Death in The Life

by Dorothy Salisbury Davis

  “On the other hand”—he started purring again and his voice really was rich and velvety—“you play along with Goldie and it’s money in the bank.”

  “No way,” Julie said.

  “You’re making a mistake.”

  “Could be.”

  He reached out his hand and tipped her chin upward. She did not draw back. If he had been a white man, she would have and maybe given him a crack across the face as well. Goldie knew it. “No hard feelings?”

  “No.” By shaking her head, she escaped his touch.

  “You know something? If you were my girl, you’d be number one in no time. You could have class. It’d be a pleasure for me to take on the obligation. First thing, I’d want your hair growing down your back. You need a little silicon up front. Then I’d start on the clothes… I got a fifty-thousand-dollar dress designer on my payroll. I ain’t bullshitting you. Ask any of my girls.”

  “How did you find out my name is Julie?”

  “I knew it from the day you bought the Tarot cards. If you’d looked in the crystal ball yourself, you’d’ve seen a dark, handsome man coming into your life.”

  “No way,” Julie said, aware that she was saying it too often, aware also of dryness in her mouth.

  “I can wait, a gentleman of leisure. Any time you change your mind, just put out the word you want to see Goldie.”

  6

  PETE HAD NOT RETURNED by seven o’clock, so Julie packed up his tool box and sewing kit, locked her shop, and went along to the Actors Forum. The door was locked, but Amy Ross, an actress Julie knew by sight, was using the wall phone outside the office door. Julie tapped at the window, showed her face up close to the glass, and was let in. Amy returned to the phone. She had not seen Pete since early that afternoon.

  Julie went into the Green Room and read the assorted notices on the bulletin board. A rehearsal was in progress in the back room. A lot of Forum members wanted part-time work, according to the board, typing, baby-sitting, translating; several members wanted to share apartments. “Mary Ann” advertised herself as a good reliable maid. With references. The acting business was very bad. When was it not?

  Amy Ross came through from the phone and made herself coffee.

  “Do you know where Pete lives? Or where he works?” Julie asked her.

  “They’d know in the office, but it’s closed.”

  “I know.”

  “Did you try the phone book?”

  Julie hadn’t. Amy sipped her coffee and watched Julie turn the directory pages. “You’re Julie Hayes, aren’t you? Are you really psychic? A lot of the kids are into that scene.”

  “I’m beginning to think I’m psychotic.” She could not find a single Mallory in the phone book. Finally she realized that a page had been torn out.

  “Nothing surprises me,” Amy said. “Not around here. No kidding, why don’t you put a notice on the bulletin board? I’ll do it for you if you like.”

  “No…” Tentative.

  “What you mean is, put it up but don’t tell me about it. All they can do is take it down.”

  “I guess. Amy, do you ever get propositioned by the pimps?”

  Amy was lighting a cigarette. She scowled.

  “I’m not saying you should,” Julie amended.

  It was the smoke that caused the scowl. Amy waved it away. “Every time I cross the street. One called Goldie, right?”

  Julie nodded, relieved.

  “He’s a charmer. I always say, ‘The Life isn’t for me, Goldie. I’m as straight as a witch’s broom.’ And he’ll say, ‘What a waste.’”

  “I didn’t find him all that charming.”

  “He thinks he’s paying you a compliment.”

  “Sure,” Julie said. “I think I’ll try Information.”

  “If Pete isn’t on time, he isn’t going to show up at all.” Amy took a long drag of the cigarette and put it out “I’ve got to get back, but see if I’m not right—it’s Friday—Monday morning you’re going to find a note from him in the mail, and if he’s got money, which he generally hasn’t you might get flowers. Kiss-and-Run Pete, we call him, but he’s a love, and he’s got more talent than half the names on Broadway. When you leave, be sure the door locks behind you.”

  Julie got a number from Information, the address 741 Ninth Avenue. She got no answer when she dialed.

