Late that afternoon I was in Beaumont, and after wandering aimlessly around for a while I took the coast highway to Galveston. I checked in at the hotel about nine o’clock and went up to my room and took a bath and changed clothes. I couldn’t stand the empty room afterward, though, and came back down. It was funny, I thought; I’d spent only one night in a hotel room with her in my life, and now it seemed that all rooms were going to be empty without her.
I rode downtown on a streetcar and stood around on Market Street for a while, trying to decide to go to a movie, but I knew I couldn’t sit through one. Taking a cab in front of the interurban station, I said, “Down the line.”
“Any particular house, Mac?” the driver asked.
“No,” I said.
He let me out at the little café on the corner. It was the first time I’d been on Postoffice Street in years. When Lee was still at Rice we had gone down there a few times.
I went up the steps of a big two-story frame house and rang the bell. A Negro maid came in a minute and looked at me through the window and then opened the door. The parlor was on the right of the hall and I went in and there was nobody in it. There were the battered phonograph and the bare floor and the sofas around the walls and the too bright lights in the overhead fixture. I sat down on one of the sofas and lit a cigarette.
Two girls came in. One of them was a tall blonde wearing a very short dress and gilt slippers without stockings and she was smoking a cigarette in a long holder. The other one was dark-haired and smaller and she smiled at me gaily and said, “Hello, honey. Buy me a drink?”
“Sure,” I said. They both sat down, the little brunette on my lap and the blonde across the room. The short dress hiked up when she sat down and I noticed a brownish-purple bruise on the front of her thigh just above the knee.
The Negro girl came in and asked, “What you want? Rye or beer?”
We all ordered whisky and I wondered indifferently if the girls would get cold tea.
The blonde said, “You’re awful quiet. What’s botherin’ you?”
“Nothing,” I said. “I was just wondering why blondes in whorehouses are always bruised.”
“Well,” she said, “I bruise easy. Don’t you want to come upstairs and bruise me a little, Daddy?”
“Leave him alone, Peggy,” the little one said. “He’s my honey. Ain’t you, baby?”
“Sure,” I said. “I’m your honey.”
“Come on upstairs with me, honey. I like big men. I ain’t ever had one too big.”
“I’ll bet you haven’t,” I said.
“What do you mean by that? Why, you big bastard—”
“Oh, hell, forget it.”
She got off my lap and went over and put a record on the phonograph. When the music started she came back out to the center of the floor and stood, tapping her shoes and wiggling her hips in time with the rhythm.
I got up and danced with her. “What’s your name, Big Boy?” she asked, looking up at me. She came only up to my shoulder.
“Whitey,” I said.
“Mine’s Billie. Don’t you like me?”
“Sure,” I said. “I like you a lot.”
“You sure act like it. What’s on your mind?”
“Nothing. I just haven’t had time to warm up yet. We need another drink.”
We had some more drinks and then I danced with Peggy. She would have been a good dancer except for the professional zeal with which she rubbed herself against me. She was too busy drumming up trade to enjoy dancing for its own sake.
A Coast Guard sailor came in and danced with Billie and when we stopped dancing and had another drink he took Peggy over in a corner and sat down with her in his lap. He was about half drunk and insisted on buying us all a drink, so we had one and then I bought a round. He kept on asking me if I didn’t have a brother in the Coast Guard because there was a fella, he said, when he was up in Alaska on the patrol boat that looked just like me.
We had some more music and the sailor and Peggy tried to do an apache routine and the sailor fell down and she bounced and skidded into one end of the sofa. They got up laughing uproariously and went upstairs.
“He’s her boy friend,” Billie said. “He comes to see her all the time and they fight to beat hell. He’s the one that put the bruises on her, and last month she hit him between the eyes with her shoe. Made both of ‘em black.”
“Very touching,” I said.
“You’re grouchy, baby. Come on, let’s have a little fun. Don’t you want to go upstairs with me?”
“Sure.” What the hell, I thought. We went down the hall and up the stairs to her room.
When we were inside she pulled off her dress and she didn’t have on anything underneath it. She kicked off her slippers and got a towel out of a dresser drawer and lay down on the bed, watching me. She was a thin girl and rather pretty, and nice in a tomboyish sort of way. I sat down on the side of the bed and lit a cigarette.
“What’s the matter, Whitey?” she asked. “Come on.”
“Don’t rush me,” I said.
“Well, I must be slippin’,” she complained. “It’s the first time I ever took my clothes off and a man could just sit there smokin’ a cigarette.”
“You’re not slipping, Billie,” I said. I fished a five-dollar bill out of my pocket and tossed it on the bed by her arm and stood up. “I’ll see you around sometime.”
I opened the door and went out, and as it closed behind me I heard her say, “Well, I’ll be damned. Of all the crazy bastards!”
Seventeen
It was about three the next afternoon when I went into this bar on 24th Street, the one where the trouble started. I had the car with me by this time, and I remembered going back to the hotel for something, I wasn’t sure what. I had been drinking steadily ever since I had come into town, but it didn’t seem to have much effect except to make me feel worse.
It was a cheap sort of place with a rough-board bar and some flimsy tables. A bunch of seamen were parked on stools at the other end of the bar, talking and laughing a lot. I sat down at this end and ordered whisky.
The bartender was big, about my size, and tough-looking. His whole aspect said “ex-pug” to anyone who knew the signs.
“Just leave the bottle out here where I can reach it, pal,” I said. “I might want more than one.”
“How do I know you can pay for it?” he asked suspiciously.
“You don’t,” I said. “Just leave it.”
He left the bottle there and put his hands on the bar. “Smart guy, ain’t you? Well, let me give you a little tip. Don’t start nothing around here.”
“Write me a long letter about it sometime,” I said. “I’d love to hear from you.”
He gave me a hard stare that lasted the length of time it took me to pour another drink and throw some change on the bar, and then he walked away, giving me the business out of the corners of his eyes as he went.
Where do you suppose she is right this minute? She could be anywhere except home. She’d never go home. How much money did she have? How could she earn a living? You know damn well the only way she could earn her living, and the way she feels after the treatment she’s been getting, she probably doesn’t much care how soon she starts. Especially after the beautiful demonstration you gave her of what to expect from her fellow beings. You really helped her a lot. You helped yourself a lot too, didn’t you? Why don’t you go on back to the hotel and take a shower and have a nice sleep? You know why not, don’t you? Well, anyway, you’re not in love with her, are you? Of course not. You just sit around these swank little tearooms because you like the decor and you enjoy the company of that cute bartender. The sonofabitch. You could go on back downtown and see a movie. You’d enjoy sitting through one. Sure you would. Or you could go on back to the farm. That’s going to be fun, living out there alone with all those beautiful hours of speculation as to where she is and what she’s doing. And what she must think of you. Don’t forget that. That’s the nice part. Well, anyway, you have some nice things to remember about those twenty-four hours with her. A vanquished honey-colored head and a beaten voice saying, “All right. All right.” Sam Harley couldn’t break her spirit in eighteen years, but you came as near to breaking it in ten minutes as anyone ever will. You’re an exceptional guy, all right.