The New Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction (80 page)

The bathroom doorknob was turning. I moved away from there until the table stopped me, and Abby came out. She was wearing a skimpy towel held around her middle and not another thing.

Her body was very beautiful. But it was a bitter thing for me to see now.

She took two or three steps into the room, flowing with that wonderful grace of hers, before she realized that the man standing by the table wasn’t the one who had just spoken to her from the bedroom – wasn’t the one for whom she didn’t at all mind coming out like this. It was only I – I who had been dreaming dreams. Her free hand yanked up and across her breasts in that age-old gesture of women, and rage blazed in her blue eyes.

“You have a nerve!” she said harshly.

Again he heard her in the bedroom and again he thought she was speaking to him. He called, “What?” and the bedroom door opened, and he said, “With this door closed I can’t hear a—” and he saw me.

Oscar Trotter was without jacket and shirt, as well as without his glasses.

I had to say something. I muttered, “The radio was so loud you didn’t hear me knock. I came in.” I watched Abby sidling along the wall toward the bedroom, clinging to that towel and keeping her arm pressed in front of her, making a show of modesty before me, the intruder, the third man. “I didn’t expect she was having this kind of company,” I added.

He shrugged.

A door slammed viciously. She had ducked into the bedroom where her clothes would be. He picked up his glasses from the table and put them on.

There was nothing to keep me here. I started to leave.

“Just a minute, Johnny. I trust you’re not sore.”

I turned. “What do you expect me to be?”

“After all, you had no prior claim on her.” Oscar smiled smugly. “We both saw her at the same time.”

He stood lean and slightly stooped and considerably older than I, and dully I wondered why everything came so easily to him – even this.

“Next time,” I said, “remember to lock the door.”

“I didn’t especially plan this. I asked her out to dinner. My intention was chiefly business. Chiefly, I say, for I must confess she had – ah – impressed me last night.”

This was his high-hat manner, the great man talking down to a lesser being. Some day, I thought wearily, I’d beat him up and then he’d kill me, unless I killed him first.

“You understand,” he was drawling, “that I was far from convinced that our problem with her would be solved by giving her two thousand dollars. I had to learn more about her. After dinner we came up here for a drink.” That smug smile again. “One thing led to another. You know how it is.”

I knew how it was – how I’d hoped it would be with me. And I knew that he had never for one single moment made the mistake of acting the little gentleman with her.

I had forgotten about the money in my pocket. I took it out and dropped it on the table.

“Georgie and Tiny weren’t keen about contributing,” I told him. “There’s just this thousand. You’ve earned the right to worry about the balance.”

“I doubt that it will be necessary to give her anything now. You see, I’ll be paying all her bills. She’s moving in with me.”

“How nice,” I said between my teeth. “I’ll be out of there as soon as I pack my bags.”

His head was bent over the money. “Take your time,” he said as he counted it into two piles. “I still have to tell Stella. Any time tomorrow will do.” He pushed one pile across the table. “Here’s yours.”

So I had my five hundred bucks back, and that was all I had. Before I was quite out of the apartment, Oscar, in his eagerness, was already going into the bedroom where Abby was.

I went out quietly.

That night I slept in a hotel. I stayed in bed most of the morning, smoking cigarettes and looking up at the ceiling. Then I shaved and dressed and had lunch and went to Oscar’s apartment for my clothes.

I found Stella all packed and about to leave. She was alone in the apartment. I could guess where Oscar was.

“Hello, Johnny,” she said. “I’m leaving for good.”

She wasn’t as upset as I’d expected. She was sitting in the living room with her legs crossed and taking a final drink of Oscar’s liquor.

“I know,” I said. “When’s she moving in?”

“Tonight, I guess.” She looked into her glass. “You know, the minute she walked into this room the other night I had a feeling. Something in the way Oscar looked at her.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

She shrugged. “I’m not sure I am. He was too damn bossy.”

I went into the guest bedroom and packed my two bags. When I came out, Stella was still there.

“Johnny,” she said, “have you any plans?”

“No.”

“I called up a woman I know. She owns a rooming house off Columbus Avenue. She says she has a nice furnished apartment to let on the second floor, with kitchenette and bath. She says the room is large and airy and nicely furnished. A young married couple just moved out.”