  Julie spent the weekend getting acquainted with the neighborhood and dressing up the back room with small purchases from the thrift shops on Ninth Avenue: an electric plate, another lamp, a table with its legs cut down to make it coffee size, and a couple of folding chairs that had once belonged to St Mary’s Hall. As a child she had played at equipping her room with everything she would need for an ocean voyage, assuming that her room really was a seaworthy vessel. She pretended to be days at sea; she pretended never to hear her mother and her friends in the other part of the apartment, a thousand miles of the Atlantic between them. Even in college, which had been the best place in her life, she had been a loner. Or, more exactly, an occasional participant in each of the numerous cliques.

  Pete did not show up. Nor did Goldie appear again at her door. On Eighth Avenue she saw a number of girls in fringe skirts and boots, some of whom looked like whores and some of whom didn’t. On Sunday morning, a soft warm day, she kept pace a few feet behind one who definitely did—flaming red hair, a yellow satin blouse with a green vest, and a behind that bounced as she sashayed along. She was singing. A couple of boys made raucous noises after her. She turned and called out, “You should show respect!” and went on. A proper-looking young man shied away when she tried to stop him. “I got a little boy looks just like you,” she said after him. Julie got close enough to hear what she was singing when she started again. Loud and clear: “Holy God, we praise thy name. Lord of all, we bow before thee… Infinite thy vast domain, holy God, we praise thy name.”

  All right. Julie crossed the street and headed for St. Malachy’s. She proposed to attend what was left of the eleven o’clock Mass, slipping into a pew at the rear of the church. The priest had an awful voice. Someone she couldn’t see from behind a pillar announced the lesson and began to read. A familiar voice. She didn’t have to look, but she did. Pete Mallory. It gave her an eerie, uncomfortable feeling, as though she had seen something creepy, obscene, that she wasn’t supposed to. Crazy, but she left the church as quickly as she could get out of it.

  She started back to the shop with the firm intention of putting Pete out of her mind. If he had been more definitely in it, it would have been easier to get him out. She didn’t even know what color eyes he had. She hadn’t talked with him more than a couple of hours in their entire acquaintanceship. But they were easy together. She felt a kinship with him she had with practically no one else, a kind of respect for something underneath… Failure? “Money makes me impotent.” It wasn’t failure she had in common with Pete, it was a peculiar kind of success, the kind most people would call failure. Including Doctor.

  Gray eyes. Eyes that wandered after they had looked at what was in front of them and then suddenly returned, as though to surprise what was in back of what was in front. Pete had visions, she was sure; he could make anything seem beautiful if he wanted to look at it that way. So what had happened to her in church? What was obscene? It had to do with knowing he had studied for the priesthood… and Jeff. The instant she thought of her husband it was as though an avalanche of snow tumbled down on her, her mind a vast, closed in whiteness. The connection had shorted.

  Upstairs over the shop, a plump Puerto Rican woman was sitting at the open window braiding her little girl’s hair. The youngster often played in front of the building.

  “It’s going to be an early spring,” Julie said.

  “Like summer. You had a customer.”

  “A real one?”

  “She used to come to Señora Cabrera. I told her to come back later.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You should have a big sign in your window.”


  “I’m going to make one now,” Julie said. She had brought the materials. Mrs. Ryan’s Consultant wasn’t going to pack them in.

  Friend Julie

  Reader and advisor

  Tarot

  She put on the flowered smock she had chosen as costume and having hung up her new shingle, sat at the table. No one came. She had lost her first customer. She arranged several combinations of the cards and worked with the Major Arcana following the instruction book. From its cryptic interpretations she elaborated with some pretty wild projections for her imaginary seeker. A couple of people from the Forum stopped by, a man and a girl who lived together nearby. With the need for practice, Julie proposed to read the cards for them.

  “You first,” the actor said. “I’m going up to Joe’s and get a beer.”

  “Don’t get lost,” the girl said.

  “Did you say don’t? I can’t believe it.”

