“I’m not very good.”
“That’s all right. I can show you.” She had found some music on the radio, and now she closed her eyes, hummed to herself, and approached, arms outstretched. We drifted about the room in a slow shuffle, her body draped upon me in what was virtually an embrace. Leisurely we swayed, back and forth, the fresh warm air of summer morning eddying through my open window. “You’re not bad,” she murmured.
Guinevere moved quite well, her body light, her rhythm sensitive. At heart, however, it was not a dance. She applied her body to me, coquetted, withdrew, her motions an invitation. But of course there was nowhere to go. While the music played, Monina withdrew into a corner, knees against her chest and arms about her knees, the tiny face stricken in loneliness. When the song ended, it was followed by another tune with a faster beat. Guinevere wriggled in my arms, oscillated her hips, and grinned wantonly at me. Only Monina did not stir; her nature minted into the same coin as her mother, she must exhibit characteristically the other face. Her head an inch from her knees, she stared at the floor and began to whimper.
“Scared,” she cried, “I scared.”
The music ended, and with it the program. A voice began to talk about a canned food. Guinevere withdrew her body slowly, stood a short distance from me, her eyes looking into mine. “Let’s dance some more,” she said softly. With a glance over the shoulder, she bellowed without irritation, “Keep quiet, Monina.”
Monina responded by blubbering.
“Oh, that kid,” Guinevere whispered. Her eyes were bright and provocative. I had the impression that if Monina were not there, the hide-and-seek which Guinevere must play with me would be finished. For this instant she seemed younger and more attainable, lavish in the promise her eyes conveyed. “If only the kid wasn’t around,” she said into my ear.
We were standing still. She turned away to find other music on the radio, and Monina grasping the pause to advantage ran toward me and threw her arms about my legs. I patted her head, felt her clutch me more firmly as Guinevere stood up and said, “Oh, this band is smooth.”
“I don’t want to dance,” I told her.
Nevertheless she approached, her eyes fluttering to the music “Aw, come on, Lovett.”
Monina released me and pummeled her mother’s thigh with her fists. “Mommie-diggie, mommie-diggie,” she shrieked with rage.
“What the hell’s got into her?” Guinevere demanded. She began to chuckle. “I bet she’s jealous.” With a deft swipe of her arm, she pinioned the child against her. “Now, take it easy, Monina,” she cautioned. “Boy, I bet she’s made me black and blue.”
The radio, unadjusted, blared too loudly in the room. I turned if off, and listened to Guinevere saying, “You know you got no idea, Lovett, how I bruise. I tell you I got the whitest flesh, and you can’t imagine how delicate it is. Every time a man puts his hands on me, it leaves marks.” The child, pacified, was now hugging her mother. Guinevere winked at me. “I’ll let you know something I never told anybody—when a man starts pawing me, I can tell there’s going to be bruises, and I feel like a white sheet or a carpet or something, and a guy with muddy boots is just walking all over it. What do you think of that?”
I made no response. I sat down at the desk, and Guinevere, the child at her knee, ensconced herself in the armchair. “You haven’t been thinking about … you know, what we were talking about yesterday?” she asked casually.
“What do you mean?”
Guinevere was insufferably cunning. “Well, you know, about just keeping an eye out, seeing what happens.”
“I told you I don’t spy.”
“Who was talking about that?” She made a small attempt at righteousness. “I wouldn’t dream of asking you such a thing. I just thought maybe like everybody else you got curiosity about this person and that person.” Monina had placed herself at her mother’s feet and was trailing her hand idly over her legs.
“Go to Hollingsworth. He’s got more aptitude for it than I.”
“Now, why do you say that?” Suddenly her face exuded an air of manufactured mystery. “You know I’ll tell you something funny. I’ve been wondering about Hollingsworth myself.”
“You have?”
“He’s a sneaky son of a bitch,” Guinevere said, fingering her bosom. “There’re things I could tell you about him.”
