One of the girls on the bed, Mona, looked over at him and smiled cutely. “Got a bug in your ear?”
“Let’s turn on the radio and dance or something,” Jack said to her. “Let’s do something.” He wanted to get it over with, like a job of work or a fight.
“It’s not even dark out,” Mona said. Primly, he thought. As if dancing in the daytime was square.
“Let’s go get some Chinese food and go to a nightclub,” Mona said. She threw her comic book fluttering across the room. “I already read the goddam thing.”
“I’m sick of Chinese food,” Denny said. He was standing in front of the mirror over the sink, inspecting his teeth.
“You hardly ever eat Chinese food,” Sue said. She was the brighter of the two, Jack thought; something about her eyes, a glint, something. He decided she had some sense. To Jack she said, “Every time we go to a Chinese restaurant he eats a hamburger or something. Honest to Christ.”
Denny said calmly, “Listen, I’ve puked more Chinese food than you ever ate.”
Mona laughed sharply. “I bet you have. You’re a real puker. Mister Puke, that’s you.”
“Stick your nose up my ass, and I’ll blow your brains out,” Denny said without turning his head.
Mona grinned at Jack. “He’s so salty. Do you have a suit?”
Jack admitted that he did. His clothes were in a quarter locker at the bus depot.
“Let’s get dressed up and go someplace really expensive,” Mona said. “All we ever do is go to crappy joints.”
“That sounds good,” Jack said. “I’ll get a room here in the hotel and take a shower and change.” He got up and swallowed off his whiskey. It was not hitting, but he did not expect it to, yet.
Sue leaned forward and whispered into Mona’s ear. Mona’s calm and serious eyes were on Jack as she listened to the secret message. She whispered back to Sue and said, “I’ll go with you.”
“We’ll see you guys in about an hour,” Denny said. He and Jack looked at each other. “Hey, baby; good to see you.” It was almost embarrassing. Denny really appeared happy about the whole thing. As if they had been old and dear friends, instead of poolhall buddies who happened to run into each other in another poolhall.
Jack and Mona left the hotel and went up Market toward the bus depot. The street was heavily crowded with people just getting off work, and with soldiers, sailors, Market Street bums, and shoppers. Mona walked beside Jack with her hand on his arm. He faintly disliked this gesture of too-sudden intimacy; he did not like people touching him. He was used to it; people always seemed to want to touch a boxer as he was entering or leaving the arena, especially leaving, if he had won, and it was a little disgusting, like the old woman who had gotten into his dressing room once in Phoenix and wanted to pay him five dollars to watch him take his shower.
“Look at all the goddam squares,” Mona said to him. In the twilight her face was harsh and pretty, her mouth slightly twisted in disgust. They were all alike. They were hip and anybody who worked for a living was square. Especially anybody over thirty. But then he felt a little that way himself, only not as hip and square; something else, something they didn’t have words for. He really did not understand people who worked for a living. But he did not really dislike them, only the ones who tried to push him around. And there weren’t very many of those.
When they got inside the bus depot, Mona said, “I wish to God I was going someplace. I hate bus depots. They always make me think I’m not going anyplace. I want to go to New York or LA or something. Don’t you?”
“I just came from LA,” Jack said.
“By bus?” Mona looked imperious, as if there was no question of going anywhere by bus. Jack left her standing by the entrance while he went for his suitcase and overnight bag. When he got back she was talking to two sailors.
“Let’s go,” he said to her.
“Don’t interrupt,” Mona said without looking at him. “I’m talking.” One of the sailors eyed Jack nervously. They were both young and smooth-cheeked, with the slack mouths of punks. One of them was trying to grow a mustache, and he had his hand resting on Mona’s arm. He looked at Jack, and let his arm drop to his side. Jack turned away and went out the door and walked back to the hotel alone.
He got a room only a few doors from Denny’s, unpacked his clothes, squared the room away, undressed, and went in to take a shower. He let the hot water run hard on the back of his neck; lately the muscles there had been cording up tight, and he had discovered that hot water loosened them as well as or better than whiskey. Before every fight he had spent almost an hour in the shower, letting the water run over him, and nipping at a pint. He had always been about half-loaded when he went into the ring. The whiskey calmed him down, and he could be more mechanical. Castelli had told him he had two great problems as a fighter: his skin broke too easily—bled too much, and he had a tendency to slip from boxing to street fighting if he seemed to think he was losing. He could control the last with whiskey, but the first had spoiled what might have been a solid career as a boxer. It got around that he cut easily, and so his opponents would go for his face and make him bleed, and he lost his last seven fights through TKOs, boxing the final rounds with a film of blood over his eyes and the salty taste of it in his mouth. This is what made him get wild, and he was an easy mark for any half-bright fighter. Prado Vasquez, a kid he liked and drank with, almost killed him the fight before his last one, when there was so much blood in his eyes that he stopped moving for a second and tried to wipe his eyes and Prado (Jack could see the tight little Oriental face) got him setting solid, a short blow to the point of the jaw, and for the first time in his career Jack went out, and came to in the dressing room. For a couple of days after that he felt as if his heart had come loose, and after one more loser Castelli cut him loose.
