Page 19 of Sneaky People


  She sat there nursing her broken heart, with a view of the deserted and darkened bandstand. At length Ken Canning came out of the cellar with a girl who in the moonlight looked like Irma Grunion, with whom her friendship had cooled after that initial slip-giving of July, but who often since, tonight included, had been her companion.

  By the time Laverne reached the parking lot, the only vehicle remaining was the long touring car labeled KEN CANNING AND HIS RAGTIME DREAMERS. The drums were strapped to a luggage rack on the rear bumper, and the Dreamers sat inside. Ken, whom she was following at a distance, handed in his saxophone case, then climbed behind the wheel and drove away.

  The last bus had gone too, taking Irma, if it was she. Laverne had to walk five miles home in her thin dancing pumps, and lost a heel en route. Her father, a railroad switchman who had to work all Labor Day, sat in the kitchen glowering over a tumbler of the hooch for which he paid the bootleggers most of his wages.

  “You’re up late,” she said, trying in spite of everything to be nice.

  “And you’re a goddam little hoor,” said he in his lousy brogue, the ugly, red-faced, heavy-eyebrowed, stupid Mick. Luckily her mother descended from Polish nobility, which was where Laverne got her own good looks, though her hair had begun to darken after she got her first monthlies at twelve and a half.

  When she began to swell, Laverne ran away to Indianapolis and worked at a lunchroom in a bus station, not returning to the sale of herself until after her miscarriage. Throughout the subsequent decade she moved from city to city alternating between jobs concerned with food and drink on the one hand and prostitution on the other. She changed her name from Hogan to Lorraine and was often a platinum blonde. She remained in love with the idea of Ken Canning though on reflection she had identified the weakness of the man himself, which was a lack of faith in his own principles. He had every right to jazz Irma Grunion, but pretending he had the clap was a moral failure.

  Every Saturday in the confessional booth, Laverne herself pretended to the priest that the worst of her sins were only “impure thoughts,” but, one, she was a woman; two, she never had a moment’s personal pleasure from the sexual employment of crotch, behind, mouth, or hand; and three, God saw everything you did anyway, so why go over it all again with the man on the other side of the grille, who being sexless by definition was immune to her God-given talents?

  Laverne had never met a man she couldn’t get up. But periodically she became bored with providing miracle cures for the impotence that remained a prevalent plague in the land, and went to serve foot-long hotdogs and fried fish, generally at roadside establishments where you got a changing clientele, and she always kept her faculties keen for the apprehension of another Ken Canning, whom she would never find in the practice of her other profession, he being a taker and not a buyer.

  In the spring of ’38 she became the third waitress hired by the first local example of the scheme imported from California: an asphalted area into which persons drove and parked and were served sandwiches on a tray that cunningly hooked over the window of their machine. This place was called a drive-in cafe, and what Laverne did was known as being a carhop. She wore an overseas cap in royal blue, a red monkey jacket with white piping over a high-necked white jersey blouse, a white pleated skirt to the midpoint of her thighs, and white calf-length boots of patent leather: like the getup of a drum majorette, cute but anywhere from five to ten years too young for her, as she who had no false vanity recognized. Her upper legs had got beefy while her calves had developed cords; her brassiere, with the weight it supported, left marks on her back that could still be seen on Sunday night after twenty-four hours out of harness, she no longer emerging into the world on the Lord’s day, not even to go to Mass, which omission she dutifully confessed on Saturday just before reporting for work and atoned for with the prescribed number of reverent salutations to the virgin mother of Christ, with whom she secretly felt a common cause that no priest, being male, could ever understand, Laverne having taken a thousand cocks and never been touched by any, while Mary had accepted none. With such a consideration, Laverne no longer even included “impure thoughts” in her roster of peccancies.

  Funny thing about a lot of fellows who came to drive-ins: they weren’t anywhere near as fresh as guys in indoor places, especially those where liquor was sold. Her typical customers were high-school punks, usually a pack of them in one car; married types with wife and offspring; and middle-aged round waltzers. All of these were big oglers, each in their own style: the punks with jeers and guffaws and stage groans; the hubbies, on the sly; the old bastards, thin-haired and pouchy-eyed, with the insecurity of those who expected to be despised.

