She listened to the murmur of voices through the door. Juan was feeding them. He wouldn't have done it if he hadn't been interested. Juan would say the hell with it and go on out to work on the bus. A restless fear arose in Alice. She had mistreated Norma. That was easy. With Norma's kind you showed weakness, and Norma would melt and run down over herself. Take a girl like that, why, she had so little love that even a stink of it on a wind would knock her ass over teacup. Alice was contemptuous of this starvation for love. She could not tie her own up with Norma's. Alice was big in herself and everyone else was very little, everyone, that is, except Juan. But, then, he was an extension of herself. She thought it might be just as well to put Norma on her feet before anything else. She needed Norma to run the lunchroom, because Alice intended to get drunk just as soon as Juan went away in the bus. She would tell him when he came back that she had a toothache that was killing her.
She didn't do it very often, but she looked forward to it now. And if she was going to do it, she'd better begin covering her tracks. Juan didn't like drunk women. She uncrossed her arms from over her face. Her eyes were sunken from the pressure and it took a moment to get them to track. She saw how the sun was flooding sweetly over the green plain behind the bedroom, and how it flowed over the rising hills far to the west. A sweet day.
She struggled her body upright and went to the bathroom. There she dampened one end of a bath towel in cold water and patted it against her face to take out the creases where her arms had pressed down against her plump cheeks. She rubbed the end of the towel around her face and over her nose and along the edge of her hairline. A brassiere strap was broken. She slipped open her dress and found that the little safety pin that held it was still there, so she pinned the strap to the brassiere again. It was a little tight but she'd sew it after Juan had gone. She wouldn't, of course. When enough of the strap was broken she'd buy a new brassiere.
Alice brushed her hair and put on lipstick. Her eyes were still red. She put some eyedrops in the corners with a medicine dropper and rubbed the lids against her eyeballs with her fingers. For a moment she inspected herself in the medicine-chest mirror and then went out. She slipped off her wrinkled dress and put on a clean print.
Quickly she crossed the bedroom to Norma's door and knocked softly. There was no answer. She knocked again. From inside the room came a rustling of paper. Norma came to the door and opened it. Her eyes were glazed, and she seemed to have been just awakened. In her hand she held the stub pencil she had used for the eyebrows earlier.
When she saw Alice a look of alarm came upon her face. "I didn't do nothing wrong with that fellow," she said quickly.
Alice stepped into the room. She knew how to handle the Normas when she had her wits. "I know you didn't, honey," Alice said. She cast down her eyes as though she were ashamed. She knew how to handle girls.
"Well, you shouldn't of said it. Suppose somebody heard it and believed it? I'm not that kind. I'm just trying to make my living and no trouble." Her eyes suddenly swam in tears of self-pity.
Alice said, "I shouldn't of done it but I just felt so bad. It's my time of the month. You know yourself how miserable you feel. Sometimes you go kind of crazy."
Norma inspected her with interest. This was the first time she'd ever found softness in Alice. This was the first time that Alice had ever needed to enlist Norma. She didn't like women and girls. There was a streak of cruelty in Alice toward other women, and when she saw Norma's eyes brim with tears of sympathy she felt triumphant.
"You know how it is," Alice said. "You just get a little crazy."
"I know," said Norma. Soft tentacles of warmth stretched out from her. She ached for love, for association, for some human being in the world to be friendly with. "I know," she said again, and she felt older and stronger than Alice and a little protective too, which was what Alice wanted.
Alice had seen the pencil in her hand. "Maybe you had better come out now and help. Mr. Chicoy's doing it all alone."
"I will in just a moment," said Norma.
Alice closed the door and listened. There was a pause, a slipping sound, and then the sharp sound of the bureau drawer closing. Alice pushed back her hair with her hand and walked softly toward the door into the lunchroom. She felt fine. She had gathered a great deal of information about Norma. She knew how Norma felt about things. She knew where Norma had put the letter.
