The Moth

by James M. Cain

  “It’s all in the bank, Jack, I’d like you to know that, with every cent of interest, as compounded.”

  “Well, I never thought you’d steal it.”

  “Now what shall I do with it?”

  “It’s your responsibility. Suppose you say.”

  “Do you know what an investment is?”

  “We had it in school. Six per cent? Like that?”

  “Something like that.”

  He went over it, one thing at a time, one word at a time, and explained the different kinds of investments. Then he showed me how he’d worked the thing out: We’d buy so and so much stock, so I’d get regular dividends; so and so much bonds, so I’d cut coupons the months I didn’t get checks from stock, and so and so much savings, so I’d always have cash. All in all, it meant I’d have about twenty dollars a month coming in, which seemed to make sense, I had to admit. “Well, Dad, I guess that’s all right.”

  “Then it’s agreeable to you I go ahead?”

  “Just what do you do?”

  “First, I’ll see Sam Shreve, who handles my brokerage account, and have him buy in this list, at favorable times. For some time there’s been a bull market, but it goes off now and then, and you’ll have to give him time to buy on off days. Then, we’ll put the stock away, in my box. The dividend checks will come to you direct, and I’ll take off the court orders from your account so you can spend your income as you please. On a boy’s current expenditures I don’t believe parents should be too inquisitive. Your clothes, subsistence, school expenses, and so on, will be paid for by myself—a light burden, and I welcome it. Your dividends will be yours as spending money.”

  “That sounds all right.”

  “It’s the best I could work out—”

  “I’ve got the idea, and from now on I’ll shut up.”

  “Now I think we’re progressing.”

  6

  ONE OF THE MAIN things in my life, from then on, was the new car I had. Up to then I’d been a guy, fourteen going on fifteen, overgrown maybe, with now and then a pal that I went around with like Denny, or a friend that really meant something like Miss Eleanor. But as soon as I got this thing I was the most popular guy on earth. Girls in school that I’d never paid any attention to, to say nothing of their brothers, all acted like they were my long-lost relations, and like I wanted nothing better than to haul them wherever they were going, and then turn around and haul them back. And they had the funniest idea it was their car too. They just took it for granted if they wanted to use it, maybe overnight, I’d just hand the key right over. I give you one guess how I fell for that. Then Nancy and Sheila, that had never taken any interest in where I was going, all of a sudden found a million things I ought to be doing with the car, and people I ought to be taking somewhere, specially them. On that, I’ve got to say for him, the Old Man put his foot down. He said if they wanted a taxi they could call one. And then, right there beside me so often I didn’t know how it happened, was Margaret.

  I guess she was fairly good-looking, though her looks never did anything to me. She was dark-haired, with white skin, pink cheeks, and a stocky little shape, that got better as she got older and taller and slimmer. She had shiny black eyes that hardly ever looked right at you, though that wasn’t because she was shifty-eyed or anything like that. It was because she was always looking at something imaginary, like some new sofa she’d be telling you about, with a little set smile on her face, like she’d be nice about it till you got in a suitably admiring frame of mind. I guess that maybe was the key to her, and why I died around her so easy. Her people, I think I said, had the Cartaret Hotel, and it wasn’t enough for them they’d sign in a guest, quote him four dollars for a room with bath, and tell him the main dining room opened at six, until then tea in the Peggy Stewart Room. They had to let him know they were doing him up pretty nice to let him stay there at all, because Washington and Hamilton and Burr and God knows who-all had stayed there, and if he was good they’d let him look in the Dolly Madison Room, where all the old furniture was, and the Cartaret Gallery, with the portraits, and the Colonial Hearth, with its copper. And Margaret, she had that in her, too. She’d let you hear her play. I don’t think, up to the time she was booked out with me, that it had ever occurred to her that letting somebody hear her play wasn’t the biggest favor in the world she could do them, or that letting people look at the sofas and the paintings and the pots wasn’t the biggest favor the family could do. They were all born smug, her father, with the cutaway coat he always wore, and her mother, who was more of a manager type, awful cold. That is, all except little Helen. She was the cutest thing I had ever seen, and at Margaret’s parties, that seemed to come oftener than tests in school, I’d get off with her, and feed her ice cream.

