Shabby Street

by Orrie Hitt

  “Please, Johnny!”

  I pushed the door open and walked in.

  “You can throw the night latch on,” I told her.

  She stood leaning up against the closed door, watching me. I put the beer on the dresser and sat down on the bed.

  “I guess you’re sort of burned up, huh, Janet?”

  “I’d rather not talk about it.”

  “But I think we should.”

  She didn’t move except where she was breathing and there she moved plenty. She had on a thin dressing gown of some yellow material and it didn’t look as though she had more than two layers of skin on underneath. The belt was tied and her belly was real flat above the band and bulging out just slightly below it. She had her black hair pulled back and tied up with a ribbon so that it wouldn’t be so hot on her neck. Her eyes were dull, like she’d been bawling, and she didn’t have any makeup on. She didn’t look very happy.

  “I’m trying to figure out what happened down at the hotel,” I said.

  “How do you know anything happened?”

  “I called. The day girl they kept on told me about it.”

  “I feel like a thief,” she said, still not moving. “It’s awful!”

  “Sure.”

  “I don’t know why I did it.”

  “Maybe you wanted to help me.”

  “Tell me something,” she said. Her voice trembled and her eyes were blazing mad. “How low can you get?”

  It wasn’t any time to play cat and mouse with her. She was a woman and she was sore and she was apt to do anything. Of course, it would be hard for her to prove that she hadn’t taken the money, after she’d admitted it, but somebody might start wondering how she’d gotten her hand in the till in the first place.

  “You ought to know that,” I said, looking at her straight. “I can get ten dollars low.”

  She walked across the room slowly, the robe swinging around her legs and rustling.

  “I can’t understand why you’d take it.”

  “I needed the money,” I said. “Just for last night.”

  “Because of me?”

  I shrugged. She looked into the mirror, patting her face, touching the corners of her eyes with her fingertips.

  “Was that the first time?”

  “Yeah.”

  Well, it had been the first time at the hotel, anyway. Nobody else, except that guy, had ever paid in advance. Usually you had to sue them or take their women away in order to get them up to date.

  “I’m glad,” Janet said.

  I got up and went over to the dresser and ripped one of the beer cartons apart. She brushed past me, feeling close and clean, and sat down on the bed. The bartender had given me a can opener and I got that out. The beer was getting warm and it had been bounced around some; it hissed like a snake when I punched the holes in the cans.

  “You got any glasses, Janet?”

  “I don’t often drink beer.”

  I looked into the mirror and she looked back at me, trying not to smile. Her robe had drifted apart between her legs. She knew what the mirror said and she moved a little, blushing, so that I wouldn’t know so much so soon. Things looked pretty good.

  “I don’t mind the cans if you don’t,” I said.

  “Well — all right.”

  “One to making things right,” I said. “Between us.”

  She looked back at me via the mirror. This time she smiled.

  “Yes, Johnny. The first beer to make it right.”

  Who could tell what the twelfth one would be for?

  We sat on the bed, not too close at first, and the beer ran down her chin when she tried to drink out of the can. She laughed and let me show her how.

  “I ought to be mad at you,” she said. “But I’m not.”

  I opened two more cans. She started drinking the second one right away. I decided her nerves had been split apart since the to-do at the hotel and the beer felt good when it washed up against the sharp ends.

  “You didn’t tell me how you made out with Mr. Connors,” she said. She acted like she wanted to fall back, stretching out on the bed, but she didn’t do it. She kept sitting up very straight, the way a virgin would sit at a fireman’s clambake. “Or are you going back to the hotel? You can, you know.”

  I didn’t tell her where they could put the hotel but she got the general idea. She looked almost happy when I told her about the hole she’d pulled me out of with that ten, and that things appeared to be real hot for the insurance business.

  I opened up another beer.

  “You’re going to think I’m an awful drinker,” she said.

  “Yeah. A real heller.”

  “But I’m not.”

  She wasn’t sitting up so straight any more. She sort of leaned off to one side, on her elbow, and the robe wouldn’t keep itself closed up. Every couple of minutes she’d put the beer can down on the floor and organize what clothes she had. By the time she took another swallow she was falling apart all over again.

  “Well, let’s have another one,” I said. “Then, I have to get out of here.”

  She was quiet while I opened up the beer. When I turned around I saw that she’d fixed the pillows, one on top of the other, and that she was lying back against them. She hadn’t bothered to cover her legs, not all the way, and up toward the top of the robe she’d been careless, too. She’d taken off the ribbon and her hair spread in black waves across the pillow.

  “I don’t think I want any more,” she said.

  I put the beer back on the dresser.

  “Maybe I don’t, either,” I said.

  “Johnny?”

  “I hear you.”

  “About last night — ”

  I started to sweat, looking down at her. The blood and the beer inside me rocked around and threatened to explode.

