Street of No Return (10 page)

At the same time it was softly cool, like floating in a pool of lily water. The sum of it was dizziness, and as she sat down in the booth facing him, he had no idea this was a booth in a taproom; he had the notion it was some place very high above the clouds.

They sat there talking. She ordered double straights of gin with a water chaser. She did most of the talking and she was trying to tell him why they couldn't go on with this.

For one thing, she said, he'd get his name loused up if he got involved with her. There was a big career in show business ahead of him, she said, and already he was in the public eye, he couldn't afford to muddy his reputation. It would really be mud, she explained, because she was a bum from 'way back and she had a jail record for prostitution and all her life she'd been mixed up with small-time pimps and small-time thugs and ex-cons. Her first husband had been a second-story man shot and killed by a house owner, and that made her a widow when she was seventeen. Then came the prostitution and a ninety-day stretch and then more prostitution and a longer stretch. So then she was finished with the prostitution and tried to play it clean and got married again. This second one was a truck driver who seemed all right in the beginning but it turned out he was really an expert hijacker specializing in liquor jobs. They finally busted him to make him a three-time loser and send him up for fifteen to thirty. It was too long for him and one day in the prison laundry he drank from a bottle of bleach and died giggling. While she was wearing black she met the one she had now. It was a common-law arrangement and his name was Sharkey.

"This Sharkey," she said, "he ain't so bad. At least, he tries his best to make me comfortable. Another thing, he don't shove me around like the others did. First man I ever lived with who never gave me a black eye. So that's something, anyway. But all the same, I ain't kidding myself about Sharkey. I know he's meaner than the others. Much meaner. It hasn't come out yet, but I know it's there. It sorta shows when he smiles real soft and tells me how much he trusts me. As if to say that if I ever disappoint him, he won't be able to take it and he'll do something crazy. That kind of meanness. That's the worst kind. Soft and quiet on the outside, and on the inside really crazy.

"These stag-party jobs I do," she went on, "if Sharkey was making a dollar he wouldn't let me do it. But it brings in an average of a C note a week and we really need the cash, Sharkey's accustomed to living high and he don't know how to budget. He used to be a big man in the rackets and he got in bad with the bosses, not bad enough to get himself bumped, but enough to be told he wasn't needed any more. Since then he's been mooching around and looking for an angle and every once in a while he gets hold of something. Like a bootleg setup. Or numbers. Or girls. But it never amounts to anything, it always gets messed up before it can build. I've tried to tell him it's no use, all these operations are strictly syndicate and an independent don't stand a chance. So then he smiles real soft and says nice and sweet, 'You do your dancing, Celia, let me run the business.' And that always gives me a laugh. The business. Some business! He hasn't made a dime in two years."

She shrugged, "I don't know. Maybe if he didn't have me, he could concentrate and promote something and make himself some decent money. He's got the brains for it. I mean something legitimate like handling talent or selling used cars. On that order. But no, he's got me and he wants me to have the best and his hands are itching for important money. The damn fool, last month he went out and borrowed three hundred dollars from God knows who, just to buy me a birthday present. Sooner or later I'll hafta pawn it so he can pay the guy he borrowed it from. Well, that ain't nothing new. That always happens when I get a present from Sharkey."

She shrugged again. "I don't know, maybe one of these days he'll find that angle he's looking for. He says it's around somewhere, all he's gotta do is find it. Lately he's been getting too anxious and sorta jumpy and I'm afraid he's headed for some genuine aggravation. He's hooked up with a couple of strong-arm specialists, a husband-and-wife team that make a business of putting people in the hospital Or maybe putting them away altogether. Anyway, it makes me nervous, because they're living in the house with us and in the morning when I'm in bed I hear them in the next room, the three of them, Sharkey and Chop and Bertha, having their daily conference. I can't ever hear what they're saying, but I think I know what it's leading up to. When it's a strong-arm routine, it's either extortion or protection racket or a collection agency for clients who want blood instead of money. I don't know why I'm telling you all this. It's got nothing to do with you and me."

"Look," he said. "If it concerns you, it concerns me."

She smiled down at the empty shot glass. "You hear that?" she murmured to the glass.

"Listen, Celia--"

"I know what you're going to say." She looked at him, looked deep into him. "I know everything you want to tell me."

"But listen--"

"No," she said. "It won't work. There's no way you can take me away from him. He just won't let you do it. If you try, he's gonna hurt you. He's gonna hurt you bad."

"I don't care."

"I know you don't. But you would if you could use your brains. That's what I'm trying to do. That's why I'm drinking so much gin. To steady myself and think straight. At least one of us has to think straight."

"Want another drink?"

"Yeah," she said. "Better buy me a pint. Then maybe I can think real straight. Maybe I'll be able to walk out on you."

"No," he said. "You won't be able to do that."

"I'm gonna try." She pointed across the room, at the bartender. "Go on, tell the man to sell you a bottle. I'm gonna give this a real try."

He bought a pint of gin. And she tried. She tried very hard. At one point she said, "Well, here's where I get off," but somehow she couldn't leave the booth. Then later she managed to get up from the booth and gazed past him and said, "Nice to have met you, and so forth," and turned away and started toward the door. She made it halfway to the door and came back to the booth and said slowly and solemnly, "You bastard, you." She sat down and lifted the half-empty bottle to her mouth and took a long quivering gulp. She went on with the drinking, taking it fast and then much too fast and finally she passed out.