But that was all right. He was getting tired of it. Everyone was being entertained but him.
While he was drying himself there was a tapping on the door.
“Who is it?” he said.
“Who did you expect?”
He opened the door and let her in. His nakedness caught her by surprise, and for a few moments she was disconcerted into silence, walking rapidly across the room and looking out the window into the light shaft. He continued to rub himself off.
“Well, really,” she said at last. “Aren’t you proud of yourself.”
“You can leave if you want,” Jack said. “But I don’t think you want to.”
“You know everything, don’t you.”
He laughed at her. “Are you going to take a shower?”
She actually looked embarrassed. “I guess so,” she said.
But Jack didn’t want to be mean. “Listen, you girls can use my room to clean up in and change, and I’ll wait with Denny. Are they through in there?”
She closed an eye and squinted at him, as he put on his underwear. “How come you walked off on me? I was just talking to a boy I used to know. You have a good build, do you know that?” She made a face. “Sure you know it.”
“You go get your things while I finish dressing,” he said.
As she was passing him she stopped and then came close to him, reaching to touch the muscles of his upper arm. Jack noticed that she had orange lacquer on her fingernails, and that one of the nails was cracked. He could smell her perfume and it made him suddenly dizzy with expectation; there was a shout in him to throw her to the floor, but he stilled it; he knew that they would certainly make love and there was no reason to be brutal; it would be better—more delicious—to move into it slowly. He waited, his eyes on the small curve of her breasts.
“What a body,” she said, almost to herself. She held her mouth up to be kissed, and Jack kissed her softly and cupped her buttocks in his hands and pulled her toward him.
“Turn off the lights,” she said. “Pull down the shades, too. It’s not dark enough in here. Don’t look. Unhook this for me, will you? Wait a minute. Okay.” She got on the bed with him,
her thin, innocent body visible in the half-light, and they made love, Jack hungrily, Mona nervously, and when it was all over she pushed him away and turned facedown on the bed, her arms rigid at her sides. Jack got up and went into the bathroom, and then came out to get dressed. She was still in the same position.
“What’s the matter?” he asked her. He was used to variations of this reaction, and it irritated him. She was trying to make him pay for his fun by being distant, guilty, and then, inevitably, bitchy.
“Nothing,” she said. “Go away. I want to get dressed.”
“Why don’t I send that other girl over with your stuff from Denny’s room?”
“You do that little thing.” Her voice was muffled by the pillow, but it still crackled with dry bitterness.
“Are you pissed off? What’s the matter, didn’t you make it?”
“Shut up.”
“I’ll send what’s-her-name, Sue, down here with your stuff,” he said.
She sat up and looked at him. “Pay me ten dollars.”
Jack laughed. “What for?”
“You know.”
“Are you trying to turn yourself out? Are you kidding?”
“Pay me ten dollars,” she said stubbornly.
“The first rule is, get the money first.” He went out and down to Denny’s room. If the girl wanted to be a hustler, he thought, she was shit out of luck. A hustler has the larceny; she always thinks of the money first. He knocked on the door impatiently; he wanted a drink of whiskey.
Eight
The girls did not know what Denny did for a living, but it did not matter, as long as he had plenty of money and didn’t mind spending it. By little things he said, by his attitude of pretended boredom and suavity in front of the girls, Jack knew that Denny was having a high old time, that this life of girls, clubs, comic books, and whiskey was all Denny wanted out of life, and that the mystery of where and how he got his money enhanced his own sense of importance. This was not like the Denny Jack remembered from Portland; the old Denny had not done any faking at all. This was one of the things that time had done to him. This, and the thickening, and the wariness around his eyes. And there were hints that sometimes Denny got too drunk, blacked out, and went wild.
But nothing happened that night; actually, they had a pretty good time. They went to an Italian restaurant on the edges of the Tenderloin where the headwaiter wore a shiny tuxedo and called the girls “Madam” and showed them to a formica-topped table and pulled the table out so they could get into the leatherette booth, and their waiter wore a white jacket and music was piped in and a bottle of wine placed on their table. Mona put an ashtray into her purse before they left. After dinner they went to a nightclub on Jones Street that featured strippers and a pair of comedians and the girls drank whiskey sours and Denny and Jack straight whiskey, and during one of the strippers’ acts, the drumbeats sharp and explosive, the light on the stage brilliant purple, Mona leaned over close to Jack and pressed her fingers into his thigh and said, “Do you think I could make it as a dancer? I mean, as an exotic dancer?”
“You have a great little body,” Jack said to her, and he meant it, still feeling her body in remembrance, looking forward to the time when they would be back in his room alone; watching the stripper with erotic detachment, and glancing over at Mona to see her watching, too, a look of wolfish hunger in her eyes, made fantastic by the purple reflection.
But when they got outside in the sharp air the first thing Mona said was, “What a crummy hole. Jesus.”