  “What about last night, Janet?”

  She stared up at me and smiled. Her lips were full and wet and red. She moved luxuriously, digging down into the bed, and the top of the robe didn’t belong to her any more. It was down off her shoulders, away from her, and there was just her flesh, soft and full, waiting for me.

  “Let’s not let it happen again,” she whispered.

  I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t say anything. She’d brought me right up to the curve and then she’d pushed me off the road. It was like falling into a well and then have somebody drop a sandbag onto you.

  “All right, Johnny?”

  I kept looking down at the floor, away from her.

  “Please, Johnny!”

  “Okay,” I said.

  I thought about taking the beer but it didn’t seem to be important. I got my cigarettes off the dresser and walked over to the door.

  “Johnny?”

  I didn’t turn around.

  “You can stay if you want to, Johnny.”

  I found the night latch and made sure it was on.

  “I had to be sure,” she said softly. “I had to know if you thought enough of me to leave if I asked you.”

  Maybe it had taken a little persuasion to get me started but she wasn’t going to have any trouble about having me stick around.

  “I hope you’ve made up your mind,” I said.

  And then she was crying and talking, all at the same time, and I couldn’t understand half of what she said. But I knew that she was talking about the job and how it hadn’t meant anything to her, how wrong I might have been on that ten but how swell it was that I was getting myself squared away.

  “I always hated that hotel,” she said, trying to laugh. “The whole three years I was there.”

  I hadn’t known she’d worked there that long.

  “You’ve got yourself a partner,” I said.

  I snapped out the light, but not before I saw how she was there on the bed, all twisted up and not afraid any more. I heard my belt buckle hit the floor and I guess she heard it, too. She let out a tiny sob and then she was asking me to hurry, filling the room with the sounds of her need.r />
  I didn’t keep her waiting very long.

  CHAPTER VI

  Kept Woman

  WE MOVED into a three-room apartment on High Street, just off North. It was on the far end of town, away from the office, away from anybody I knew or anyone who might know me. It suited me fine.

  “Some day,” Janet said, “we’ll get into a place where we can have our own furniture.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I wonder how long it’ll take?”

  She was sitting on the low davenport, leaning way back, her legs pushed out in front. It was hot in the apartment. She was wearing only briefs and a black net brassiere.

  “I just got my license,” I reminded her. “It’s going to take me a while to get writing business and making some real money.”

  She took a deep breath and her breasts shot right up into the air. She moved her legs some, back and forth, and I moved around in the chair.

  “I wish it didn’t take so long,” she said She sat up suddenly, smiling. “I don’t know what I’m griping about, Johnny. I’m — sort of happy. Only I wish that we could get married. It doesn’t seem right, living like this.”

  “That’s the hell of it,” I said.

  I got up from the chair and went over and took my coat out of the closet. It was still early in the evening, a few minutes past seven, and I didn’t want to spend the whole of it batting the breeze with her. Besides, I had an appointment to sell my first life insurance policy.

  “Going out, Johnny?”

  “To get some of that money we need.”

  She laughed and came to me. I dropped the coat and got my arms around her and pulled her in close. She felt like she was naked, all warm and throbbing against me.

  “Later,” she whispered, moving her lips over my mouth. “Later — when there isn’t any hurry.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  I didn’t feel too much like leaving the house.

  She didn’t close the door until I was in the lower hall. Then I heard her call good-bye again and the lock clicked sharply.

  The Ford coupe was parked out front. It was four years old, but in good shape and Connors had been nice enough to let me use it until I could afford one of my own.

  I pointed the car cross-town, toward the corner of Main and Clarke Streets.

  I felt real good.

  This was my third week in the business. I’d just passed my life exam and now I was qualified to give the public a fast going over. From what I’d seen on the debit assigned to me, it was going to be better than a Sunday picnic in the country. A lot of people believe anything they’re told. And I could tell them plenty.

  I felt sorry as hell about Janet but there wasn’t much I could do to change things. She was a good kid, a little nuts maybe, but I didn’t think she was the kind of a dame I’d want to spend the rest of my life looking across a mattress at. At first, she’d been a little coy about moving in with me and if there’d have been any other answer to her problem I’d have given it to her without being asked. But she’d tried for a whole week to get a job, after the incident at the hotel, and she hadn’t been able to hook one. Everybody had asked her for references and it would have taken a board of directors meeting to have gotten her one from the hotel. She hadn’t said so, not in so many words, but she’d given me the feeling that I had to do something about her or that ten bucks might come up and cause me a fistful of trouble.

  “We ought to be married, if we’re going to live together,” she’d said.

