Shirley

by Howard Fast

  “Cigarette,” Shirley said.

  He gave her a cigarette and lit it “Now the lower lip.”

  Shirley bit her lower lip.

  “Good, good.”

  “A for the lower lip. Thank God she didn’t bite her nails.”

  “Now roll a strand of hair between your fingers.”

  “If there is one thing I do not like,” Shirley said, “it is the habit some girls have of playing with their hair.”

  “Do you have to like it? Just do it. The lower lip, and then you roll the hair.”

  “And then I go to sleep?”

  “Do I complain about sleep? Does Albert? Is the stake worth the game or not?”

  “I got to wash my stockings and my underwear. You and Albert don’t”

  “There again,” Santela sighed. “I got to wash my stockings. Please, Shirley.”

  “I told you I’m not from Covent Garden. So I got the habit of clean stockings. Sue me.”

  “You know damn well what I mean!” Santela shouted.

  “Got. You got a prejudice against girls who say, ‘I got’ It ain’t cultured. I got no culture.”

  “Lousy bitch!” Soames said, from where he was working on the bridge table.

  “Now him,” Shirley said, directing a finger at Soames. “He’s making a score for himself. Nobody ever called me a bitch before and got away with it, James Charles. Just remember that.”

  “Albert, shut up!” Santela cried. “Just shut up!”

  “OK,” Shirley nodded. “I got the message. No ‘got’ tomorrow. I don’t say I got to wash my stockings—I have to wash my stockings, because the damn rain in Spain splattered them with mud from knee to ankle.”

  Santela walked over and faced her. “You think you’re indispensable, don’t you?” he whispered, his face hardening, his intense, dark eyes fixed on her.

  “Well—almost—maybe.”

  His arm came up suddenly, and with all his strength, he struck her across the face with his open palm. The blow cracked like a pistol shot, and Shirley staggered back under the impact of it.

  “Just a taste,” he whispered. “Just a sample. Remember that, bitch. We won’t let Albert use that word—I reserve it to myself. Don’t think you fool me for a moment. I haven’t figured out what your angle is, but I will. I think you underestimate me, Shirley. I think you got a double-cross hidden away somewhere. Well, you know what I got?”

  Panting, her face contorted with pain, one hand covering the livid mark Santela’s palm had left on her cheek, fighting to control her thoughts, her emotions, her fears, struggling to keep her voice even and unshaken, Shirley replied, “Being a lady, I won’t try to say.”

  “This is what I got.”

  “Have,” Shirley whispered, almost to herself.

  Santela put his hand into his side pocket and brought out a five-inch knife, covered in mother of pearl. He squeezed a button on its side, and a slim blade sprang into view. “Razor-sharp,” Santela said. “I don’t carry a gun, like Albert here. This is more effective, my dear Shirley—and let me tell you that if you make one step out of line tomorrow, I’m going to cut up that pretty face of yours so that your own mother wouldn’t look at it.”

  “What do you want me to do, break into tears?”

  Santela relaxed suddenly. The knife blade clicked back into place, and he returned the knife to his pocket. He smiled.

  “Be good, Shirley,” he said.

  “Now walk from here to the table,” Santela said.

  Half asleep, her face still smarting from the pain of the blow, Shirley walked across the room toward the bridge table.

  “Head up!”

  She raised her head.

  “No, no—stop! Take it over.”

  She paused and faced Santela, and their eyes met, and Shirley said to herself, “How much do they need to kill you, Shirley? Not much, I think, so play it very cool. You are stupid, but try to play it cool anyway. So far in this, you have misjudged everyone—Burton, Soames, Santela. You did everything the wrong way, and all it adds up to is being folded into a closet, and all it takes is for that creep Santela to realize that nobody is going to make Stillman think that he’s looking at his daughter. You know that, and even if this Santela is a complete nut, he can come to the same conclusion. So just do what they say. Don’t try to think about tomorrow. Just do what they tell you to.”

  “All right,” Shirley shrugged. She walked across the room again.

  “Now once more, and this time I want you to sit down at the table.”