  It was a weak clue, but Julie used it in her reading. Temperance followed by the Hanged Man: she suggested that the seeker was going to have to come to a decision. She was at sixes and sevens now because she suspected hypocrisy, deception. Without Julie’s quite knowing when it happened, the cards themselves seemed to take over, and simply from her little knowledge of their basic symbolism, she found herself spilling out a stream of consciousness that held the seeker enthralled. It was an experience like none Julie had ever had before. A trip. A trance could hardly have been a less conscious effort.

  “Are you satisfied with the reading?” she asked some five minutes later, a question borrowed directly from Madame Tozares.

  “More than. Did anybody at the Forum tip you off about us?”

  “That is very close to an insult.”

  “But you were right on.”

  “You threw the cards,” Julie said. “Then they took over.”

  The girl nodded. “Now I’d like some advice.”

  “Hold it. No way,” Julie said.

  “I’ll pay you.”

  Julie shook her head. “Your boy friend’s coming back for his turn. If I read, I don’t referee.”

  “Him come back here? Are you kidding? He’s gone for the day and good riddance.”

  “If that’s how you feel about him, what do you need with advice?”

  “You’re right, I don’t need advice. I need money.”

  “Remember the High Priestess. She seemed pretty cheerful about your prospects.”

  “She did, didn’t she?” The seeker’s spirits brightened.

  Julie said, “I tell the truth as the cards reveal it. I don’t exaggerate. I don’t hold back.”

  The girl got up from the table with the attitude of someone on her way home to pack.

  “If you’re satisfied with my reading, will you recommend me to your friends?”

  “You’re in business, Julie.” She went out wiggling her plump little backside. There was a smile under each buttock.

  Julie was about to lock up when the former client of Señora Cabrera returned. She was a tidy little woman, pale, with a strained face. She wore a dark blue suit, good shoes, and carried a new leather purse. Sales personnel with commission extra, Julie decided. No rings and no marks to show that she had recently removed them.

  “How much do you charge for a throw of the Tarot, Friend Julie?”

  She was hearing that form of address for the first time; it sounded natural. “What did the Señora charge you?”

  Her split second of a smile before she spoke didn’t cover the lie. It exposed it. “Five dollars.”

  “I’m sorry, but I charge ten,” Julie said. If she charged less, the reading would be worth less.

  “I hope you’re as good as the Señora.”

  “I tell you only what I see. I hold nothing back and I do not exaggerate.”

  Julie let the cards take it from there. Once, when she had been trying to learn a dance step, the choreographer had said, “Let the feet do it.” She let the cards do it.

  When the reading was finished the woman put her ten dollars under the base of the lamp. “I’m glad I came,” she said. “I feel much better.”

  Julie went to the door with her. “Recommend me to your friends.”

  “I may,” she said as though carrying something away with her that she was not yet ready to share.

  “Do you mind my asking, Do you work at Lord and Taylor’s?”

  “Macy’s.”

  Julie closed the door behind her and went to the back where she removed her smock and hung it on the bathroom door. “Macy’s,” she said aloud with wonder at her own perception. “I’ll be damned.”

  True to Amy Ross’s prediction, a note from Pete awaited Julie when she opened the shop door Monday morning.

  Friend Julie,

  I’m sorry to have gone into my vanishing act. A sick friend needed me and since that doesn’t happen very often I stood by. May the gods inspire you and the fates send custom.

  Pete

  P.S. Thanks for returning my kit and kaboodle to the Forum.

  So long, Pete, Julie thought. Disengagement. What an exercise in saying nothing gracefully. Even his handwriting, long and lean like himself, seemed to lope off the page. Kiss-and-Run Pete, Amy had called him. Then there was Mrs. Ryan’s version of Pete. To hell with that, but to hell with him too. Julie locked up again long enough to walk to Ninth Avenue and buy herself some lilacs.

  Later that morning Amy stopped by on her way to rehearsal. “See, didn’t I tell you?” she said of the flowers.

  “Yep.”