  So when this spiffy-looking bird pulled in in the Buick on an unusually warm night in late March and swung into one of the slots she attended, Laverne at least noticed him as being different, though did not let this cut any ice as to her manner, which as always, whether serving food or taking a dick, was professionally warm and personally remote.

  “Hi, how you doing?” she said automatically, lifting her order pad and taking the pencil stub from the hair just under the overseas cap.

  “Real bad till now,” said he, giving her a onceover that was just right; quick, appreciative, and thoroughly confident. “I was afraid I might get one of them skinny little chicks,” pointing disdainfully at Millie, who was just going by with a tray of malteds, on her dreamy eighteen-year-old legs the slender thighs of which made Laverne feel like a brewery horse. “I’m gonna compliment the manager,” he said, “for hiring at least one real woman.” His hand was on the rim of the door; he raised his index finger. “I mean it. If he is off duty at present, I want his name and will send him my personal letter expressing same.”

  Laverne’s face, which until now had shown the usual synthetic smile, went blank with emotion. There was nothing of Ken Canning in the substance of this speech, nor in the man’s appearance, with his round, pink, boyish face and pompadour. But the uncompromising self-assurance overwhelmed her with nostalgia. He knew he was right—as did few men who consorted with her as either prostitute or waitress.

  “I’d be much obliged,” said he, “if you was to suggest the specialty of the house. I never been to one of these places before, and it is quite a novelty. I’m all for it, as I am in the automobile business myself, and you can look at it this way: we are scratching one another’s backs, you and me.” He produced a dazzling grin; he had been straightfaced until this moment. “A fascinating woman like yourself no doubt hears lots of lines, but this ain’t one, I assure you.” He got out an ostrich-skin wallet, with little gold corners, and took from it a piece of pasteboard. “Here’s my card.”

  Laverne squinted and held it at an angle. The light from the globe atop the nearby standard was more than adequate, but she felt a requirement to be ceremonious. She was also getting far-sighted with age.

  “‘Virgil Buddy Sandifer Quality Used Autos,’” she read aloud.

  “Not the biggest in the metropolitan region,” said Buddy, “but the best in the world.”

  “You are Virgil Buddy Sandifer?”

  “One and the same,” said Buddy, lowering his eyelids in mock modesty.

  “Pleased to meetcha.”

  “Likewise,” Buddy said. “Listen, I don’t wanna monopolize you like they say: you got a job to do, and I admire that. You’ll be giving me the bum’s rush if I don’t order soon. Make it a filly minion on toast; no fries or pickles or anything extra.” He stopped and gave her a piercing look. “I’m gonna level with you: I ain’t hungry.”

  “Gee,” Laverne said tragically, “all we got is the plain burger or the special with chopped lettuce, onion, relish, and tomato; the fish; hotdog with chili; and the American cheese, regular or grilled.”

  “I’m gonna level with you,” Buddy said. “I saw you from the road. I just ate a big chicken dinner. I couldn’t swallow another bite.” He raised his finger again, and turned on the ignition key with the other hand. This
produced a certain suspense. Suddenly he jabbed his foot at the starter, and the engine came to life. He revved it. “I’ll put it this way: I’m gonna pick you up when you get off. What time?”

  “Eleven,” said Laverne. “Make it ten past, ’cause we got to wash our hands and stuff.”

  “You get out of that cheerleader getup?”

  “Not till I get home.” She could see he was disappointed; he patronized roadhouses and cocktail lounges. “You mind stopping off?” she asked. “I ain’t married or nothing. I got my own little flat. I got some real nice clothes. You wouldn’t be embarrassed to be seen with me, I swear. I could go anyplace in the nice clothes I got.”

  Buddy raised his eyebrows as if in doubt, thrilling Laverne to her boots. He was the first man since Ken to make her feel both continuously useful and temporarily unworthy, that is, with something to aspire to: not daughter, whore, or waitress, all of them roles complete in themselves, dead ends, jobs for hire, really, in which you were paid to perform a function. She had served Ken for love alone, and he had given her nothing except the high sign with his thumb when he wanted her and a quick injection of semen.

