Three by Cain

by James M. Cain

  “Yes, gracias, I like.”

  We went in there, and he had one of the apartments on the south tier, the biggest in the building, with a living room the size of a recital hall, four or five bedrooms and baths, servants’ rooms, study, everything you could think of. The stuff I remembered from Paris was there, rugs, tapestries, furniture, all of it worth a fortune, and a lot of things I had never seen. Four or five guys in denim suits were standing around, waiting to be told where to put their loads. He paid no attention to them, except to direct them with one hand, like they were a bunch of bull fiddlers. He sat us down on a sofa, pulled up a chair for himself, and went on talking about how he was sick of hotel living, had about given up all hope of finding an apartment he liked, and then had found this place, and then of all the cockeyed things, here we were.

  Or were we? I said yes, we were at the other end of the hall. We all laughed: He started in on Juana, asked if she wasn’t Mexican. She said yes, and he started off about his trip there, and what a wonderful country it was, and I had to hand it to him he had found out more about it in a week than I had in six months. You would have thought he might have conveniently left out what he went down there for. He didn’t. He said he went down there to bring me back. She laughed, and said she saw me first. He laughed. That was the first time there was the least little glint in their eyes.

  “Oh, I must show you my cricket!”

  He jumped up, grabbed a hatchet, and began chopping a small crate apart. Then he lifted out a block of pink stone, a little bigger than a football and about the same shape, but carved and polished into the form of a cricket, with its legs drawn up under it and its head huddled between its front feet. She made a little noise and began to finger it.

  “Look at that, Jack. Isn’t it marvelous? Pure Aztec, at least five hundred years old. I brought it back from Mexico with me, and I’d hate to tell you what I had to do to get it out of the country. Look at that simplification of detail. If Manship had done it, they’d have thought it was a radical sample of his work. The line of that belly is pure Brancusi. It’s as modern as a streamlined plane, and yet some Indian did it before he even saw a white man.”

  “Yes, yes. Make me feel very nostálgica.”

  Then came the real Hawes touch. He picked it up, staggered with it over to the fireplace, and put it down. “For my hearth!”

  She got up to go, and I did. “Well, children, you know now where I live, and I want to be seeing a lot of you.”

  “Yes, gracias.”

  “And oh! As soon as I’m moved in, I’m giving a little housewarming, and you’re surely coming to it—”

  “Well, I don’t know, Winston, I’m pretty busy—”

  “Too busy for my house warming? Jack, Jack, Jack!”

  “Gracias, Señor Hawes. Perhaps we come.”

  “Perhaps? Certainly you’ll come!”

  I was plenty shaky when we got to our own apartment. “Listen, Juana, we’re getting out of this dump, and we’re getting out quick. I don’t know what the hell his game is, but this is no coincidence. He’s moved in on us, and we’re going to beat it.”

  “We beat it, he come too.”

  “Then we’ll beat it again. I don’t want to see him.”

  “Why you run away?”

  “I don’t know. It—makes me nervous. I want to be somewhere where I don’t have to see him, don’t have to think of him, don’t have to feel that he’s around.”

  “I think we stay.”

  We saw him twice more that day. Once, around six o’clock, he rang the buzzer and asked us to dinner, but I was singing and said we would have to eat later. Then, some time after midnight, when we had got home, he dropped in with a kid named Pudinsky, a Russian pianist that was to play at his next concert. He said they were going to run over some stuff, and for us to come on down. We said we were tired. He didn’t argue. He put his arm around Pudinsky, and they left. While we were undressing we could hear the piano going. The kid could play all right.

  “I see his game now.”

  “Yes. Very fonny game.”

  “That boy. I’m supposed to get jealous.”

  “Are you jealous?”

  “No. Jealous—what the hell are you talking about? What difference does it make to me what he does, once I’m out of it? But it makes me nervous. I—I wish he was somewhere else. I wish we were all somewhere else.”

  She lay there for a long time, up on one elbow, looking down at me. Then she kissed me and went over to her own bed. It was daylight before I got to sleep.

