“Yes, I know some chaps in the oil business and I never met a stingy one yet,” she said. Her study of him continued to be intensive.
After dinner they went to two other speakeasies, and O’Byrne wanted to go to Harlem. “I’m afraid you’ll have to count me out on that,” said George. “I have to get up early.”
“No Harlem for me, either,” said Angela.
“Come on, a good dirty show,” said the blonde.
“I’ve seen them,” said Angela.
“Seen them? I’ll say you have,” said the blonde.
“So if you’ll excuse us,” said George hastily.
“Yes, and don’t talk so much, Elaine. You only have one thing bigger than your mouth and you know what that is,” said Angela.
“So do you,” said Elaine.
The men shook hands, the women did not even say goodnight. In the taxi Angela told George her address, an apartment house on Central Park West. “I just took it for granted you didn’t want to go to your hotel,” she said. “Anyway, I don’t like going to hotels. The bellhops get to know you. I knew a friend of mine was up in the Casino the other night and who should keep pestering her but some bellhop from some hotel. A fag, at that. She couldn’t place him, in his Tux, but he kept trying to sit at her table. She was out with some movie producer and I guess the fag wanted to meet him. If there’s anything I can’t stand it’s a fag. They cause more trouble than they’re worth. You got a couple at that club of yours.”
“What club?”
“Isn’t that the Tennis and Racquet tie you’re wearing?”
“Racquet and Tennis, but very observing. The Tennis and Racquet is a Boston organization.”
“I would of known you were a member without the tie,” she said. “Say, that rings a bell. The Lockwood from the Coast, he’s a member, too. He was wearing the self-same tie. Come on, give.”
“He’s my son,” said George.
“Well can you imagine that! What a small world. But not small enough, huh?”
“You mean not big enough.”
“That’s what I mean. Not big enough. You don’t mind, do you?”
“Mind what?”
“Well, me and your son, and now you. I don’t mind, but with you it might be mental. We’ll try it and see, huh? When I get my clothes off maybe you won’t care. And don’t forget, I don’t get a hundred dollars a night for just having a good shape. I had a friend of mine last year, he sent for me all the way from London, England. Two nights in London, and then back to New York. That must of set him back plenty. And he gave me a thousand. I told him, I said I wouldn’t go over for less. I didn’t tell him I made some on the boat coming back, I just told him, I said two weeks the minimum I’ll be away from New York. You could figure that for fourteen hundred. I like to average a hundred dollars a night. It won’t be long before I’m not as pretty as I am now, so I’m getting it while I can.”
“And then what?” said George.
“Well, I was thinking of getting married. Or else I was thinking of opening a beauty parlor. Get some John to set me up in business. The prices these hairdressers get. You know, seven dollars a curl for a permanent. You notice I don’t have a permanent, not because I’m afraid to spend the money. But with my particular looks—here we are.”
It was a small apartment. The livingroom was astonishingly tasteful, as though furnished and decorated by a professional from W. & J. Sloane. The period was Colonial American, and in the entire room the only item of identification with Angela Schuyler was a cabinet-size photograph of herself in a silver frame. The photograph was from the White Studio, and in it Angela was wearing a black satin evening dress with two panels that covered the nipples of her breasts but left the rest of her torso bare. “You go in for black and white,” said George.
“The hell I do, that’s why I wouldn’t go to Harlem,” she said.
“I was referring to your clothes.”
“Oh, that’s different,” said Angela. “You want to take a bath? I’ll take one with you if you want to.”
“That’d be fine.”
“Unless you’d rather I didn’t.”
“I’d rather you did. I’ve never done that.”
“You never took a bath with a girl? Not even your wife?”
“Not even my wife,” he said.
Her bedroom was not done by a professional from W. & J. Sloane. The bed was large enough for four adults. The chairs, dressing table, chaise longue and framework of three sets of triplicate mirrors were done in matching ivory, touched with gilt. “I’ve been trying to get up enough nerve to put a meer up in the ceiling, but that’d be the tip-off. When I signed the lease I was working for Carroll. Earl Carroll. And I put down show girl for my occupation. But if the owner ever came in here and saw a meer up in the ceiling, that’d be the tip-off. The building is full of married couples, middle-aged if not past it. Care for a drink?”
“No thanks,” he said.
She opened a dresser drawer and took out a white leather-bound photograph album. She tossed it to him. “Have a look at these. They’ll put you in the mood,” she said.
“Pictures of you?” he said.
“Christ, no! Take a look.”
The photographs were glossy prints of men and women engaged in various forms of sexual activity. She stood behind him as he turned the pages, and he became conscious of her hand on the back of his neck, rubbing his skin when he lingered over a photograph, holding her hand still between pictures. “I wanted to see which ones you liked best,” she said.
“Which do you?” he said.
“I’m not saying.”
“Let me guess,” he said.
“Go ahead,” she said.
“You liked the one of the young boy,” he said.
“The kid with the big dingus. How did you know?”
“Pure guesswork,” he said. It had not been guesswork at all; her hand on his neck had revealed her agitation.
“Imagine a young kid with a thing like that? Elaine told me she saw the boy, putting on a dirty show in Cuba. The picture’s not a fake. I thought it was a fake, but Elaine saw him. That thing must be a yard long.”
“Oh, not a yard. Not even a foot.”
“But on a kid fourteen years old. Maybe fifteen. What a future he has!”
“That picture puts you in the mood, doesn’t it?”
“You want to know the truth? Yes, it does. Sometimes I dream about that kid. He could make a fortune if he came to New York. A fortune.” She stood up and stretched her arms back as far as they would go, then suddenly she took off her jacket and the dickey and put her hands over her bare breasts, and looked down as she gently squeezed them. “The best in New York City,” she said. “Aren’t they something?”
“Yes they are,” he said.
He was not equal to the demands created in her by the picture of the Cuban boy, but as a professional she was there to entertain him and she did. When it was over she washed him and lit a cigarette for him. “How often do you come to New York?” she said.
“Fairly frequently,” he said.
“But with your wife.”
“Not always.”
“When’ll you be here again?”
“The day after tomorrow, passing through. Changing trains. Then I’m not sure when I’ll be back again. Why?”
“Do you want to make a date for between trains? I’ll be here. Or is that rushing you?”
“It might be.”
“And you have to give your wife a screw when you get home. Is that it?”
“Well, I’ll have to be ready to.”
“That’s where your kid had the advantage.”