A Swell-Looking Babe

by Jim Thompson

  “It wouldn’t do much good if he could,” Dusty shrugged. “He’ll never be well enough to go back to work.”

  “A hell of a note,” mused Trowbridge. “I remember readin’ about it at the time. I said to myself right then, Now, why the hell does a man want to do a thing like that? A man with a good job and a family to take care of. What’s he figure it’s going to get him to mix himself up with a bunch of Reds?”

  “He didn’t mix with any Reds,” Dusty said quickly, almost sharply. “I know they tried to make it look that way, but it wasn’t anything like that. You see there was this group—the Free Speech Committee—who wanted to hold a meeting in the school auditorium, and all Dad did was sign a petition to—”

  “Sure”—Tug stifled a yawn. “Well, it was a lousy break, anyway. Lousy for you. Of course, it was hard on your old man, too, but he’d already lived most of his life. The way I see it, he stuck his neck out and yours got stepped on.”

  “Well…” Dusty murmured. There was a casual bluntness about Trowbridge which precluded argument. For that matter, he didn’t entirely disagree with the ex-racketeer.

  Trowbridge got the bag of laundry from the bedroom, and gave him a dollar tip. He returned to the lobby, heartened by his talk with Tug yet vaguely ashamed of himself. His father hadn’t done anything wrong. In any event, it wasn’t up to Tug Trowbridge to pass judgment on him. Still, it was nice to have someone see your side of things, to realize that you were making a hell of a sacrifice and getting nothing for it. Everyone else—the doctor and the lawyers and his father, and his mother, up until the time of her death—had taken what he had done for granted.

  Dusty couldn’t remember just how he’d happened to tell Tug about the matter. It had just slipped out somehow, he guessed, a natural consequence of the big man’s friendliness and interest. Trowbridge was a far cry from the Manton’s average guest. He treated you like a friend, introduced you to the people he had with him. When he said, “How’s it going?” or “What’s on your mind, Dusty?” he really wanted to know. Or he certainly made it sound like he did.

  …Bascom was waiting for him when he got downstairs, frowning and tapping impatiently on the counter. “Finally got back, did you?” he said grimly. “How long does it take you to pick up a bag of laundry?”

  “Not too long.” Dusty looked at him coolly. “About as long as it takes you to unlock a door.”

  Bascom’s eyes flashed. He flipped a slip of paper across the counter. “College boys,” he jeered. “There’s some calls for you, college boy. See if you can take care of them between now and daylight.”

  “Look, Mr. Bascom”—Dusty picked up the call slip. “What’s…well, what’s wrong, anyway? What are you sore at me about? We used to get along so well together, but every time I turn around now you—”

  “Yes?” said Bascom. “If you don’t like it, why don’t you quit?”

  “But I don’t understand. If I’ve done or said anything—”

  “Get moving,” said Bascom crisply. “Step on it, or you won’t get a chance to quit.”

  Dusty made the two calls—ice to one room, a telegram pick-up from another. This was another thing he couldn’t remember: just how his quarreling with Bascom had started. It had begun only recently, he knew that. They’d gotten along swell for months, and then, apparently for no reason at all, Bascom had changed. And since then he could do nothing but scold and snarl and ridicule. Make things tougher than they were already.

  Dusty had been pretty hurt at first. He still was. But the hurt was giving way to anger, a stubborn determination to stand up against the clerk’s injustice. He didn’t know what it was all about—and he was ceasing to care—but he knew that Bascom couldn’t get him fired. Not, anyway, without digging up much more serious charges than he could make now. Dusty had broken various of the hotel’s innumerable rules, as in the instances, for example, of smoking behind the key rack and working without his collar. But Bascom was guilty of some rule-breaking himself. Bascom wasn’t supposed to slip up to an empty room for a quick shower. He wasn’t supposed to trot down the street to an all-night lunch room instead of having his food sent in. Dusty always knew where he was, of course, and could get him back to the desk with a phone call within the space of two or three minutes. But that could make no difference to the hotel. Bascom was supposed to remain behind the counter throughout his shift. That was the rule, period. If the management ever found out—

