Hot Spot

  Why not? “Sure,” I said. “Thanks.”

  There were no street lights, but the moon was waxing, and higher now, and I could see the dark shadow of vines growing along the fence and over the porch. The air was heavy and sweet with something I hadn’t smelled for a long time, and after the second breath I knew it was honeysuckle. To make it perfect, I thought, the gate should drag a little and need to be listed to open it. It did.

  All the lights were off and they were sitting on the porch steps. When they saw there was somebody with her, they reached inside the front door and turned on the porch light. The sister was a slightly older version of Gloria, a little heavier, maybe, and having grey eyes instead of the startling violet. They were friendly, but a little embarrassed, like people who didn’t get around very much. Gloria introduced me. His name was Robinson, and he was a slightly built man around my age with thinning yellow hair and rimless glasses.

  “Mr. Madox is the new salesman at the lot,” Gloria said.

  “And apprentice baby-sitter,” I added, clowning a little to break the ice. We shook hands.

  “Well, you don’t look as if they could overpower you,” he said, and grinned.

  As they went out the gate Mrs. Robinson called back, “Make Mr. Madox some lemonade, Gloria.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “We just had a soda.”

  I didn’t notice the child until they had gone. She was maybe two or four years old or something like that, curled up in a long nightgown in the porch swing, a golden-haired girl with big saucer eyes. The whole place, I thought, is as blonde as an old-country smörgäsbord.

  “This is Gloria Two,” she said. “And this gentleman is Mr. Madox, honey-lamb.”

  I never know what to say to kids. That itchy-kitchy-coo stuff makes me as sick as it probably makes them, so I just said, “How do you do?” Surprisingly, she stared back at me as gravely as her aunt and said, “How do you do?”

  Then I thought of the funny name. “Gloria Two?” I asked.

  Gloria Harper smiled. “They named her after me. And then when I came to live here it was a little confusing. Mostly we just call her ‘Honey.’”

  “Isn’t that confusing too?” I asked.

  She stopped smiling. “Why?”

  “Doesn’t anybody call you that?”

  “No.”

  “They should. It’s the colour of your hair.”

  She shook her head. “It’s just sunburned.”

  She took Gloria Two inside to put her to bed. When she came back I was admiring the watercolours on the walls in the living room. I recognized one of them as being the wooden bridge over the river, the one we’d crossed going out to the oil well.

  “They’re good,” I said. “Did you do them?”

  She nodded. “I don’t have much talent, but it’s fun.”

  “I like them.”

  “Thank you,” she said.

  We went out and sat down on the porch with our feet on the steps. A cocker spaniel came around the corner, looked me over, and jumped into the porch swing. I handed Gloria a cigarette and we smoked, not saying much. The honeysuckle vines looked like patent leather in the moonlight and the night was heavy with their perfume.

  “It’s pretty, isn’t it?” she asked quietly. “Sometimes when it’s quiet like this you can hear the whip-poor-wills.”

  We listened for them and it was very still now, but we didn’t hear any.

  “Well,” she said. “They’re kind of sad anyway.”

  “They’re an echo or something. I think the ones you hear have been dead for a thousand years or so.”

  She turned her head and looked at me. “Yes. I never thought of it before, but that’s the way they are.”

  Her eyes were large, and they looked black here in the shadows. “You’re very pretty,” I said.

  “Thank you. But it’s just the moonlight.”

  “No,” I said. “I wasn’t talking about the lighting.”

  She didn’t say anything. I snapped the cigarette and it sailed across the fence. “Look,” I said. “What’s with Sutton?”

  You could see her tighten up. She was there, and then she was going away. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Well, I guess it isn’t any of my business.”

  “Please—” Her voice was strung out tight and she was unhappy and scared of something. “It’s— You’re just imagining things, Mr. Madox.”

  I started to say something, but just then a car pulled up in front of the gate and stopped. A boy in white slacks got out and came up the walk. He was about twenty-one and his name was Eddie Something and he was home from school for the summer. The three of us sat on the steps and talked for a while, about how hot it was and about school and about how many of them were going right into the Army.

  “What outfit were you in, Mr. Madox?” Eddie Something asked.

  “Navy. I got out on a medical and went into the merchant marines.” I thought of the “Mr. Madox” and the fact that we were talking about two armies ten years apart. What was I doing here, talking to these kids? Getting off the steps, I flipped the cigarette away and said, “Well, I’ll see you around.”

  “You don’t have to go, do you?” Gloria asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. I went out and got in the car and rammed it towards the highway, full of a black restlessness and angry at everything. Driving around didn’t do any good. I drove out to the river and went swimming, and when I came back to town it was still only ten o’clock. The rooming house was thunderously silent. Even the old couple in the next room had gone somewhere. I mopped the sweat off my face and tried to sit still on the bed.

  Well? she said. She sat on the chair with her legs stretched out and the toes of the wedgies touching and stared at me, sulky-eyed, over ripe, and spoiling, and said, Well?

  Well?

