I turned around and looked behind me to see who she was talking to, but there was no one there. By the time I turned again, she was standing before me. “How much is it?” she said then, “I have to do everything myself around here!”
I must have looked blank, because she sighed as one with the patience of a kindergarten teacher and said slowly and distinctly, “How — much — is — the stuff? Or don’t you talk English?”
“I’m not the bootlegger,” I grinned.
“Well, then, who are you?” she said.
“I came with Bernice,” I said.
“Well, who’s Bernice?” she wanted to know.
My nerves snapped and I said, “What’s the matter, don’t you live here?”
“Do I live here?” she echoed. “Are you telling me?” And then turning her head toward where she had just come from, she emitted an appalling quantity of noise, a combined scream and bellow, as though I had attempted to assault her. “Jerry!” I nearly jumped out of my socks.
But instead of a man rushing excitedly out there to protect her, a tawny-haired girl came hurriedly into view and said, “Did you want something, Marion?”
“Yes, I do,” Marion declared positively. “Do you know any one named Bernice?”
“Which Bernice?” inquired Jerry. “I know a Bernice Fairchild and I also know—”
“Oh, for Jesus’ sake, Bernice,” I roared toward the door, “will you please come out here and tell these dumb broads something!”
Instantly I saw a gleam of admiration light each of their four eyes; evidently calling them broads was the “open sesame.” I was the sort of person they were used to having around. Their hauteur dissolved before my eyes; they seemed to relax. Bernice opened the door and came out, her features barely peering forth through snowdrifts of powder. “Oh, hello, Bernice,” Jerry said, “I didn’t know you were here!” Bernice took her aside and said something to her; I had a distinct impression she was explaining my presence in terms of “I didn’t know what to do with him so I brought him along.” Jerry tactlessly allowed her eyes to stray toward me, and I heard her say; “Leave it to me.”
Jerry announced to the other girl, “She knew Sonny Boy,” meaning Bernice. This was evidently by way of introduction, for I saw them shake hands.
“I only met him once,” said Bernice guardedly. “Jerry told me about him and you.”
“Twice, pal, twice,” Jerry reminded her sweetly. “Once in my place and once—”
“Oh, I don’t mind,” the one called Marion said. “He’s gone now. He’s in Detroit.”
“She’s been sharing expenses with me this last month,” Jerry said.
Bernice suddenly without the least provocation whirled around to me and said with a gust of undisguised anger, “For Pete’s sake, do you have to be told where the liquor is! Can’t you find it?”
So I took it for granted she wanted to be left alone with them, and I strolled off with my hands in my pockets and my head bent unhappily.
In the rear room, ignoring the presence of a number of people who were lolling around in the background, I helped myself to a drink from a bottle that stood on a table. Not alone on the table by any means, but I chose it for its label. After a while I tired of going back to it so much, so I brought it along with me to the radiator box I was sitting on and kept it there until it was no good any more. Then I opened the window behind me and threw it out. About ten minutes later every one in the room got up and ran out toward the door, so I grew curious and went after them. The fat doorman was standing there looking unhappy, with a tall policeman beside him. I heard the latter say that an old lady had just been taken to the hospital with a scalp wound from broken glass. That didn’t interest me much; I went back to where I had been sitting and wondered who could have done it. It was only a good while later, after the policeman had been made a present of two bottles of rye and had gone away, that I remembered I had done it. So I stood up excitedly and ran over to Jerry, whom I presumed was one of the hostesses, if you could call them that.
“Listen, do you know who threw that—” I started to say.
She smiled indulgently and said, “Why, you did, of course; everybody saw you do it.”
I left her then, but later we were back together again, and she kept getting her head under my chin somehow. “You’re always looking around the room for Bernice,” I heard her say. “Don’t always look around the room for her; she’s all right.”
Finally I gave her head a strong push, and she fell over on the carpet on her elbows. She stayed there rubbing them, and looked up at me and said, “You’re not so dead, after all.”
“Quit jazzing around me so much,” I told her. “I’m not hot for you.”
She laughed and said, “How do you know I’m not for you, though?”
Then all at once the glass I held in my hand gifted me with momentary intuition, and I saw through the whole maneuver. I remembered how Bernice had taken her aside for a minute when we first came in, and said something to her in an undertone; and how she, this one, had looked over in my direction and answered, “Leave it to me.” So I realized then that Bernice must have asked her to do her a favor and take me off her hands, vamp me or something, anything that would keep me busy and give her a free rein for the evening. And I thought to myself, “Oh, yeah?” But I felt blue and unwanted just the same. And I got up and went out of the place, out into the open air. I went to the back of the roof and sat on the edge of a fire escape with my legs dangling over above a pit a million miles below me. I finished what was in my glass and then I set it down in back of me and lost myself among the lights below, which kept spinning up toward me all the time but never quite reached me. It seemed to me all I had to do was to lean down toward them a little way — and then they would be able to reach me. But I knew better than to do that; so I stopped looking at them, and they all went back to their places far below me. Then I heard a voice say, “Boyfriend, don’t sit there; you scare me.” I turned around and saw a pair of green-silk-stockinged legs standing there slim and straight. And above them was Jerry again, looking down at me.
I got to my feet and said, “What do you want? What are you following me around for?”
“Can’t I like you if I want to?” she said.
I told her that I saw through her, that she was just doing it to do Bernice a favor and keep me away from her.
“That’s how it started,” she admitted. “She did ask me that. But I’m not pretending now; I really like you.” And a whole lot more, including suggestions as to my future sleeping quarters.
I spat over the edge of the roof and said, “I didn’t even hear that. Where’s Bernice, what’s she doing now?”
She flamed up like a skyrocket, and I quickly shifted around to the other side of her, thinking she might try to push me over the edge. “Oh, so you want to know, do you, sweet man? Well, she’s put herself under the hammer in there for a hundred dollars. Just one big happy family!”
I left her standing there and went in, and that lump in my neck wasn’t an Adam’s apple, it was my heart. Bernice was standing up on a chair, just winding up some sort of a harangue she’d been giving. And she was very drunk; her hair kept getting in her eyes. “—All privileges included except leaving marks on the lily-white torso,” I heard her say. “But it’s gotta be in cash, no checks accepted!”
The noise in there was terrific. And at that, not every one was noticing her. But enough were — too many were. I tried to get to her and get her off the chair. Pick it up by one leg and dump her off if necessary. But, like in a bad dream, I couldn’t get to her; they were all in my way, and the harder I’d push this one and that one, the harder they’d push me back. “Don’t fight!” I heard Bernice call out delightedly.