by James Jones
“I am sorry. But you havent got any claims on me, mister. You’re not my husband, you know.”
“Yeh I know. I sure as hell aint, am I? Jesus Christ, Lorene,” he said.
“Listen, every minute we talk here is costing me four bits . . .”
“And thats a lot of money, aint it?”
“. . . and theres nothing I can do about the other. Do you want me to slip you in ahead, or don’t you? I’m going out of my way to do that as it is.”
Thats right, he thought. Women were so practical.
“Well,” she said, “what do you say?”
He looked at her, at the very wide mouth across the thin child’s face that was compressed into a harried impatience, now, wanting to tell her what to do with it, to take it all of it and stick it, and walk out of this ratrace. Instead, he heard himself saying, “Okay,” and hated himself for saying it.
“All right then,” Lorene said. “In number nine. And get undressed. I’ll be back soon as I take care of this.”
And she was gone then, swiftly, him watching her legging it down the hall twisting and turning through the crowd like a broken field runner. A man reached out an arm and stopped her and she smiled, talked, got irritated and went on.
Another Prewitt, Prewitt thought. He went on into number nine then, after that one, and looked at the granite basin still sitting on the floor with the used towel in the water, feeling the blankness in him slowly filling up with anger, but the anger kept seeping out the bottom where his stomach no longer was. He sat down on the bed. He could not stop seeing the mental picture he had brought with him, and it made him feel all gone inside.
He heard her coming back. But by the time he could look up the door was already shut, the unzippered gown on the chair, and she was moving fast toward the granite stand and the Vaseline. Then she stopped, looking at him stupidly.
“Why you’re not even undressed yet!”
“I’m not? By god, I’m not, am I?” he stood up.
Lorene looked like she was going to cry. “I told you to be undressed when I got back, goddam it. I’m slipping you in ahead of them, just as a favor, and you dont even try to help me any.”
Prew stood and looked at her. He could not say anything.
“Never mind that now,” he said. “Let me look at you.”
“Okay,” she said.
He handed her the three dollars and unbuttoned his fly.
She pushed the damp hair back out of the harried eyes, sweat glistening from the flat place between her chubby little breasts.
“Dont bother to undress now,” she said. “Just drop them.”
“I’ll be goddamned if I’ll do it with my pants on,” he said, and went on pulling them off over his shoes. “Payday or no payday.” He knelt to untie his shoes.
“Well at least leave your shoes on. You know there’s a time limit on Payday. Petunia will be knocking any time now.”
He straightened up, looking at her, a tightness of ache deep in his jaws that ran clear down his spine into his buttocks and knotted his belly sourly. She lay naked on the bed, waiting frenetically, her head bent forward irritably to look at him, her knees up in the proper position, the required position, the regulation position, the following exercise will be a back and leg exercise done in two counts from the position of arms at thrust, at the count of one raise the body horizontally, at the count of two recover, arms at thrust HOOV, ready HEXercise.
The springs squeaked under his knees.
“Why dont you come back tomorrow night?” Lorene said. “And stay all night tomorrow?”
He could hear this faintly through the skintight space suit of plexiglass he was encased in, sealed in, a perfect example of the Twentieth Century Man doing his calisthenics to keep healthy and not lose his figure, in his airtight, soundproof, loveproof, hateproof, lifeproof plexiglass space suit that was a marvel of modern industrial accomplishment, a masterpiece of modern industrial engineering design, there should be at least two in every home, and then one each for all the little ones, because a Twentieth Century Man looked so silly naked with his shoes and socks still on, a muscle-knotty squirrel divested of its skin but the footpads not cut off yet. But he was goddamned, stinking slucking goddamned, if he would tell her, now, how he could not come back tomorrow because he had had to borrow twenty from the twenty per cent men, also a marvel of modern industrial accomplishment, to come today at all, and that he would not have the dough to come again tomorrow. Besides, he would have to yell too loud to make it heard outside the plexiglass space suit anyway.