  Next day he was in and out half a dozen times, and the day after that, and that day after that. I began missing cues, the first sign you get that you’re not right. The voice was in shape, and I was getting across, but the prompter began throwing the finger at me. It was the first time in my life that that had ever happened.

  In about a week came the invitation to the housewarming. I tried to beg out of it, said I had to sing that night, but she smiled and said gracias, we would go, and he put his arm around her and you would have thought they were pals, but I knew them both like a book, and could tell there was something back of it, on both sides. After he left I got peevish and wanted to know why the hell she was shoving me into it all the time. “Hoaney, with this man, it do you no good to run away. He see you no care, then maybe he estop. He know you have afraid, he never estop. We go. We laugh, have fine time, no care … You care?”

  “For God’s sake, no.”

  “I think yes, little bit. I think we have—how you say—the goat.”

  “He’s got my goat all right, but not for that reason. I just don’t want any more to do with him.”

  “Then you care. Maybe not so, how he want. But you have afraid. When you no care at all, he estop. Now—we no run away. We go, you sing, be fine fallow, no give a damn. And you watch, will be all right.”

  “If I have to, I have to, but Christ, I hate it.”

  So we went. I was singing Faust, and I was so lousy I almost did get stuck in the duel scene. But I was washed up by ten thirty, and we came home and dressed. It wasn’t any white dress with flowers on it this time. She put on a bottle-green evening dress, and over that the bullfighter’s cape, and that embroidered crimson and yellow silk, sliding over the green taffeta, made a rustle you could hear coming, I’m here to tell you, and all those colors, over the light copper of her skin, was a picture you could look at. I put on a white tie, but no overcoat or anything, and about a quarter after eleven we stepped out and walked down the hall.

  When we got in there, the worst drag was going on you ever saw in your life. A whole mob of them was in there, girls in men’s evening clothes tailored for them, with shingle haircuts and blue make-up in their eyes, dancing with other girls dressed the same way, young guys with lipstick on, and mascara eyelashes, dancing with each other too, and at least three girls in full evening dress, that you had to look at twice to make sure they weren’t girls at all. Pudinsky was at the piano, but he wasn’t playing Brahms. He was playing jazz. The whole thing made me sick to my stomach as soon as I looked at it, but I swallowed hard and tried to act like I was glad to be there.

  Winston had on a purple velvet dinner coat with a silk sash knotted around it, and he brought us in like it was all for us. He introduced us, and got us drinks, and Pudinsky slammed into the Pagliacci Prologue, and I stepped up and sang it, and clowned it with as good a grin as I could get on my face. While they were still clapping, Winston turned around and began to throw the show to Juana. She still hadn’t taken off the cape, and he lifted it off her shoulders, and began going into a spasm about it. They all crowded up to look, and when he found out it was a real bullfighter’s cape, nothing would suit him but that she had to tell them all about the fine points of bullfighting. I sat down, and got this feeling it wasn’t on the up-and-up, that something was coming. I thought of Chadwick, and wondered if this was another play to show her up. But that wasn’t it. Except that Winston would put his arm around Pudinsky every t
ime he saw me looking at him, he didn’t pull anything. He put her in the spot, and made her explain the whole routine of bullfighting, and she took the cape to show them, and she was pretty funny, and so was he. Nobody could make a woman look good better than Winston, when he wanted to. Pretty soon somebody yelled out: “How the hell does a man study to be a bullfighter, that’s what I want to know.”

  Winston went down on his knees in front of Juana.

  “Yes, will you tell us that? Just what are the practice exercises for a bullfighter?”

  “Oh, I explain you.”

  They all sat down, and Winston squatted at her feet.

  “First, the little boy, he wants to be a bullfighter, yes? All little boy want to be bullfighter.”

  “I always did. I do still.”

  “So, I tell you how you do. You find nice burro, you know what is burro?”

  “A little jackass, something like that?”

  “Yes. You get little jackass, you cut two big maguey leaf, you know maguey, yes? Have big leaf, much thick, much sharp—?”

  “Century plant?”

