She blushed and he did too. Then she looked troubled and unsure.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
“Eddie, let’s go to the office and talk.”
“Sure,” he said, uncertain, because of her sudden change of mood. They walked over to the office. The main office belonged to Carl, who owned the Satin Slipper and managed it. Eddie had a small office down the hall. It was the first office he had ever had, except for a desk he had had in the army when he was a supply sergeant. The office was not much. An old wooden desk, a filing cabinet and some hard wooden chairs. But he was proud of it.
“Eddie, I’ve been thinking a lot about us.”
Oh, Jesus, was his first thought, she wants to stop seeing me.
“I like you a lot, Eddie. And I know you like me. Don’t you?”
“Well…Yes. I…I like you.”
He stuttered and looked down at the desk. She touched his cheek.
“Eddie, I want you to quit working for Carl.”
Eddie looked up, shocked.
“Quit? Are you nuts?”
“Eddie, I’m worried. Carl is taking advantage of you and you are going to get in a lot of trouble.”
“Carl! Taking advantage! Honey, Carl gave me this job. I owe him. What other guy is gonna take a chance on a guy with my record. Besides, I ain’t done anything I could get in trouble for.”
“You know that’s not true. There’s a lot of dirty money that comes through this bar. There’s numbers and don’t think I don’t know about the drugs.”
Eddie sat up at the mention of drugs.
“Honest, Joyce, I ain’t foolin’ around with drugs. I’m through with that stuff.”
“I didn’t say you were using drugs, Eddie,” Joyce said, laying her hand gently on his forearm. “I’m close enough to you to know that.”
She said the last in a low voice and they both felt suddenly shy and very close.
“It’s just that there is selling going on here all the time and someday Carl is going to get busted and they’ll take you along with him, because you got a record.”
Eddie knew that he was in love with her then. He held her hand hard.
“Look, Joyce, you have to have faith in me. I just know I’m gonna stay clean this time. I’ve been feelin’ it ever since I got paroled. I can handle anything that comes up here and now that I met you-well, that’s the biggest reason why I ain’t goin’ back to the joint.”
Joyce could not think of anything to say. They just looked at each other. Then they were holding each other and kissing. Eddie realized that Joyce was crying.
“Hey,” he said, wiping away the tears.
Joyce sniffed and blew her nose. She looked at her watch.
“I gotta change. My shift starts in ten minutes.”
“That’s okay. Take an extra five.”
“I can’t, Eddie. Carl will get mad and I’ll get in trouble.”
Eddie laughed and puffed out his chest.
“You take that five. Carl is out of town for a few days and I’m the boss.”
The waiting room at the State Penitentiary was tiled in green and lined with cheap, leather-covered couches that were made in the prison as part of its rehabilitation program. Bobby did not know it, but he was sitting on the handiwork of a timid bookkeeper who had solved his marital problems by roasting his wife and her lover alive.
Two guards stood behind a circular counter in the center of the room, answering inquiries. Bobby glanced at the clock on the far wall. The visiting hour would start in two minutes. He wriggled nervously in his seat and looked at an attractive Negro woman who was talking quietly to a small boy, explaining that he would have to stay with grandma while she saw daddy, because little boys were not allowed inside the prison.
One of the guards left the counter and moved to the side of a doorway that led down a ramp to the prison area. A line formed and the guard searched purses and made everyone empty their pockets.
There was a gate with bars at the end of the ramp. The guard signaled to another guard who sat at a desk in a celllike room and the gate rolled aside with a metallic groan. The visitors walked down another hallway and were shown into a large visiting room. There were more prison-made sofas and several chairs. They were set up facing each other across wooden coffee tables. Automatic soft drink, coffee and candy vending machines stood watch from a corner of the room. The color scheme was the same antiseptic green that was used where cream was not throughout the prison.
Bobby found a pair of chairs in a corner and watched the doorway nervously. A prisoner stood at the entrance and looked around. It took Bobby a few seconds before he realized that the prisoner was his brother. He had put on weight and he seemed thicker, especially in the face. He wondered how he looked to his brother.
Billy spotted him and waved. When he strode across the visiting room, it was with a swagger. His handshake was firm and he showed no embarrassment at the prison clothes he was wearing.
“You’re still as ugly as ever,” he said, a grin spreading across his still handsome features.
“I should be. I look like you,” Bobby said, but the levity in his answer was forced and Billy sensed it.
“Momma didn’t tell you, huh?”
“She wasn’t much of a correspondent.”
“Well, it wasn’t her fault. I told her not to. I figured you’d have enough to worry about in Nam and I didn’t want you worrying about something you couldn’t do anything about.”
“What, uh, what happened? I mean, I only got hazy details from Mom.”
Billy shrugged his shoulders.
“Things just didn’t work out. I had a job that paid peanuts and no prospects. Johnny Laturno said, ‘Let’s hit a liquor store’ and I went along. The clerk was an old guy. We didn’t think he’d give us any trouble, but he decided to play hero and I hurt him pretty bad.”
“What did you do?” Bobby asked. The question was almost rhetorical. He had been with Billy during enough rumbles to know what had happened.
“I stabbed him.” He shrugged. “It was his fault. I told him to be cool and nothing would happen. He just didn’t look like much so we forgot about him for a minute. Next thing, he tries to hit Johnny with a bottle. What else could I do?”
“Yeah, well…”
“Look, I don’t want you worrying about me. It ain’t so bad here. I’ll be out in a few years. And I got enough friends in here so I’m not messed with. But look. Tell me about you. Mom said something about college. What’s that all about?”
“I’m starting next week. It’s something I thought about toward the end of my hitch. I never really gave school a chance and I want to better myself. I don’t want to pump gas my whole life. When I was in the army, I started thinking about things. Not anything in particular. Just a lot of things. I realized that there was so much I didn’t know, so I decided to give college a try.”
Billy slapped Bobby on the back and grinned again.
“I’m proud of you. Really. You always had the brains in the family. I know you’ll do great. Hey, maybe you’ll be a lawyer and you can get me outta this dump.”
They laughed and Bobby could feel himself relaxing. It was the same old Billy after all.
“What are you gonna study?”
“I don’t know. I’ll just take general studies until I figure it out.”
“I hear business is good. That’s where the money is.”
“Yeah, well I’ll see.”
They sat back again and Bobby tried to think of something to say. Billy looked around. The other people in the room were huddled together, talking in low tones. Trying to preserve their rationed moments of intimacy.
“Say, do you want a Coke or something?” Billy asked. “I can get it from the machines.”
“No thanks. I ate before I drove down.”
“Yeah. Uh, well, how was the ride?”
“Okay. Boring. It’s just the Interstate.”
They looked at each other again. There did not seem to be anything left to talk about.
“How was the army?”