“You’ll have to hurry, honey,” Lorene said. “If you dont want to take a raincheck.”
It was very strange: Robert E Lee Prewitt, the Twentieth Century MAN, who walked upon his mother earth in an up-to-the-minute Twentieth Century PLEXIGLASS SPACE SUIT that industrial techniques produced in such munificent mass abundance that every man woman and child could have one at cost, at less than cost, at nothing actually, because our recent research has so perfected the new process that we can now make the astounding offer of an almost absolute vacuum in our newer models, this modern MAN with so much to be grateful for, with the heritage of the ages in his hands, who could hear his shoes scraping scraping against the gilt-flaking bed frame like one of the higher-priced more accurate metronomes reminding him not to get the clean sheet muddy—this creature was not even HAPPY! Just because he could not get outside his plexiglass space suit, his sanitary all-purpose all-weather space suit, just because he was not known, just because he did know, just because he could not touch another human soul. He humped and he pumped and he could not get outside his space suit.
“Come on, honey,” Lorene panted. “You’re not even trying.”
Then, as if to prove it, there was a big broad knock on the door and Petunia hollered, “All right in there, yawl. Y’time’s up, Miss Lorene.”
“All right,” Lorene bawled.
“Try,” Lorene panted. “Or I’ll have to give you a raincheck.”
Try what for?
“To hell with it,” he said. “Fuck it. I quit. I give up.” He got up and got a handkerchief from his pants and wiped the sweat out of his eyes.
“Whats wrong with you tonight?”
“I guess I had two too many drinks. Piss on it,” he said. He put his pants on. Then he put his shirt on. Then he wiped his face again. He did not have to put his shoes on.
“I’m sorry it didnt work, Prew.”
“Whats to be sorry for? You done your best, dint you? Your professional best.”
As she handed him the printed card and refund, Lorene looked rather like a girl who has failed to pass her finals and been flunked out. She wanted to redeem her reputation.
“Will you be back tomorrow night?”
“I dont think so,” Prew said, looking at the buck and a half in his hand that would make the car fare for tomorrow night. “Anyway, dont you hold your breath until you see me, lady.”
“Now don’t be like that. Thats no way to be. Theres no need to get mad. Lots of fellows get rainchecks, all the time. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
“Raincheck?” he said. “Piss on the raincheck.” He tore the card in two and laid it carefully on the bed. “Give that to some other three-minute man. I aint worried about my virility.”
“All right, if thats the way you feel.”
“Thats exactly how I feel.”
“Okay. Well, I’ve got to go. Maybe I’ll see you sometime.”
He watched her put the gown on and leave, hoping she would say something else, something more, wanting her to make the overture he could not make. Even in the anger he did not want to destroy it between them. She stopped at the door and looked back at him a second and he knew she was waiting for him to make the overture. But he could not make it. She would have to make it. But she could not make it either. And she left.
He finished dressing in the room alone. The room was muggy like before a storm with evaporated sweat, but when he stepped out in the h
all it was no better and his eyes and temples pounded with undischarged, unrelieved, too-rich blood. His face was flushed with it, and already he had sweat through the back of his shirt and the ass of his pants. Well, he thought, thats the first time that ever happened to you. You must be changing somehow. Some way or other. He felt very sick and very angry.
In the hallway he met Maureen standing in the doorway of her room taking a breather. Somebody had sneaked a bottle in to her and she was half drunk.
“Well, look who’s here,” she bawled. “Hi there, Babyface. Hey, why so glum? Cant you get in to see your own true love?”
“You want to go to the room with me?”
“Who? Me? Whats wrong with the Holy Princess, Babyface?”
“To hell with her. I’m asking you.”
“They really keep the Princess on the move, dont they? all the lonesome lovesick joes? God-damn, wish I looked like a virgin. They dont want whores any more, they all want mothers. To protect them. What you need is a wife, Babyface.”
“Okay, lets get married.”