I shrugged, having the idea that behind her elaborate digressions, something demanded voice. She was in a state where she sought information, but if balked would end by furnishing it. “I think he’s masquerading,” she suggested.
“I don’t understand what you mean.”
“Well, there’s something about him.” She had lit a cigarette, and was waving the extinguished match at me for emphasis. “Sometimes I think he’s the son of a prince, now I don’t mean that exactly, but you know, a magnate, or a … a potentate, and that he’s living here in disguise.”
I laughed. “What gave you that idea?”
She was quite serious. “I got my intuition about it. There’s something fishy with that character.”
“Something fishy?”
She was reluctant to expose her evidence, as if once removed from the fertility of her brain it must wither in my barren room. “Things,” she said ominously.
I laughed again.
Annoyed, she finally admitted in a grudging voice, “There’s a joker that’s always going up to visit him. I don’t like that a bit.”
“What does he look like?”
“Oh, I can’t tell. He wears a dark blue suit, and he’s got a hat he pulls down over his forehead. My theory is that he’s the guy who comes to pay off Hollingsworth.”
“For what?”
“Well, I figure that’s the way his father gives him his allowance, you know in the form of a stipend.”
“Guinevere, I hope you realize how silly this is. Why can’t the man be just anybody?”
She caressed her forearm, mouth puckered in suspicion, uncertain how well she could trust me, “You know I’ve seen a little bit of Hollingsworth,” she confessed. Her expression was sullen. “I don’t trust him,” she repeated. With an abrupt gesture, Guinevere smoothed her dress upon her thigh, and stated dramatically, “I asked him about his buddy. Do you know what he said?”
“I don’t.”
“He said nobody ever comes to visit him.” She was triumphant. “What do you think of that?”
“How do you know he visits Hollingsworth?” Yet I was uneasy. Somehow she had created a mood where anything was conceivable.
Without embarrassment, Guinevere mounted her proof. “I followed him up the first time. I like to know what’s going on.” Her mouth was cherubic in its pride.
“Did you and Hollingsworth ever become friends?” I asked suddenly.
She was very casual. “What’s it to you?” she yawned.
“Not much.”
Guinevere looked at me, her eyes wary, denying the sense of her words. “He’s just like the rest of you,” she said raucously in one of her sudden modulations. “He wasn’t above trying to get up my skirts either.”
I made no answer. I was ruffled she had lumped me in the same basket with Hollingsworth. A minute dragged by, and Guinevere to fill the pause went on at length with one of her inexhaustible stories about a lover and his whang, developing ever more lavish detail as if I were a kitten to be enticed by brightly colored ribbons. At her feet, Monina, bored amanuensis, sketched designs in the dust.
The child began to complain at last, and Guinevere stood up and hefted her pile of sheets once more. “Well, I got other things to do besides talking to you,” she said. Still, at the door, she turned around coquettishly. “You’ll keep an eye out, won’t you?”
“No.”
Visibly irritated, she departed, yanking Monina behind her.
ELEVEN
WHAT a long day was to follow.
After Guinevere left, I had my solitary meal at noon, and came back to write for several uninterrupted hours
. When I finished, the afternoon was at its height, and in a lethargy of self-satisfaction I lay on my bed and watched the air flutter along the pitch of my ceiling. The door was open to the hall for any breeze which might wander through, and after a while I began to drowse.
A voice woke me, a soft husky voice whose overtones were sweet. “I’m awfully sorry. Would you get up?”
I roused myself to a sitting position. A girl was standing in the doorway, her slender body balanced awkwardly, much as though she would leap into flight if I stirred too quickly. “Come in,” I offered.
“You looked so comfortable sleeping there,” she said, “that I hated to wake you. I guess you have the secret of knowing how to sleep.”
“I was just drowsing,” I mumbled foolishly.
She took my desk chair, and sat down upon it. “No, you mustn’t be ashamed. I thought you were beautiful.”
I rubbed my head, dazed by awakening in the afternoon heat. Apparently, she expected no answer. “Oh, it’s wonderful,” she went on. “You’re awfully lucky.”