  Everything was distorted perhaps because of the moonlight. Shadows were swollen and dead black and nothing looked the same as it did in the day. The filling station was a hot oasis of light, but I was behind it, walking fast along the alley. Beyond it I crossed the road and went into the trees. I pushed through the oleander hedge and stood for a moment in its shadow, looking at the house and the lawn. The only car in the drive was the Buick coupé, right where I’d left it, and all the windows in the house were dark. I went up the porch.

  The screen door was unlatched.

  A little light came in through the venetian blinds in the living room. There was no one in it. I located the stairs and went up. The short hallway at the top had two doors in it and a window at the end. One of the doors was open.

  She was lying on the bed next to a window looking out over the back yard. From the waist up she was in deep shadow, but moonlight slanted in across the bottom of the bed and I could see the gleam of that tiny chain around her ankle.

  “Harry,” she said, her voice a little thick with the whisky. “You found the way, didn’t you?”

  What’s so wonderful about it? I thought. Dogs do.

  5

  “HARRY?”

  “What?”

  “You want another drink?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’ve had enough. I’ve got a headache.”

  “It couldn’t be the whisky. It’s straight Bourbon. It wouldn’t give you a headache.”

  Nothing but the best, I thought. “All right. It’s not the whisky.”

  “I like you,” she said. “You don’t drink much, but you’re all right. Harry, you know what?”

  “What?”

  “You’re all right.”

  “You said that.”

  “Well, Godsakes, I’ll say it again if I want to. You’re all right. You’re sweet. You’re a big ugly bastard with a face that’d stop a clock, but you’re sweet. You know what I mean?”

  “No.” I lighted a cigarette and lay on my back staring up at the ceiling. It must be nearly midnight. My head throbbed painfully and very slowly, like a big flywheel turning over, and the taste
of whisky was sour in my mouth. She must bathe in cologne, I thought; the room was drenched with it.

  “Harry?”

  “What is it?”

  “You don’t think I’m fat, do you?”

  “Of course not.”

  “You wouldn’t kid ’ninnocent young girl, would you?”

  “No.” I turned and looked at her. Moonlight from the window had moved up the bed and now it fell diagonally across her from the waist up to the big spread-out breast which rocked a little as she shook the ice in her glass. I thought of a full and slightly bruised peach beginning to spoil a little. She was somewhere between luscious and full-bloom and in another year or so of getting all her exercise lying down and lifting the bottle she’d probably be blowzy.

  “Well?” she said sarcastically. “Maybe I ought to turn on the light.”

  “You asked me a question. Did you want it answered or didn’t you?”

  She giggled. “Oh, don’t be so touchy. I was just kidding you. I don’t mind. Pour me another drink.”

  She didn’t need any more, but I reached down beside the bed for the bottle. Anything to get her to shut up, I thought. The bottle was empty.

  “There’s not any more,” I said.

  “The hell there’s not. What became of it?”

  “Maybe it leaks,” I said wearily.

  “Nuts. We got to have a drink.” She sat up in bed and climbed out unsteadily, whisky-and-cologne smelling and sexy, bosom aswing, and humming “You’d Be So Easy To Love,” under her breath. “I got some more hid in the kitchen. Have to keep it hid from him because he don’t drink and won’t let me, when he’s home. Him and his lousy ulcers.”

  I heard her bump into something in the living room and swear. She had a bos’n’s vocabulary. My head felt worse and I wondered why I didn’t get out of there. She was already on the edge of being sloppy drunk, kittenish one minute and belligerent the next. God knows I’ve always had some sort of affinity for gamey babes, but she was beginning to be a little rough even for me. She had a lot of talent, but it was highly specialized and when you began to get up to date in that field you were wasting your time just hanging around for the conversation. You could do without it.

  In a few minutes she came back carrying what looked like a tray of ice cubes and another bottle of whisky. She set the ice cubes on the dresser and I could see her fumbling around on the top of it for something.

  “Harry, we’re going to have a drink,” she said thickly. “Good old Harry … Harry is a girl’s best friend … Oh, where’d I put those dam’ cigarettes? Harry, switch on that light, will you? I got to have a smoke.”

  I reached up and turned on the reading lamp. She found what she was looking for and turned around, the cigarette hanging out of her mouth and that gold chain around her ankle, looking at me with a lazy, half-drunken smile.

  “Harry, you don’t think I’m fat, do you?”

  Here we go again, I thought. “No,” I said.

  She smiled again. “Well, you sure ought to know.” She had the bottle of whisky in her hands and was trying to twist the cap off. She paused for a moment, apparently thinking hard about something, and laughed. “Say, you really had a nerve, didn’t you?”

  “Why?”

  “Coming into the house the way you did. And right into my room.”

  Maybe it was risky, I thought. I might have got caught in the traffic.

  “What would you of done if I’d screamed?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Run, I suppose.”

  “But you didn’t think I would, did you?”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “But you was pretty sure of it, wasn’t you?” There was a little edge to her voice.

  “I told you I didn’t know.”

  “The hell you didn’t.” She quit working on the bottle and glared at me. “I know what you thought. And you know what?”

  “What?”

  “I don’t give a damn. What do you know about that?”

  “Oh, knock it off,” I said.

  “I know what you think, all right.”

  “You said that.”

