Alice turned to Loring. “She’s drunk, you can see that. It’s quite useless going on with this farce. Couldn’t you come back tomorrow?”
“Drunk, am I,” Ida lurched across the room and stuck her face into Alice’s. “Well, why am I drunk, besides the toothache I mean? Because I got things inside me like my mother had, only not sparks. It’s just a knowing. When she closed her eyes up there tonight I knew she was for it, I knew she was going to die. A long trip, a long long trip.”
“That’s enough,” Loring said curtly. “If I can’t get any information from you, the police can and will. She was poisoned.”
“Poisoned!” Ida stretched out her hands to him. “I never did anything to her, mister! I never did it. She’s my only friend in this house!”
“Sit down.” He pushed her into a chair and towered over her. “Did she ask you to bring her anything, any pills that she’d hidden, perhaps?”
“No, no, I never did! No!”
“Did she ask you to?”
“No!”
“Did she tell you she was feeling ill?”
“Sleepy, she said. She said she was sleepy. And then she laid there like someone had turned out the lights in her and I knew she was dead.”
“Don’t let her talk like that!” Alice cried. “Kelsey isn’t dead. She’s all right, you said she was going to be all right!”
Loring went over and took her hand. “Go upstairs and stay with her if you’re worried.”
“Shouldn’t ought to leave her alone anyway,” Ida said aggressively. “My only friend in this house which the others in it look down their noses...”
Alice closed the door. She had to stand in the hall a minute until her legs stopped shaking and her tears were forced back behind her eyes.
The police were going to come, as they had come the other time.
Mr. Heath, tell the court where you first met the deceased, Geraldine Smith.
Had there been any liquor consumed, Mr. Heath?
You and Miss Smith were riding in the rumbleseat, Mr. Heath. Go on.
Mr. James, you tell the court...
The court extends its sympathy...
She walked across the hall into the drawing room. Johnny was still huddled in the chair and when he looked up she knew by the glassiness of his eyes that he had been drinking steadily.
He’s remembering too, Alice thought, he’s thinking of Geraldine.
“Where’s Father?” she asked.
“I went up to tell him,” Johnny said. “He wasn’t in his room. Is she all right?”
“She will be.”
“How much did she take?”
“Over a grain.”
“Where did she get it for God’s sake? And why would she want to kill herself for God’s sake?”
“Better stop drinking now, John,” Alice said.
“Going to send me out for a walk, too?” he said in a hard voice.
“I sent Philip out because he was upset. I thought he would feel better if he had some fresh air. You could do with some too. Might sober you up.”
“I’m not...”
“I’m going upstairs to sit with Kelsey. Don’t come up.”
In Kelsey’s room she sat beside the bed for a long time, not thinking at all. Already her mind was closing over the fresh wounds, sewing the edges together, so that there was only a dull ache which spread over her whole body and seemed to have no source.
Kelsey was breathing naturally and evenly. Once she moved her hand on the covers and sighed and turned her head toward the light, as if to remind Alice: See me, how young, how pretty; see the curve of my shoulder, the firm breast, the flushed cheek. These are nothing to me, I want to die...
The clock in the hall struck twelve. Kelsey stirred again.
Alice bent over her. “Kelsey?”
“Aaah,” Kelsey sighed, the sound of her father, the infinitely tired sound that was almost a groan. “Aaah...”
“It’s me, it’s Alice.”
“Alice.” Her voice was soft and tattered like torn chiffon. It brushed against Alice and she felt it but didn’t hear it.
“How do you feel, Kelsey?”
“Philip...”
“Oh, Philip’s all right,” Alice said eagerly. “He won’t be leaving. He’s going to stay. Is that why you did it?”
“No... no.”
“What? I didn’t hear you, Kelsey.”
“Dead.”
“But you’re not dead, darling! You’re going to be all right again!”
“Came back.”
“Of course, of course you came back! Mustn’t talk now. You’re tired.”
Kelsey’s hands plucked at the covers. Alice caught them in her own. “Please. Be quiet. Try and rest.”
“I know — what to do.”
A voice, a thin thread like a spider’s web spun from a long way off, broken by a breeze. “Aaaah...”
Chapter 6
By the time the last show came on at one o’clock Stevie Jordan was always a little tight. But by one o’clock those patrons who intended to get tight had already done so and those who didn’t had gone home, so Stevie’s lapses went unnoticed. Discrimination dissolves in alcohol and the last show was the best. Everything looked fine under the dim lights, the drinks, the chorus girls, the orchestra and Stevie.
Stevie himself made no concessions to glamor, did not attempt to conceal what he was. He hadn’t, as some people thought, fallen out of the top drawer into Joey’s. He had climbed up as far as Joey’s from one of the bottom drawers. It was the best job he had ever had or ever would have. He was at the top, but because it wasn’t a very high top he didn’t try hard to stay there. He was always in trouble of some kind and always falling in love with the wrong woman.
“Marcie Moore. You all remember Marcie. You know what we call her round the back of this dive? Pretzel, we call her, and you’ll see on account of why. Are you ready, Marcie?”
The lights were still dimmer. A baby spot fumbled over the floor, found the entrance and the girl standing there looking as if she were afraid to come out.
“Her real name is Marcella but you’ll want to call her Marcie. Say hello to the suckers, Marcie.”
Then Marcie’s voice, shy, barely audible, “Hello. Hello, suckers.”
She came out onto the floor, reluctantly, as if the baby spot were a tangible force which pushed her along. She wore skin-tight black satin shorts and bra, but she didn’t look as naked as some of the patrons. She was too scrawny, like a young bird only half feathered.
She wasn’t scared of the crowd at all, despising them as a bunch of drunks, but Joey liked her to pretend. He kept up his part of the pretense by dismissing gentlemen who asked for her phone number with the statement that she lived at home with her mother.
“—lives with her mother,” Stevie bawled. “No kidding. Now how many of youse guys out there live with your mothers?”
A drunk at one of the floor tables said his mother was dead and began to wail softly to himself because his mother was dead, died when he was a baby, poor old mother, worked hard all her life...
The orchestra drowned him out with a tango. Marcie jerked, dipped and spun around the floor. The routine was vigorous and she had no energy to waste smiling at the gentlemen.
Half of the orchestra laid down their instruments and purred and whistled when Marcie did the splits or a back-bend. At the end of the dance she bowed briefly and unsmilingly and disappeared behind the curtain, followed by the thunder of tablepounding and stamping feet and cries of “More! More!”
Then Stevie came on the floor again, still clapping and looking toward the curtain as if he expected Marcie to come back for an encore. It was just a gag to work up more applause for her. He knew she never did an encore for the last show.