Maureen stopped guffawing and looked at him. “Hell, you dont need no wife. What you need is a drink, and you need it bad. Come on, I got a bottle hid under the bunk,” she whispered. “You really want to go now? Or you just want the drink?”
“Sure. The works.”
“You can have the drink anyway. You dont have to fuck to get it. Are you sure you want to go?”
“Sure I’m sure. The works. The whole works,” he said.
“Because I wont be much good,” Maureen said. “Some muffdiver got my gun a whal ago and I aint worth a damn now. Thats why I been takin a break.”
“To hell with it. I want the works.”
What had been difficult with Lorene was easy this time, with Maureen. Theres irony for you, Prewitt. Make a note on that. They even had time for another drink before Petunia knocked. Make a note on that too.
“Okay!” Maureen bawled. “Comin out! Come on, Babyface, we got to shove.”
Prew got out three more dollars and threw them on the bed. “There. Theres the fucking money. Let’s go again.”
Maureen stared at him half drunkenly. “Go again? You dont want to go again.”
“Sure I want to go again. And after that, go again. Aint my money as good as the next guy’s? As long as I pay, whats it to you who you lay?”
Maureen picked up the bills. “Its nothing to me.”
“All right then.”
She leaned down and got the hidden bottle out. “Lets have a drink first.”
“Okay.”
She watched him drink. “Listen, Babyface. Goin again aint gunna do you any good. Not with what you got. You just be wasting money.” She put the money in his hand and closed his fingers over it. “You take this money and go to the nearest bar and you get yourself drunkern hell. That’s all’l do you any good.”
“Gettin drunk wont do me any good.”
“Yes it will. When I get what you got, that how I always fix it. But goin again wont do you any good. I know.”
“Who the hell’re you? Dorothy Dix? I aint asking you for no advice.”
“No. But I’m givin it to you, goddam you, and shut up. I’m doin the talking. You can knock yourself out if you want, but you aint going to kill me too. Fuckin wont help what you got. I’ve tried that way myself, in my time.”
“How do you know what I’ve got? You cant even guess at what I’ve got.”
“I know what you got. You got the same thing I get myself, only I get it about two or three times every week fifty-two weeks a year year in year out. Dont try to snow me, Babyface. This is Maureen.”
“Okay, you’re so smart. You tell me.”
“I am telling you. All you got is a feeling you’re locked up in a box thats two sizes too small for you and theres no air in it and you’re suffocatin, and all the time outside the box you hear the whole world walking around laughin and having a big, big time. Thats all you got.” She looked at him.
“Okay,” Prew said meekly. “You talk.”
“Okay then. Hell, I get what you got all the time, and the ony thing’ll fix it is to get drunkern hell. I’ve experimented, see? What you got to do now is to remember that it aint nobody’s fault. Its the system. Nobody’s to blame.”
“Thats a pretty hard thing to remember.”
“Sure. Too hard. Thats why you got to get good and drunk. Because if you dont you’ll never remember it, see?”
“Okay. You win.” He began to dress.
“Now you’re talkin sense.”
Petunia knocked again. “Miz Kipfer say you git a move on in ere, Mo-reen. You overdue, heah?”
“Take off, you bag of pus,” Maureen bawled. “You just watch yourself. This is a seconds.”
“You better keep this three then,” Prew said.
“You keep it, Babyface. You need it worse than me. At least right now, anyway. You can give it back some other time. All I want you to do is get out and go get drunk and quit givin me the blues.”
“Okay. I’m going to get drunk,” he said. “But on my way out I’m going to say hello to Mrs Kipfer. I’m going to tell her what I think of respectable whores’ madams. The mealy-mouthed old bitch.”
“No you aint. You just leave Mrs Kipfer alone, see? She’ll have the goddamn MPs on you quickern you can bat your eye. You want to spend a month in the Shafter stockade? You just go get drunk.”
“Okay,” he said. “Okay. But listen, what the hell can you do? Aint there nothing you can ever do?”
“No,” Maureen said. “Not ever. Because nobody’s to blame. Its the system. Thats what you got to remember, that nobody’s to blame.”