Alice had tried to get into Norma's suitcase before but it was always locked, and while she could have taken it apart with her fingers--it was only cardboard--the marks would have showed tampering. She would wait. Sooner or later, if she was careful, Norma would neglect to lock her suitcase. Alice was clever, but she didn't know that Norma was clever too. Norma had worked for Alices before. When Alice went through Norma's dresser drawers and looked at her things and read the letters from her sister, she didn't notice the paper match carelessly lying on the drawer's edge. Norma always put it there, and when it was displaced she knew someone had been going through her things. She knew it couldn't be Juan or Pimples, so it must be Alice.
Norma was not likely to leave her suitcase unlocked. For all her dreams Norma was not stupid. In a toothpaste box in her locked suitcase there was twenty-seven dollars. When she had fifty dollars Norma would go to Hollywood and get a job in a restaurant and wait her chance. The fifty dollars would rent her a room for two months. Food she would get where she worked. Her high, long-legged dreams were one thing, but she could take care of herself too. Norma was no fool. True, she didn't understand Alice's hatred of all women. She didn't know that this apology was a trick. But she would probably find it out in time to save herself. And while Norma believed that only the best and most noble thoughts and impulses resided in Clark Gable, she had a knowledge of and a lack of respect for the impulses of the people she met and came in contact with in everyday life.
When Pimples came scratching softly at her window at night she knew how to take care of that. She locked her window. He wouldn't dare make too much noise trying to get in for fear Juan in the next room would hear him. Norma was nobody's fool.
Now Alice stood in front of the door between the bedroom and the lunchroom. She ran her finger down either side of her nose and then she opened the door and went behind the counter as though nothing at all had happened.
CHAPTER 7
The big and beautiful Greyhound bus was pulled in under the loading shed at San Ysidro. Helpers put gasoline into the tank and checked the oil and the tires automatically. The whole system worked smoothly. A colored man cleaned between the seats, brushing the cushions and picking up gum wrappers and matches and cigarette butts from the floor. He ran his fingers behind the last seat, which stretched across the rear. Sometimes he found coins or pocketknives behind this seat. Loose money he kept, but most other articles he turned in to the office. People made an awful stink about things they left, but not about small change. Sometimes the swamper managed as much as a couple of dollars behind that seat. Today he had dug out two dimes, a fifty-cent piece, and a hip-pocket wallet with a draft card, driver's license, and a Lions Club1 membership card.
He glanced inside the bill section. Two fifty-dollar bills and a certified check for five-hundred dollars. He put the wallet in his shirt pocket and brushed the seat with his whisk broom. He breathed a little hard. The money was easy. He could take it out and leave the wallet behind the seat for some other swamper to find down the line. The check would be left too. There was too much danger in checks. But those two sweet fifties--those sweet, sweet fifties! His throat was tight and would be until he got those sweet fifties out and the wallet behind the seat.
But he couldn't get to them because the punk kid was washing the outside of the windows where they were splashed with dirty mist from the highway. The swamper had to wait. If they caught him they'd put him away.
There was a little rip in the cuff of his blue serge trousers. He figured he would slip those two sweet fifties in there, inside the cuff, before he got off the bus. Then h
e'd get sick before he went off the job. He'd be sick, all right. Like enough he wouldn't be back for a week. If he got sick on the job and still stayed out the day till quitting time, they wouldn't figure anything if he didn't show up for a few days and it would save his job. He heard a step on the bus and stiffened a little. Louie, the driver, looked in.
"Hi, George," he said. "Say, did you find a wallet? Guy says he lost it."
George mumbled.
"Well, I'll come back and look," said Louie.
George swung around, still on his knees. "I found it," he said. "I was going to turn it in as soon as I finished."
"Yeah?" said Louie. He took the wallet from George's hand and opened it. The punk kid looked in through the window. Louie smiled sorrowfully at George and flicked his eyes toward the punk.
"Too bad, George," Louie said. "I guess they've got 'em stacked against us. Two fifties the guy said and two fifties it is." He pulled out the bills and the check so the punk looking through the window could see them. "Better luck next time, George," Louie said.
