“Marion, I had to phone you,” she said.
Conversations at four in the morning always began that way. “Charmed,” Marion said, “I thought I told you not to call me after three.”
“I had to. Please, Marion.”
He smiled to himself. “How’d it go?” he asked. When his girls called this late, it usually meant they had been humiliated and wanted to complain. Once in a while, one of his more talented girls would have come across something unusual, and would be anxious to learn what he thought of it, but he could hardly believe, however, that this had happened tonight.
“That’s what I mean,” Bobby said, “it was so extraordinary and unexpected.”
“Then tell me about it.” He was the father of the garter girls and he had listened to children’s stories so long that he was ill.
“I can’t tell you over the phone.”
No girl ever could, he thought. “All right, tell me tomorrow.”
“Marion, this is a special favor, I know … but could you come over and see me tonight so I can tell you?”
Bobby was something to resent. She had the wheedling watered charm of a small-town beauty and she tried to use it on him. “Knock off,” he said into the phone.
“Well, can I come see you?”
“Yes, tomorrow.”
“Marion, our mutual acquaintance gave me five hundred dollars.”
“Congratulations.” But he was interested. He could not understand it.
“Will you come see me now?” she asked.
“No.”
“Can I come see you?”
“If you don’t take too long.”
“But, I can’t, Marion. I let the baby sitter go when I got home.”
He had, of course, not forgotten. There were the two babies in the bedroom of that tiny four-room cottage.
“Get the sitter back,” he said patiently into the phone.
“I don’t know how I can, Marion.”
“Then leave it until tomorrow,”
There was a pause. He could almost hear Bobby’s little brain with its quick calculations. Finally, she gave a girlish sigh. “All right, Marion, I’ll get her somehow.”
“You be over soon,” he said, “or I might go to sleep,” and he set the phone down.
While he waited, he put on a dressing gown. The marijuana in his jar was low and he told himself to pick up more tomorrow, debating whether to make a new stick or not. Marijuana gave him no pleasure. He never got a lift from it. The drug made him cold, his temples even felt as if ice had been laid to them. Once in a while it got to be too much for him.
Still, he smoked it. Now and again it placed him in deep mental states. If a thought came up which should be written down—something for example which could seem as clear at night and as mysterious in the morning as “The three eyes of love”—he would discover that his brain watched the thought, and the thought watched his hand, and his hand the pencil, the pencil the paper, until the paper stared back at him with a hostile grin, “You’re flying, man.” He had tried to go on from marijuana. There had been a period a few months ago when he moved onto main-line, but the results had been impossible.
There was a knock and Bobby came in. It was known that his door was never locked, and this was one of his disciplines. There were enough people he had to be afraid of, things he had done one way or another, and he was full of fear. Many nights he lay awake listening to the desert sounds, the rare animals, the wind, the noise of automobiles, his heart beating from anger at his fear. For punishment he never used the bolt. The thought that he must never lock his door had come on him one night in a sweat-soaked bed, and he revolted at the idea. “Oh, no,” he said aloud, “do I have to do that?” and in the act of pleading leniency for himself, had made it impossible to lock his door again.
Bobby kissed him on the cheek. It was one of the mannerisms of call girls who had no talent. They loved to act like sorority queens, and he would watch how each new one would pick up the affectations of the others.
“It was a wonderful night, Marion,” Bobby said.
“Sure,” said Marion, “you made five hundred.”
“Oh, it wasn’t that. He was so nice to me. He called it a loan. Do you know, Marion, if I ever hit it,” Bobby promised, “I’m going to pay him back.” She wandered around the room, looking at him, moving a little restlessly from chair to chair. Bobby was tall and a bit thin for a call girl and she had a wan demure expression which was out-of-date. “What a wonderful pad you have here,” she said.
He rented his house furnished, and he never felt it had a great deal to do with him. The modern furniture meant as much to his eyes as stones and cactus on the desert flats. “How’d it go?” he asked. He was not really curious; Marion had collated so much information about everyone in Desert D’Or that a new figure could hardly alter the statistics. He asked out of the onerous duty of the specialist.
