Charley walked round the streets alone. There was a warm molasses smell from the sugar refineries, whiffs of gardens and garlic and pepper and oil cookery. There seemed to be women everywhere, in bars, standing round streetcorners, looking out invitingly behind shutters ajar in all the doors and windows; but he had twenty dollars on him and was afraid one of them might lift it off him, so he just walked around until he was tired and then went back to the room, where he found Grassi already asleep with the covers over his head.
It was late when he woke up. The parrot was squawking on the gallery outside the window, hot sunlight filled the room. Grassi was not there.
Charley had dressed and was combing his hair when Grassi came in looking very much excited. He had taken a berth as donkey-engineman on a freighter bound for South America. “When I get Buenos Aires goodby and no more war,” he said. “If Argentina go to war, goodby again.” He kissed Charley on the mouth, and insisted on giving him his accordion and there were tears in his eyes when he went off to join the boat that was leaving at noon.
Charley walked all over town inquiring at garages and machineshops if there was any chance of a job. The streets were broad and dusty, bordered by low shuttered frame houses, and distances were huge. He got tired and dusty and sweaty. People he talked to were darned agreeable but nobody seemed to know where he could get a job. He decided he ought to stay through the Mardi Gras anyway and then he would go up North again. Men he talked to told him to go to Florida or Birmingham, Alabama, or up to Memphis or Little Rock, but everybody agreed that unless he wanted to ship as a seaman there wasn’t a job to be had in the city. The days dragged along warm and slow and sunny and smelling of molasses from the refineries. He spent a great deal of time reading in the public library or sprawled on the levee watching the niggers unload the ships. He had too much time to think and he worried about what he was going to do with himself. Nights he couldn’t sleep well because he hadn’t done anything all day to tire him.
One night he heard guitarmusic coming out of a joint called “The Original Tripoli,” on Chartres Street. He went in and sat down at a table and ordered drinks. The waiter was a Chink. Couples were dancing in a kind of wrestling hug in the dark end of the room. Charley decided that if he could get a girl for less than five seeds he’d take one on. Before long he found himself setting up a girl who said her name was Liz to drinks and a feed. She said she hadn’t had anything to eat all day. He asked her about Mardi Gras and she said it was a bum time because the cops closed everything up tight. “They rounded up all the waterfront hustlers last night, sent every last one of them up the river.” “What they do with ’em?” “Take ’em up to Memphis and turn ’em loose… ain’t a jail in the state would hold all the floosies in this town.” They laughed and had another drink and then they danced. Charley held her tight. She was a skinny girl with little pointed breasts and big hips. “Jez, baby, you’ve got some action,” he said after they’d been dancing a little while. “Ain’t it ma business to give the boys a good time?” He liked the way she looked at him. “Say, baby, how much do you get?” “Five bucks.” “Jez, I ain’t no millionaire… and didn’t I set you up to some eats?” “Awright, sugarpopper; make it three.”
They had another drink. Charley noticed that she took some kind of lemonade each time. “Don’t you ever drink anything, Liz?” “You can’t drink in this game, dearie; first thing you know I’d be givin’ it away.”
There was a big drunken guy in a dirty undershirt looked like a ship’s stoker reeling round the room. He got hold of Liz’s hand and made her dance with him. His big arms tattooed blue and red folded right round her. Charley could see he was mauling and pulling at her dress as he danced with her. “Quit that, you son of a bitch,” she was yelling. That made Charley sore and he went up and pulled the big guy away from her. The big guy turned and swung on him. Charley ducked and hopped into the center of the floor with his dukes up. The big guy was blind drunk, as he let fly another haymaker Charley put his foot out and the big guy tripped and fell on his face upsetting a table and a little dark man with a black mustache with it. In a second the dark man was on his feet and had whipped out a machete. The Chinks ran round mewing like a lot of damn gulls. The proprietor, a fat Spaniard in an apron, had come out from behind the bar and was yellin’, “Git out, every last one of you.” The man with the machete made a run at Charley. Liz gave him a yank one side and before Charley knew what had happened she was pulling him through the stinking latrines into a passage that led to a back door out into the street. “Don’t you know no better’n to git in a fight over a goddam whore?” she was saying in his ear.
Once out in the street Charley wanted to go back to get his hat and coat. Liz wouldn’t let him. “I’ll get it for you in the mornin’,” she said. They walked along the street together. “You’re a damn good girl; I like you,” said Charley. “Can’t you raise ten dollars and make it all night?” “Jez, kid, I’m broke.” “Well, I’ll have to throw you out and do some more hustlin’, I guess… There’s only one feller in this world gets it for nothin’ and you ain’t him.”
They had a good time together. They sat on the edge of the bed talking. She looked flushed and pretty in a fragile sort of way in her pink shimmy shirt. She showed him a snapshot of her steady who was second engineer on a tanker. “Ain’t he handsome? I don’t hustle when he’s in town. He’s that strong… He can crack a pecan with his biceps.” She showed him the place on his arm where her steady could crack a pecan.
“Where you from?” asked Charley.
“What’s that to you?”
“You’re from up North; I can tell by the way you talk.”
“Sure. I’m from Iowa, but I’ll never go back there no more… It’s a hell of a life, bo, and don’t you forget…‘Women of pleasure’ my foot. I used to think I was a classy dame up home and then I woke up one morning and found I was nothing but a goddam whore.”
“Ever been to New York?”
She shook her head. “It ain’t such a bad life if you keep away from drink and the pimps,” she said thoughtfully.
“I guess I’ll shove off for New York right after Mardi Gras. I can’t seem to find me a master in this man’s town.”
“Mardi Gras ain’t so much if you’re broke.”
“Well, I came down here to see it and I guess I’d better see it.”
It was dawn when he left her. She came downstairs with him. He kissed her and told her he’d give her the ten bucks if she got his hat and coat back for him and she said to come around to her place that evening about six, but not to go back to the “Tripoli” because that greaser was a bad egg and would be laying for him.
The streets of old stucco houses inset with lacy iron balconies were brimful of blue mist. A few mulatto women in bandanas were moving around in the courtyards. In the market old colored men were laying out fruit and green vegetables. When he got back to his flop the Panama woman was out on the gallery outside his room holding out a banana and calling “Ven, Polly… Ven, Polly,” in a little squeaky voice. The parrot sat on the edge of the tiled roof cocking a glassy eye at her and chuckling softly. “Me here all night,” said the Panama woman with a tearful smile. “Polly no quiere come.” Charley climbed up by the shutter and tried to grab the parrot but the parrot hitched away sideways up to the ridge of the roof and all Charley did was bring a tile down on his head. “No quiere come,” said the Panama woman sadly. Charley grinned at her and went into his room, where he dropped on the bed and fell asleep.