“Are you taking it?”

“I think I will.” She uncrossed her knees and pulled her skirt over them. “Two people can be very comfortable.”

I looked at her sitting there rather primly with eyes lowered – a placid, cozy, cuddly woman with a bosom made for a man to rest his weary head on. She wasn’t Abby, but Abby was a ruined dream, and Stella was real.

“You and me?” I murmured.

“If you want to, Johnny.”

I picked up my bags. “Well, why not?” I said.

Stella was very nice. We weren’t in love with each other, but we liked each other and got along, which was more than could be said of a lot of couples living together.

We weren’t settled a week in the rooming house near Columbus Avenue when Oscar phoned. Stella answered and spoke to him. I dipped the newspaper I was reading and listened to her say we’d be glad to come over for a drink that evening.

I said, “Wait a minute.”

She waved me silent and told Oscar we’d be there by nine. When she hung up, she dropped on my lap, cuddling the way only she could.

“Honey, I want to go just to show I don’t care for him any more and am not jealous of that Abby. You’re sweeter than he ever was. Why shouldn’t we all still be friends?”

“All right,” I said.

Oscar answered the doorbell when we got there. Heartily he shook Stella’s hand and then mine and said Abby was in the kitchen and would be out in a minute. Stella went into the kitchen to give Abby a hand and Oscar, with a hand on my shoulder, took me into the living room.

Georgie and Tiny were there. Georgie hadn’t brought his wife, of course; he kept her strictly away from this kind of social circle. They were drinking cocktails, even Tiny who was mostly a beer man.

“Looks like a caper reunion,” I commented dryly. “Except that there’s one missing. Though I guess we could consider that his widow represents him.”

There was an uncomfortable silence. Then Oscar said pleasantly, “Here, sour-puss, maybe this will cheer you up,” and thrust a cocktail at me.

I took it and sipped.

Then Abby came in, bearing a plate of chopped liver in one hand and a plate of crackers in the other. She had a warm smile for me – the impersonal greeting of a gracious hostess. Stella came behind her with potato chips and pretzels, and all of a sudden Stella’s jiggling irritated me no end.

Abby hadn’t changed. There was no reason why I had expected she would. She still made me think of golden fields and cool streams, as she had the first time I’d laid eyes on her.

I refilled my glass from the cocktail shaker and walked to a window and looked out at the Hudson River sparkling under the sinking sun.

“Now that was the way to handle her,” Georgie said. He had come up beside me; he was stuffing into his mouth a cracker smeared with liver. “Better than paying her off. Not only saves us dough. This way we’re sure of her.”

“That’s not why he did it.”

“Guess not. Who needs a reason to want a looker like that in his bed? But the result’s the same. And you got yourself Stella, so everybody’s happy.”

Everybody was happy and everybody was gay and got gayer as the whiskey flowed. But I wasn’t happy and the more I drank the less gay I acted. Long ago I’d learned that there was nowhere a man could be lonelier than at a party. I’d known it would be a mistake to come, and it was.

Suddenly Georgie’s face turned green and he made a dash for the bathroom. Oscar sneered that he’d never been able to hold his liquor and Tiny grumbled that the only drink fit for humans was beer and I pulled Stella aside and told her I wanted to go home.

She was not only willing; she was anxious. “Fact is, I don’t feel so good,” she said. “I need air.”

We said our goodbyes except to Georgie whom we could hear having a bad time in the bathroom. An empty hack approached when we reached the sidewalk and I whistled. In the hack, she clung to me, shivering, and complained, “My throat’s burning like I swallowed fire. My God, his whiskey wasn’t that bad!”

“You must be coming down with a cold,” I said.

She wobbled when we got out of the hack and she held her throat. I had to half carry her up the steps of the brownstone house and into our room. As I turned from her to switch on the light, she moaned, “Johnny!” and she was doubled over, clutching at her stomach.

For the next hour I had my hands full with her. She seemed to be having quite an attack of indigestion. I undressed her and put her to bed and piled blankets on her because she couldn’t stop shivering. I found baking soda in the kitchen and fed her a spoonful and made tea for her. The cramps tapered off and so did the burning in her throat.