  Buddy was of the same kidney. He did not ask, demand, or order: he took. He took her home after work, took her to the couch, took off the blue underpants that went with the carhop outfit, took out a Trojan and then his manhood, and took possession of her. Then he took his departure. He said very little during this series, and like Ken Canning he did not kiss her once.

  On Wednesday, her day off, in the late afternoon Laverne put on her best dress of Kelly-green satin, platform shoes, gold pendant earrings, gold bunch-of-grapes brooch, thin gold neck chain bearing a gold cross, a string of white beads half the size of Ping-Pong balls, three rings (zircon, hammered brass, silver-and-turquoise), and a white picture hat; and carrying a pair of white calf gloves, she appeared at the place of business called VIRGIL BUDDY SANDIFER QUALITY USED AUTOS.

  A dark, hairy hook-nosed man in a rumpled brown suit came out of an aisle between the cars, raised his heavy eyebrows, and said: “Yes, ma’am, can I show you something?”

  “Can I just look around?” Laverne asked in the beseeching voice she used with salesmen when she was their potential client but never when one of them was hers.

  “Our pleasure,” said this man, without so much as a glance at her tits or any other portion of her figure. There was not the slightest glint in his eye of guilt or even repugnance. He was either queer or neuter, in either case O.K. by Laverne, who liked fags who admitted it and even for a while in ’32 lived with one, which gave them both protective coloration. As to those who had no interest in sex, as opposed to romance, she herself was one of their company.

  She stared idly at the nearest machine. She didn’t know beans about cars and couldn’t drive one, though she had knelt, bent, or spreadeagled herself in every known make and several custom jobs including one with a dashboard of blue mirror. She hated leather seats, sticky under your bare can if beer had been spilled; also joke horns that played the first fucking four notes of “O Susanna.”

  The salesman went into the little concrete office, and almost immediately thereafter Buddy came out. A gust of wind threatened her picture hat, and the hand she raised to control it hid her face momentarily. With that, and the fine clothes, he showed no sign of recognition until he reached her.

  “Well, say,” said he, flushing with amazement and stepping back a pace and then walking around her. “Say, you look like a million dollars.”

  “On the hoof,” said she, bending one leg and raising a heel slightly like a model.

  “Hmm. You was right. You sure got swell clothes. You are dressed like Mrs. Astor’s pet pony.” He was impressed; he hadn’t smiled once.

  She said: “I figured you thought I never wore anything but the car-hop getup.”

  “Go on,” he said, and grinned a little now. “That’s bushwa, and you know it.”

  “Well,” she said, “that’s what I thought anyway.”

  “So you come over here to prove your point,” Buddy said. “I like that. That takes class, kid, and I like it a whole lot. I like you too. I liked you the other night, but I admit I never knew you was a fashion plate.”

  Laverne was overjoyed. Her basic mission accomplished, she intended to go off alone to the Idle Hour, the local movie house, where a Barbara Stanwyck picture was playing. She wasn’t after Buddy any more than she had been after Ken Canning. To a real man you just made yourself available, with the full understanding that at any given time he might well have more important claims to his attention or superior appeals to his taste. You did not lower yourself by entertaining expectations.

  “Well, so long then,” she said. “Maybe sometime when you haven’t eaten you might show up at the drive-in and get one of my slots again, and I’ll try to suggest something you would like. I asked Carl—he’s the boss—about filly minion that you mentioned the other night, and he said tell everybody the fish is filly of sole though I know it ain’t: it’s haddock, I think. Actually, everything they serve over there is garbage, if you wanna know. If you saw the kitchen you wouldn’t never eat a bite there. I don’t, that’s for sure. We get our food free, but I bring my own sandwiches from home.” She stopped. “I’m running off at the mouth.”

  “No, you ain’t,” said Buddy with vehemence. “I regard nothing more important than what a man eats. I want good food. I don’t care if it’s fancy, you know, but it’s got to be good.”

