I sat down at a table and smoked a cigarette, not thinking much of anything until she came out of the powder room and walked over to where I was sitting.
She had on a white print dress, pleated across the skirt. Her make-up was on nice and even and the way her blonde curls were fixed close to her head made her look about sixteen years old. She was cute, all right. Nice little body, pretty legs, lots of make-up. She didn’t look cheap exactly, but she looked like what she was — a cute little waitress, out for a big time.
She smiled at me, showing even little teeth.
“I’m sorry I was late, but I was kind of rushed at the last minute,” she said.
“Think nothing of it,” I said, smiling. “Waiting for you is a good deal.”
She liked that, I could tell. The guys she knew probably never talked that way.
I took her by the arm and we went outside. I was taking her to the Palmer House so there was no point in using my car.
It was a hot night and the street was crowded with people on their way home and others looking for a place’ to eat. There was a lot of traffic and noise, so there wasn’t any use in trying to talk.
We waited under the canopy of the hotel while the doorman got us a cab. When one stopped we got in and I told the driver to take us to the Palmer House.
She looked over at me and smiled self-consciously. “I wish I’d known this morning I was going to the Palmer House. I’d have dressed different.”
“What for? You look swell.”
“I should have worn stockings,” she said. “A girl shouldn’t go out to dinner at a nice place without stockings.”
She looked down at her shoes. They were white, open-toed pumps that showed her red toenails. She had on an ankle bracelet and some kind of leg make-up. Her legs were pretty and it didn’t matter whether she wore stockings or not and she knew it as well as I did. She just wanted me to look at them.
The air was cool and fresh in the Palmer House lobby. We went up the steps to the Empire Room.
The head waiter smiled and said hello and led us to a good table at the edge of the dance floor. A bus boy put glasses of water and napkins in front of us and a waiter brought over the wine menu. She wanted a Tom Collins and I had a Martini and pretty soon we were sitting with drinks in front of us, looking at each other across a two foot table. She sipped her drink and looked at me over the edge of the glass.
She said: “You could have knocked me over with a feather when you asked me to go out today. Honestly, it was the last thing in the world I expected.”
“Don’t give me that. A girl like you shouldn’t be surprised when somebody wants to take her out. You should be surprised if they didn’t.”
We talked a little more, but she was a little embarrassed. She couldn’t figure out what I wanted and she didn’t want to be too agreeable until she knew what I had in mind.
The waiter came back and we ordered some food. The headwaiter was there to see that everything was all right. He said hello to the blonde and smiled at her as if she came in every night.
She got a kick out of that. She smiled back at him and acted damn near like she wanted him to sit down and have a drink with us.
After dinner we talked for a while and then I took her to a night club where they had a big name comedian and a pretty good floor show. This was Wednesday and about twelve o’clock she said she’d better be getting home because she had to work the next day.
We walked over to get my car and I drove out to where she lived, about the thirty hundred block on the North side, in a two-story frame house her father owned. They lived on the first floor and rented out the second floor to some of her old man’s relatives. Her mother had died when she was just a kid and she lived alone with her father.
The neighborhood was one of those respectable, lower-class districts, where everybody sits out on the porch in their stockinged feet after supper. The men smoke black pipes and the women, who seem to be pregnant the year ’round, just sit there and rock.
I knew that kind of neighborhood and I knew the people because I came from that kind of street. You go to church on Sunday, you play ball in the streets and in the summertime the firemen come around and open up a hydrant and give all the kids a bath.
We sat outside in the car and smoked a cigarette apiece and we didn’t talk. Finally I tossed my cigarette away and looked at her. “I don’t want to keep you up, honey,” I said. “You’ve got to be up pretty early.”
She looked at me in a peculiar way. “All right. I’ll go in.”
She got out and I walked to the front porch with her. I knew what she was thinking.
I caught her arm as she started up the steps.
“Wait a minute, honey. Are you mad at me?”
“I’m not mad,” she said. “But it’s funny. A guy takes a girl out and acts like he likes her and spends a lot of money and then doesn’t even try to kiss her.”
She was facing me and I could see her pretty clear in the light from the street lamp. She didn’t look mad; she looked confused and a little like a kid about to cry.
“I feel different about you,” I said. “I like you in another kind of way.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I hardly know myself, but you’ve hit me hard, honey. How about tomorrow night?”
“Well, if you want to see me you can.”
“I want to. How about the same time, same place?”
“That’s fine, Johnny,” she said, and she looked at me, waiting for me to do something.
I didn’t do anything so finally she said, “Good night,” in a choked voice and went up the steps.
I waited until she was in the house, then I got back in the car and drove down town. I went up to my room and mixed a drink and stretched out on the bed.
All I could think about was Alice. I wondered what she was doing.
The next day I worked and caught up on my bets. My luck had swung around the other way and it wasn’t so good. I was still ahead of the game though, and bad streaks never last forever.
The night I picked up the blonde and took her to dinner and then made a stop at the Chez Paree. We had a table within spit-ball distance of a lot of characters who make the papers every day or so for being short on their income tax or having drunken rows with their wives in the middle of some hotel lobby. I told the blonde their names and her eyes opened wide.
She was impressed and for the rest of the time we were there she kept one eye on them like they were something that would grow mushrooms out of their ears.
I took her home pretty early and I kissed her a few times in the car. She seemed happy about that, but it was all pretty mild. Maybe that’s what she liked.
That was on a Thursday night. She had to stay home Friday night but I made a date for Saturday to take her to the track. That was her day off and she’d never seen a race.
When I got home that night I was worried and nervous. I hadn’t talked to Alice in a couple of days and it had me up in the air.
Friday morning at ten o’clock I called her. I didn’t have anything much to say, but I had to know how things were going. When she came to the phone, I said, “Johnny. Anything new?”
“I was going to call you at noon,” she said. “Something’s happened. Where can I see you?”
I thought for a minute. “There’s a bar on Jackson, just the other side of State, called Murphy’s. There’s a bar in front and some booths in back. I’ll be in one of the booths at one o’clock. All right?”
“I’ll be there.”
“Okay, see you.”
She hung up and I sat there for a while trying to figure out what could have happened. I lit a cigarette and turned a lot of thoughts over in my head. A million things could have happened. Whatever it was it was something important. I could tell that from her voice.