“I watched you dance,” he said.
“How’d you get in?”
He looked up, but not for long. He watched the liquor in the glass. “How’ve you been, Lois?”
“Fine.”
“Ah. That’s good.” He looked up once and saw her scratching behind an ear. He looked away again, because she had not smiled.
“Well,” he said, “you like it here?”
“Huh?”
“You like it? What you do.”
“What kind of a question….”
“When did you get up today?” he said. “What kind of a question is that?”
“Just, I just wondered,” he said. He gave a small, interrupted shrug. “Just in general. How you spend a day.”
“I work and I sleep. Like everybody.”
“And it’s like that all day, full with it?”
“Jesus, Sam, what are you talking about?”
“Just a question. Normal question. Not everybody does the same work and has the same day.”
“That’s right,” she said. “And how’s yours?”
He took a drink and then blew air through his lips. “I don’t work all the time. I don’t think I work as often as you do.”
“Why, you creepy son of a bitch!”
He looked at her, blinked a few times. Then he took a cigarette out and lit it. “We’re just talking,” he said. “Spending time. Why get sore with me?”
“Because you asked for it?”
He looked at the smoke make a spiral at the end of the cigarette and then he shook his head. He smiled and shook his head.
“What you come here for?” she asked.
“I know. You don’t want me and how do I take it. That what you asked?”
This time he looked up and smiled at her and she hated his face. She could say nothing.
“And how do you take it, sitting here with me?” he asked this time.
She felt vicious but had a rule against that, so it sounded prim. “If you’re going to do a thing well you got to perfect the right habits. Good work habits. And that’s how I can sit here with you.”
He took a hot drag on his cigarette and talked the smoke out. “There aren’t that many habits,” he said. “There comes a point and no habit will do.”
It was getting too serious for her and nothing was getting done. For a moment she wondered why he had come but she had work habits and thought she knew. But so far, nothing accomplished….
“Why don’t you forget about work,” she said and made a smile.
He looked up too late for the smile but he saw her lean back on the pile of pillows and stretch out. She did it well. When she did this, it said, when I lie down you want to lie down.
“Sit here,” she said. “I can’t see you.”
“That’s all right,” said Jordan. “I’m fine.”
Her work habits won’t do her now, he thought. It’s a painful sight…. He was done and he wanted to leave. The professional part which would come next did not interest him and he did not want to watch the girl become more forced and he himself awkward.
“Sam?”
“Yes.”
“Come on.” He did not answer right away and she lay on her back, listening for something else. It’s time, she thought. Goddamn all of them. “Come on, Sammy,” she said again.
This time she sat up and pulled off her jersey.
Like peeling a fruit, he thought, a smooth-skinned fruit. She sat in a small, white brassiere, the red shorts, and then she arched to unhook herself.
“You still have your shoes on,” he said.
She held still for a moment, letting it grow that she was being used, misused and insulted. Then she yanked one shoe off and threw it at him.
“You lousy son of a bitch!”
Jordan leaned out of the way and got up. He felt depressed and felt wrong for having stayed this long. He got up and went toward the door but the girl was in the way. She was loud and foul, very loud, and would not let him pass. She screamed insults at him with a high timbre as if calling for help.
Jordan put his hands on her arms to move her out of the way. He felt wrong and depressed. “We just talked,” he said. “And it wasn’t any good.”
“Damn you,” she yelled, “damn you, you bastard creep,” and the door jumped open.
There was the bouncer, small-hipped with cummerbund and farther back in the dark hall, Sandy was there, and talk, talk, talk, sharp and fast to fit all this. And why, thought Jordan, why….
He got in one good punch; it felt like a good one, in his arm and shoulder, but suddenly the girl was silent, they all were, and it killed all of Jordan’s intent. Sandy back in the hall, looking, the girl back by the wall, looking, Benny as close as he needed to be, looking, looking, concentrated and cold. Is that what they see—like Paul, or like Kemp—is that what they see, when I step up to them? No. The bouncer does this for love—I’ve
never
. I never knew they disliked me this much….Jordan got beaten badly. He had doubled over and had started to cry though nobody saw this because of all the smear on his face and the method in general. Sandy was dim in the hall but was the only one Jordan saw in the end. This was perhaps due to the angle. Then Sandy walked away with the girl. Benny—as a fact—hardly mattered.
13“Can you make it?”
He could make it. He got up and stood. Sandy let go of his arm and held out a wet rag. “Wipe yourself.”
