“Worked for Mr. Siegel long?” I tried.
“A month,” Jerry said in a surprisingly high voice. “And I don’t work for him the way you think. I’m a teacher, ballroom dancing.”
I started to smile at Jerry’s joke and held back the smile because he wasn’t smiling back. I also realized that the reason the furniture was in a corner and Jerry was sweating might give some support to his crazy tale.
“No kidding?” I said.
“I like dancing,” Jerry said defiantly, taking a step toward me.
“So do I,” I said, hoping he wasn’t going to ask me to dance.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Jerry said. “You’re thinking a guy that spends most of his time fox trotting, waltzing, rhumbaing must be some kind of a fairy, right?”
“No, never entered my mind.”
Jerry’s move toward me wasn’t exactly ungraceful.
“I can clean and jerk two fifty,” he said. “I’m in a baseball league that plays two nights a week, year around.”
I wondered what position he played but didn’t have time to ask.
“You think you can do that?” he said. “You think a fairy can lift two fifty and play baseball?”
I couldn’t see any reason why not, but I said I saw his point.
“People think a dance teacher walks around on his tiptoes and has a limp wrist,” he went on. “Nobody thinks Fred Astaire is a fairy.”
I didn’t know and didn’t care, but I told him he was right. At that point Siegel returned with Miss Show Business behind him. Her coat was gone, and she spangled and glittered like a dime store.
“Peters, this is Verna,” Siegel said. “She’s in the lounge show. I’m taking a few dance lessons, advanced stuff from Jerry, and Verna’s helping out.”
“Pleased to meet you, Verna,” I said, wondering what I had wandered into.
“Listen,” Siegel said, coming over to me, “I’ve got big friends in this town. I know a Countess, a real one, society people, show business, you know. If I can help, let me know. Anything I can do. I didn’t see anything at Hughes’ that night. I don’t know anything. If you want me to, I’ll ask some questions, but I don’t think this is exactly the kind of thing my people would know about. Know what I mean?”
I said I knew, and he put a hand on my shoulder to guide me out. He stopped at the office door, looked back at Verna and Jerry at the other side of the room. Jerry was demonstrating a step to Verna, who was having trouble understanding.
“You look like an honest guy, Peters,” Siegel whispered. “Tell me. You think I’m losing my hair?”
I looked at his hair, and he looked like he was losing it. I said no he wasn’t losing it and I wished I had as fine a crop as he. Siegel patted my shoulder, smiled and opened the door. I walked out and shared the small hallway with the guy who had gone over me for the gun.
“Remember,” said Siegel. “You need help-you know where to come.”
“Right,” I said. “Thanks.”
The door closed, and I eased my way past the muscle and went down the stairs, feeling his eyes on me.
My father’s watch told me it was two-forty-five. My body told me time was running out, and the doorman of the Hollywood Lounge told me it was almost 7:30. I decided to believe the doorman. I had four and a half hours till my meeting with Hughes, and I decided to spend a few of those hours at the Y, urging my body toward a few more years of abuse. The sky rumbled a rain warning.
I drove to the Y on Hope Street, showed my card to the night man, and went down the stairs to the locker room.
The locker door bounced, banged and vibrated, adding a familiar sound to the equally familiar smell of sweat, chlorine and urine and the sight of peeling walls, narrow wooden benches and bare 40-watt bulbs. It was a comforting jazz of light and sound for a confused Toby Peters. I absorbed it with all of my still intact senses as I hung my jacket on the hook and began to take off my shirt.
The sound of running shower water off in the shower room echoed with indistinguishable voices as I slowly undressed and changed into shorts, T-shirt, jock, socks and shoes. A dozen lockers down, a tall kid with sloping shoulders sat in a wringing wet T-shirt and panted heavily. The kid pushed his moist hair back but seemed too tired to reach up and open his locker. I adjusted my soiled supporter, frayed from overwashing in the sink. My shorts were slightly torn at the crotch, my T-shirt was crumpled, sweat-dry and a little stiff, and my gym shoes were worn tennis-flat and giving away at the seams. I savored my socks. They were new, soft and absorbant.
I took a last look at the tall kid and moved down the row of lockers toward the stairs leading to the gym. I was aware of moving, shuffling bodies even before I got to the gym floor. When I came up from the stairway darkness, I faced a volleyball game with five people on each side, all men. The server was a stocky young guy with a white shirt. I turned away from them and headed far the light bag in the corner. I banged away on it for about ten minutes with my handball gloves, softening the gloves and working up a slight sweat. Leaving the plop of the volleyball behind me, I went up the stairs and did a mile on the track.
I was feeling good and not thinking. I made my way to the handball courts and struck it lucky. Dana Hodgdon, a proctologist who was about sixty, was alone on a court. He was a thin guy with white hair which he kept out of his eyes by wearing a sweat band on his forehead.
He was already dripping with sweat when I knocked at the door and asked if he wanted a game. He said sure and after I got a few whacks at the ball, he served. My palms started to swell as they always did. I was feeling great and only lost the first game 21–14. My legs felt good, and my hands were in control of the ball. Some days everything felt right, and I could put the ball where I wanted it. Other days, I could strain and concentrate, relax and forget, change my style and still blow easy shots. In four years of playing, I had only beaten Doc Hodgdon twice. Both games were on the same day and I just barely won. Then he disappeared for a month. When he came back he explained that he had played that day with double pneumonia and a temperature of 102.
Hodgdon played the angles and never moved more than he had to. He played it smart. I played it frenzied and ran myself into exhaustion. I sometimes wondered what was in it for him to play against me, since I was the only one who got a lot of exercise and had anything to gain from a victory.
With my mind pleasantly blank, I went for a low shot and hit the wall head on. It had happened before, but that didn’t make it any better.
Flat on my back on the cool wooden floor, my eyes looked up at the open space high on the rear wall of the court, where people could watch the game or wait their turn. The face of a skeleton looked down at me, attached to a lean, powerful, dark-suited body. I tried to sit up but fell back, dazed.
“How you feeling?” Doc Hodgdon asked, helping me up. I had trouble standing, and Doc helped me off the court and down to the locker room, where I surveyed the damage to my forehead in a shower room mirror. It was slightly swollen, matching the lump on the back of my head. My eyes looked bewildered. Reflected in the mirror, I could see Doc Hodgdon bouncing his handball.
“It feels all right,” I said, running cold water into my cupped hands. I brought my face down to the hands.
“Sure you’re O.K.?” asked Doc.
“Fine. All right. Go on back, I think I’ll call it a night, Doc. Thanks for the game,”
Doc turned, and as I examined myself in the mirror again, I saw him pull off his sweat-stained shirt and watched the crescent-shaped scar low on his back disappear as he left the shower room. The rushing sound of water soothed my eyes, and the smell of sweat satisfied my senses-the compensations of a wounded athlete.
I took my T-shirt off carefully to avoid the sudden dizziness that might drop me to the floor, and was about to move to the showers when I decided to take a last look at my head. The mirror had clouded with steam, and as I wiped it clean I saw the image of the cadaverous man who had been in the gallery over the handball court. His arms were folded and he stared at me with a slight smile.