“All by herself?”
“Yeah, Mr. Marine. I had to ask her to quiet down. Like I said, it’s not too serious, but the management runs a quiet place here and if they get complaints, then I have to do something.”
The blandness in his face had hardened into a set smile.
“Something like what?” Mickey said.
“Mr. Marine, I’d hate to see you and—your wife—get thrown out. You’re nice-looking young people and—”
“I’ll speak to her about it,” Mickey said and turned away.
The hell with that, he thought, heading for the room. I’ve got no money to spend putting in a fix with some cheap hotel dick. We can always move.
When he went in, Irene was sitting in the armchair in her black panties, doing her nails.
“Hi, honey,” she said, without looking up.
Her bed had been opened and was badly rumpled. The ashtray on the bedside stand was overflowing. Some of the butts had lipstick on them and some didn’t. The level of whisky in the bottle was down by three or four ounces. He saw that he wouldn’t have to worry about putting in a fix. Irene had taken care of that.
“I’ll take a shower and get dressed for dinner,” he said.
“Okay, honey.”
When he returned to the bedroom, she had made no move to get dressed. He sat on the bed to put on his shoes and socks.
“We going to start looking for Lou Roberts tonight?” she said.
“Maybe. If we can make some contacts.”
“Look,” she said, “I don’t know anything about Denver—like where the girls hang around or anything. Every town is different. You have to be careful.”
“Just do the best you can. Maybe this hotel detective can help. He’s a good friend of yours, isn’t he?”
There was quite a long silence. He heard her get up. The bed lurched slightly and she was sitting beside him. She slid her arm over his shoulder.
“Joe—honey—I had to,” she said with quiet urgency. “Listen—he came in here, no knock, no nothing. He’s got a key. All I had on was a pair of pants—”
“It’s all right.”
Her hand stroked at his head and neck.
“I didn’t know you’d care, Joe. You never said anything, never touched me. If you care, honey—”
“I don’t care.”
“Well, see, he started hinting around like there was something—wrong, about us. He said he might even have to throw us out of the hotel. It was for you, really, not for myself.”
“Yeah. How did he put it to you?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean what did he offer?”
“Oh, well, he said if he could come up and see me once in a while, maybe he could straighten things out, you know? I told him I didn’t know what you would do, you might kill him—”
He looked at her sharply.
“I might kill him? Why would you say a thing like that?”
“I had to say something. After all, we’re registered here as Mr. and Mrs.”
“Okay.”
“That’s all there was to it, Joe, honest. It didn’t mean a thing to me. It was just so he wouldn’t throw us out.” He sat brooding over the disheveled bed. She lifted his hand, laid it against her naked breasts.
“Joe, baby—”
“Did he ask any questions?”
“Like what?”
“Like what are we doing here?”
“No. He—”
“Did you happen to mention anything about Lou Roberts?”
“No, I didn’t.” Her voice took on an edge of calculation, the old we’re-in-this-together tone. “I wouldn’t do that. I know you don’t want anybody to find out you’re looking for Lou Roberts.”
He disengaged his hand, laid it flat on his thigh and spoke slowly and distinctly.
“That is right,” he said. “Because some other people know about this deal and I have to get to Roberts first, before things get loused up.”
He gave it a chance to register.
“You understand that, Irene?” he said.
After a moment she said casually, “Sure, Joe. Whatever you say.”
He forced himself to a gentler manner.
“All right. Let’s get dressed and go out on the town.” As she got up, he slapped her buttocks in a friendly way, saw her smile privately, turning her head away. He had no idea how much she had put together in her erratic little mind, but he knew that the longer it took him to find Lou Roberts, the more risk he would run with her. For a few dollars she would put herself in anyone’s hands, and his own dollars were dwindling.
* * * *
They were leaving the room when the telephone rang. He felt momentary shock, until he remembered he had left his number with the union and the employment agency. He went back between the beds and picked it up. It was somebody at the union headquarters.
“We got an emergency call for a substitute at a small joint near downtown. The regular man has to leave on account of a death in the family. He’ll be gone about a week. You want a week’s work?”
“Sure,” Mickey said. “Where’s the place?”
“Write it down.” The guy’s voice gave him the address and he wrote it down. “The employer is a guy named Fenelon. Girard Fenelon. Got it?”
“I got it.”
“How soon can you get there?”
“How soon does he need me?”
“No later than ten o’clock.”
“I’ll make it.”
“Okay.”
He joined Irene at the door and they went out.
“What was it?” she said.
“A job,” he said.
“Oh? Starting when?”
“Ten o’clock.”
“Tonight?”
“We’ll have dinner first.”
“What kind of a job is it?”
“Tending bar.”
She looked at him quickly.
“I didn’t know you were a bartender,” she said.
“What did you think I was?”
“I don’t know.”
They were alone in the elevator, and after it started down she laughed shortly to herself.
“You know what I really thought you were?” she said. “Some kind of a cop.”
“Oh? What made you think that?”
“Oh I don’t know. Sometimes you act like it.”
He was glad to have the information. It was something to watch in himself.