"Suppose the guy pays a reward," said George.
"You'll get half," said Louie. "If it's under a buck, you'll get it all."
Louie moved out of the bus and into the waiting room. He handed the wallet in at the desk.
"George found it. He was just bringing it in," said Louie. "That's a good nigger."
Louie knew the wallet's owner was right beside him so he said to the cashier, "If it was me that lost this, I'd give George a nice little present. Nothing don't turn a guy bad like no appreciation. I remember a guy found a grand and he turned it in and he didn't even get a thank-you. The next thing you know he robbed a bank and killed a coupla guards." Louie lied easily and without strain.
"How many going south?" Louie asked.
"You're full up," said the clerk. "You got one for Rebel Corners, and don't forget the pies like you did last week. I never had so much trouble with fifty pies in my life. Here's your wallet, sir. Will you inspect it to see if it's all right?"
The owner paid a five-dollar reward. Louie figured to give George a buck sometime. He knew George wouldn't believe him, but what the hell. It was a stinker's game and a muddy track. Everybody had to take his chance. Louie was big, a little on the stout side, but a dresser. His party friends called him "meat-face." He had a fast line and was smart and liked to be known as a horse player. He called race horses dogs and spoke of all situations as parlays. He would have liked to be Bob Hope or, better, Bing Crosby.2
Louie saw George looking in from the loading platform doors. An impulse of generosity seized him. He walked over and gave George a dollar bill. "Cheap son of a bitch!" he said. "Here, you take the buck. Over five-hundred dollars he gets back and he puts out a buck!"
George looked into Louie's face, just one quick, brown flash of the eyes. He knew it was a lie and he knew there wasn't anything he could do about it. If Louie was mad at him he could make it tough. And George had wanted that drunk. He had almost felt the liquor take hold of him. If only that punk kid had kept his big nose out of it.
"Thanks," said George.
The kid went by with his bucket and sponge. George said, "You call those windows clean?" And Louie made it up to George. He said to the kid, "You want to get any place, you better get on the ball. Those windows stink. Do them again."
"I ain't taking orders from you. I'll wait till I get some kind of complaints from the super."
Louie and George exchanged glances. It was just a punk. In less than a week he'd be out on his ass if Louie thought of it.
The big Greyhounds came in and out of the covered loading shed heavy and high as houses. The drivers slipped them smoothly and beautifully into place. The station smelled of oil and diesel exhaust fumes and candy bars and a powerful floor cleaner that got in the nose.
Louie went back toward the front. His eyes had caught a girl coming in from the street. She was carrying a suitcase. All in one flash Louie caught her. A dish! A dish like that he wanted to ride in a seat just behind his own raised driver's chair. He could watch her in the rear-view mirror and find out about her. Maybe she lived somewhere on his route. Louie had plenty of adventures that started like this.
The light from the street was behind the girl so he couldn't see her face, but he knew she was a looker. And he didn't know how he knew it. There might have been fifty girls come in with a light behind them. But how did he know this one was a looker? He could see a nice figure and pretty legs. But in some subtle way this girl smelled of sex.
He saw that she had carried her suitcase over to the ticket window so he did not go directly toward her. He went into the washroom. And there he stood at the wash basin and dipped his hands in water and ran them through his hair. From his side pocket he took a little comb and combed his hair back smoothly and patted it behind where the suggestion of a duck tail stood out. And he combed his mustache, not that it needed combing for it was very short. He settled his gray corduroy jacket, tightened the belt, and pulled his stomach in a little bit.
He put the comb back in his pocket and inspected himself again in the mirror. He ran his hand over the sides of his hair. He felt behind to see that no strands were out and that the duck tail was lying down. He straightened his regulation black ready-made bow tie and he took a few grains of sen-sen out of his inner shirt pocket and threw them in his mouth. And then he seemed to shake himself down in his coat.