  “Yes. Tie leaf on head of little jackass, make big horn, like bull— ”

  “Wait a minute.”

  Some woman dug up a ribbon, and Winston broke off fronds from a fern, and with the ribbon and the fern leaves, he stuck the horns on his head. Then he got down on his hands and knees in front of Juana. “Go on.”

  “Yes, just so. You look much like little jackass.”

  That got a shout. Winston looked up, kicked his heels, and let out a jackass bellow. It was a little funnier than it sounds.

  “Then you get little stick, for espada, and little red rag, for muleta, and practice with little jackass.” Somebody dug up a silver-headed cane, and she took it, and the cape, and the two of them began doing a bullfight act in the middle of the floor. The rest of them were screeching and yelling by that time, and I was sitting there, wondering what the hell was up. The buzzer sounded. Somebody went to the door, came back, and touched me on the arm. “Telegram for you, Mr. Sharp.”

  I went out in the hall.

  Harry, one of the bellboys, was out there, and shoved a telegram at me. I opened it. It was nothing but a blank form shoved in an envelope. “Is the messenger still there? He’s given you nothing but a blank.”

  Harry closed the door to the apartment. You could still hear them in there, screeching over the bullfight. “Let me talk quick, Mr. Sharp, so you can get back in there before anybody thinks anything. I had to have a telegram in my hand, so it would look right.… There’s a man down there, waiting for you. I told him you were out. He went up to your apartment, then he came down again, and he’s down there now.”

  “In the lobby?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “What does he want?”

  “… Mr. Sharp, Tony put through three calls today for this new party, Mr. Hawes. They were all to the immigration service. Tony remembered the number from a year ago, when his brother came from Italy. Tony thinks this man is a federal, come to take Miss Montes away.”

  “Is Tony on?”

  “We’re both on. Get back in there, Mr. Sharp, before this Hawes gets tipped off. Get her out of there, and have her press the elevator button twice. Either me or Tony will get her out through the basement, and then you can stall this guy till she gets under cover. Tony thinks his people will take her in. They’re fans of yours.”

  I had a wad of money in my pocket. I took it out and peeled off a ten. “Split that with Tony. There’ll be more tomorrow. She’ll be right down.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And thanks. More thanks than I know how to say.”

  I stepped back in. I took care to be stuffing the telegram in my pocket as I came. Winston jumped up from where he was still galumphing around the floor, and came over. “What is it, Jack?”

  “Just some greetings from Hollywood.”

  “Bad?”

  “Little bit.”

  “Well, what is it? By God, I’d love to wake the sons-of-bitches up and tell them where they get off.”

  “Wouldn’t wake them up, that’s the trouble. It’s only ten o’clock there. To hell with it, I’ll tell you later. And to hell with bullfighting. Let’s dance.”

  “Dance we shall. Hey, professor—music!”

  Pudinsky began to bat out more jazz, they grabbed each other, and I grabbed Juana. “Now get a grin on your face. I’ve got something to tell you.”

  “Yes, here is nice grin.”

  I laid it out for her fast. “This Pudinsky thing is nothing but a smoke screen. He’s turned in an anonymous tip against you, then you’re to be taken to Ellis Island, then I’m to run to him for help, then he’s to move heaven and earth—and fail. You’re to be sent back to Mexico—”

  “And then he gets you.”

  “So he thinks.”

  “So I think, too.”

  “Will you for God’s sake stop that and—”

  “Why you tremble?”

  “I’m plenty scared of him, that’s why. Now listen—”

  “Yes, I listen.”

  “Get out of here, quick. Get out on some stall so he thinks you’re coming back. Change your dress, pack, as fast as you can. If the buzzer rings, keep still and don’t answer. Go to the elevator, ring twice, and the boys will take care of you. Don’t call me. Tomorrow I’ll reach you through Tony. Here’s some money.”

  I had palmed the wad, and slipped it down the back of her dress. “And once more, step on it!”

  “Yes, I step.”

  She went over to Winston. He was sitting with Pudinsky, the fern leaves still in his hair. “You want to play real bullfight, yes?”