  “Think I’m some lousy tramp that you can walk right into her room, will you? Well, I’ll tell you what you can do—”

  “You’re drunk,” I said. “Why don’t you shut up?”

  “Shut up, will I? Why don’t you make me?”

  “Who hasn’t?” I said.

  The bottle slid out of her hands. She picked up the tray of ice cubes and let fly. It bounced off my ribs and ice slid all over me. I got off the bed and started for her. She was a sight, arm drawn back and bristling with drunken rage and as nude as a calendar girl. I grabbed her arm and swung her, and she shot backwards and fell across the bed. All the fight went out of her and she crumpled and began to cry.

  “Harry,” she sobbed, turning on her back and looking up at me with her eyes swimming. “Where you going, Harry?”

  “Nuts,” I said.

  The moon was almost down now, and the streets were deserted and dark with shadow. Two blocks away on Main a car went past now and then, but here beside the old Taylor building there was no light or movement. I stopped and stared at it, trying to fight off the disgust and the headache and escape the cloying perfume.

  Across the weed-filled vacant lot on this side, next to the cross street, I could just make out the small window at the rear, the one I had unlocked. It might be weeks or months before anybody discovered it and fastened the latch. I had plenty of time to make up my mind about it, but what was I waiting for? Didn’t I know what was going to happen as surely as sunrise if I went on living in the same town with that sexy lush?

  Oh, sure, I’d stay away from her, all right. Didn’t I always? What was my batting average so far in staying out of trouble when it was baited with that much tramp? It was an even zero, and I didn’t see anything in the situation here that promised I’d improve very much. And the way she soaked up the booze, and as crazy as she was when she was drunk, she was about as safe to be mixed up with in a town like this as a rattlesnake. You didn’t know what she’d do. The smart thing was to get out of here and let her happen to somebody else.

  But I had to wait, unless I wanted to give up the idea which was going around in my mind. It would take at least a month. No, it would take longer, because you couldn’t just come in here, pull off something like that, and then run. It would put the finger on you. I looked at the building again. It was perfect for what I wanted—unoccupied, and not too near any of the few inhabited shacks along the street. The only hitch was that I had to get into it and out again without being seen, when the time came, and now the moon was working against me. I couldn’t take a chance on it until it started to wane, unless we happened to get an overcast or a rainy night. There were two or three shacks on the opposite side of the cross street which had a view of the side of the building, and you could never tell when somebody might be awake and looking out from one of them.

  I went on back to the rooming house and lay awake a long time still thinking about it. Sometime before I dropped off I got to wondering what was on that street next to the bank, the one the side door opened on to. I had been right there on the corner a couple of times, but I couldn’t remember. If there were a store on the opposite side with a door or show windows facing the side of the bank it would be too dangerous. That was something I had to find out before I could even consider it, but it could wait until morning.

  The next day was Sunday. I awoke around ten with a hang-over and feeling as if I’d been beaten up in a fight, listless and only half alive. I went downtown for some orange juice and coffee, bought a paper at the drugstore, and then walked slowly around the whole block the bank was on.

  It was all right. In fact, it was very good. The cross street was blind as far as seeing the side door of the bank was concerned. There was a store across there, all right, but it faced only on Main and this side was a blank brick wall. I went on around, as if out for an aimless Sunday morning str
oll. Directly behind the bank there was an alley cutting all the way through the block, and where it came out into the next street the only business establishments again faced on Main. All right, I thought; so far, so good.

  Tuesday, when the draft had gone through, I went back to the bank and cashed a cheque for fifty dollars. While I was inside I looked it over again, very thoroughly. There were four men at work, one in each of the two cages, an officer of some kind at the railed-in desk, and a book-keeper busy over the tabulating machines. They were all young or in early middle age except the Mr. Chips type I’d talked to before. He would be the one who’d always get left there because he was too old and frail to belong to the volunteer fire department. The door at the rear was partly open this time and I could see it led into a washroom, all right. And it opened inward.

  I was beginning to get it all into place in my mind now. The tough part was going to be the waiting. Right now I had to work out the idea for the machine, and I already had a pretty good idea about that. I had to go out of town to buy the things I needed, however. It would be too risky to do it around here, or keep it in my room while I was working on it. You lived in a glass bowl in a town this small. On Thursday I told Harshaw I was going to take the next day off to drive down to Houston and try to collect some money a man owed me.

  I hadn’t seen any more of Dolores Harshaw at all, but Thursday afternoon I ran into Gloria Harper in the drug store. I had gone in for a Coke at three o’clock and she was sitting alone in a booth. She looked up and smiled, and I went over and sat down.

  “Are you doing anything tonight?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “Not tonight.”

  “Well, I hear they’re playing ‘The Birth of a Nation’ at the movie. Why don’t we go see it?”

  “It isn’t really that bad, is it?” she asked. “But I’d love to go.” Her smile was something to see; and I noticed I was beginning to look for it when I was around her.

  I picked her up around seven. The picture wasn’t too bad, but we ran out on the second feature. As we were walking back up the street to the car she stopped and bought a pencil from the old blind Negro, the one who had come into the bank. He had a little stand there on the sidewalk.