Jordan wiped and gave the rag back.
“Can you make it?”
“Why? Why was this—”
“Rule of the house. The bouncer thought….”
Jordan did not hear the rest because he was not listening. I did not know they disliked me this much.
“Can you make it?”
“Sure.”
“Can you drive?”
“Sure.”
“Here. Here’s the keys. Take my car.”
“Sure.”
“Maybe I should drive you home?”
“Sure. I mean, no. I’m sure no.”
“I got something else to….”
“Sure.”
When Jordan was in his room he sat on the bed for a while and felt the pain start. He went to the sink and had a very hard time opening the faucet because he had shut it so tight earlier. He washed and it started to hurt more.
He saw that it was fairly dark outside and that soon he would go to sleep. He felt strangely comfortable with his pain because it was strong and concrete. That way, he did not think. But he did a few things, step by step and uncomplicated by thinking, even without any clear, urgent feeling.
He walked along the wall, down the stairs, to the drugstore at the counter where he bought a styptic stick. At the adjoining counter he bought one envelope and a stamp. In the back, on the shelf for the telephone books, he wrote on the envelope, putting down as much as he knew:
Betty. Diner on Third Avenue. Penderburg, Pa
.He took a bill out of his pocket and put it inside the envelope. He stamped, sealed, and dropped the letter into the mailbox outside. Was it five C? I think it was five C. He walked home. He worried about the money, and why five C instead of one. Who was she? Why not more. A grand. He went to his room and, on his bed, fell asleep almost immediately.
One week later Kemp was still alive. And they had found Paul under the bridge, in the culvert, because of the smell. It was now a gang killing with solution imminent and the guard around Kemp in the hospital was heavy. Kemp stayed in a coma but breathed inside his oxygen tent.
Jordan stayed in his room, on the bed, and sometimes he loosened the faucet a little so that he could watch, by turning his head, how the drops came slowly. He cleaned his guns a few times, in order to concentrate. He knew how to make a proper job of this, a good craftsman’s job, though it meant more than that. And I’m going to tilt right out of my mind if I don’t hold on to the few things I know.
But it did not help. What he knew felt jinxed. What he knew for these days were things he had never paid attention to before: the bedsheet wrinkled under his back, the stain on his towel from washing his face, the morning noise, noon noise, and evening noise three stories down on the street. He liked the noon noise best because it was one car, two cars, one laugh, two voices, all distinct from each other. He never looked at his ceiling, because it made him feel flattened and small. Once or twice, it seemed, he had a fever.
He called Sandy from the drugstore, for information. There wasn’t any. There had been no change.
“How’s your head?”
“Much better. Thank you.”
“Where you calling from?”
“The drugstore, here at my corner.”
“When you called yesterday, you called from the same place?”
“Yes.”
“Now listen to me, Sam. Stop making these lousy calls from the same place all the time if you know what I’m talking about. There is … Stop interrupting. There isn’t a thing gained by these calls you keep making except maybe you get spotted once or twice too often. First news, I get word to you.”
“Sandy, I can’t just….”
“You loused it up. Not me. And stop calling.”
“It’s been over a week. There’s got to be some….”
“When Meyer decides what next, you’ll hear about it. Listen, I got a tournament on.”
“How’s Lois?”
“What you say?”
“Good-by,” and Jordan hung up.
He stayed in the booth for a while, turned to the blank wall. A line of sweat moved down his cheek, and he stuck out his tongue to lick. He would not call Sandy again. The upsetting thing was how it came over him, how a faint sting happened and next he would say something which he had not thought up ahead of time. Stupid things, without feeling to them. How’s Lois….
He called Bass. He had no difficulties with Bass but also learned nothing. Bass did not like to be called by Jordan, he had no information, and he said all that. He said, “If you call here again I’m going to do something about it.”
“How are you?” said Jordan. “Are you all right?”
“What?”
“I won’t call you again,” said Jordan, and hung up.
Next day he called Meyer. Jordan ordered a hamburger at the drugstore counter and while it was on the grill went to the booth and called Meyer. Meyer was not easy. Jordan had to call three numbers and with the third one he had to wait a while till the girl went to see if the call was wanted. Jordan ran his tongue around the inside of his cheek, where a cut wasn’t healed and it tasted like metal. He spat on the floor and put his foot over it.
If he says Kemp is dead, that will change everything. It will mean time in between like always. No. It’ll be Sam Smith this time, Sam Smith doing between-time vacationing. The thought pleased him though he had no idea where he might go.