“Something I ate,” she said as she lay huddled under the blankets. “But what? We didn’t have anything for dinner that could hurt us. How do you feel, honey?”

“Fine.”

“I don’t understand it. That Abby didn’t serve anything to speak of. Nothing but some chopped liver and—” She paused. “Honey, did you have the liver?”

“No. I can’t stand the stuff.”

“Then it was the liver. Something wrong with it. Call up Oscar and see if the others are all right.”

I dialed his number. Oscar answered after the bell had rung for some time. His voice sounded weak.

“How are you over there?” I asked.

“Terrible. All four of us sick as dogs. And you?”

“I’m all right, but Stella has indigestion. We figure it was the chopped liver because that was the one thing she ate that I didn’t.”

“Could be,” Oscar said. “Georgie seems to be in the worst shape; he’s sleeping it off in the spare room. Tiny left a short time ago. Abby’s in bed, and that’s where I’ll be in another minute. What bothers me most is a burning in my throat.”

“Stella complained of the same thing. First I ever heard of indigestion making your throat burn.”

“All I know,” Oscar said, “is that whatever it is I have plenty of company in my misery. Abby is calling me.”

He hung up.

I told Stella what he’d said. “The liver,” she murmured and turned on her side.

That was at around one o’clock. At three-thirty a bell jarred me awake. I slipped out of bed and staggered across the room to the phone.

“I need you at once,” Oscar said over the wire.

“Do you feel worse?”

“About the same. But Georgie has become a problem.”

“Is he that bad?”

“Uh-huh. He went and died on my hands. I need your help, Johnny.”

Georgie lay face-down on the bed in the guest room. He was fully dressed except for his shoes.

“Tiny took him in here before he left,” Oscar told me. “After that I didn’t hear a sound out of Georgie. I assumed he was asleep. Probably he went into a coma and slipped off without waking. When I touched him half an hour ago, he was already cold.”

Oscar’s face was the color of old putty. He could hardly stand without clinging to the dresser. Abby hadn’t come out of the other bedroom.

I said, “Died of a bellyache? And so quickly?”

“I agree it must have been the chopped liver, which would make it ptomaine poisoning. But only Georgie ate enough of the liver to kill him. Abby says she remembers he gorged himself on it.” Oscar held his head. “One thing’s sure – he mustn’t be found here. Brant is enough trouble already.”

“This is plainly an accidental death.”

“Even so, the police will use it as an excuse to get as tough as they like with us. We can’t afford that, Johnny, so soon after the Coast City job. Best to get the body out.”

I looked him over. He didn’t seem in much better condition than the man on the bed.

“I can’t do it alone,” I said.

He dug his teeth into his lower lip and then fought to draw in his breath. “I’ll help you.”

But most of it had to fall on me. I fished car keys out of Georgie’s pocket and went looking for his Ford. I found it a block and a half up Riverside Drive and drove it around to the service entrance of the apartment building. At that late hour it was possible to park near where you wanted to.

Oscar was waiting for me on the living-room sofa. He roused himself and together we got that inanimate weight that had been pot-bellied Georgie Ross down the three flights of fire stairs and, like a couple of men supporting a drunk, walked it between us out of the building and across the terribly open stretch of sidewalk and shoved it into the Ford. For all we could tell, nobody was around to see us.

That was about as far as Oscar could make it. He was practically out on his feet. I told him to go back upstairs and I got behind the wheel and drove off with Georgie slumped beside me like a man asleep.

On a street of dark warehouses over on the east side, I pulled the car over to the curb and got out and walked away.

Stella was up when I let myself in. She asked me if I’d gone to Oscar’s.

“I was worried about them,” I told her. “Tiny and Georgie left. Oscar and Abby are about in your shape. How’re you?”

“Better, though my stomach is very queasy.”

I lay in bed wondering what the odds were on chopped liver becoming contaminated and if a burning throat could possibly be a symptom of ptomaine poisoning. I watched daylight trickle into the room and listened to the sounds of traffic building up in the street, and I was scared the way one is in a nightmare, without quite knowing of what.