It showed Joe what the world was like, what he’d be up against if he became a priest.
It also showed him he wasn’t so bad, made him feel better about himself, but not much.
He was what St Augustine (who’d asked God to make him chaste but not yet) had been before he straightened out — a vicious youth.
One night Joe promised God that if the uncensored poses came the next day he’d burn them sight unseen and go to confession (to the Italian church downtown), but they hadn’t come, fortunately.
So, early in August, in thought, word, and deed, Joe was still sinning away.
On the evenings he drove out to the ball park (the sign on the left-field fence now said HACKETT’S QUALITY COAL, nothing about hot stuff, or win a ton — Uncle Bobby was selling real estate in California), he sat alone in the family box and appeared to take a lively interest in the flight of foul balls over the grandstand, but was really looking up skirts.
Late at night, wearing only his pajama bottoms because of the heat, he lay in the dark, listening to his radio, to dance music emanating from Frank Dailey’s Meadowbrook, from the beautiful Glen Island Casino, the Aragon, the Trianon (“Lee Bennett steps forward to ask the musical question ‘Who?’”), the Cotton Club (“Duke Ellington and his famous orchestra continue the program with a number captioned ‘Caravan’”), but when the lights went on across the way, in Dora’s living quarters over the garage, he got up to use Mama’s opera glasses.
In the afternoon, leaning on the stone wall, he was still the friendly young neighbor with an erection, now waiting, however, for a chance to speak to one of the sunbathers alone, a chance that finally came.
“Dora.”
“Whut?”
“You know what you said.”
“Whut?”
“‘Anytime,’ you said.”
Silence.
“Dora.”
“Whut?”
“You know.”
Silence.
“Dora.”
“Cost ya, kid.”
“O.K.”
“Ten dollars.”
“O.K.”
“I mean twenty.”
“O.K.”
Silence.
“Dora.”
“Whut?”
“When?”
Silence.
“Tonight, Dora?”
“I don’t get off till nine-thirty.”
“That’s not late.”
“I might be real late if somebody gives me a ride.”
“I’ll give you a ride. I’ll pick you up in the Reo.”
“No, the big one.”
“O.K., the Pierce. Orpheum?”
“Palace.”
Blasé but sweating in a white linen suit, parked — no parking — in front of the Palace with the motor running, he sat smoking, the big vertical sign going off then, the street a shade darker then, and she came clicking out of the air-cooled lobby in her black high-heel pumps and would have opened the back door if he hadn’t reached over and opened the front one. She got in beside him, saying “Hot,” and he pulled away from the curb, smelling her perfume and thinking they weren’t a couple of kids off to a sock hop in a gym, they were a vicious youth and a hot babe off to an assignation (French), but the problem was the same — what to say?
“Have to turn off the sign when you leave?”
“I don’t have to do nothin’.” She was feeling around in her handbag. “Gimme one of them things.”
He produced his English Ovals, pushed in the dashboard lighter, pulled it out, but not too soon, and held it away from her mouth, making her come for it — all while driving in traffic. Randy couldn’t have done better.
“Phew! You like these lopsided stinkers?”
Not what Diane would say, he thought, and was silent.
Cheerfully: “Know why I like this boat, kid?”
“No.”
“Looks like a hearse.” She laughed at the idea.
“Uh-huh.”
“Smells like one too.”
“Uh-huh.” He produced his (really Mama’s) little silver flask. “Scotch, babe?”
She turned on him. “You crazy kid! You shouldn’t drink when you drive! You shouldn’t drink! You wanna get us both arrested?” She was panting, arousing him.
He took a nip from the flask and put it away.
“And don’t call me babe,” she said.
“Don’t call me kid,” he said.
“Call you what I like.”
“Call you what I like.”
She shut up then, so he did, and they rode in silence. He’d meant to stop at the drugstore, but stopped instead at the station, which he wouldn’t have done if he hadn’t seen Dale out in front, hosing down the pavement. “Carton o’ Luckies,” Joe called to him — knew her brand from his afternoons in the sun with her and Frances, from being so observant then — and Dale hurried into the station.
“I got some in my apartment.”
“Get you some more.”
When Dale came out of the station, Rock did too, and while Dale collected for the carton and cleaned the windshield, especially the passenger’s side, and talked about the weather, failing, though, to bring the passenger into it, Rock did the pavement, holding the hose between his legs, about a foot from the nozzle, all the time looking over at the car solemnly, which was embarrassing. When Joe drove away, he could — fortunately, she couldn’t — see the attendants standing together in the rearview mirror, Rock laughing, Dale shaking his head.
“Them jerks know you?”
“They know the car.”
He drove down the alley so she’d be on the right side to go into her place when she got out of the car, and then he reached across and opened the door, his arm resting for a moment on her legs above the knees but not much.
“Thanks for the ride and ceegrettes, Joe.” Joe, not kid.
Yes, but he was afraid she was saying good night to him, had changed her mind about doing business with him, and the laugh was going to be on him — there wouldn’t be anything, as there might have been, to keep her from telling Frances what had happened that night.
“Gimme a few minutes ’fore ya come up, Joe.”
“O.K.” Blasé.
He put the car in the garage, went into the house, washed his hands and face, his armpits and crotch (into which he shook talcum powder), combed his hair, urinated, and retired to his room to top up his flask from a bottle of White Horse on loan from the pantry, then returned to the garage, to the car for — it was on the floor in back — the bouquet of roses.
The door at the top of the stairs was wide open — on account of the heat or him? — and he could hear the shower running, but he politely knocked — no response — before entering. Her apartment (what she called it) was just one big room with kitchen facilities and a bathroom, the door of which was wide open — on account of the heat or him or both? A small oscillating fan was playing on the opened-out couch, her bed, a pillow and sheet on it. He didn’t want to sit there, naturally, or in the overstuffed chair, on account of the heat, and chose a straight-back chair from which he could see straight into the bath-room. It then occurred to him, sitting there with the bouquet wrapped in green wax paper, how he might look to her — like an old-fashioned beau, Harold Lloyd or somebody, in the movies — and so he put the bouquet on the floor. Then he got up to draw the shade of the window into which it was possible for a Peeping Tom to see, but not very well, from the house across the way. He returned to the straight-back chair, took a nip from his flask, and was reaching for his cigarettes, but forgot all about them when she stepped out of the shower wearing, it seemed, because of her tan, a white bathing suit.