“Why?”
“To have this room. I love it. If I could, I’d buy it from you.”
I grimaced. “It’s dirty enough and cheap enough.”
“But that’s what is good about it. It’s so dirty,” she said in her husky voice. “I hate clean rooms. I hate people who are always afraid of leaving a trail. That’s why this place is wonderful. You live here and you leave your marks, and after you stay long enough it’s going to be in the walls, and the air, and a part of you is never going to leave here.”
On the strength of this speech, I examined the girl more closely. Her face, narrow and delicate, with a childish nose and mouth, a soft chin, and gentle brown eyes, made it difficult to determine her age. Like Hollingsworth, like myself, she might have been twenty; it was not unlikely that she was ten years older. My stare was returned candidly, a small smile rendering her lips tremulous, while she fished awkwardly in her purse for a cigarette, lit it, and passed it over as if we were old friends. I accepted the gift, but I was hardly prepared for such abrupt intimacy.
“Don’t you want one?” I asked.
“Oh.” She seemed startled. “Oh, yes.” Once more she fumbled through her pocketbook, and struck a match with hands that shook perceptibly. I noticed her fingers then, long and slender, potentially beautiful, but the nails were bitten, the cuticle was ragged, and deep tobacco stains yellowed the skin. She smoked like a man, palm upward, the cigarette held in the crotch between her fingers, the smoke drifting through the interstices and curling about her wrist. With her delicate features she could have been attractive except that her complexion was dull and beneath her eyes discolored, and her brown hair, unadorned, dropped lankly to her shoulder. I had the impression she was not wholly aware of herself, and even the most elemental grooming would be performed spasmodically. Certainly her clothing would carry the stains of everything she touched.
In confirmation, some ash fell from the cigarette, and she rubbed it into her skirt. The suit she wore, a brilliant violet poorly chosen for her mouse-brown hair and sallow color, was frayed at the elbows, ravelled at the collar.
“You’re a poet, aren’t you?” she asked.
“No.”
“Oh, but you are, I can tell.” When she smiled, her childish mouth turned pensive and wise, conveying to me the uneasy suggestion that she knew more about me than I had discovered myself. “A poet with a typewriter,” she mused, “oh, things are sad.” The smoke curled upward over her hand into the air. “You should never use a typewriter,” she said.
“I like to,” I confessed gruffly.
“No, you don’t understand,” she informed me. The cigarette had burned to within a half-inch of her knuckle, but she seemed unaware of the heat.
“Hadn’t you better put it out?” I asked.
She looked at the butt in some surprise. Probably she had forgotten how it came there. Yet, obediently, she opened her hand and let it fall, and if I had not ground it down, I believe she would have watched the ember char my floor.
Realizing at last that she must have had some reason for coming into the room I asked her purpose. She placed a hand over her pocketbook. “I noticed,” she said slowly, “that there’s a place to let in this building. I saw the sign outside.”
“Oh, I didn’t know that.”
“Who could rent me the room? I came into the house, and I couldn’t see where I could find the janitor, and I just walked and all the doors were closed.”
I smiled to reassure her. “I’ll take you down to the landlady.”
“I’ve got to have it,” she said, a pressing note in her voice. “You see I don’t have any place to live.”
I shook my head. “If it’s one of the lower rooms it’s probably expensive.”
“But I’m just loaded with money,” she said in a wan attempt at gaiety. “If I pay the money, she can’t refuse me. That’s a law, isn’t it?”
I led her downstairs to Guinevere’s apartment. Before I could knock on the door, the girl clutched my elbow. “I’m named Lannie,” she said, “Lannie Madison. Will you tell her that we’re friends, and that it would be wonderful if she would give me the room.” After a pause, she smiled. “It’s not really untrue. I liked you the moment I saw you.”
I nodded. “All right.” After I rapped, there was a long pause in which I could hear Guinevere approaching, her slippers flapping slovenly upon the floor. She opened the door a crack, and peered out with suspicion. “Oh, it’s you,” she said ungraciously.