“Hullo?”
“Meyer?”
“Yes, who….”
“This is Smith. I….”
“What?”
“Jordan. I meant Jordan. I said Smith because….”
“Who in hell gave you leave to call here? Don’t you got any better sense than….”
“The reason I said Smith….”
“Shut up!”
Jordan did, feeling patient. The dullness of patience was something new he had learned. He had not needed patience before.
“… be sure you’ll know before long what’s what, if anything happens. Meanwhile, there’s nothing. And meanwhile I want nothing from you!”
“I mean, is there no plan?”
“Didn’t you hear what I said just a minute ago? And we don’t do this kind of business on the phone, damn your crazy head!”
“I’ve got to know….”
“You sit tight and wait like the rest of us!” and Meyer hung up.
Jordan forgot to stop for his hamburger and walked out on the street. The sun shone and he thought he might get a new room, with a new view, and more sun perhaps. I might spend more time there. Sam Smith unemployed. He watched himself walking past a store window and thought he looked like anybody. But if no one believes me, how can I be somebody else? Paul thinks I’m Smith and he’s dead. Kemp thinks I’m Smith and doesn’t count. I mean, how can you talk to Kemp, down under in the oxygen tent. What’s Betty’s last name …?
14“When I think of it,” said Jane, “when I imagine I have over four hundred smackers—you know what I’d do?”
“There’s a customer,” said Betty.
“Where?”
“The short one there. The little boy,” and she pointed to where the head stuck up over the counter.
“And I bet he wants orange juice.”
“Orange juice,” said the boy. “A small one.”
Jane got the orange juice and Betty looked out the stand to the other side of the street. There were planted palms, there were convertibles moving, and some of the buildings across the way had Spanish tile roofs. There was sun over everything and the beach was behind the next block.
“I was saying….” said Jane.
“But I told you, honey; I told you right when I came when I told you all about it. I said, Jane, some of this is for you.”
“Let me finish,” and Jane folded her arms, leaned against the cooler, and looked up at the coconuts which hung on strings and had faces on them. “If I had that money,” she said, “you know what I’d do?”
“No,” said Betty, very patient.
“I’d go to Oregon, is what I would do, for the apples. I want to see nothing but apples and forget all about oranges.”
Betty had heard that several times before but she smiled. “It’s nice here.”
The other girl didn’t answer that and then they had customers.
After a while they sat down on their stools and Jane smoked a cigarette. Betty drank orange juice.
“You know what really kills me about this?”
“About what?” said Betty.
“About all this,” and she swept her arm over everything: stand, juicers, street, traffic, palms, sunshine. “The sticky fingers,” she said. “I got these constantly sticky fingers.”
“Oh. From the orange juice.”
“Just say juice, Betty. The other goes without saying.”
They had customers and didn’t talk for a while. Betty had a small pain in her back, from bending down into the cooler.
“It’s four o’clock, honey,” said Jane. “Don’t forget your doctor’s appointment.”
“It’s only fifteen minutes. The last time I walked it, I got there….”
“You know what I’d do if I had a doctor’s appointment, let’s say an appointment at eight in the evening? You know what I’d do at, let’s say seven in the
morning
?”“You’d worry about it all day.”
“Ha. At seven in the morning I’d call the boss, and I’d tell him—”
“You got a customer, Jane.”
She got to the office in time but then had a long wait. After the doctor she took a long walk and when she took the bus into Miami she got off at the wrong stop. It was almost dark when she got to the rooming house and she walked slowly. There was a palm tree next to the house and she could hear the leaves scraping.
“Honey?”
She stopped on the porch steps and saw Jane on the swing. The swing clattered when the girl got up and Betty saw Jane dressed to go out. “He’s here,” said Jane. “What?”
“The one, you know. The one you been telling about.”
All Betty said was, “Gee—”
“He don’t look rich.”
“What’s he look like?”
It sounded one way to Jane and was meant another way by Betty. It had slipped out that way because she could not remember his face too well.
“I don’t know. Pale, I guess.”
“Oh.”
“You better go in now. He’s been there an hour.” Jane put the strap of her bag over her shoulder. “I won’t be back before two.”
“You don’t have to do that, Jane.”
“Are you kiddin’? ‘Bye now,” and she started down the steps. “Wait a minute, I almost forgot!”
Betty stopped in the door and waited. Jane came close and then, “What did the doctor say, honey?”
“Three months.”
“Three? Was it him?”
