by Orrie Hitt
Cherry had to wait until after one o’clock to get her pay — a little over four dollars with everything taken out — and she had a sandwich in a nearby drug store. She felt hurt at losing the job but she wasn’t really surprised. The office of Channing and Bright was geared for speed and she just wasn’t capable of it.
She spent the rest of the afternoon going from one employment agency to another. Yes, they had jobs. Some were in factories and some were in offices but none of them paid more than forty dollars a week. She didn’t go out to any of the interviews offered to her. What was the use? She couldn’t save anything on that kind of pay.
By four-thirty she was quite a distance downtown and not far from Tom Lester’s studio. He had said that he would help her. Perhaps he would offer her more money. Even if he gave her a raise of only ten dollars she would be closer to her goal than she would have been with the other jobs.
She crossed the street, leaving the business section behind her.
The weekend had been miserable and long and she had missed not going to the café on Saturday night. Joe had come over at about eight o’clock on both nights. She had talked to him on the front porch but she hadn’t gone out with him.
“I could cut my arm off,” he had said when they were alone.
“I don’t feel very sorry for you, Joe,” she had answered.
“I never heard you talk that way before.”
“You can’t treat me like a two-dollar slut and expect me to think much of you.”
“I take it all back.”
“Take what back?”
“Well — ”
Sunday night he had stayed for two hours — Oscar and Rita had gone to the movies — and he had tried to get her to go up to her room.
“You won’t be sorry.”
“I know I won’t. Because we’re staying right down here.”
“Hell, I tell you I didn’t mean it.”
“What good does that do me now?”
She thought about him as she walked along the street toward the studio. One day he would make some girl a good husband but what he had to offer wasn’t for her. She had to move ahead and become a success. At forty or fifty dollars a week it would take her time but she could afford to wait. She was young and nothing would stand in her way.
Tom’s studio was in a brick building next to a secondhand furniture shop. There were a lot of things piled on the sidewalk in front of the store. The owner brought them out in the morning and took them in at night. He didn’t sell very much. Not many people used the street — this was one of the mysteries of Tom’s success.
Cherry entered the studio and found a strange girl behind the counter. She was a girl in her teens and she had a faint, uncertain smile and a rather attractive face.
“Can I help you, miss?”
“I wanted to see Mr. Lester.”
“I think he’s in the darkroom. Would you care to wait?”
“Thanks.”
There was a lone chair next to a magazine rack and Cherry sat there. She had wasted her time. Tom had replaced her over the weekend and wouldn’t have anything to offer. She should have taken one of those factory jobs and forgotten about him.
Tom came out in about ten minutes.
“Pleasant surprise,” he said, smiling. He rubbed his hands together. “Want to come back and talk?”
She stood up. She had worn a white blouse and gray skirt to work and these were as tight as her other clothes. She noticed his eyes run over her body.
“I hope you’re not too busy,” she said.
“I’m not busy. And if I were I’d put it aside.”
She followed him into the back room. Beyond this was another room but she had never been in that one. He kept it locked and said he didn’t use it. Yet one night when she drove by with Joe she had seen a light in there. She had said nothing about it to Tom.
“Tired,” he said, sitting down at a small desk. “Care for a cigarette?”
“Not right now.”
She sat in a chair beside the desk. He lit a cigarette and sucked the smoke into his lungs.
“How did the new job go?”
“Not very well. They put me on a typewriter and all I did was make mistakes.”
“So you quit?”
“I was fired.”
He leaned toward her, his elbows on the desk.
“I hired another girl in your place.”
“So I see.”
She felt a little ill. She should have stayed with this job. Forty a week was a lot better than nothing.
“I hope you understand that I couldn’t wait,” he went on. “I had to have somebody.”
“Oh, I understand.”
“And you know I don’t have enough business for two girls.”
“I know that. Half of the time you don’t need even one girl.”
The next day she would start out again and she wouldn’t turn anything down. She would take a job in a factory and be happy with it. What else could she do?
“You’ve been saving your money,” he said, “to get out of town.”
“Yes, I told you about that when I started with you. I said then that I might be with you six months and I might be with you for a year. I didn’t lie to you.”
He laughed. “You just quit me cold.”
“I’m sorry about that,” she confessed. “I should have used more sense. But I was thinking only about making twenty dollars more each week. Now I know there wasn’t much point to trying. Much that I learned in high school I’ve forgotten.”
“There’s one thing you haven’t used,” he said. “And you didn’t learn it in high school.”
“Such as?”
“Your beauty. You’re a very beautiful girl, Cherry. Not only your face but your body.”
“Well, thank you.”
“You could do something with it if you wanted to. You could make your beauty pay you some pretty big dividends. Do you know that?”
She crossed her legs and she knew that he could see her knee. She didn’t mind. He had seen her knees before.