  Then, after Margaret started playing for me, an awful thing happened to her. Until then, as I’ve said, it hadn’t occurred to her that her playing wasn’t the most wonderful thing in the world. But then she’d look in the paper, and there I’d be with a picture of me in the Little Lord Fauntleroy suit, and two thirds of the notice given to me, and there she’d be, down with the acrobats and the trained seals, with two lines about being “promising,” and no picture. From then on, I think she just had to show me. After my voice broke, of course that got my picture out of the paper, but it didn’t get hers in. She played, just the same. About every week and a half Sheila would tell me Margaret was “appearing” somewhere, and I really should go. So I’d take her. One time it would be a woman’s club in Towson, another time some Peabody thing, and each of those, so far as the papers went, would be let out with three lines. But the little smile was there. What we talked about, going and coming from those places, I don’t know, and I’ve racked my brains to remember, because after what happened it seemed to me I should. I can’t.

  Her parties in the wintertime were given in what was called the Walnut Room, which was just off the lobby, and had been the bar before 1920. In the summer they were given out on the lawn, at the side of the hotel, under the maples. I’ve got to admit, whether it was the afternoon things they gave when we were younger, or the night parties they put on later, they were pretty nice. At first the Rocco Trio, then later the Woodberry Jazzbabies, made the music, and we all had a good time, even when Margaret consented to play. While she was banging out Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2, I was feeding America’s Sweetheart No. 1.

  But a gray car is a gray cat, and at night I went places that had nothing to do with school kids or Margaret. I’d clean up my algebra around eight or eight thirty, begin to yawn and say I’d just as well take in the picture show. But once out of the house, where I went was an uncertain proposition. Sometimes I’d go to a bowling alley, or maybe I’d slip over to Washington. It wasn’t new to me, as my father had taken me there, to sit in the gallery and look at Congress, or go to the top of the Monument, so I knew my way around. But sliding in Rhode Island Avenue, finding a place to park near the Treasury, maybe taking in a Washington movie, all that was a kick, even if it didn’t mean much. At the same time I was getting a feeling I’d never had before, and it meant business. I began to notice girls. I didn’t notice them the way I noticed Margaret, if I noticed her, like she was a friend in a girl’s dress, but nothing to have ideas about. I had ideas about them, plenty. How to get them, I didn’t know. But getting them was the idea. When Denny hit town that summer, it turned out he’d been thinking along the same line, but he’d learned more tricks than I could have dreamed up in a lifetime.

  Not that I’d call him original, or in any way refined. If he could pull some gag and get started with them in a soda fountain, he’d do that, and we’d all four walk out together. Outside, if the best he could think of was to fall in step behind them and fire some crack past their ears, he’d do that. But if he had to, he’d whistle at them, right from the car, and get me to slow down, so we were rolling right beside them. I didn’t enjoy that much, but I’d do it. Whatever we did, a half hour later it was always the same. One of them would be
on the front seat with me, and the other back in the rumble with him. He was always trying to sell me the rumble, on account of the “stuff you can get away with back there,” but I figured if it was all that chummy he wouldn’t be so hot to come up front. Nothing ever came of it. We’d go to some picture show, or to some dump on the edge of town, where Denny thought he could get beer but couldn’t, or past East Baltimore, to the beach. The beach, somehow, always seemed as though it was going to work, because at least there were the bay and the sand and the moon. With some of those girls we picked up and another pair of guys I think it might have. Our trouble was we were fifteen years old—or I was, and Denny, though he was nearly sixteen, looked younger.

  But Labor Day we got ambitious, and ran down to Annapolis to see what we could see. We kept on over Spa Creek to Eastport, and there we decided to get some gas. And across the street was this pair arguing with a guy in blue jeans. One of them, the one that was doing most of the talking, was dark, I suppose eighteen or nineteen, with a pretty snappy shape, and dressed in pink sweater, white skirt, and red shoes. The other was a fat girl, maybe seventeen, with frizzled blond hair, a striped blue-and-white jumper, and a blue skirt. By then, Denny took a gander at them all, but I don’t think we’d have paid much attention to them if the dark one hadn’t ripped out a cussword: “That’s a hell of a note. I’ll say it is. One hell of a hell of a note.”