  The curious looked in the window now and then throughout the day, but as they would into a cage in the zoo. Ready to run if a paw came out at them. A few friends came to talk, but no paying customer. That afternoon Julie had cards printed, thinking of Mrs. Ryan and her Bingo crowd. The next day she decided to distribute some of the cards herself to shops within a few blocks’ range. Almost everybody gave her a little counter space near the cash register. She was soon on a first-name basis with the florist, the baker, the shoemaker, dry cleaner, deli owner… and Mr. Bourke in the electrical equipment shop who had lived down the hall from Mrs. Ryan until he was asked to leave. He looked so normal. Square. A slight man of fifty or so with glasses that kept sliding down his nose. He was very pleasant to Julie. The boyish type.

  “Did Pete Mallory speak to you about a couple of spotlights for my place?” Julie asked him.

  “I haven’t seen Pete lately.”

  “On loan, he thought maybe.”

  Mr. Bourke was accustomed to Pete’s nonprofit business. “What did you want to use them for?”

  Julie explained.

  “I’ll see what I can do for you.”

  “Thanks,” Julie said.

  Going out of his place Julie walked into Goldie. He’d been waiting for her. “Looking for me, Julie?”

  “Nope.”

  “If any of the cats on this stroll give you a hard time, you tell Goldie.” He grinned and drew his finger across his throat to show what he would do about it.

  “You bet.” She went into the fish market, which was the nearest exit.

  Late in the day Mrs. Ryan came by with her friend Mrs. Russo. She left Mrs. Russo and took fifty of Julie’s cards. Mrs. Russo represented cash, but what she was really paying for was someone to tell about the wonderful man she was married to, the precinct detective, and she inquired of the cards more for him than for herself. Something good was going to happen for him, Julie told her, although there might be a slight delay.

  “Two weeks, two months… Does the number two mean anything to you?”

  “Second grade! Detective second grade. That’s the very thing I wanted to know.”

  Friend Julie became a familiar figure on Forty-fourth Street and environs, and people did visit her, though not by and large on a paying basis. Nobody could afford ten dollars certainly, and except with the Macy’s woman on whom she had tested her strength, she would have felt like a charlatan to take it. She accepted five and sometimes two. She cert
ainly had no qualms. In fact, she felt she might be doing some good for once in her life. And if she was not writing an actual story, she was filling a notebook with colorful characters, most of their color of her own invention. She did not miss Doctor Callahan. Definitely not.

  7

  SHE HAD SEEN THE GIRL before, a mere child. She had to be a child to take Julie for an older woman. “Ma’am”—that was something new in Julie’s life.

  “I need to talk to someone, ma’am.” She stood with her back to the entrance. Every time anyone passed in front, throwing a shadow through the window, she averted her face.

  “I read cards,” Julie said. She was wary of the word need.

  “How much do you charge?” The youngster kept looking with a mute longing toward the inside room.

  “Come on in,” Julie said and ushered her into the back room.

  “Five dollars? Ten? I’ll pay you whatever it is.”

  “Five is fine and you pay it later.”

  They sat at the low table. Julie could see the street if she leaned back in her chair. The seeker was concealed, and more at ease as a consequence. Julie still put her age at fifteen or sixteen, but a street person. There was nothing garish about her; she wore a dark green pants suit with a white ascot at her throat; her shoulder-length hair hung soft and richly brown, and her only makeup was eye shadow. Her own lashes. What was it then that marked her? And was the mark forever? It occurred to Julie that Goldie might have sent her, whatever pretext she was about to lay on: the thing about whores was that they were terrific actors.

  “You know what I am,” the girl said, getting it out front. She had no smile. Not for Julie. Down all the way.

  “How did you expect me to know?”

  “People can tell. Sometimes I think there must be a smell. I don’t even wear perfume on account of what people say. I don’t walk like a whore, I don’t think. I know I don’t talk like the ones I know.”

  “Do you feel like one?”

  “I guess that’s it. It’s when I get feeling like one, that’s the worst. That’s when I want to kill myself. I have a knife even.”