“I hadn’t thought much about it,” she said. “I know that it helped me at the café but now they don’t need anybody.”
He nodded.
“Everything happens at once, doesn’t it?” he asked.
“It would seem so.”
“It usually does. You get one bad break and another is bound to follow.”
The young receptionist came in then and asked him if there was anything else to be done. He said there wasn’t and she bade him goodnight. A few moments later the door closed behind her. Tom and Cherry were alone in the building.
“I wouldn’t expect you to let her go because of me,” Cherry said. “That wouldn’t be fair.” She tried to laugh. “You said to come to you if I needed help and that’s what I did. I had no way of knowing that you would replace me so quickly.”
He put out his cigarette and lit another one. She felt he had something on his mind but she had felt the same way before. Once he had said there was something he wanted to discuss with her but he never had. At the time she had thought he might be going to give her a raise and she had been disappointed.
“I hope I can trust you,” he said.
“Trust me?”
“That’s what I said. If I can’t I’m opening doors that I don’t want open.”
She felt confused. What was he talking about?
“I don’t follow you,” she said.
He leaned back in his chair and stared up at the ceiling.
“You kept my books for me,” he said. “You knew how much business I did and you also knew how I lived. Didn’t you ever wonder how I could make ends meet?”
“It was none of my affair. You were the boss and I just worked for you. When it came time for you to pay me, you paid me. What more was there for me to know?”
“Some girls would have been curious.”
“I wasn’t,” she lied.
“I’m keeping my own books now. All the girl out
front does is take cash and make appointments. The other way, if she’s at all smart, is too dangerous for me.”
It wasn’t dark outside but the building next door was closed and long shadows crept into the room.
“I’d better be going,” she said.
He looked at her and smiled.
“I thought you wanted to make some money,” he said.
“I do.”
“How much?”
“As much as I can.”
“That’s a good answer.”
“Everybody does. You have to make money or you’re done for.”
“Stuck in Northtown?”
“You could say that.”
“And you want to get out of here?”
“I want to get a chance at something bigger than I’ve had. I might not have the best voice in the world but there are others who aren’t any better. I’ve heard them and seen them and I know I can do as well as they can. All I need is a chance.”
He was silent for a moment. He was still looking at her, his eyes serious.
“How much are you willing to pay for that chance?”
“Quite a bit.”
“Almost anything?”
She had been asked almost the same question by an elderly man after one of the beauty contests. Married, he had offered to take her to New York and set her up in an apartment. The proposition had been tempting but she had refused.
“I’d do almost anything,” she agreed now.
“How would a couple of hundred bucks a week strike you?”
She hardly knew what to say.
“That’s fantastic,” she murmured.
“No, it isn’t. Not with your face and your shape. Some girls who have less than you have make as much. I know a couple who make a lot more. One has a new Chrysler and she has an apartment that would knock your eyes out.”
She wished she knew what he was trying to say. It was hot in the room and she was uncomfortable.
“I don’t know how they do it,” she said finally.
“They work for me.”
“You?” She was surprised.
Again he leaned forward and when he spoke he spoke slowly.
“Let’s not kid ourselves,” he said. “I can help you and you can help me. It’s as simple as that. You’re not stupid enough to think that I pay my bills on what I make from the studio, are you? I’d be in the street in less than a week if I tried that. Are you listening?”
“I’m listening.”
“When I took this business over after my father’s death I found out he had worked thirty years for peanuts. I decided I wouldn’t do the same thing. And then I met Catherine. She wanted the sky in her lap and I really had to do something. So I did it. I did the only thing I could do. Can you guess what it was?”
“No.”
He hadn’t finished the second cigarette but he lit another one.
“There’s a big market in nudes,” he said. “You can’t imagine how big it is. And sexy movies. Some of the movies bring a hundred dollars a print and many of the master films are worth fifty or sixty thousand dollars. The man who takes these pictures can pay well for the girls he uses. And the men. The movies don’t leave anything out, not a thing. Am I making myself clear?”
She understood then, saw where his money had come from. She wouldn’t have thought it possible. He seemed decent.
“I think I know what you’re talking about,” she said.
“I have about thirty girls and I do the work at night in the back room. I also have a barn outside of town that I use from time to time. Some of the girls are prostitutes and some of them are married, trying to live on a husband’s income that nobody could live on. And one is even the daughter of a lawyer.” He paused. “You could be one of them, Cherry. I’d guarantee you two hundred a week and you wouldn’t have to do much work to earn it.”
She had heard of these things before. Many girls posed in the nude and thought nothing of it. There were even magazines on the racks in stores that showed women wearing no clothes.
“You surprised me,” she said.
“Did I? Well, I think I can trust you. I wouldn’t be talking to you this way if I didn’t. You’re down on your luck and you need money. You’ve got something to sell that I can use. So I’m making you an offer.”