  The fat girl kind of looked at us and made a face. Denny went over and helped himself to some of her gum, and we stood around while the argument went on. It was about the delivery of ice. “I’m sorry, Miss, but I’ve got no way to deliver to the bay. It’s like I told you: my truck’s in the shop. Right around the neighborhood, where I deliver by barrow, I can accommodate you. But the shore is out of the question.”

  She turned away and started up the street, the fat girl after her, but of course Denny got in it: “Hey, hey, hey! Wait a minute! What is this?”

  They stopped then, and Denny said: “We haul ice. Naturally we do. We love to haul ice. But we don’t haul it unless people act friendly and say please and work on us.”

  The fat girl came over and stuck another piece of chewing gum in his mouth. He put his arm around her and didn’t exactly stop at the fifth rib. The other one came over and shot her eyes first at them and then at me. “What’s he talking about?”

  “Hauling ice. For friendly people.”

  “How would he haul it?”

  “How would you?”

  “... I’d need a car.”

  “So might we.”

  “You mean he’s got one?”

  “I mean I have.”

  “Say, that’s different.”

  She took the last piece of gum Fats had, stuck it in my mouth, and patted my cheek. “Is that friendly?”

  “For a start, that’s fine.”

  I put my arm around her, and I didn’t stop at the fifth rib either. She said I had a nerve, but didn’t pull away, and I could feel the blood pound in my mouth. Denny said pull the car over, he’ll get the ice. So next thing, she and I were crossing the street. She hooked little fingers with me. “Now look, big boy, you act friendly.”

  “Me ? I am acting friendly.”

  “How old are you ?”

  “... Nineteen.”

  The guy loaded the ice, a fifty-pound cake, on the floor in front, so she had to sit close beside me. It turned out her name was Lina, but Fat’s I never found out. I gave my real name. Denny said his was Randall, Randy Thomas, he said. “I thought you was Calvin Coolidge,” said Lina. But Fats did plenty of squealing as he helped her in the rumble, so it looked like she didn’t much care. It was a hot day, and going through the scrub woods toward the bay it seemed to get hotter, not cooler. Lina began flapping her dress to give herself air. Then she got the cutes and asked if that was allowed. I raised one foot and kicked open the hood vent, so her dress blew up, clear to her waist. She kept looking at me as she pulled it down. “You’re over nineteen, my handsome young friend. Considerably. What’s the big idea, telling me lies?”

  It turned out she was from Glen Burnie, and her family had some kind of hot-dog stand up there, but her brother had taken over this place beyond Eastport, not because it was much of a place, but because it had a big icebox, and they could use it for storage. And today, with the brother away and a lot of dogs, butter, ground meat, pop and stuff on hand, there was plenty to spoil if we didn’t get the ice there quick. So when we pulled up outside I piled that ice in the box, and she made sure everything was all right. Then she began to clown and ask if we’d have something cold. So while she and Fats were getting bottles Denny and I had a look around. It was just a soft-drink joint, with a front room that had a counter in it, and two back rooms, one a bedroom, the other a combination kitchen and pantry. Pretty soon Lina came out with soft drinks and sandwiches, and Fats passed them out. Denny suddenly seemed awful hot. After he got down some ham and ginger ale, he said: “You know what I’d like to do?”

  “What’s that, Mr. Coolidge?”

  “Go swimming.”

  “And ruin all those clothes?”

  “Oh, we got suits.”

  “You have?”

  “In the car. Right in the dashboard.”

  “But we girls, we’re to swim in our birthday clothes?”

  “Well, we could take turns on the suits—”

  “How you know we haven’t got suits?”