“I wonder how those old hags keep their jobs,” Sue said.
“Call them old?” Denny laughed. “I seen a couple strippers in Seattle a while back that make these chicks look like high-school kids. Man, one of them old bags must of been fifty, her old boobies flopping around; I swear, I wondered why her false teeth didn’t pop right out of her mouth, the way she was jumping around up there.”
“That’s why they use those colored lights,” Sue said. She and Denny were arm in arm in arm in front of Jack and Mona. “That way you can’t see the wrinkles.”
“No, that’s not right,” Denny said. “The colored lights are part of the act. They’re sexy, that’s why they use them.”
“I don’t see anything sexy about colored lights. I bet a strip act would be twice as sexy in bright lights.”
“Naw, you just don’t understand,” Denny said. “It’s more mysterious with the colored lights.” He turned and walked backward, and asked Jack, “You been to Mexico; you ever see one of them shows down there?”
“A couple,” Jack said.
“Strip shows?” Mona asked.
Denny and Jack both laughed. “A lot like that,” Jack said. “Only, kind of vulgar.”
“What’s the big mystery?” Sue wanted to know.
“No mystery,” Jack said. “No mystery at all.”
“Stag shows,” Denny explained. “Chicks stickin bottles in themselves and screwin donkeys, and that kind of crap.”
“Good God,” Sue said. “Those Mexicans, they’ll do anything. How filthy!”
“Well, the time I was in Tijuana the chick who took on the donkey was an American. Redhead. About forty. Some guy told me she used to be in the movies.”
“Guess what kind of movies,” Jack said.
“No, really. She was supposed to have been in Hollywood movies. A starlet or something. She was about forty when I saw her. Me and Tommy had a good thing going down there and we was out of our minds all day every day. That’s a funny town. Did you ever see a bullfight?”
Jack said he had not.
“They stink,” Denny said.
They went to Denny’s room. He got out his whiskey bottle and the glasses, and they each had a drink. Sue was already drunk, and she gagged a little on hers, frowned, and then drank some more.
Denny winked at Jack. “This one really puts it away.”
“Lissen,” Sue said. She winced. “I could do a goddam better striptease right here and now than them goddam old bitches any day. You want to see?”
She began wriggling and snapping her fingers.
“Turn on the radio,” Denny said.
“Oh, really, Sue,” Mona sniffed with disgust. She went over and snapped on the radio, and in a few seconds, while everyone stood still and waited, rock and roll music began to play. Sue got into the beat, and jumped up on the bed, her face a counterfeit of abandon, and began rocking back and forth on the springs. Trying to keep the rhythm she reached behind to unsnap her dress.
“Christ,” she said, “I can’t do it.” She sat down, cross-legged. “Goddam it.” A commercial played on the radio, and Jack went over and switched to another station. But Sue did not get up and try again.
“They got trick dresses,” Denny said.
“Do you want to dance?” Mona asked Jack. “It’s dark now, if I turn out the lights.”
As they danced, Jack wondered what twists of personality would make a person ashamed to make love in the light, and yet not mind having another couple in the room, as long as it was dark. It seemed so dishonest. But as they danced he kept drinking from his glass and rubbing against her body, and after a while nothing much mattered; he was blurring into a good peaceful sexual drunk.
The rest of the night got more confusing as he got drunker, and he liked that, he wanted to hold on to it; as the liquor pulled him away from himself Mona’s body touching his pulled him back in, and he was in a state of increasing amniotic suspension. There were vague things that happened; someone predictably threw up in the bathroom; somebody fell over the corner of the bed; later on, one or both of the girls started crying about something, and eventually Jack mumbled that it was time to go back to his room and took the small moist hand in his and muttered good night to the radio and opened the door into the overbright, eerie, empty hallway and staggered down to his room, fumbled for his key, got the door open and the DO NOT DISTURB sign in place on the outside knob, and pulled her into the room without turning on the light and starte
d kissing and pulling her clothes off and then his, and getting her on the bed, his wet mouth all over her body; dizzy, befuddled, really too tired to make love, but, having intended all evening to make love, bullishly going through with it, deep in his mind the blurry conviction that he would swallow her, licking her body, sinking his teeth into the mound of hair, focusing on nothing but the pure gratification of his urge to investigate her with his tongue and fingers while she thrashed beneath him; finally exhausted by sleepiness lying back and feeling distantly, rosily, the way she mounted him at last and brought him with a snapping vigor back to one long second of daylight before he passed out.
He did not realize until the real light, gray, of morning, that he had slept with Sue instead of Mona, but did not care even then. He was hung over and feeling burnt inside; still erotic, only this time awake, and in the light. He began kissing Sue’s breasts and belly until she moaned and put her arms around him and spread her legs for him, her eyes shut, his cracked open, looking down, watching himself enter her, seeing her hips move sleepily, feeling her tighten just at the moment he was ready to come himself, letting go, feeling her body pull it into herself in bucking spasms; and then, with his mind empty, falling asleep still in her for another long doze of contentment.