I made the introductions, and Guinevere, clasping her bathrobe over her bosom, nodded indifferently. “What the hell do you want, Lovett? I’m busy with Monina.”
Her rudeness angered me, but I said quietly, “Lannie’s an old friend of mine, and she saw there’s a room empty, and she’d like to rent it.” As I finished, I felt I had made a mistake. Guinevere’s face became guarded. “That would be a nice cosy setup for you, wouldn’t it, Lovett? When the police come, you can tell them you two are playing house.” And apparently determined to extract the last chiché from her role, she announced, “Listen, Lovett, and you … Miss Madison, I keep an orderly house here without shenanigans, and I don’t intend to start any.”
Lannie had turned pale. In a small voice, she murmured, “Why are you so cruel? You don’t mean it. I can see that you’re kind, and that you’re ashamed of it.”
“I’m ashamed of nothing.” But Guinevere was staggered. I sensed that the cliché of the blusterer with the heart of gold was not entirely without attraction to her. “What do you want the room for?” she temporized.
“I don’t have anywhere to live. I found a job today, and I have to have a bed.”
“Why don’t you go to a hotel?” she asked, examining Lannie in detail.
“I don’t have enough money.”
Guinevere folded her arms. “Well, then you don’t have enough for this. It’s fifty dollars a month, and the bath is in the hall.”
“But I do. I can get enough money.” As if she had just remembered—“I have enough now.”
Guinevere shook her head. “There’s nothing I can do for you. Room’s rented.”
The reaction surprised me. Lannie stood with her back straight, her head high. “Oh, you’re a wicked, silly woman,” she said with sudden passion. “You don’t understand yourself. You don’t understand the good there could be in you. Why do you lie, and why must you bully?”
Guinevere’s face reddened. “Listen, Lovett, you don’t need to bring your friends around to insult me. I’ve gotten enough lip in my life.”
Lannie put her hand in mine. “Well, let’s go.” There was indifference in her voice. But at the door she paused and, with what I suspected was artistry, said, “You know you should give me that room. You’re going to feel terrible later, because you suffer when you’ve been unkind.”
“Wait a minute,” Guinevere said. “You sure there’s no monkey business, Lovett, between you and her?”
> “No business at all,” I drawled, and abruptly the strain in Lannie’s eyes dissolved, and she began to peal with laughter. Guinevere, reluctantly, began to snigger. “You’ll be the death of me, Mikey,” she said, and for the first time since I had brought Lannie down, there was recognition in her bald blue eyes, and a hint that she might wink at me. “Oh, you give me a pain in the ass, all of you,” she grumbled.
Yet nobody laughed genuinely. When we finished it was on a wary note. Guinevere sighed heavily. “You sure you got sixty dollars?” she asked Lannie.
“I thought it was fifty,” I said.
Guinevere folded her arms. “It is fifty … after the first month. There’s a joker wants to rent this place, and he offered me ten bucks. I’m not letting that go for anybody, no matter what my personal feelings may be.”
“Oh, I’ll give you the ten,” Lannie said. “You deserve it, you should have it.” She fumbled through her purse once more, and extracted a small sheaf of bills. “Let me pay you now.”
“Don’t you want to look at the room first?” Guinevere asked.
Lannie seemed surprised as though this had not occurred to her. “Oh. Oh, no. I know what it’s going to be like, and I know I’ll take it. I could tell it was a wonderful room from the sign outside.”
“Take a look at it anyway,” Guinevere said.
“No, no, I want to pay the rent now,” Lannie said in a breathless voice. With her stained fingers, she counted off sixty dollars, the last ten in singles. I do not believe she had five dollars left. “Can I have the key?” she asked.
I intended to leave with Lannie, but Guinevere delayed me. “You don’t mind, Miss Madison, if I keep your boy friend for a while?”
“Of course not.” Lannie turned to me. “You’ll visit me, won’t you?”
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