  So they dug in a closet and came up with Lina’s brother’s suit, which was blue flannel shorts and a white woolen shirt, and her sister-in-law’s suit, which was a one-piece job with the little short skirt they wore at that time. Then Denny and I got our suits from the car. Then an argument started as to where we’d put them on. Denny said one locker room for the four of us, and Fats acted like she had no objection. But Lina took her in the bedroom, and he and I put on our suits by the counter. Pretty soon both girls ran by outside, on the catwalk that ran around the place, and skipped on down to the water, giggling.

  Lina had a hard, trashy face, but in the brother’s outfit, with the blue pants flapping and the white shirt hugging her, she had something. In the water she didn’t squeal and splash like Fats did, but really liked to swim, and could. When I got out there she was in deep water, headed for a float, so I went out there too. Pretty soon we had it to ourselves, letting the swells rock us, with Denny and Fats and their whoopdedo where we could hardly hear them. She watched me, then: “You do a nice crawl, Jack, all except your arms. You’re forcing them out, and it’s all right for a pool, maybe. But on long stretches it sure will wear you down.

  “How do you get them out?”

  “Roll ’em out.”

  She swam for me, and showed me. “Roll out your elbow first and leave it lift your hand out. And relax your hand, so it goes limp. And sling it forward, don’t push it. Sling it easy. Let your middle finger riffle the water as it goes along. And don’t reach. Don’t stretch for distance and grab. And don’t dig your hand in. Roll it in. Roll it in, blade your hand, and let your weight push you ahead. It’s all in rolling your hips to get foot action and your shoulders for arm drive. Do it right you can keep it up all day. Do it wrong you poop out in fifty feet.”

  It was play the way I liked to play, quiet, friendly, close.

  But there was no getting around it, the air might be hot but the water was cold, and pretty soon we had to come in. So of course Denny and Fats came too. She was all out of breath from laughing and he from making her laugh. In the shack it was so hot you could smell oilcloth, suits, ham, mustard, pop, and girls. Lina opened Cokes and we drank them. I took mine to a table by the window, where there was air coming in. Lina turned on a fan and let it blow her hair around. Denny moved to get some of it, but just shifted from one counter stool to the other. Fats was at the end of the counter, and all of a sudden there was a spitting sound and something popped Denny in the eye and she began chasing a cat. Denny wiped off his face, and went back in the kitchen to look, and Fats kept on talking about
how that darned cat kept spitting at people. Lina looked at me and winked. Denny came back and took another swig at his pop. Then here came the spitting sound again and Fats chased the cat again and Denny went out to look again and Lina winked at me again. Then I saw what had happened. Lina had opened two or three spares, and Fats had one, out of sight from Denny under the counter, and she’d shake it up, keep her thumb over it, and then when the pressure was good, she’d ease her thumb and a little pip of foam would spit out and hit Denny in the eye. Then right away she’d kick at the cat, chase it, and hide the bottle. If you ask me Denny was fooled, but maybe he wanted to be. Then he caught her at it, and that was all it needed. In just about ten seconds the whole afternoon we’d been piling up for ourselves exploded.

  He grabbed her, shook his own Coke, held his thumb over it, and began popping it in her face as fast as he could get the pressure up. She squealed and pulled away and Lina whooped and held her. Then he tore her suit open and slopped Coke all over her and she did the same for him. Then her suit slipped off and she had nothing on but fat, that shook all over her. Still he kept throwing Coke. Then she got loose and dodged all around. Then she ran in the bedroom and he ran in after her and slammed the door. Lina beckoned me, tiptoed over, opened the door on a crack, and peeped. You could hear them in there, but what made me sick was the look on Lina’s face as she watched them, her mouth wet, her eyes shining, and her breath coming in little short gasps.

  “What’s the matter, don’t he like me?”

  “Listen, Lina, take it easy. He’s not a horse, see? In the first place you kept him swimming around out there, right on top of all that stuff he put in his stomach, and—”

  “What stuff?”

  “Sandwiches. Pickles. Ginger ale.”

  “What was wrong with that?”

  “It was swell. But in the second place, it’s hot—”

  “It is, Coolidge, but he’s not. What ails him?”

  “Hell, he’s just a kid—”