“He went with other women?”
“No,” she said. “He made me go with other men.”
For some moments it was quiet.
And then she went on, “We lived here in this neighborhood. It’s a perfect neighborhood for that sort of deal. He had me out on the street looking for customers and bringing the money home to him, and when I came in with excuses instead of cash he’d throw me on the floor and kick me. I’d beg him to stop and he’d laugh and go on kicking me. Some nights I have bad dreams and he’s kicking me. So then I need the sweet dreams, and that’s when I reach for the pipe.”
“The pipe?”
“Opium,” she said. She said it with fondness and affection. “Opium.” There was tenderness in her eyes. “That’s my new husband.”
He nodded understandingly.
She said, “I get it from a Chinaman on Ninth Street. He’s a user himself and he’s more than eighty years old and still in there pitching, so I guess with O it’s like anything else, it’s all a matter of how you use it.” Her voice dropped off just a little and her eyes were dull and sort of dismal as she added, “I wish I didn’t need so much of it. It takes most of my weekly salary.”
“What kind of work you do?”
“I scrub floors,” she said. “In night-clubs and dance-halls. All day long I scrub the floors to make them clean and shiny for the night-time customers. Some nights I sit here and think of the pretty girls dancing on them polished floors. The pretty girls with flowers in their hair and no scars on their faces—” She broke it off abruptly, her hand making a brushing gesture as though to disparage the self-pity. She stood up and said, “I gotta go out to do some shopping. You wanna wait here till I come back?”
Without waiting for his answer, she moved across the cellar toward a battered door leading to the backyard. As she opened the door, she turned and looked at him. “Make yourself comfortable,” she said. “There’s a mattress in the next room. It ain’t the Ritz Carlton exactly, but it’s better than nothing.”
He was asking himself whether he should stay there.
He heard her saying, “Incidentally, my name is Tillie.”
She stood there waiting. “Kenneth,” he said. “Kenneth Rockland.”
But that wasn’t what she was waiting for. Several moments passed, and then somehow he knew what she wanted him to say.
He said, “I’ll be here when you come back.”
“Good.” The candlelight showed her crooked grin, a grimace on the scarred face. But what he saw was a gentle smile. It seemed to drift toward him like a soothing caress. And then he heard her saying, “Maybe I’ll come back with some news. You told me it was two men. There’s a chance I can check on them if you’ll tell me what they look like.”
He shook his head. “You better stay out of it. You might get hurt.”
“Nothing can hurt me,” she said. She pointed her finger at the wreckage of her face. Her tone was almost pleading as she said, “Come on, tell me what they look like.”
He shrugged. He gave a brief description of Oscar and Coley. And the Olds 88.
“Check,” Tillie said. “I don’t have 20–20 but I’ll keep them open and see what’s happening.”
She turned and walked out and the door closed. Ken lifted himself from the floor and picked up the candle. He walked across the cement floor and the candle showed him a small space off to one side, a former coal-bin arranged with a mattress against the wall, a splintered chair and asplintered bureau and a table stacked with books. There was a candle-holder on the table and he set the candle on it and then he had a look at the books.
It was an odd mixture of literature. There were books dealing with idyllic romance, strictly from fluttering hearts and soft moonlight and violins. And there were books that probed much deeper, explaining the scientific side of sex, with drawings and photos to show what it was all about. There was one book in particular that looked as though she’d been concentrating on it. The pages were considerably thumbed and she’d used a pencil to underline certain paragraphs. The title was, “The Sex Problem of the Single Woman.”
He shook his head slowly. He thought, It’s a damn shame...
And then, for some unaccountable reason, he thought of Hilda. She flowed into his mind with a rustling of silk that sheathed the exquisite contours of her slender torso and legs. Her platinum blonde hair was glimmering and her long-lashed green eyes were beckoning to say, Come on, take my hand and we’ll go down Memory Lane.
He shut his eyes tightly. He wondered why he was thinking about her. A long time ago he’d managed to get her out of his mind and he couldn’t understand what brought her back again. He begged himself to get rid of the thought, but now it was more than a thought, it was the white-hot memory of tasting that mouth and possessing that elegant body. Without sound he said, Goddamn her.
And suddenly he realized why he was thinking of Hilda. It was like a curtain lifted to reveal the hidden channels of his brain. He was comparing Hilda’s physical perfection with the scarred face of Tillie. His eyes were open and he gazed down at the mattress on the floor and for a moment he saw Hilda naked on the mattress. She smiled teasingly and then she shook her head and said, Nothing doing. So then she vanished and in the next moment it was Tillie on the mattress but somehow he didn’t feel bitter or disappointed; he had the feeling that the perfection was all on Tillie’s side.
He took off his shoes and lowered himself to the mattress. He yawned a few times and then he fell asleep.
A voice said, “Kenneth—”
He was instantly awake. He looked up and saw Tillie. He smiled at her and said, “What time is it?”
“Half-past five.” She had a paper bag in her hand and she was taking things out of the bag and putting them on the table. There was some dried fish and a package of tea leaves and some cold fried noodles. She reached deeper into the bag and took out a bottle containing colorless liquid.
“Rice wine,” she said. She set the bottle on the table. Then again she reached into the bag and her hand came out holding a cardboard box.
“Opium?” he murmured.
She nodded. “I got some cigarettes, too.” She took a pack of Luckies from her pocket, opened the pack and extended it to him.
He sat up and put a cigarette in his mouth and used the candle to light it. He said, “You going to smoke the opium?”
“No, I’ll smoke what you’re smoking.”
He put another cigarette in his mouth and lit it and handed it to her.
She took a few drags and then she said quietly, “I didn’t want to wake you up, but I thought you’d want to hear the news.”
He blinked a few times. “What news?”
“I saw them,” she said.
He blinked again. “Where?”
“On Tenth Street.” She took more smoke into her mouth and let it come out of her nose. “It was a couple hours ago, after I come out of the Chinaman’s.”
He sat up straighter. “You been watching them for two hours?”
“Watching them? I been with them. They took me for a ride.”
He stared at her. His mouth was open but no sound came out.
Tillie grinned. “They didn’t know I was in the car.”
He took a deep breath. “How’d you manage it?”
She shrugged. “It was easy. I saw them sitting in the car and then they got out and I followed them. They were taking a stroll around the block and peeping into alleys and finally I heard the little one saying they might as well powder and come back tomorrow. The big one said they should keep on searching the neighborhood. They got into an argument and I had a feeling the little one would win. So I walked back to the car. The door was open and I climbed in the back and got flat on the floor. About five minutes later they’re up front and the car starts and we’re riding.”