  Dusty completed the two calls, and returned to the desk. He and Bascom resumed the night’s chores, interrupted now and then when Dusty had to leave on a room call or one of the telephones rang. They checked off the day’s charge slips against the guests’ bills. They checked the room rack against the information racks. The work went rapidly, Dusty calling out the data, Bascom checking it. In the pre-dawn stillness, the bellboy’s clear steady monotone echoed through the desk area:

  “Haines, eight fourteen, one at twelve dollars…Haley, nine twelve, Mr. and Mrs., two at fifteen…Heller, six fifty and fifty-two, one at eighteen…Hillis, Dallas, Tex.—”

  “Wait a minute!” Bascom flung down his pencil. “What kind of a room number is Dallas, Tex.? If you can’t do any better than that, I’ll—”

  “Sorry,” Dusty said quickly. “Hillis, ten oh four, one at ten.”

  Bascom picked up the pencil. Then, suddenly, he laughed. Softly, amusedly. Suddenly—for the moment, at least—he was the old Bascom again.

  “Out of this world, wasn’t she?” he said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a woman who could come up to her.”

  “I know I haven’t,” said Dusty.

  “Yes, sir, a lovely woman,” mused Bascom. “Everything a woman should be. You know, Bill”—he turned on his stool and faced Dusty—“have you any idea how it feels to be my age, in the job I’m in, and to see someone like her? I’ve used up my chances. I’m not an old man, but I’ll never amount to anything more than I do now. And that isn’t enough by a million miles for a woman like that.…It’s not a nice feeling, Bill. Take my word for it.”

  Dusty nodded, slowly, still taken aback by the clerk’s sudden change in manner. He could see what Bascom was driving at, but—

  “You’ve been here about a year,” Bascom went on. “How long do you intend to stay?”

  “Well”—Dusty hesitated—“I don’t know. I can’t say, exactly. It depends on my father, how my expenses run and—”

  “Does it? I’ve seen you on the street, Bill, the way you dress, your car. I’ve got a pretty good idea of what you make here—around a hundred and fifty a week, isn’t it? That’s what’s actually keeping you here, the money. Plenty of money with no real work or responsibilities attached to it. A nice soft job with a lot of so-called big shots calling you by your first name. You don’t want to give it up. If you did, you’d have gone back to school long ago.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Dusty reddened. And then he checked himself. “I mean, I know you’re just trying to help me, Mr. Bascom, and I appreciate it. But—”

  “I know. You’ve got doctor bills, your father to take care of. But you could still swing it, Bill. There’s such a thing as a student loan. Scholarships. You used to talk quite a bit about them when you first came here. There are part-time jobs you could get. You’d have to do plenty of scrimping and sacrificing, but if you really wanted to—”

  “I couldn’t. I can’t!” Dusty protested. ‘“Why the doctor bills alone, those and the medicines, take—”

  “Doctors will wait for their money, if it’s in a good cause. There’s a city dispensary for people with low incomes. So”—Bascom’s eyebrows rose—“what else is there? A place to sleep, something to eat. That’s about the size of it, isn’t it? Don’t tell me you couldn’t manage that in these times. You could squeeze by for a few years, long enough to get your education.”

  Dusty wet his lips, hesitantly. Bascom made things sound awfully easy. If he had to do them himself, well…

  “It’s not that simple,” he said. �
�There are plenty of things besides—”

  “There always are. But there aren’t many that you can’t do without. No, Bill. It wouldn’t be easy, not an ideal arrangement by any means. But…” His voice died. The friendliness went out of his face. “Forget it,” he said coldly. “Let’s get back to work.”

  “But I was going to say that—”

  “I said to forget it,” Bascom snapped. “You’re lazy. You feel sorry for yourself. You want something for nothing. It’s a waste of time talking to you. Now, call those rooms off to me, and call ’em off right.”

  Dusty gulped and swallowed. Voice shaking, he resumed the calling.

  The remaining three hours of the shift passed swiftly. At five-thirty, the split-watch elevator boy arrived. At six, the head baggage porter retrieved the check-room key from Dusty and began his day’s duties. At seven the entire day shift came to work.

  In the locker room, Dusty took another shower and changed into his street clothes. He scowled at himself in the mirror, ripped out an abrupt disgusted curse.