  She walked across the room and pulled the chair away from the table, preparatory to seating herself.

  “No, take your hands off the chair! You don’t touch the chair.”

  “So how do I sit down?” Shirley demanded. “Do I crawl under the table and wriggle up into the chair?” And then she bit her lips, and pleaded to herself, “Shut up, shut up, shut up.”

  “Bite the lip.” Santela was pleased. “Always, bite the lip, Shirley. Now go back and do it again. Albert, when she comes to the table, you move around behind her and draw the chair back. You come around in front of the chair, Shirley. Then, as you sit down, Albert will gently slide the chair under you.”

  “If that’s the way you want it,” Shirley sighed. She went through the maneuver as directed, and Santela nodded with pleasure. “Once more,” he said, and Shirley remarked, “Don’t mind me if I faint. Don’t even pick me up.”

  “We get to the eating now. Now let’s consider the setting.”

  “Joey,” Shirley said softly, “I will admit that maybe the finer things in life have passed me by. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I have quaffed champagne, and I have never eaten in Pavilion or the Colony—”

  “You don’t eat in a place, you eat at a place.”

  “Score one for the Dodgers. All I am trying to get across is that I can eat my dinner without reminding the company of either Sadie Thompson or Damon Runyon. I read books occasionally. I go to the movies. I watch television. I even toured the White House with Jackie Kennedy.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “So let me go to bed like a nice master criminal. I’m sorry,” she added quickly. “You don’t have to slap me around for that one. It just slipped out Sue me. I mean—what can I do?”

  “You can put your mind to acting like a lady for a few hours.”

  “Absolutely. But this Janet Stillman—two years in the company of a character like James Charles Alexander over there, how much of a lady can she be?”

  “You don’t learn, do you?” Soames shouted. “God damn lousy mouth of yours, I ought to wash it out with soap!”

  Shirley pleaded with herself, “Shut up, shut up—please, please shut up!”

  “Can it,” Santela said wearily. “Now let’s get at it, Shirley. Consider that one of the teaspoons is somewhat larger than the other. How do you differentiate between that and the soup spoon?”

  “I eat from the outside in. It always works.”

  “It does not always work. Can you remember that the soup spoon is likely to be round? The dessert spoon is like a larger teaspoon. Unless a fork should be used for the dessert. Now I’ll give you a menu, and we’ll practice with what we have here—”

  “Mother’s name?” Soames snapped at her.

  “Elizabeth.”

  “Father?”

  “Morton.” Her head was dropping forward, her eyes painful slits.

  “Shirley!”

  The eyes closed. Santella slapped her sharply with the back of his hand.

  “Sweet boy,” Shirley muttered. “I hardly ever wanted to be a man, except that if I was a man for five minutes I’d have a ball with you.”

  “I don’t want any bruises on your face,” Santela told her. “Why don’t you co-operate?”

  “You’re so good to me,” Shirley sighed.

  “You had an uncle you loved very much. What was his name?”

  “Albert—just like lover boy over there.” She nod
ded at Soames, who lay on the couch, snoring heavily. “He sounds like a buzz saw. How can I think through that noise? Why don’t you wake him up? Why should he sleep anyway?”

  “Where did you meet Charles?” Santela asked.

  “Charles? Charles who?”

  “Him!” Santela cried in anger, pointing to Soames. “Him! What kind of a half-wit are you?”

  “All kinds.”

  “He’s your husband, stupid!” Santela shouted, waking Soames. “He’s your husband! His name is Charles Alexander! Your father refused you permission to marry him and you ran off with him.”

  “With my father?” Shirley asked sleepily.

  Soames came over, yawning, and said to Santela, “Just let me push her around a little, Joey. I won’t make any marks on her. I just want to teach her the time of day. Give me fifteen minutes with her, and you’ll see how willing she’ll be.”

  “Don’t be a jerk,” Santela said. He looked at his watch and observed that it was half-past three in the morning. “We all need sleep. There’s a lot to do in the morning.”

  “What about this clown here?”