Just as his right hand went to the brass knob of the washroom door, Louie's left hand flipped fingers up and down his fly to be sure he was buttoned up. He put on his face a little crooked smile, half worldliness and half naivete, an expression that had been successful with him. Louie had read someplace that if you looked directly into a girl's eyes and smiled it had an effect. You must look at her as though she were not only the most beautiful thing in the world, but you must keep looking into her eyes until she looked away. There was another trick too. If it bothered you to look into people's eyes, you should look at a point on the bridge of the nose right between the eyes. To the person looked at it appeared that you were looking into the eyes, only you weren't. Louie had found this a very successful approach.
Nearly all his waking hours Louie thought about girls. He liked to outrage them. He liked to have them fall in love with him and then walk away. He called them pigs. "I'll get a pig," he would say, "and you get a pig, and we'll go out on the town."
He stepped through the door of the washroom with a kind of lordliness, and then had to back up because two men came down between the benches carrying a long crate with slats to let air in. The side of the crate said in large white letters MOTHER MAHONEY'S HOME-BAKED PIES. The two men went in front of Louie and through to the loading platform.
The girl was sitting on a bench now, her suitcase beside her on the floor. As he moved across the room Louie took a quick look at her legs and then caught her eyes and held them as he walked. He smiled his crooked smile and moved toward her. She looked back at him, unsmiling, and then moved her eyes away.
Louie was disappointed. She hadn't been embarrassed as she should have been. She had simply lost interest in him. And she was a looker too--fine well-filled legs with rounded thighs and no stomach whatever and large breasts which she made the most of. She was a blonde and her hair was coarse and a little broken at the ends from a too-hot iron, but well-brushed hair that had good lights in it and a long, curling bob that Louie liked. Her eyes were made up with blue eyeshadow and some cold cream on the eyelids and plenty of mascara on the lashes. No rouge, but a splash of lipstick that was put on to make her mouth look square, like some of the picture stars. She wore a suit, a tight skirt and a jacket with a round collar. Her shoes were tan saddle-leather with white stitching. Not only a looker but a dresser. And the stuff looked good.
Louie studied her face as he walked. He had a feeling that he had seen her someplace before. But then, she might look like someone he knew, or he might have seen her in a movie. That had happened. Her eyes were wide set, almost
abnormally wide-set, and they were blue with little brown specks in them and with strongly marked dark lines from the pupil to the outer edge of the iris. Her eyebrows were plucked and penciled in a high arch so that she looked a little surprised. Louie noticed that her gloved hands were not restless. She was not impatient nor nervous, and this bothered him. He was afraid of self-possession, and he did feel that he had seen her somewhere. Her knees were well-covered with flesh, not bony, and she kept her skirt down without pulling at it.
As he strolled by Louie punished her for looking away from his eyes by staring at her legs. This usually had the effect of making a girl pull down her skirt, even if it was not too high, but it hadn't any effect on this girl. Her failure to react to his art made him uneasy. Probably a hustler, he said to himself. Probably a two-dollar hustler. And then he laughed at himself. Not two dollars with that stuff she's wearing.
Louie went on to the ticket window and smiled his sardonic smile at Edgar, the ticket clerk. Edgar admired Louie. He wished he could be like him.
"Where's the pig going?" Louie asked.
"Pig?">
"Yeah. The broad. The blonde."
"Oh, yes." Edgar exchanged a secret man-look with Louie. "South," he said.
"In my wagon?"
"Yeah."
Louie tapped the counter with his fingers. He had let the little fingernail on his left hand grow very long. It was curved, like half a tube, and sanded to a shallow point. Louie didn't know why he did this, but he was gratified to notice that some of the other bus drivers were letting their little fingernails grow too. Louie was setting a style and he felt good about it. There was that cab driver who had tied a raccoon's tail on his radiator cap and right overnight everybody had to have a piece of fur flapping in the breeze. Furriers made artificial fox tails, and high-school kids wouldn't be seen in a car without a tail whipping around. And that cab driver could sit back and have the satisfaction of knowing he had started the whole thing. Louie had been letting his little fingernail grow for five months and already he'd seen five or six other people doing it. It might sweep the country, and Louie would have started the whole thing.