  He’s right, old Bascom’s right, he thought. No wonder he doesn’t have any use for me. Dad and I could manage. We—he—couldn’t spend what I didn’t have. He’d probably pull himself together if I went back to school, if he knew that one of us was going to amount to something. It would give him something to live for.

  He finished dressing, and went out to his car. Pulling away from the curb, he gave the Hotel Manton a knowing, deprecating look. It could go to hell, the Manton could, and Marcia Hillis along with it.

  4

  It was a shabby, rundown house, a faded-blue cottage, in a block that was barely a half-block. It was bordered on one side by a vacant lot, a hundred squarefoot jungle of weeds and Johnson grass, on the other by a crumbling brick warehouse. Facing it, across the narrow street, was a used-car lot. Dusty had rented the place shortly after his mother’s death. Its chief—rather, its only—advantages were its cheapness and its distance, per se and socially, from the family’s former neighborhood. Things had gotten pretty uncomfortable there after his father’s trouble. In this section of town, there was little chance of encountering onetime friends.

  Dusty ate breakfast on the way home, and it was nearly nine when he arrived. It was Wednesday, one of the two days a week that the doctor called, and a black coupe, with the letters MD on the license plate, was parked in front of the house. Dusty drew up behind it, waited until the doctor came out.

  Doctor Lane was a brisk, chubby man with narrowed irritable-looking eyes. He bustled out to his car, frowning impatiently when Dusty intercepted him.

  “Well, he’s all right,” he said brusquely. “As good as can be expected. Incidentally, can’t you spruce him up a little? Can’t expect a man to feel good when he goes around like a tramp.”

  “I’m doing the best I can.” Dusty flushed. “I give him plenty of—”

  “The best you can, eh?” The doctor looked him up and down. “Better try a little harder. Or else get someone in to look after him. Should be able to afford it.”

  He nodded curtly, and tossed his black-leather bag onto the seat of the car. His hand on the door, he paused and turned.

  “Understand he’s been having a little beer. Well, won’t hurt him any. Won’t do him any good, but there’s damned little that will. Not enough alcohol in the slop they make these days to hurt a baby.”

  “I wanted to ask you, Doctor. If it’s as dangerous as you say—”

  “As I say?” Doctor Lane snapped. “Any considerable amount of alcohol will kill him. Stop his heart like that.”

  “Well, don’t you think it would be better—safer—if he was told—”

  “No, I don’t think so. If I did I’d have told him before now.” The doctor sighed wearily, obviously struggling to control his impatience. “Don’t want to alarm him. You can understand that, can’t you? Not the slightest need to tell him. He’s a naturally careful liver. Doesn’t smoke. Goes easy on the coffee. Gets plenty of rest…By the way, he’s just as well off if he doesn’t eat much. Doesn’t do enough to burn it up. Okay? That doesn’t make you mad, does it?”

  “I—” Dusty’s mouth snapped shut. He stared at Lane steadily. “Just what,” he said, “do you mean by that?”

  “Well—uh—” The doctor cleared his throat. “No offense. I only meant that working nights, and all, it was probably difficult for you to—to—”

  “I see. I thought that’s what you must mean, Doctor.”

  Doctor Lane laughed uneasily. “Now—uh—I was saying about the liquor. Only danger in it I see is, uh, negative, largely negative. Know what I mean? Explaining why he shouldn’t have it. Alarming him. Mustn’t do that, understand? No reason to do it. He’s never drunk the stuff, no reason why he should take on any fatal quantity now. If he had any money to throw away, he’d—” The doctor broke off abruptly. He cleared his throat again. “As I was saying. My thought in warning you was that you might, with the best of intentions, urge some on him. I mean to say that, for example, you might be having some people in, and if you were drinking yourselves you’d naturally offer your father—”

  “I don’t drink, Doctor. I don’t do any entertaining.”

  “Fine. Splendid. No cause for worry, then.” Doctor Lane backed away a step. “Anything else?”