  “She’ll have to do. We play it by ear, and somehow or other, she’s going to have to do. Shirley!”

  “Yes, Master,” she muttered.

  “You’d clown at your own funeral, wouldn’t you? Now listen to me. You play ball with us, we play ball with you. You cross us up, and I swear to God that I’ll cut that pretty face of yours into ribbons.”

  “Sweet boy.”

  “Just shut up and listen. We’ll let you sleep in the morning, so you’ll be good and fresh “for tomorrow. But don’t try anything. Albert and I will take turns watching the door of your room. Tomorrow, we’re going to Stillman’s for dinner at about six-thirty. I made the date early. I told him that you insisted that no one else should be present, and he trusts me, and he’s going to do as I told him to do. Don’t worry about it. Don’t go too close to him. Hold yourself aloof. Keep your face in the shadow when you can. Keep your mouth shut. The less you say, the better.”

  Shirley was dozing off again.

  “Albert, go into the bedroom and pull out the telephone. It’s on a socket.”

  Alone in the bedroom, Shirley began to undress. She fell asleep. She shook herself awake again, and managed to remove most of her clothes. She didn’t remember crawling under the covers, and she was deeply asleep as her head touched the pillow.

  10. Mr. Bergan

  Once, when Shirley and Cynthia were discussing Mr. Morrow, who was office executive at Bushwick Brothers, Cynthia observed that in her opinion Mr. Morrow was a misogynist—which, as she explained, meant that he hated women.

  “I took pains to memorize that word,” Cynthia said, “because I find it a ready-made label for a large number of creeps I have been in contact with.”

  But Shirley felt that Cynthia could not be more wrong. “Absolutely the reverse,” Shirley said. “He’s a dirty old lecher.”

  “Him? He never even made a pass—at nobody. Not even at Lucy Koller, who is just dying for anybody to make a pass at her.”

  “Which proves nothing,” Shirley said. “Suppose you had a stomach that stuck out a foot and a half, and five hairs that you combed sidewise over your skull and a complexion the color of chicken soup? That could give you a terrible sense of inferiority, couldn’t it?”

  Cynthia agreed that it could, and now, the morning after she had her disturbing telephone conversation with Lieutenant Burton, she watched Mr. Morrow prowling angrily between the rows of electric typewriters, computers and billing machines, and recalled what Shirley had said, and tried to convince herself that deep beneath his jaundiced surface, Mr. Morrow nursed a brooding desire for the fairer sex.

  He chose to interrupt her thoughts with a query as to whether dreams were her only obligation for that morning.

  “I was thinking,” Cynthia explained.

  “You are not paid to think, Miss Kugelman. You are paid to operate that machine in front of you, and since it has a full keyboard, clearly marked, it is obviously designed to eliminate all but the most elementary thought processes.”

  Mr. Morrow was pleased with the way he had phrased that, and since the things Cynthia said about him were said to herself, he did not react to them. Aloud, Cynthia observed that she did not feel very well, and she couldn’t help adding that the operation of this particular machine was considered to be particularly difficult.

  “We will not argue about the difficulties this computer presents, Miss Kugelman. You are a special friend of Miss Campbel, aren’t you?”

  “I am,” Cynthia replied stiffly.

  “And I notice that she is not at her place this morning. Did you share an evening that results in your present state of discomfort?”

  “I think that my evenings are my own business, Mr. Morrow,” Cynthia said with dignity. “Also, I was not with Miss Campbel last night. Also, I am very worried about Miss Campbel.”

  “And just what is Miss Campbel up to?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr. Morrow. It is none of my business what Miss Campbel is up to, and I should think that it is nobody else’s business either.”

  “It is my business to see that this office functions, Miss Kugelman, and I don’t enjoy impertinence.”

  “Well, I don’t enjoy being asked to inform on fellow workers,” Cynthia said doggedly.

  “Inform? Did I ask you to inform?”

  “You certainly did,” Cynthia answered indignantly, turning to the computer and making it plain that so far as she was concerned, Mr. Morrow was beneath contempt.