CHAPTER 8
Girard Fenelon was a small, harassed-looking man with a graying mustache that twitched in spasmodic response to an irregular tic in his left cheek. He owned two spots; not that he expected to get rich, he explained to Mickey, but it was well to have insurance. If you happened to make a little on one joint, you needed another to pay the taxes. He realized that bartenders also were unlikely to get rich. He was sympathetic about this, but felt called on strongly to advise there wasn’t much he could do about it personally. No bartender was going to get rich at Fenelon’s expense—on the side, so to speak. In other words, he ran a clean joint on a strict percentage, and no bookmaking, pushing, girls nor procuring would be tolerated.
He closed the brief orientation lecture with a measured pause and a philosophical sigh.
“Even if I should be tempted, my wife would never stand for it. My wife, Mr. Marine, is an excellent woman.”
As it turned out, Mme. Fenelon did not visit the bar during the time he was there and the problem never came to a head. Fenelon was easy to work for. The hours were long; Mickey had to be there at four in the afternoon to get ready with the setups and didn’t get off until two in the morning. But he got an hour’s dinner break between seven and eight, and Mr. Fenelon, who divided his time between the two taverns, usually managed to relieve him for short breaks two or three times in the evening. A cocktail waitress came on for the cocktail hour, stayed until seven, then returned at nine, so he didn’t have to worry much about table service. The clientele was quiet and congenia
l and not too demanding. The first few hours of the first night were nerve-racking because of his limited experience and the long gap between his training and the actual work situation. Making correct change quickly was tricky until he got the hang of it. Also, he found himself stumped on several orders. But Mr. Fenelon, who was there most of that night, hovering about him like a worried mother hen, took a liberal view. He showed Mickey a reference file under the back bar where he could find the recipe for nearly every drink known to man.
“Nobody can remember some of those crazy drinks,” Fenelon said. “Don’t worry about it. Just look it up so they won’t send it back.”
* * * *
It was nearly three in the morning when he got back to the hotel. Irene, fully dressed except for her shoes, was lying on her bed, smoking.
“How did it go?” he asked casually.
He was more eager for the information than he let himself show. He had left her on her own soon after dinner.
“All right I guess,” she said, shrugging.
She eyed him, stretched herself lazily on the bed, letting her skirt ride high on her thighs. She gazed at him, almost curiously, then rolled over slowly, turning her back to him.
“Unzip me, will you, Joe? I can’t reach.”
He leaned over her, found the zipper tab at the back of her neck and pulled it down. It was a plain but chic wool dress and the fabric had a softly nubby texture under his fingertips. The dress parted in a deep, narrow V, revealing part of her rather good back, the long, straight, faintly corrugated line of her spine.
Without turning, she reached back awkwardly with one hand, scratching in relief. After a moment her fingers plucked futilely at the fastening of her bra.
“Come on, honey,” she pleaded softly. “Help.”
He slipped his fingers under the tight band and unhooked it. Her flesh was warm and vibrant to his touch. She sighed deeply, snuggled face down into the bed.
“Ah,” she said, “my poor, aching back.”
Without conscious impulse, only half aware of what he was doing, he ran his fingers slowly along her spine, massaging the tense vertebrae and tiny knots of muscle on either side. She stirred, wriggling in appreciation.
“You ever-lovin’ doll,” she murmured. “You ought to be one of those—you know—a masoose. What good is a bartender?”
“Did you make any contacts?” he asked.
She grumbled incoherently.
“What?” he said.
“I said nothing much. I met a few people—a couple of the girls.” She giggled, a muffled sound in the wadded pillow under her face. “A real big man in a white cowboy hat tried to pick me up, but I turned him down.” She twisted her head and looked up at him with a mischievous squint. “I didn’t think you’d like it,” she said.
“Anything else happen?”
“Not much. I didn’t find out anything about Lou Roberts, if that’s what you’re hinting at.”
“Well,” he said, “you can’t expect everything all at once.”
He had stopped massaging her and was sitting beside her on the bed. She rolled onto her back and pushed up on her elbows, her hair in disarray, her half-bared shoulders and upper arms imprisoned in the girlish dishabille of her new dress.
“You know,” she said, “you’re a sweet guy, Joe, a real sweet guy.”
She held out her hand and he helped her to sit up. He found himself looking at her newly, almost with tenderness. Something in him responded to an unsuspected warmth in her. For the first time since the trauma of his personal tragedy, he felt erotic stirrings.
She sensed it. Smiling, she touched a forefinger to his lips, returned it to her own, then repeated the gesture in reverse. Watching him with half-closed eyes, she slipped her arms from the sleeves of the dress, one at a time, holding the bodice up as a shield until both hands were free, then pausing a moment longer, teasing, before she lowered it, pushed away the unhooked bra and exposed little by little her high, stunted breasts with their small nutlike nipples.
He leaned toward her, somewhat off balance. She smiled again, flexed her left knee and drew back her skirt to uncover the top of her stocking where her supporters clutched it. She waited for him to loosen them, her eyes urgent with suggestion.
