heeled shoes.

  I couldn’t bear to have my new wardrobe sent, so together, Corinne and I piled the big Bloomingdale’s shopping bags into a cab. With the help of the doorman, we got everything upstairs, where we heaped it onto the fluffy new quilt on my bed. The Bloomingdale’s shopping bags sported that month’s theme, which was a celebration of Mexico. Stick men in ruffled shirts, round women in bright shawls, and a childlike orange sun scrawled overhead decorated each of these magical packages. We dove into them, freeing the contents from yards of tissue paper, which we threw high in the air. We took turns holding the clothes up to my body.

  “Well, pal, you’re starting to get it together,” Corinne said, her broad Cheshire cat face beaming at me over my shoulder in the mirror.

  Finally, my mentor sent me to her upper-out-of-sight beauty salon on Fifty Seventh Street where they actually did make me over. The stylist performed his slight-of-hand miracle, snipping while we chatted in front of the mirror. He shaped my fine hair, layering it subtly around the face, introducing a long, wispy bang that thrilled me. Then he shooed me on to the colorist, who decided what I needed was streaks of tawny-blond, not so light that the outlines of my face would disappear, but fair enough to bring out the green in my eyes. Instead of a cap, he wrapped small sections of my hair in tinfoil that had been cut into strips, because, he said, it would look more natural. The two men consulted each other. They hovered around me and whispered.

  “I think her brows need shaping,” the stylist said.

  “He’s done a marvelous job on that baby-fine hair, hasn’t he?” the colorist asked me, addressing my image in the mirror.

  This was exactly the sort of experience that gave me the keenest pleasure, two grown men fussing over my hair, my skin color, and the angles of my face, which ordinarily I spent hours staring at all by myself. When they finished with me, my hair fell in rich, shiny tendrils down my neck. When I moved, it shimmered and bounced gently around my head. My hair was an asset! At last, a real asset! I understood then that beauty is nothing more than the expression of energy, someone’s energy.

  After Bloomingdale’s and Frederico and company got through with me, I looked so well-heeled I had become a stranger to myself. No more picking at my fingernails, which were now a perfect rose pink; no more bare-faced afternoons—it was seamless and streamlined, this existence. I felt like a greased pig.

  “Never mind, you’ll get used to it,” Corinne said. “Think you’re ready to hustle?”

  “Sure,” I said, of course not feeling read
y at all.

  “This is in case you lose your book and every client in it, or you have to move to a new town; whatever the circumstance, you’ll always have hustling to fall back on.

  “First, you stake out one of the toniest hotel bars, the more conservative, the better. Then you go there, maybe carrying a shopping bag or two from Bergdorf’s, dressed as demurely as is humanly possible. Then you discreetly, and I mean discreetly, hit on the likeliest-looking mark. But always watch your back. The house dicks work these places like jailhouse guards. They’re out looking for trouble, and they don’t want their nice, family-men-type guests to be exploited.”

  “What do I say to the mark? How do I open? And if I’m disguised as some super-conservative dame, how am I going to let him know I’m peddling my ass?”

  “That’s up to you. No two girls use exactly the same approach. Hustling takes some skill, I have to admit, but everybody finds their own gimmick eventually. You just have to figure out what yours is,” she said.

  So I learned how to solicit the visiting businessmen who dropped into the dark, cool, wood-paneled lounges during the afternoons at the cushier hotels on the Upper East Side. I never really enjoyed that end of the business, even though, as Corinne had predicted, I did discover a scam that worked for me. I would pick on the most happily married man I could find, the one who wouldn’t dream of cheating on his wife, let alone paying for it. I would tell him that I could teach him how to give his wife more pleasure, that it was a sin for a married man to be so inexperienced. “The blind leading the blind,” I would tell him. I tried to make him feel guilty. I was amazed this approach ever worked. Not often, of course, but even when the mark had no intention of buying, he never failed to find me amusing, as if I were another colorful New York side trip, like a visit to Chinatown on Saturday morning or a performance of Oh! Calcutta!

  “Man is not monogamous,” that was my line. I was just repeating what Corinne had told me. I remember with certain regret one shy man from outside Des Moines who had always been true to his wife until he met me. By this time, I believed so completely that practicing monogamy was living a lie, I saw nothing wrong in seducing him. In fact, I couldn’t wait to enlighten the shy man from Des Moines.