Cherry thought about it briefly. It would mean a lot of money to her, fast money, and she would be able to leave Northtown in a very short time.
“I don’t know what to say.”
“I didn’t expect that you would. It’s an idea that takes hard thinking sometimes. Some girls come into it easily but others have to struggle with themselves. All I know is that you have the body to sell pictures, plenty of pictures.”
“Would they be sold around here?”
“No, not around here. I’m not that foolish. All of my material is used out of town and I have more buyers than I can satisfy. From one sex movie alone I picked up twenty thousand dollars.”
“That’s a great deal of money.”
“Yes, and that’s only part of what I make. Sex is big business, Cherry. You can’t fight it. Everywhere you look there is sex. Life is sex. Without sex you wouldn’t be here and neither would I.”
“Can’t you get into trouble?”
“You can get into trouble driving your car down the street. Sure, I can get into trouble. But I don’t believe I will. I do enough to live comfortably and let the rest go. If I wanted to become rich I could become rich but I’m satisfied with things the way they are. I have money in the bank and I pay my bills promptly. What else is there?”
Two hundred dollars a week was bait, bringing Cherry closer and closer to the steel jaws of a trap. She could force herself to do it for a while, save her money and go on to something better. If the pictures weren’t sold in town no one would know, no one would suspect.
“What would I have to do?” she asked.
“Interested?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Well, I wouldn’t put you in the movies, not right away. You can decide about that later. In the movies you have to let the men do pretty much what they want.”
“I’d never go that far.”
“Then I’ll start you out with a series of stills. All you do is undress and I take the pictures as you go through the motions. From these pictures I build up a set and sell the negatives to a supplier. That’s about all there is to it.”
She laughed nervously.
“I’d feel funny taking my clothes off.”
“The first time is the hardest. After that there’s nothing to it. We have to make each set different, that’s all. Some men will buy half a dozen sets of one girl and keep coming back for more.”
“Why do they buy them?”
“Don’t ask me that. You’d have to read a dozen books to find the real reason. Some of them are lonely, some haven’t found in marriage what they want, I guess. I don’t really know. I just snap the pictures and take in the dough. The rest doesn’t concern me.”
His cigarettes were on the desk and she reached for one. Nobody would know if she did it, nobody would be able to guess. The pictures would be sold and soon forgotten. And she would have the money to build her career.
“I’ll let you know,” she said as he held the lighter for her.
“Whenever you get around to it.”
Her mouth was dry and the smoke tasted strange.
“It might take me a little while,” she said.
“That’s perfectly all right.”
When she was ready to go he walked with her to the door. The girl had turned out the lights and he caught up with her in the darkness.
“I could go for you myself,” he said.
“Please, Tom.”
“I mean it. Since the day you walked in here for the job I’ve had a yen for you.”
She stood very still, hardly breathing.
“But you’ve got a wife.”
“And she’s got a boy friend. She isn’t fooling me any. Nigh
ts when I’m down here they’re making love in some hotel or motel.”
“That’s your problem, not mine,” Cherry responded.
He tried to kiss her but she turned her head away.
“There’s money to be made here,” he said, not forcing the issue. “Don’t forget it.”
Once she was outside, Cherry walked to the bus stop three blocks away. She kept thinking of two hundred dollars a week. There would be no taxes deducted from money made that way. It would be two hundred dollars clear. To cover up she could take a job in a factory and tell Oscar and Rita that she had to work at night. There would be no reason for them to doubt her.
While she waited for the bus she thought of Joe and his proposal of marriage. She didn’t love him, of that she was sure, and she wasn’t ready for marriage. Marriage was for a girl who wanted kids and a home and neither appealed to Cherry. She wanted glittering lights and success and all the wonderful things that went with being somebody. After she had attained that goal she would seek out a man. Cherry smiled. There would be men along the way, probably many. Frankly, she liked men, liked how they could make her feel.
The bus was late. She continued to think. Where else could she earn so much money? She could become buried alive in a factory or an office and everything she had hoped for would be nothing but a dream, a dream with no chance of becoming real.
She missed the bus when it came by. She was in a phone booth talking to Tom Lester.
“Make it tomorrow night,” he said. “About ten.”
She was shaking as she left the phone booth. She was selling part of her body for a chance at the world. It seemed the only thing for her to do.
Chapter Five
IT WAS easy for her to get a job in a factory and by ten o’clock the next morning she was working. The factory made cosmetics and they put her on an assembly line with a dozen other girls. All she had to do was wrap the cologne sticks in foil and push them into bottles.
“For a buck an hour,” one girl said, “they want you should be a speed demon.”
The work was uninteresting but it wasn’t bad. The cologne had a nice, clean smell to it and she could think while she was working. She could think of Tom Lester and two hundred dollars a week. That was a lot of money. She would live on her factory pay, save the rest and in a month she could leave Northtown.