  “I just thirst for it.”

  “Wait. I get things. I come back.”

  He showed her out, then came over to me. “Lovely girl.”

  “Yeah, she’s all of that.”

  “I’ve always said there were two nations under every flag, male and female. I wouldn’t give a damn for all the Mexican men that ever lived, but the women are marvelous. What saps their painters are, with all that beauty around them, to spend their days on war, socialism, and politics. Mexican art is nothing but a collection of New Masses covers.”

  “Whatever it is, I don’t like it.”

  “Who would? But if they could paint her face, that would have been different. Goya could have, but those worthy radicals, no. Well—they don’t know what they miss.”

  I went over, sat down and watched them dance. They were getting lit by now, and it was pretty raw. I wished I had fixed up some signal from the boys, so I would know when she was out. I hadn’t, so all I could do was sit there. I was going to wait till he missed her, then go down to the apartment to find her, then come back and say she didn’t feel well, and had gone to bed. It would all take time, give her a start, but I had to take the play from him.

  I had looked at my watch when she went. It was seven after one. After a hell of a time I slipped back to a bathroom and looked again. It was eleven after. She had been gone four minutes: I came back and sat down again. Pudinsky stopped and they all yelled for more. He said he was tired. The buzzer rang. Winston opened, and I began thinking of a stall in case it was the detective. Who stepped in was Juana. She hadn’t changed her dress. Over her arm was the cape, in one hand was the espada, and in the other the ear.

  They had got a little sick of bullfighting, but when they saw the ear they began to yell again. They passed it around, and felt it, and smelled it, and say “Peyooh!” Winston took it, held it up to his head and wobbled it, and they laughed and clapped. He got down on the floor again and bellowed. Juana laughed. “Yes, now you are no more jackass. Big bull.”

  He bellowed again. I was getting so nervous I was twitching. I went over to her. “Take that stuff back. I’m fed up on bullfighting, and that ear stinks. Take it back where you got it, and— ”

  I grabbed for the ear. Winston dodged. She laughed and wouldn’t look at me. Something hit me in th
e belly. When I looked around I saw that one of the fags in woman’s clothes had poked me with a broomstick. “Out of my way! I’m a picador! I’m a picador on his old white horse!”

  Two or three more of them ran back and got broomsticks, or mops handles, or whatever was there, to be picadors, and began galloping around Winston, poking at him. Every time they touched him he’d bellow. Juana drew the espada, and spread the cape with it, like it was a muleta. Winston began charging it, on one hand and his knees, still holding the ear with his other hand and wobbling it. Pudinsky began to rip off the bullring music from Carmen. There was so much noise you couldn’t even hear yourself think. I walked over and leaned on the piano, with my back to it, till she would get the clowning over and I would have another chance to get her out.

  All of a sudden Pudinsky stopped, and this “Ooh!” went around the room. I turned around. She was standing there, like a statue, the way they do for the kill, with her left side to Winston, the sword in her right hand, up at the level of her eyes, and pointing right at him. In her left hand, down in front of him, she held the cape. He was down there looking at it, and wobbling the ear at it. Pudinsky began to play blue chords on the piano.

  Winston snorted a couple of times, then looked up at her, like he wanted a cue on what to do next. Then he jumped up, and back, but a sofa caught him. A man yelled. I jumped for the sword arm, but I was too late. That espada thrust isn’t something in slow motion, like you maybe have thought from reading the books. It goes like lightning, and next thing I knew the point of the steel was sticking out the back of the sofa, and blood was foaming out of Winston’s mouth, and she was over him, talking to him, laughing at him, telling him the detective was waiting to take him down to hell.

  It flashed over me, that mob at the novelladas, pouring down out of the sol, twisting the tail of the dying bull, yelling at him, kicking at him, spitting on him, and I tried to tell myself I had hooked up with a savage, that it was horrible. It was no use. I wanted to laugh, and cheer, and yell Olé! I knew I was looking at the most magnificent thing I had ever seen in my life.