The chair he’d pulled out meant her back would be to the door. She sat there anyway, even though not being able to see the door made her uncomfortable.
Dougie came over, fast as a fly to a light bulb. ‘Hi, Betty Jo.’
‘Hi, Dougie,’ she said, with just the right amount of un-enthusiasm.
Pauly ordered them both beers, and she prayed Dougie wouldn’t choose that exact time to ask for ID, knowing as he did that she was only seventeen. But Dougie was cooperating, and left to get the beers.
‘How’s the phone company tonight?’ Pauly asked.
‘Quite hot.’
‘All those old switches, all those old lines,’ he said knowingly. ‘Guess what I heard?’
Dougie chose that precise moment to bring over their longnecks.
‘Hi, Betty Jo,’ he said again, braying almost exactly like a mule. He took his time setting the bottles down. Surely he was destined to spend his whole life in Grand Point.
‘Hi, Dougie,’ she said, being polite to his saying hello for the second time in five minutes.
She turned her attention back, as any lady would, to the man she was with. ‘What did you hear, Pauly?’
Pauly waited as Dougie was still standing there, awkward as something newborn, and unwise. When Dougie finally got the hint and walked off, Pauly said, ‘I heard our little telephone company is kept in business by the biggest phone company, Illinois Bell.’
She looked away, like she was carefully considering what Pauly said. It didn’t make sense, a big company like Bell being nice to a second-floor operation like DeKalb-Peering, but she’d not yet studied business.
Behind the bar, Dougie was shooting moony glances her way.
‘I suppose that’s possible,’ she said.
‘Competition, see? Politicians down at the capitol in Springfield say they like lots of phone companies slugging it out to keep prices reasonable, but it’s baloney. Those politicians get big contributions from Bell to keep other big competition away. Tiny fish like DeKalb-Peering keep things from looking like Bell controls the state.’ He sat back knowledgably and took a sip of his beer.
It appeared slimy behavior was everywhere, not just in Grand Point, Peering County.
‘Lived here long?’ he asked.
‘My whole life, though I’m fixing to change that.’
‘Leaving?’
She opened her purse and brought out the little pocket notebook. The thin cardboard cover was all frayed, and the curly wire at the top was squished from banging around in her purse, but it showed she was mature enough to have big plans.
‘Every night after work I write down the money that’s going to the bank come payday. I only make three-fifteen an hour, but a dollar of that goes to the bank, no excuses. In only seventy-four more weeks, I’ll have enough for beautician school in Chicago.’
She told him how she’d quit high school to work in Grand Point’s one beauty parlor, but how, after six months, it had closed, leaving her to find only part-time work as a nighttime phone operator.
‘Well, don’t leave before we’ve gotten to know each other properly,’ he said, flashing a fine smile.
‘That’s a most agreeable idea,’ she said. In fact, she was now thinking the whole business of Chicago might be slipping into a distinct second place if things worked out between herself and this sexy man.
Pauly glanced over at Dougie. ‘I tried getting your friend to cash my paycheck, but he won’t do it.’
Being as there was no one there except the ancients, she called across the room: ‘Dougie, cash this man’s paycheck.’
One of the ancients, a woman, looked over. The men had already been giving her the secret eyeball, probably recalling younger days.
Dougie’s face got red from her suddenly paying attention to it. ‘Not enough in the drawer, Betty Jo.’
She shrugged a what-can-I-do smile over at Pauly. ‘Big check?’
‘I do all right, climbing poles. Listen, let’s try that Mexican-looking place across the river.’
Her mouth went dry but she kept her face calm. ‘The Hacienda’s a dump.’
‘I saw lots of cars in their parking lot. They’re bound to have a full register.’
‘It’s full up with creeps.’ She touched her sore cheek. He might as well know.
‘What the hell happened?’ He leaned forward with encouraging concern.
‘A man in this town doesn’t want me seeing anyone but him.’
‘He hit you?’
‘Yes.’
‘And this bastard will be at the Hacienda?’
She quickly held up her hand. ‘I just need to stay away from him until he regains his senses.’
‘I’m in a little jam,’ he said. ‘You can wait in the car while I get my check cashed.’
He’d been a Marine. It would be OK. They drained their longnecks and went out.
‘Damn, what is it with cops in this town?’ he said as soon as they hit the sidewalk.
A sheriff’s cruiser was double parked alongside Pauly’s hot car. Yellow, with two manly black stripes running back from its nose, she’d thought Pauly’s Buick perfectly matched his strong physique when he’d driven her home Thursday night.
An officer had his face pressed against Pauly’s side window, trying to see in. She couldn’t see who it was. She backed into a dark doorway as Pauly walked up to his car.
A second later she heard voices. Pauly’s… and little Jimmy Bales’s.
It was a relief. She stepped out to join Pauly. Looking across the Buick’s waspy hood, she said, ‘Jimmy Bales, what on earth are you doing?’
Jimmy Bales was no real cop. Only a year older than her, he’d been hired to drive a cruiser around town in the evenings, to radio in reports of drunks getting into their cars. A real deputy would then speed over, and if the drinker was a nobody, write him a hundred dollar ticket. Word was it wasn’t about stopping drunk drivers so much as getting the county more cash. People were always getting drunk in Grand Point, being that there wasn’t much else to do.
‘Ad-ad-admiring the car is all,’ Jimmy stammered, nervous. He was another of those destined to spend his whole life rotting in Grand Point.
‘You been admiring too many things, Jimmy Bales,’ she said, thinking she’d demonstrate her self-assurance to Pauly.
Jimmy Bales seemed to grow even smaller. They’d given him too big a uniform, making him look like he was drowning inside it. At least they hadn’t given him a gun; for sure, the recoil would knock him on his butt.
‘Keep… keep… keeping an eye out, is all.’
‘Nothing about that car needs to be eyeballed,’ she said, feeling in control for the first time that evening. ‘Nothing anywhere else, either.’
Even in the dim light, she could see his face flushing beet red. Two months earlier, she’d caught him looking up into her bedroom window from his bike. He was a young, lustful boy.
For a moment, Jimmy Bales stood frozen in his too-big uniform. He’d caught the reference. He said, ‘You hadn’t ought to talk to me that way, Betty Jo. Something bad could come of it.’
‘Jimmy Bales? If you would be so kind as to move your vehicle?’
The frozen Jimmy Bales unfroze himself enough to get in his cruiser and drive away.
Pauly turned to look at her. ‘It appears you don’t take guff.’
Without meaning to, she touched her cheek. ‘When I can help it.’
He opened the passenger door for her, went around and got in. ‘I guess my car is real noticeable here,’ he said.
‘It’s not so much the car; it’s you.’
‘What’s that mean?’
‘My Mr Important likes to keep tabs on people. He knows you gamble.’
‘Sometimes, after working lines here I stay to have a beer and roll some dice, is all.’
‘Mr Important’s friend knew about you driving me home, too.’
‘Sheriff’s people watched me doing that, too? Damn.’ The engine rumbled as he started it and pulled away from the curb.
‘We’ve hardly got regular police, just one per shift to answer phone calls about missing dogs and such. Everything else goes to the sheriff’s department. That’s the way the Importants like it.’