And the thing died in him. Only feebly stoked to begin with, the slight flame sputtered and went out, choked by some damper whose source was as vague to him as the earlier ignition—some defect in her performance; a too precise timing, an over-explicit purposefulness in her gestures; an exposure of the classic art of the temptress, as if a faulty spring in a window shade had caused it to roll up unexpectedly; a blatant revelation; some or all of these closed down to shrivel the blaze of that momentary bonfire. Or something deeper, in himself, an intuitive recognition that possession on her terms was a double-edged sword and that her blade, if she chose to wield it, was more destructive than his because of their different goals.
Irene stared at him with a kind of horror as he got to his feet and slapped her knee lightly.
“Come on,” he said. “You’re a big girl now. You can undress yourself.”
“You—” Her mouth twisted, struggling for words. “You’re not normal!”
“I guess not,” he said, turning away.
From that moment, she began to be afraid of him. Mickey didn’t realize it at first. She realized it only vaguely herself. But she realized that he had rejected her ultimately, and rejection bred subtle retaliation.
* * * *
They saw each other, waking, only for brief periods after that. They led separate lives out of the same headquarters, lives that rarely touched. When he woke, around ten in the morning, Irene would be asleep and he would dress quickly and go out to press his systematic search for a clue to Roberts’ whereabouts. It carried him farther day by day as he worked from downtown into the outlying districts. He would return to the hotel in time to dress for work. Irene would usually have gone out; if not, she would speak to him only if necessary. He had given her the address and telephone number of Fenelon’s tavern, but he never saw her there nor heard from her. Once, she had left the hotel before he went to work and didn’t come in until six the next morning. She was helplessly drunk, and he had to undress her and put her to bed. She lost consciousness during the process. He was looking for a nightgown or pajama top, because she had a tendency to get uncovered while she slept and he didn’t want a pneumonia case on his hands, when he found an assortment of soiled hose and lingerie stuffed into a dresser drawer. He realized she hadn’t done any laundry and she had no clean underclothes left. He put everything in the lavatory and left it to soak. She could decide for herself whether to wear it wet or tend to it.
On the morning of the last day of his employment by Fenelon, he woke and lay quietly, lingering, his hands linked under his head. After a while he got up and dressed, went down to the hotel coffee shop for breakfast and afterward stopped at the desk. He paid their bill to date and checked himself out.
“My wife will stay on for a few days. If you’ll give me the single rate, I’ll pay it in advance.”
The clerk told him the rate and he paid a week’s rent for her.
“I’m leaving money with her, of course,” Mickey said. “She can pay cash for anything else she needs. Simpler that way.”
The clerk gave him a receipt for the advance rent. He went up to the room and Irene was still asleep. He got out his suitcase and packed what he had. There were some things with the hotel laundry service and he called to have them sent up. After a few minutes, a boy brought them. He was putting them in the bag when Irene woke up. He heard her stirring, but went on with the packing and closed the bag before he looked at her. She was on one elbow, blinking.
“Going somewhere?” she said.
“Yeah,” he said. “Time to move. I’m not getting anywhere here. I think Roberts has either gone back to Kansas City or has moved on, maybe west.”
“What about me?” she said.
“Your rent is paid
here for another week. If you decide not to stay, they’ll give you a refund.”
“You promised to get me to Las Vegas.”
“Not exactly,” he said. “We had a kind of bargain, remember?”
He waited a short time and she didn’t say anything. He went to the bathroom to make sure he hadn’t left anything.
When he came back, she said, “What about your job? You running out on that too?”
“This is the last night,” he said. “It was a temporary job.”
She flopped onto her back and yawned deeply. He picked up the bag and started out. When he looked back, she had uncovered her left leg, raised it high in the air and was stroking it lovingly with both hands.
In the hall he met the house detective.
“Checking out, Mr. Marine?”
“Yes,” Mickey said. “Mrs. Marine will stay on for a few days.”
“Oh. Well, we’ll take good care of her.”
“I’m sure you will.”
He got in the elevator, pushed the button for the next floor down, and when he got there, reversed direction and returned to his own floor. He left his suitcase in the hall and walked quietly back to Irene’s room. He could hear her voice raised in angry protest, a shrill curse, the sound of a slap. He put his key in the lock silently, turned it, opened the door and went in.
Irene was crouched, naked, on the bed, as far back from the edge as she could get. The hotel detective was leaning over her, one hand raised. She spat at him.
“Stay away from me—you stink!” she hissed. “You make me sick to my stomach!”
“Don’t give me that, you cheap tart—”
Mickey moved between the beds and grabbed the detective’s left arm. He spun him half around, hit him hard in the midsection, then snapped his head back with a short, lifting blow to the chin that rolled him back on to the other bed and off to the floor. He was around the bed by the time the detective had scrambled to his feet. When he saw Mickey poised, the fight went out of him. He straightened his jacket with one hand and nursed his jaw with the other.
“I don’t know if you need this job or not,” Mickey said, “but we can fix it for you to lose it. Now stay the hell out of here.”
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