“How could it be?” Betty went into the house.
She could not tell whether he seemed especially pale because the light was almost gone in the room. She saw him get up from a chair and come toward her. When he was close she saw he was smiling.
“Remember me?” he said.
She had the feeling, for a moment, that she did not.
“What a question, Sam! Why, what a question!”
She thought he would want to kiss her but he did nothing. He stood there smiling and she was still struck by that. His smile was a stretch of his face, though this did not make a false smile but only an awkward one. He was embarrassed, she felt, and it embarrassed her. She stepped up quickly and gave him a kiss. He gave her a kiss and straightened up again. He deserves more, she thought, and knows it, but he is a gentleman.
“I guess you got the money,” he said, “didn’t you?”
“It was you, wasn’t it, Sam?”
“Surprised you, huh?”
He was still smiling, as if trying very hard. The girl reached up with a small gesture and stroked his face. Then she turned away. She went to the couch and sat down there. “Sam,” she said, “come and sit with me, Sam.”
She looked down into her lap when he sat down next to her and so could not see him at all. “I don’t know what to say, Sam.” She smiled, but did not show him her face.
“I don’t either,” he said.
She leaned over to the side of the couch and turned on the radio. “Have you eaten yet?” she asked him. “What I mean is, did you just come to town, Sam?”
He did not answer because the radio was coming alive and he leaned across her and snapped it off. When he sat up again and saw her face, he quickly smiled again. “I don’t like it,” he said. “I’d rather talk to you,” and after that, after there was more silence, he said, “even if we have nothing to say.”
Then he took her arm in his hand and held it. “I’ve just come to town,” he said. “Yes.”
“I think it’s wonderful that your business….”
“I came just to see you.”
She pressed her arm against her side, to give his hand a squeeze. He could smell the slight acid odor of orange peel.
“What’s your last name?” he asked her.
She was very startled and laughed.
“Mine’s Smith,” he said. “I’ve come to see you.”
“Evans. Elizabeth Evans.”
“Mine’s Smith,” he said again, and then he took out a cigarette which both seemed to end this conversation and also to make it a point of importance.
How nutty, she thought. We both should have laughed about this name thing because actually, it could be funny.
“Now we’ll eat,” he said.
She was glad he had brought that up because it was a topic and something to do, and she said since coming to Miami she had not been out yet at all and so didn’t know where they might go.
“I’d like us to eat here,” he said. “I don’t mind waiting. I’ll sit and watch.”
She did not mind that either though she was sorry she had nothing special. Peas from a can, and there were hot dogs, there was …
“It’s all right,” he said. “Whatever. Put your housecoat on.”
“What?”
“Put your housecoat on. You’re home.”
She laughed and he smiled back and in a way, she thought, what he says just sounds strange at first but then really isn’t.
He sat on the couch and by turning his head he could see the head of the palm outside the window, the one which kept rattling its fronds. The window had the same curtains which he had seen before in the girl’s Penderburg room. Jordan, as he knew he would, felt well now. He sat, looking at everything, the room with the curtains and the used furniture, the girl moving back and forth in the kitchen alcove, and while he saw mostly her back he also felt that much more at ease because of that. As if they had known each other a long time and had no need for the special. He saw nothing cheap, common, crummy, or little, nothing of the pathetically small in his choice of an evening; he saw none of that because it was not there. It was not there, because the pressure and effort which had brought him this far had been so sharp and tremendous.
She put ice-water in glasses next to the plates, which was a restaurant habit, and she served him first and kept watching his plate, which was no habit at all but was natural. After eating they had instant coffee, and they talked about how quickly she had left—two days after he had sent the money—and about how long he could stay this time. He would tell her, he said, he would tell her soon.
She pressed no point, though she asked personal questions. Why shouldn’t she, was Jordan’s feeling. I’m Smith. I am out of town a lot, because I travel on business; I come home here between times, because I have time in between.
The evening was dull, slow, warm, and harmless. That way, it lasted and lasted.
It gave Betty time to think of a number of things. Four hundred, she thought, maybe four hundred is enough. If I knew him better. I might ask him about it, tell him about it. He might even help. He’s a gentleman, really. He’s gentle.
When Jane knocked on the door it was not two yet. But there had been nothing for Jane to do after the movie was over and she’d thought: It’s my room as much as hers and who is Smith anyway. She knocked, with a lot of purpose, and then she called through the door.