  “You can’t believe the signs they put up. You know, they all say ‘Good Food.’ Whereas I have seldom worked anywhere where that wasn’t a damn lie, if you pardon my French.” She smiled gently. “I’m like you about food.”

  Buddy was earnest. “Say, them sandwiches you make for yourself: what kind?”

  Laverne giggled; this was getting personal. “Sometimes just cold cuts or cheese or both, but sometimes I get ambitious, you know, like ground ham and I grind cheese into it, and also sweet and dill pickles both and olives with pimento, and I mix the mustard in it instead of smearing it on top, and then I put that on whole wheat toast, which I think is bette r when cold than when hot.”

  During this account Buddy had by degrees lost his look of self-possession. This sophisticated individual had a true boyish quality which she had never identified in Ken Canning.

  “That’s the kinda stuff my old lady used to make, real original, like she would make a sandwich that sounds crazy when you hear it but by Jesus it was something to taste. You might laugh at this, but she’d fry bananas and mash ’em all up with bacon and she made her own nutbread and would make a sandwich of two slices of that, toasted, and I tell you it was something you’d lay down and lick the floor for. Though I know it sounds crazy.”

  “It don’t to me,” said Laverne, then lied: “I can make nutbread.”

  “I haven’t tasted that in years. My old lady—I mean my mom, not the wife—died when I was a kid.”

  He had already, in a few brief moments, separated himself forever from Ken Canning, who had had no such vulnerability—except perhaps when lying about having the clap on that last night; if so, it was of another, a bleaker, kind.

  Laverne found herself wanting desperately to feed this man. “Look,” said she, “I don’t want to get out of line, you probably have to eat with your missus and all, but sometime if you might want one of them sandwiches your mama used to make, I could do it. I’d need to know in the morning if it’s a workday, so I could make the nutbread before I went on shift at four.”

  In fact she had never tried much cooking at all, let alone baking. She would buy a loaf of nutbread someplace; anybody could put bananas and bacon in a skillet.

  Buddy collected himself from his reverie. “I’ll take a rain-check on that.” He had his authority back again. “You call in sick to the drive-in tonight. We’ll go downtown to the Stardust Roof of the Maumee Hotel, or the Palm Terrace of the Chippewa. We don’t wanna waste them ritzy clothes of yours.”

  “It?
??s my night off, anyway,” said Laverne.

  “Tell you what you do,” Buddy said. “Walk on down the corner, and I’ll pick you up there in five minutes.”

  Laverne said: “I don’t want to get you in trouble.”

  Buddy was offended. “You won’t,” he said curtly. He turned away, but couldn’t let it go at that, and turned back. “You can’t. What I say goes. I do what I want, see. It’s just good taste like the fella says. That’s all.”

  “Sure,” Laverne said softly.

  They ended up at the Palm Terrace of the Chippewa, at Laverne’s suggestion. Already she had discovered how to influence Buddy without appearing to defy him. She pointed out that the Starlight Roof of the Maumee was neither really starlit nor a roof: it was on the second-to-top floor, and the stars were little light bulbs set in holes in the ceiling.

  “You been there, huh?” This seemed to crush him.

  She resuscitated him. “Cigarette-girl job was open last year, but I got there too late.” This was true. Laverne wasn’t much of a liar in important matters. What was unpleasant she rather concealed than misrepresented: for example, that she had been in rooms in both Maumee and Chippewa in the practice of her alternative profession.

  She had never however been to the Palm Terrace, where the greenery was as false as the celestial display of its competitor. Buddy did not mention this though. He beamed proudly back and forth from her to the palms made of tin or papier-mâché as they entered through a kind of bower of trelliswork intertwined with celluloid bougainvillaea. Laverne had an eye for the phony even when she didn’t want to.

  Buddy had, already prepared, a dollar bill rolled tight as a cigarette. He took this from his side pocket and poked it at the tuxedoed headwaiter, a pockmarked Dago who stared insolently at Laverne and not at him, thinking he had her number, and but for the need not to embarrass naïve, oblivious Buddy, she might well have sent the greaseball on a flying fuck at the moon.