  To Mr. Bergan, Mr. Morrow spoke more forthrightly and angrily. “What’s all this about Miss Campbel?”

  “Sir?”

  “I said about Miss Campbel, Mr. Bergan.”

  “She’s one of our best workers, Mr. Morrow. I can tell you that.”

  “She’s not here this morning.”

  “Probably sick,” Mr. Bergan said understandingly. “You know about these girls.”

  “I definitely do know about these girls, as you so aptly put it, Mr. Bergan. What I do know is that we have gotten communications and inquiries from the police concerning Miss Campbel and her background.”

  “Yes, sir,” Mr. Bergan agreed mollifyingly. “But the police made it plain that these inquiries in no way reflect upon Miss Campbel’s character. They concern something else entirely.”

  “You know what, Mr. Bergan?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Then I will tell you what. Where there is smoke, there is fire.”

  “Well, Mr. Morrow, I really don’t think that has to be the case in this case.”

  “Then just what is the case in this case? Would you mind informing me? You seem to be much closer to these young ladies and their problems than a businesslike attitude warrants.”

  “I just think maybe she’s indisposed this morning, Mr. Morrow. That’s all.”

  “And the other matter?”

  “I just don’t know, sir.”

  “Can you think of any reason why I should not notify her that perhaps she would do better in another office?”

  After sorting out the positives and negatives, Mr. Bergan protested more firmly than he ever had before, in terms of a suggestion from Mr. Morrow. “I just won’t stand by and see her fired for a day’s absence,” Mr. Bergan said.

  “You won’t stand by?”

  “No, sir. I’d have to take this to Mr. Bushwick.”

  “I think perhaps we’ll both take this to Mr. Bushwick,” Mr. Morrow answered with dignity and umbrage. “I think you have overstepped yourself, Mr. Bergan.”

  Partners in anxiety are brought into communion without much difficulty, and when Mr. Bergan suggested to Cynthia that she lunch with him at Kaplan’s Delicatessen, she accepted immediately. Over fried salami and eggs, which Mr. Bergan stared at dismally and pecked at with no appetite, he told Cynthia of his encounter with Mr. Morrow.

  “My sentiments about Mr
. Morrow,” Cynthia said, “can be summed up in two simple words—drop dead.”

  “Which solves nothing. Jobs don’t grow on trees, and I don’t want Shirley to be fired. Believe it or not, Cynthia, I have very strong feelings toward Shirley. I know that she looks upon me as a wolf, and it’s probably some character defect of my own that has given her that impression. But believe me, I have only the most serious intentions toward her.”

  “I was always inclined to accept that,” Cynthia nodded. “In fact, I told Shirley so.”

  “Thank you,” Mr. Bergan replied gratefully. “That being the case, I think you ought to come clean with me and tell me exactly what kind of trouble Shirley got herself into.”

  “Who says it’s trouble?”

  “Am I blind?” Mr. Bergan demanded.

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I just happen to be sworn to silence,” Cynthia said.

  “Of all the damn nonsense! Shirley’s in some kind of awful trouble, and you won’t let me help her because you’re sworn to silence?”

  “How do you know you can help her? I don’t even know where she is.” Cynthia was close to tears at this point. “How would you feel if everyone in New York City was trying to knock you off, Mr. Bergan? That’s all I’m asking you.”

  “What?”

  “Exactly, Mr. Bergan.”

  “Look, please, Cynthia,” he said, “don’t call me Mr. Bergan when we have a responsibility like this to share.”

  “I don’t even know your first name.”

  “Michael. Call me Mike. That’s what people call me—except at Bushwick Brothers.”

  “All right, Mr. Bergan. I will be honored to call you Mike.”

  “Now what’s this about everyone in New York trying to kill Shirley?”

  “Almost everyone,” Cynthia said, and then, because she felt that unless she talked to someone, she would become hysterical, she told Mr. Bergan the entire sequence of events leading up to this morning.

  “Poor kid,” said Mr. Bergan. “Poor kid.”