“That’s all right,” Betty called back. “Come on in.” And when she’s in, Betty thought, she’s going to say something like, how are you two lovebirds, or something.
“Well, well, well,” said Jane. “How are you two bugs in a rug?”
Jane was the only one who laughed, though Jordan got up from the couch and said something about Jane might want to sit there, and Betty said, wouldn’t it be nice to have some iced tea.
She made iced tea, and Jane sat down on the couch and told Jordan to sit down next to her. Then she talked a lot, touching her hair, hiking a strap, peeling the lacquer off one of her nails. But she watched Jordan all the time and tried budging him in various ways. It’s a good thing, thought Betty, that he’s calm and a gentleman, or I would feel badly embarrassed for Jane.
“So, how you doing?” said Jane. “I mean, in your business.” Her voice had a splash sound and was too loud.
“Fine,” said Jordan. “Nothing special.”
“You down on business, Mister Smith?”
“No. Just a visit.”
“Oh. You salesmen. I bet everybody else thinks you’re down on business, huh?” and when he did not answer, “Buttons, isn’t that what you told me, Betty?”
“Yes,” said Betty from the sink.
“Is it a good business, Mister Smith?”
“No. Not very.”
“Oh, I bet you’re just saying that, Mister Smith, aren’t you?”
Jordan got up and went over to the sink. He gave the faucet a twist and then went back to sit down again.
“Well, I do beg to differ,” said Jane, “about the way you interpret your business, because I do happen to know about that generous gift you sent Betty. It made Betty very happy, didn’t it, Betty?”
“Yes, very. You want me to put lemon on the table?”
“You know what I’d do, Mister Smith, if I got a gift like that from an admirer? I’m not saying I got an admirer, you understand, but….”
“You’d go to Oregon to see the apples,” said Betty.
“Well, that was very funny. You haven’t got the tea strong enough, I don’t think. Tell me, Mister Smith, are you married?”
“No.”
“Ah! But divorced.”
“I’ve never been married.”
“A woman hater!” and she laughed with a clickety sound. “Is he a woman hater, Betty?”
What had been there for Jordan was thinning out. It was thinning out into an embarrassing daydream. A time in a hot room with a view of a dusty palm in the next lot, and the girl by the sink talking flat and about something hard to remember. He would remember everything Jane was saying.
“Tell me, Mister Smith, what’s the name of your company?”
“Don’t you want your iced tea, Jane?”
“Betty, you keep interrupting. Tell me, Mister Smith, will you come often? Is it one yet?”
“Yes, it’s one,” said Jordan.
“You must hear this program! The Two Sleepy People, and it’s the swooniest….”
“Leave it off.”
“What?”
She had the radio on and Jordan got up and clicked it off again.
“You mean you don’t like music, Mister Smith? And I thought, right from the start when I saw you, Mister Smith, a sweet, quiet gentleman like….”
“Leave.”
“What did you say?”
“Leave. Come back tomorrow.”
“Why, you must be out of….”
“Here’s ten dollars. Go to a hotel for the night.”
Jane got up and when she stood up she started to laugh, loud and straight into Jordan’s face. “
That’s
a switch! What do you take me for giving me money and telling….” She stopped talking because she did not really feel brazen any more, watching Jordan. He was somebody else now …“Boy,” she said. “These button men—” and gagged on it with a sudden jolt when Jordan hit her in the face.
It hurt, but above all she was frightened. He said, “Get out,” again and she ran. She heard him say, “Don’t you ever say that to me,” and she nodded her head, nodded her head, while trying to get the door to the hallway open. He grabbed her arm to make it hurt and took her out to the porch where he turned her around, toward him. “Git,” he said. “Git and don’t mess what I’ve got.”
He snapped her around toward the steps and she almost stumbled. Then she ran.
Jordan did not watch her but went inside. He went to the table and picked up a glass of iced tea, and while he drank it he looked all around. All like before now. Only Betty is frightened. He put his glass down and went up to her and put his hands on her face. “I want you here,” he said. “Not her.”
“But, but you hit—”
“I’ve never done that before.” Then his face changed, and before she could see what it meant he moved very close, put his head next to hers. “Don’t be frightened. Please. Don’t be frightened….”
She suddenly knew herself to be very important, that nothing else mattered between them, except what he felt about her. She took him into the next room, left the light on in the front room, left the light off in the bedroom, stood still when he took off her clothes. She waited next to the bed while he got undressed, and when they lay down together they lay still for a long time. They made love once and then lay together because he did not let her go.