“Well, it was wonderful. I was really living,” Bobby said.
This, Marion could doubt. His taste, lately, had been for frigid women, but he had found her less than frigid; the act was a nightmare to her, and what was most disgusting, she didn’t even know what she thought about it. There had been a stiff little-girl smile on her mouth. “Living it high,” Marion said.
“I was sent.”
“Yes,” Marion said. “Eitel’s got lots of technique.”
“It wasn’t technique. I think Charley has a crush on me. You don’t know how sweet he is.”
“He’s a sweet guy,” Marion said.
“It was so funny when he saw the kids. Veila woke up and began to cry, and he held her and rocked her. I could swear there were tears in his eyes.”
“This is before he paid you?”
“Yes.”
“Well, what do you know?” said Marion.
“You’re not being nice,” Bobby said. “You don’t understand. I had the blues today. I was thinking that maybe I couldn’t make it so well for this kind of work, and Charley Eitel gave me a terrific-type lift. He makes you feel like you’re … something.”
“When did he say he’d see you again?”
“Well, he didn’t say exactly, but the way he smiled when he left, I know it won’t be but a day or two.”
“Five hundred,” Marion said. “Figuring it one-third to me, two-thirds to you, you owe me one hundred and sixty-seven. I can make change.”
Bobby was surprised. “Marion,” she said, “I thought I only owed you seventeen dollars. After all, he was supposed to leave just fifty dollars, wasn’t he?”
“One-third, two-thirds. That’s how it’s done.”
“But I didn’t have to tell you how much he gave me. You’re penalizing me for being honest.”
“Baby, you felt like shooting your mouth off. That’s what you’re paying for. Vanity. It’s all vanity. I have vanity that I want to be paid.”
“Marion, you don’t know what the extra money means for my children.”
“Look,” he said, “you can go and drown them. That’s all right with me.”
He was wondering if he ought to hit her. This was something he seldom did, but she irritated him. She was such a small-town girl, and masochist on top of it. She believed she had come down in the world. Of such characters, he thought, was his stable made. It would be a mistake to hit her. Bobby would enjoy herself for a week.
“Marion, I feel as if there’s something I ought to tell you.”
“Why don’t you stop announcing everything you have to say?” he snapped.
She went right on. “I think I’ve got a strong crush on Eitel,” she said, “and it’s brought up a certain dilemma you ought to know about. Marion, I don’t think I’m made out to be a party girl.”
“Sure you are. I never met the chick who wasn’t.”
“I was thinking that if it takes with Charley Eitel and myself, that well, what I would like, is to leave this and all this work as being just a little episode when I was on the rocks. I mean, think of the kids.”
Bobby put a hand on his shoulder. “Marion, I hope you won’t be disappointed and think you wasted time on me. You see, I really have a very strong crush on Charley. An experience like tonight doesn’t happen that often. With the money he gave me, less the seventeen dollars that belongs to you, I mean, out of fifty, I could get everything sort of straightened out.”
He didn’t listen to her. Marion was thinking of the parakeet she kept, and how she would stand in front of the cage in the shabby living room of her cottage, lisping to the bird in baby talk, and he wondered if he were up on marijuana for he was thinking that Bobby’s bird talked to her, and now the bird who was Bobby talked to him in the pad of his cage.
“Look,” Marion said abruptly, “you think Eitel has a hurt for you?”
“I’m sure he does. He couldn’t have acted that way otherwise.”
“But he didn’t say when he’d see you again?”
“I just know that it’s going to be soon.”
“Let’s find out,” Marion said, and reached for the phone.
“You’re not going to call him now,” Bobby protested.
“He won’t mind getting up,” Marion said, “he’ll just take another sleeping pill.”
Over the line he could hear the phone ring and ring again. After a minute or more, there was the sound of the receiver going over with a crash, and Marion smiled to himself at the thought of Eitel groping on the floor in the darkness, half dumb with sleep, half dumb with Nembutal.