“I wont believe that,” he said. He put the three back in his wallet. “But its okay. I know what you mean.”
“Okay then,” Maureen said. “Just take off. I dint take you to raise, did I? I aint got all goddam day.”
“Go fuck yourself,” he grinned.
“Next!” Maureen bawled, as he closed the door.
He was still grinning when Mrs Kipfer opened the door for him gracefully sweetly, and he managed easily now by just grinning at her and not saying a word.
Thats what you got to remember: its nobody’s fault, its the system, he told himself. What did you expect on Payday? A brass band to meet you? A motorcycle escort? She was just busy, thats all. Would you expect to go in a department store and talk to your girlfriend behind her counter while the customers beat each other to death with nylon hose all around you when the big sale was on?
“Thats all it is,” he told the stairway. “She’s got to earn her living. According to the system. Aint she?”
Thats all it is, he told himself.
But the hard tight sour knot of indigestible outrage in his belly did not dissolve.
I guess she’s right then. You got to wash it out with liquor. You got to be drunk enough to be sentimental, before you can believe different. No matter how many times you spiel it. No wonder theres so goddam many alcoholics in this goddam country. In this goddam Twentieth Century.
What a name. Lorene. The perfect whore’s name: romantic, very high-toned, and very feminine. Lorene the fair, Lorene the square, Lorene the lily maid of Hotel Street. How could you ever of thought that was a lovely, woman’s name? he thought biliously.
Well, he would go up to the corner to Wu Fat’s, thats where. He would go in the downstairs bar and he would drink this thirteen-fifty up and then see how we feel. We’ll feel like hell, thats how. All right then, after that he would catch a Kalakaua bus out to Waikiki where Maggio said he was going to be with his queer friend Hal, this Payday night, because it had already taken all his money to pay his debts, and we will look them up. We will drink some more off of them. Hell, if he got drunk enough he might even be able to pick himself up one himself. He had tried everything else. He might as well shoot an angle on this azimuth.
Chapter 25
HE DID NOT have to go to Waikiki to find Maggio. Maggio was sitting at th
e bar of the cocktail lounge of Wu Fat’s Restaurant, when he walked in, and Prew stood in the doorway of the Payday pandemonium, wanting suddenly to laugh wildly like a condemned man getting a reprieve, feeling the warmth that Maureen’s whiskey could not give him beginning to spread through him now, as he watched the little Wop perched high above the press on the withers of a bar stool like a winning jockey in a crowded paddock smiling benignly down from his precarious perch at the screaming mob, and arguing with the barman in Italian.
“Halo, lunsman!” Angelo bawled at him, waving his arm. “Hey, here I am! Over here! This is me!”
Prew worked his way slowly over to the stool, feeling himself begin to grin.
“Can you breathe?” Angelo said.
“No.”
“Climb up on my shoulders. You can see everything from up here, and still breathe too. Aint this wonderful?”
“I thought you was headed for Waikiki tonight.”
“I am. This here is ony preparation. Would you like a little preparation, lunsman?”
“I could do with a little preparation,” Prew panted, still elbowing in towards the bar.
“Hey, pizon,” Angelo called to the barman. “Bring this other pizon some preparation. This pizon is a personal friend of mine. This pizon badly needs preparation.”
The sweatily grinning barman nodded happily and moved away.
“This pizon fought with Garibaldi, too,” Angelo howled after him. “He is use to ony the best of service.
“I got him trained,” he said to Prew. “Me and that pizon both fought for Garibaldi. I’m tellin him about the beautiful statue of Garibaldi the Americans put up in Washington Square.”
“Where’d you get all the goddam money? If I remember, when I hit you up this afternoon you was supposed to be flat broke.”
“I was. Honest I was. I happen to run into a guy from Easy Company owed me five from a jawbone latrine game so I settled for two-fifty and call it even. So I could induce a little preparation, before I go out to Waikiki and go to work.”
