The light filtered down from a hundred thousand roofs and across the floor just as it had filtered across the Humboldt Park lagoon on their first mornings together, when the lagoon was the thrill of a clandestine honeymoon month, before the whole world started acting clandestinely.
Violet shrugged. ‘They all get that way when they get old,’ she advised him like a grandmother.
‘I’m not so hungry no more,’ Sparrow decided, ‘one more sandrich is all I could eat.’
‘Just the same, it was mighty sweet of you to pick up the sandrich when he slugged me wit’ it – did you see him hit me?’ For one moment he felt she was going to get mad all over again. Then she added: ‘The poor old man,’ and Sparrow knew she was almost sober.
‘Don’t worry about your perm’nent,’ he flattered her, ‘spendin’ on hair like yours is just tarnishin’ the lily. With hair like yours you could be a model ’n pose.’
‘Yeh,’ she laughed off his praise, ‘under the arms maybe.’ She raised her arms elegantly, like a real lady in a deodorant ad, high over her head. ‘Anyhow it ain’t red, it’s just awe-burn. Would you like me wit’ red hair all over?’
‘I like redheads of any color – oney first fix the sandrich ’n get some clean sheets on the bed. Old men ’r kind of moldy, you know.’ N leave the dirty mustard off. Off the sandrich, I mean. It got on the sheet awready, somehow. You know what I mean?’
‘I know what you mean,’ she replied, and went to the bedroom to change the sheets and stash Stash’s upper plate in the drawer on top of the.38, wondering casually how in the world that poor old man was ever going to eat without his plate. There was a daub of blood on her slip and she was examining it when the punk shambled in and said, ‘Let’s see.’
‘No,’ she told him firmly, ‘there’s blood on it. I don’t think a man should look at blood on a woman. I don’t like the sort of man that would.’
So Sparrow ignored the slip, he was accustomed to her superstitions. ‘I hope Old Man gets a good lawyer,’ he hoped.
‘Yeh,’ Violet repented, ‘I’d hate to see him lose that job. But maybe this’ll teach him to quit dictatin’ everybody. Honey, that string is ticklin’ me.’
Sparrow generously switched the string to the other corner.
It was better than no love at all.
He hadn’t stopped by Molly Novotny’s door for three nights and three days. But for the second time in the week he had had his last, final and never-again fix. This time he was through and meant it. So he wanted to tell Molly how she had helped him to beat the stuff just in time.
He came down the stairs with Rumdum plowing on a leash before him and his mind went down the stairs one bound ahead of the hound. Frankie had dark-haired Molly on his mind as well as the needle and he couldn’t get either off. His eyes had a curtained look; to hide the need of both from himself. But Rumdum’s were hotly eager for everything.
For Rumdum had good beer and Girlie on his mind and he and Frankie were going calling together.
Within Frankie heard the phonograph’s sleepy murmur, but he did not knock. Some aversion to knocking at this door still held him, it must always be somehow accidental and nobody’s responsibility; he kicked Rumdum in an oblique hope that the dog might protest loudly enough to get Molly’s attention. But the hound only slid one cold eye sidewise. When the murmuring paused Frankie stepped, gently but firmly, on the dog’s tail. Rumdum put it between his legs and sat down heavily upon it, looking as wronged as a hound could look: he didn’t want to take responsibility either.
Frankie stood looking down at the ravenous-looking freak at his feet and saw a shiver, as of returning life, run through that mangy and bloated form: the beer-clogged nostrils had picked up, faintly, Girlie’s special scent. A scent, for Rumdum, like that of no other bitch the whole endless length of Division Street. He bristled and forgot himself long enough to give forth with a low, menacing, masculine growl, reserved strictly for occasions when no opponent was in sight. Molly heard that boastful rumble and opened the door just a crack.
‘He stopped dead here ’n I couldn’t get him a step farther,’ Frankie explained casually. ‘I think he got a crush on Girlie.’
‘He sounds mad at somebody.’
‘He’s just puttin’ that on. All he is is thirsty again ’n he knows the place he gets took care of. Say, I’m sort of dry myself. How about a little Christmas cheer? You dry?’ And fetched Rumdum a sharp kick to make him leave off growling long enough so a person could make himself heard. ‘I guess he’s likely to go on like that till he gets some beer in him.’
She opened the door just wide enough so that he could brush past, if he pleased to, or stay where he was. Yet gave him the benefit of both breasts against his arm as he passed.
He sat down in the big red upholstered chair in the corner, looking shabbier than ever in his stained field jacket. While Rumdum swished about his legs, suddenly coy after all his growling threats about what was going to happen to her if he ever got within paws’ reach of her lovely flanks.
Girlie, snarling defensively down at the oversized mongrel from her sanctuary in Molly’s arms, seemed to share some of those reservations about Rumdum which Molly held for Frankie. Whose big dog had he been lately?
‘I’ll tie her up,’ Molly announced, and when she returned to her guests: ‘I left her a saucer of milk. She isn’t old enough for beer.’
‘If she hangs around this one she won’t drink nothin’ else,’ Frankie bragged when Molly came to sit beside him on the chair’s broad arm. To study him with her direct child’s gaze.
‘You didn’t come back,’ she reminded him. ‘You went ’n got fixed again ’n was too ashamed to come back.’
Her directness shook him, he hadn’t had time to lie.
‘It was the last one, Molly-O.’
She’d been planning for three days to give him the sharpest dressing down she’d ever given anyone. Yet now that he was here, with the tired look under his eyes, all she could think of was, ‘I threw myself away on a man worth nothing at all. I can’t lose now by going along with one that’s worth something.’ And took his head to her breast.
‘You don’t know what it’s like,’ he told her without raising his head from the clean milk-and-fur odor of her. ‘All I hear up there is how I smashed her up a-purpose. If just she didn’t think that.’
‘She’s got you thinkin’ you done it a-purpose, is that it?’
‘All I know is she got me stonin’ myself. How does a guy know what he was really thinkin’ when he was stewed?’
‘You can’t take what she says now like it’s somethin’ real, Frankie – Sophie ain’t been right in the head since the accident, everybody knows that.’
‘But it was me made her wrong in the head then,’ n everythin’ I do since makes it worse for her, I don’t know why. What if one of them pin-curl biddies upstairs seen me come in here?’
Molly lifted his chin until his eyes were forced to meet her own. He read an ancient anger there. ‘I ain’t forgot the time I was just a kid ’n she cracked me in front of everybody -’ n you backed off ’n let me go bawlin’ home by myself. You was that scared of her even then.’ Cause you didn’t want to go home with her that night. You wanted to go home with me. It was how I wanted it too – things would have been better for me since then if you’d done like you felt instead of like other people told you you got to.’
He pressed her hands to his shoulders and turned his eyes away; but she brought him back.
‘You know why Zosh slapped me that night?’ Cause she was wrong in the head awready, that was why. She was evenin’ up on you way back then. You wouldn’t fall in love with her the way she wanted you to, the way she was in love, she had to get even with you for that. She never got another chance till the accident. That was her one big chance ’n she took it without even carin’ what she was doin’ to herself. It’s all she ever tried to do for you was to get even.’ N you’re lettin’ her do it every time you knock on that Fomorowski’s door or sneak up to see Blind Pig. You know it in your heart ’n you’re backin’ down from admittin’ it to yourself just like you backed down that other night.’