  Dusty shook his head. There had been something, but he couldn’t mention it now. Perhaps he could do it later, but he was in no mood to ask for favors from Doctor Lane now. Probably it wouldn’t do any good if he did ask. If Lane thought he was so lowdown as to mistreat his own father, he’d hardly be inclined to wait indefinitely on payment for his services.

  Going up the walk to the house, Dusty guessed that he’d mismanaged the whole interview. The doctor was always cranky, ready to leap down your throat, at this hour of the morning. If he’d had to talk to him—and he might have waited until another time—he shouldn’t have disputed with him, made the doctor humble himself for a curtness that was more or less normal for him.

  Mr. Rhodes was seated on the living room lounge, squinting at the morning newspaper. He smiled absently at his son, and Dusty went on back to the kitchen. The coffee pot was still warm, and there was a little coffee still left in it. Dusty poured a cup, and carried it into the living room.

  “Dad,” he said. Then, sharply, “Dad! I want to talk to you.”

  “Oh!” The old man laid the paper aside reluctantly. “Go right ahead, Bill.”

  “I want you to gather up all your clothes today, all your laundry. I—maybe you’d better do it right away. I’ll have the stuff picked up this morning, so we can get it back tomorrow.”

  “All right, son,” his father said, mildly. “Do you want any of your things to go, too?”

  “Just yours. The hotel still does mine at half price.”

  Mr. Rhodes shuffled out of the room. Dusty took up a sip of coffee, and picked up the telephone. He called the laundry and cleaners. Then he consulted the telephone directory, and, swallowing the rest of his coffee, called a grocery store.

  He was just hanging up when his father returned. He lighted a cigarette, motioned for the old man to sit down.

  “I’ve just ordered some groceries, Dad. They’ll be delivered within the hour—twenty-three dollars and eight cents worth—and the man will have to have his money upon delivery. Now I can leave the money with you for him, and go on to bed, if you’re sure you can take care of it. Otherwise, I’ll sit up and wait.”

  “Of course, I can take care of it,” said Mr. Rhodes. “You go get your sleep, Bill.”

  “Another thing. While you’re waiting, I’d like to have you shave. I’ll put a new blade in the razor for you. Draw the water if you want me to. Will you do that, Dad?”

  “Well, I—” Mr. Rhodes ran a hand over his stubbled face. “That’s—it’s pretty hard for me to do, son. I—I have a hard time seeing what I’m doing since I broke my glasses.”

  “But you…You didn’t have them fixed, Dad? After I gave you the money
, and you promised—” Dusty broke off, abruptly. “All right,” he said. “All right. You go in and see the optometrist tomorrow, have him give me a ring here at the house and tell me what the bill will be. I’ll get a money order for you to give him when you pick up the glasses.”

  “Fine,” the old man murmured.

  “Now, I’ll give you a shave myself. Or, no”—Dusty took a dollar from his wallet and added some change to it “you can use a haircut, too. This will take care of it. You run along right now, Dad.”

  “Well”—Mr. Rhodes looked down at the money “hadn’t I better wait until the groceries…?”

  “I’ll take care of them myself. I don’t want to go to bed, anyway, until you get back from the barber shop.”

  “Well, now, there’s no need to—”

  “I’ll be waiting,” Dusty said firmly. “I want to be sure you—that they give you a good job.”

  His father looked at him thoughtfully, the kind of appraising look he had used to give him, back before the trouble had come up, when Dusty’s conduct had fallen below standard. Curious, disappointed, but not condemnatory nor surprised.

  Dusty stared back at him stolidly.

  Mr. Rhodes stood up, shoved the money into the pocket of his stained baggy trousers, and left the house.

  The laundry and cleaning men came, then the man from the grocery store. Dusty was in the kitchen, still unpacking and putting away the groceries, when his father returned from the barber shop.

  The barber had done his work well. Except for his clothes, Mr. Rhodes might have been Professor Rhodes, principal of Central High School. Dusty was pleased by the transformation, but also annoyed. It confirmed his belief that his father could, if he only chose to, escape the slough of senility into which he seemed to be sinking.

  “Well,” he said, curtly, “I hope we’ve got enough here to last a while.”

  “This meat, Bill”—Mr. Rhodes shook his head. “Why did you get so much? It’ll spoil before we can use it.”