When she was able to sit up he phoned for a cab. She said she didn't want to leave, she wanted to drink some more. She said it would be nice if she could really knock herself out and stay that way for a week, so then she wouldn't be able to see him. Maybe that would do it, she said, with her eyes saying that nothing could do it, nothing could keep her away from him.

He put her in the cab and they arranged for the same time, same place tomorrow night.

So then it was tomorrow night. It was a succession of tomorrow nights in the booth in the taproom with ginger ale for him and gin for her. Sitting there facing each other and not touching each other, and it was three weeks of that, just that, just sitting there together until closing time, when he'd put her in a cab and watch the cab going away.

Then on Tuesday of the fourth week she said she couldn't take this much longer and if they didn't find themselves a room somewhere, she'd have convulsions or something.

He didn't say anything, but when the cab arrived to take her home, he climbed in with her. He said to the driver, "Take us somewhere."

The driver took them to a cheap hotel that paid certain cabbies a small commission.

In the bed with her it was dark but somehow blazing like the core of a shooting star. It was going 'way out past all space and all time.

"Lemme tell you something," she said afterward. "I gotta spoil it now. I gotta get dressed and scram outta here."

"No."

"But I gotta," she breathed into his mouth. "It's risky enough already. I don't wanna make it worse."

"All right," he said.

"Please." She touched his arm. "Don't get sore."

"I'm not sore," he said. He was sitting up in the bed. He spoke thickly, falteringly. "Its just that I hate to see you leave."

"I know," she said. "I hate it too."

Then in the darkness of the room she was out of the bed. He heard the rustling of fabric as she began to put on her clothes. The sound was difficult to take. She was getting dressed to walk out of here and it was really very difficult to take.

"Celia--"

"Yes?"

"Let's go away."

"What?" she said. "What's that?"

"We'll go away." His voice throbbed. "It's the only thing we can do."

"But--"

"Look," he cut in quickly. "I know it's wrong. It's giving him a raw deal, it's sorta like larceny. But that's aside from the issue. We just gotta do it, that's all."

For a long moment she didn't speak. And then, very quietly, "What do you want me to do?"

"Write him a note. Pack some things. We'll fix a time and you'll meet me at the train station."

There was another long quiet. He waited, not breathing, and then he heard her saying, "All right. When?"

They arranged the hour. It would be late afternoon. She finished dressing and there was no further talk and then she walked out of the room and he tried to go to sleep. But he couldn't sleep and already he was counting the minutes until he'd see her again. On a small table near the bed there was a lamp and he switched it on and glanced at his wrist watch. The dial said four-forty. He'd be meeting her at the station in approximately twelve hours. He thought, Twelve times sixty makes it seven hundred and twenty minutes, that's a long time.

He lit a cigarette and tried to think in practical terms of what must be done in the next twelve hours. It would be a busy twelve hours because he'd have to cancel several bookings. He was listed for night-club engagements and guest appearances on several radio shows and a large recording company had him scheduled for some platters. All these bookings were very important, especially the radio and the recordings. His manager would start hopping around and yelling that they couldn't afford these cancellations, there was too much money involved, and another factor, a bigger factor, he hadn't yet reached big-name status and he wasn't sufficiently important to walk out on these contracts.

But, he said to himself, you're sufficiently mad about her to walk out on contracts and manager and everything, if it comes to that. You don't really care if it comes to that. You don't care about anything except her.

As it turned out, the cancellations were handled smoothly and there were no negative reactions. He told his manager that he was very tired and needed a rest and had to go away for at least a month. His manager nodded understandingly and patted him on the shoulder and said, "You got the right idea, Gene. Your health comes first. So what's it gonna be? Florida?"

He said he wasn't sure. He told his manager that he'd send a postcard just to keep in touch. But there mustn't be any publicity, he was really very tired and he just wanted to get away from people for a while. His manager promised to keep it quiet. His manager said, "Leave everything to me. Just have yourself a nice vacation and get plenty of sun. And for crissake stay out of drafts, don't come back with a sore throat."

They smiled and shook hands. The cab was waiting and he climbed in and set his suitcase on the floor. He settled back in the seat and the cab went into gear and moved away from the curb. He looked through the window and saw his manager waving good-by. He waved back and then the cab turned a corner and began to work its way through the heavy downtown traffic.

At the railroad station he was in the waiting room and the big clock said five-fifty. He wondered what was keeping her. Then the clock said six-ten and he wondered if he should make a phone call. When the clock said six-twenty he got up from the bench and moved toward a phone booth.

He was in the phone booth, putting the coin in the slot, then starting to dial, and then for some unaccountable reason his finger wouldn't move the dial. It happened in the instant before he turned and looked and saw the man outside the booth.

The man was smiling at him. The man was a six-footer wearing a dark-brown beaver and a camel's-hair overcoat and smoking a cigar. The man had pleasant features and he was smiling softly and good-naturedly.

He'd never seen this man before, but without thinking about it, or trying to think, he knew it was Sharkey.

He opened the door of the booth and said, "Well? What is it?"

"Can we talk?"

"Sure," He stepped out of the booth. Well, he thought, here it comes. He told himself to take it calm and cool. Or at least try. His voice was steady as he said, "I guess it's better this way. She tell you about it?"

"No," Sharkey said. He widened the smile just a little. "I hadda find out for myself."

He gazed past Sharkey and he saw some people getting up from the benches and walking out of the waiting room. They were headed toward the stairway leading up to the platform. In a few minutes they'd be getting aboard the sixthirty southbound express. He thought of the two empty seats and it gave him an empty feeling inside.