“Why should I be surprised? Nothing surprises me. What’ll you have?”
“Ham on rye, bottle of Western beer.”
She shouted the order at Mrs. Brewster, who gave no response at all, not even a flutter of her apron. Fielding wondered whether she’d recognized him as the man involved in the fight and was trying to freeze him out to avoid further trouble.
“The service in this place is lousy,” he said.
“So’s the food. Why come here?”
“Oh, I just wanted to see how everybody was doing after the fracas last Monday.”
“I’m doing fine. Joe’s still in the cooler. He got thirty days.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
Juanita put one hand on her hip in a half-pensive, half-aggressive manner. “Say, your being always sorry for people is going to get you in some real trouble one of these days. Like your being sorry for me, and pretty soon you’re trading punches with Joe.”
“I was a little drunk.”
“Well, I just thought I’d warn you, you oughta let people feel sorry for themselves. Most of them are pretty damn good at it, me included. Wait a minute, I’ll light a match under the old girl. She’s having one of her spooky days.”
“There’s no hurry. Why don’t you sit down for a while?”
“What for?” Juanita asked suspiciously.
“Rest your feet.”
“So now you’re feeling sorry for my feet? Say, you’re a real spooky guy, you know that?”
“I’ve been told once or twice.”
“Well, it’s no skin off my elbows.” She sat down, with considerably more squirming than was necessary. “Got a cigarette?”
“No.”
“Well, I’ll smoke my own, then. I figure there’s no sense smoking my own if I can bum one.”
“Smart girl.”
“Me, smart? Nobody else thinks so. You should hear my old lady on the subject. She throws fits telling me how dumb I am. I don’t have to stand it much longer, though. I’m just living with her for the time being while Joe’s in the cooler, so I’ll have someone to look after the kids. When Joe gets out, maybe we’ll take off again. I’ve always hated this town; it’s treated me rotten. But don’t go feeling sorry for me. What they can dish out, I can take.”
“They?” Fielding said. “Who are they?”
“Nobody. Just them. The town.”
“Where have you been living?”
“L.A.”
“Why’d you come back here?”
“Joe lost his job. It wasn’t his fault or anything. The boss’s nephew just got old enough to work, and Joe was thrown out on his can to make room for him. So I thought, why not come back here for a while? Maybe things are different, maybe the town’s changed, I thought. Hell, this town change? I must of been crazy. The only thing’ll change this place is the Russians, and me personally I couldn’t care less if they started dropping bombs like confetti and everybody fell dead in their tracks.” She lit a cigarette and blew the smoke across the table directly into his face, as if she were challenging him to disagree with her. “What do you think of that, eh?”
“I haven’t thought about it yet.”
“Joe has. Joe says when I talk like that, I oughta have my mouth washed out with soap. And I says, listen, Dago, you try it and you get a hand full of teeth.” She smiled, not out of amusement, but as if she wanted to show she had the teeth to carry out the threat. “Joe’s a real flag-waver. Hell, I bet while they were locking him in his cell, he was waving the flag. Some dagos are like that. Even with the cops sitting on their faces, they open their yaps and sing ‘God Bless America.’”
Fielding started to laugh but immediately checked himself when he realized Juanita wasn’t attempting to be funny; she was merely presenting her own personal picture of the world, a place where people sat on your face and you retaliated in the only logical way, which wasn’t by singing “God Bless America.”
Behind the counter Mrs. Brewster had come to life and was putting the finishing touches on the ham sandwich, a slice of pickle and five potato chips. Juanita went over to pick up the order, and Fielding could hear the two women talking.
“Since when am I paying you to sit with the customers?”
“He’s a friend of mine.”
“Since when, five minutes ago?”
“Being nice to customers,” Juanita said smoothly, “is good for business. You’ll make more money. You like money, don’t you?”
Mrs. Brewster let out a sudden little giggle, as if she’d been tickled in some vulnerable place. Then she smothered the giggle with a corner of her apron, slammed the ham sandwich on a tray, and opened a bottle of beer.
Juanita returned with the order and sat down opposite Fielding again. The exchange of words with Mrs. Brewster had improved her spirits. “Didn’t I tell you she was a real spook? But I can handle her. All I do is say ‘money,’ and she giggles like that every time. I always get along with spooks,” she added with a touch of pride. “Maybe I ought to of been a nurse or a doctor. How’s the sandwich?”
“It’s not bad.”
“You must be awful hungry. Me, I’ve got a cast-iron stomach, but you couldn’t pay me to eat in this joint.”
“It’s lucky for you the old girl hasn’t taken up lip-reading.” Fielding finished half the sandwich, pushed the plate away, and reached for the beer. “So your mother looks after the children while you work, eh?”
“Sure.”
“You look too young to have children.”
“That’s a laugh,” she said, but she looked pleased. “I got six of them.”
“Go on, you’re pulling my leg.”
“No, that’s the honest-to-God fact. I got six.”
“Why, you’re hardly more than a child yourself.”
“I started young,” Juanita said with considerable truth. “I never liked school much, so I quit and got married.”
“Six. Well, I’ll be damned.”
She was obviously enjoying his incredulity. She reached down and patted her stomach. “Of course I kept my figure. A lot of girls don’t; they let themselves go. I never did.”
“I’ll say you didn’t. Six. God, I can’t believe it.” He kept shaking his head as if he really couldn’t believe it, although he’d known since Monday, the day of the fight, that she had six children. “How many boys?”
“The oldest and the youngest are boys; the middle ones are girls.”
“I bet they’re cute.”
“They’re O.K.” But a note of boredom was evident in her voice, as if the children themselves were not very interesting, only the fact that she’d had them was important. “I guess there’s worse around.”
“Have you any pictures of them?”
“What for?”
“A lot of people carry pictures of their family.”
“Who would I show them to? Who’d want to look at pictures of my kids?”
“I would, for one.”
“Why?”
The idea that a stranger might be legitimately interested in her children was incredible to her. Her eyes narrowed in suspicion, and he thought for a minute that he’d lost her confidence. But he said easily, “Say, what’s got into you anyway? Your kids have two heads or something?”
“No, they haven’t got two heads, Mr. Foster.”
“How did you know my name?” This time his surprise was genuine, and she reacted to it as she’d reacted to his feigned disbelief that she’d had six children, with a look of mischievous pleasure. Apparently this was what Juanita liked best, to surprise people. “Where’d you find out who I was?”
“I can read. It was in the paper, about the fight. Joe never had his name in the paper before, so I clipped it out to save for him. Joe Donelli and Stan Foster, it said, was involved in a fight over a woman in a local café.”