“Charley,” Marion said brightly, “it’s Faye. I hope I didn’t disturb you.” Bobby had snuggled next to him to hear the responses.
“Oh … it’s you …” Eitel’s voice was thick. There was a pause, and over the wire Faye could feel how Eitel tried to find himself. “No, no, it’s all right. What’s it about?”
“Can you talk?” Marion asked. “I mean like is your friend around?”
“Well, in a manner of speaking,” Eitel said.
“You’re still asleep.” Marion laughed. “You just tell your friend I called to give you a tip on a horse.”
“What horse?” said Eitel.
“I’m talking about a date of yours named Bobby. You remember Bobby?”
“Yes. Of course.”
“Well, I mean like she just left here, and she was talking about you.” He kept his voice as neutral as a referee. “Charley, I don’t know what you got,” he said, “but Bobby digs you. Man, she really digs you.”
“She does?”
He was still groggy, Marion thought. “Now, look, Charley, try and concentrate cause I have to make arrangements.” His voice very distinct, he asked, “When would you like to see Bobby? Tomorrow night? Night after?”
This would wake Eitel up. As if the phone were an antenna, he felt sleep vanishing, the line becoming clear, and Eitel tense and nervous and wide-awake before him. Maybe it was ten seconds until the answer came.
“When?” Eitel repeated. “Oh, God, never!”
“Well, thanks, Charley. You go to sleep. I’ll get you a different kind of chick next time. Give my regards to your friend.” And with a look, Marion put the phone down.
“He was asleep,” Bobby said. “He didn’t know what he was saying.”
“I’ll call him again.”
“Marion, it wasn’t fair.”
“Sure, it was fair. Did you ever hear of the unconscious? That’s what he was talking from.”
“Oh, Marion,” Bobby whimpered.
“You’re tired,” he told her, “you better get some sleep.”
“He meant the things he said when he was with me,” Bobby blurted out, and began to cry.
It took him fully ten minutes to bring her around and send her home. At the doorway, with a sheepish smile she handed him one hundred and sixty-seven dollars, and he patted her and told her to rest. When she was gone he wondered if he should have kept her a little longer, and wished that he had. Life was a battle against sentiment, and to exercise Bobby while she still cherished the wound of being in love with Eitel would have been novel.
Woman’s vanity. He wanted to crush it like a roach, and was wistful he had taken too much tea. When he was on tea it was impossible to make love, his body was numb. A pity, because it would have been exactly right to burn into her brain the seed of what she had never possessed: one grain of honesty. She had never loved Eitel, Eitel had never loved her, not for thirty seconds. No one ever loved anyone except for the rare bird, and the rare bird loved an idea or an idiot child. What people could have instead was honesty, and he would give them honesty, he would stuff it down their throats.
It occurred to him that he had missed a perfect chance with Bobby. What he should have done, what he had never thought of doing, was to ask her to stay. There was a business she claimed was loathsome, and he could have kept her at it for ten or twenty minutes while nothing happened, nothing at all. Why hadn’t he thought of that sooner? and knew it was his pride that held him back. There was the danger of Bobby talking.
Suddenly, he decided to be without pride. He could do it. He could be impregnable if sex was of disinterest to him and that was how to be superior to everybody else. That was the secret to life. It was all upside down, and you had to turn life on its head to see it straight. The more he thought of what he could have done with Bobby, the more frustrated he became. There was still time to call her, he could call her back, he smiled at the idea of the baby sitter who would be hired for the third time.
Yet, thinking of the lesson he should have given Bobby, he found to his surprise that no matter the marijuana, he was no longer numb, and so it was now ridiculous to phone her, he would only teach the opposite; Bobby would decide she loved him instead. Faye didn’t know if he wanted to smash his fist through a wall or burst out laughing.
“Hey, Marty, how you doing, kid?” a voice said.
He realized he was standing in the middle of the floor with his eyes closed, his fists pushed with all their force into the pockets of his dressing gown. “Well, Paco, what do you say?” Faye asked quietly.
“I’m flying, Marty, I’m flying.” Paco looked at him like a foundling come out of the storm, a skinny Mexican boy of twenty or twenty-one with a long face and large eyes. They were feverish now, and Marion knew why he had come. Paco needed a fix. He strutted, he was jaunty, he waved his hands, he was holding himself together by the most intense effort of will.
“You know what I was thinking,” Paco went on in the same bright voice, “I haven’t seen Marty in a while, tail-hound Marty, the kid who helps out a kid.…”
“What are you doing down here?” He knew Paco from the capital; there had been a time when he went around with the club to which Paco belonged.
“Here? Here? I been here a day. This town is for birds.”
“It’s a town,” Faye said.
Paco had been the sad one in the club. He was worth nothing in a fight, he was funny-looking, he was a natural to play patsy and punk. Still, nobody bothered him for he was considered a little crazy. That was the thing about Paco. He was the only one in the club who would do things no one else would ever think to do. Once he picked up a scissors and stabbed the club leader because the club leader had been talking about Paco’s sister.
Marion had not seen him in a long time. Paco had been picked up in a robbery and had lived a term in state prison. The fact he dropped in like this after an absence of two years did not startle Faye. Such things were always happening to him.
“I hear you’re peddling gash,” said Paco, “you got some gash for me?”
It was weird. Paco was neurotic, Faye thought, a pimply dreamy kid, begging for dough. In his family his mother hounded Paco, he used to call her dirty names; in the clubhouse he would lie around for hours reading comic books; once he announced he wanted to go to the South Seas. Even at the age of seventeen, tears came into his eyes at a harsh word. And now he was a junkie, and he needed a fix. Sudden compassion for Paco burned Faye’s eyelids. The poor slob of a pachuco.
“You’re
on horse, aren’t you?” Faye asked.
“Marty, I kicked the habit, so help me, but I’m sick now, this boy’s sick, it’s part of the cure, I need a little.” Paco beamed. “Fifty bucks, Marty, and I got enough for a week. I sail, and then I kick the habit.” When Faye didn’t answer immediately, Paco went on. “Twenty-five, that holds me. Marty, I got to get out of this town. It disgusts me. I’ll go nuts here.”
He could give him a hundred, and then Faye caught himself thinking of the pistol he kept in his bureau drawer, and the automatic in the glove compartment of his car. From the judge Faye could never escape, there came the decision: “Give him nothing at all.” His compassion was not pure; he was a little afraid of Paco. Even of Paco! he told himself.
“No,” Faye said, “no loan.”
“Ten bucks. I need a fix. Marty!”
“Nada.”
“Five bucks. Jesus God.” Paco had begun to come apart. He sweated abominably and his poor sad pimply face was unbelievably ugly. In another minute he might faint or throw up.
Faye was almost sick with pain and excitement. He fought his compassion with the fury of a man looking for purity. “Get out, Paco,” he said gently.
Paco sat down on the floor. He looked as if he were ready to chew on the rug, and from what seemed an infinite distance, Faye remembered Teddy Pope and the Joshua tree, and thought with a pang that to make it, maybe one had to be a slob and suffer like Pope or Paco. Was that why he had tried to get on main-line? So that he could crawl on his hands and feet and bark like a dog?
“Chinga tu madre,” Paco was singing at him.
He had to get the pachuco out of here. But where? There was only the police station. Faye shrugged. A month from now, two months from now, it was possible he could be beaten up by Paco’s friends for leaving a junkie with cops. Of course, he paid the police protection, they could handle it quietly. But the police themselves would give Paco a fix, they would have to. They would send him to the county farm of the capital all fixed up. So, no matter what, Paco would get his horse.
For an instant Faye thought of killing him. Only that was killing a zero, and if he were to kill somebody there should be a score. However, he had to do something with Paco. But what? He could take him in his car and leave him on the road. People would find him, they would drop him at a hospital, they would fix him there. Whichever way he considered it, Paco was going to get his fix.