  I’d had one for that, too. If I was already married I couldn’t get sacked with her, not unless I got a divorce and I’d have to wait for that. I was very vague about the whole thing, telling her, and she cried because I hadn’t told her about it before but she believed me and that was the important thing.

  The next day we’d moved into the furnished apartment.

  “It’s funny I’m so scared,” she’d said that night after we’d gone to bed. “I guess I hadn’t ought to be scared.”

  “You don’t have to worry,” I’d said, stroking her hair. “You don’t have to worry about a damned thing.”

  She’d kissed me long, throwing her body at me.

  “Only one thing,” she’d murmured. “Don’t let that happen, Johnny.”

  “Not until we can make it right,” I’d agreed.

  And then she’d been mine, all mine, and she’d cried and cursed me because the night was so young and beautiful. She’d gone to sleep, her arms holding me tight, and I’d tried to think about her and how it was with us.

  I was still trying to figure it out.

  A girl like Janet shouldn’t be shacking up with a guy like me. She ought to have more sense. But it was her business if she wanted to be so stupid. Besides, she wasn’t the worst bed partner in town and I might get to like her pretty good after a while.

  I parked the car on Main, just below the corner of Clarke. I rolled up the windows and locked the doors. In this part of town they’d steal the air out of your tires.

  I walked back to the corner, turning left into Clarke Street. The wind was blowing damp and sharp, as it does before a thunder storm, and the assorted smells from the rendering plant, down at the end, came boiling up the street. The man who owned this stench factory was the ward alderman. I’d met him once. He’d smelled worse than his plant.

  I turned in at the first house, a great, big, barn-like thing with five or six apartments clinging to the walls inside. The wooden steps protested under my weight and a dog growled from near-by.

  “Johnny.”

  I swung away from the door, staring into the shadows.

  “Hi,” I said.

  There was a porch swing down at the far end, one of those kind that hang from the ceiling by four chains, and she was sitting in that. Of course, it was plenty dark in there, but I was able to make out the dull white lines of her legs and the dim oval of her face.

  I walked over to the swing.

  “You been waiting for me?”

  She nodded.

  “I remembered that I didn’t tell you I’d moved into a different apartment.”

  I sat down beside her. The swing shook on the chains and threatened to go over backward.

  “I’d have found it all right,” I said.

  “Remember the one I used to have?”

  “Top floor, left.” I’d tried to get in there a couple of times but I hadn’t had any luck. “One of the door panels had a hunk of plywood nailed over it.”

  “That’s the one.”

  “I guess you didn’t like it.”

  She moved around in the swing, pulling her legs up under her body. I could see the lines of her breasts, pointed and full, and I could smell the soft scent of her perfume.

  “Nights during the summer,” she said, “I like to sit out here on the porch, just watching. With the baby upstairs I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t hear the baby crying when I sat down here.”

  “Your mother could have called you,” I said. “Or your father. They ought to be able to sit night watch for you once in a while.”

  “They don’t live here any more, Johnny.”

  “Oh.”

  “Dad got a job on the Erie, up in Port Jervis. I’ve never been up there.”

  “You haven’t missed anything,” I said.

  “After I had the baby — well, he’d been driving back and forth, boarding up there during the week and coming home weekends — after the baby came they decided to move. By that time I had a job, so I stayed here.”

  I didn’t ask her any more and she didn’t bother telling me. I knew it all, anyhow. She was just a girl with a kid, and she wasn’t married, and her folks were sore as hell about it. Her folks ran away and she stayed, which made her about two hundred percent better than her old lady and her old man thrown together.

  I got out my wallet.

  “Here’s that thirty I owe you,” I said, handing her the ten and a twenty. “Any time you need some of the same stuff, just let me — ”

>   “That’s okay,” Julie said. “I always like to see somebody from this street get a break. You didn’t have to be in any hurry giving it back. There’s only me and the baby and rent’s cheap as dirt down here. The woman who takes the baby for me every day only charges four dollars a week.”

  “Just remember what I said,” I told her, folding her small fingers around the money. “If you ever need any help, yell.”

  “Thanks, Johnny.”

  A life insurance man can always get his hand on a fast buck. Some people pay you their premiums way in advance, and you can play around with the money for a little while and not get caught. Like that thirty I’d just given Julie. By the time the fellow’s premium was actually due I’d be able to replace it with somebody else’s money, and before too long I’d be making enough on the debit so that I could square the whole thing away.

  “Well,” she said, getting up, “we’d better go in where there’s some light.”

  “Okay.” That was her idea, not mine. “But we don’t have to be in any hurry about it.”

  She laughed and moved across the porch. I followed her, hearing the swish of her skirt. We went into the wide hall and she quietly opened the first door on the right.

  A small table lamp burned in one corner of the room. I’d never been in this apartment before, but it looked much different than I’d expected. Instead of wide, chipped boards on the floor, there was block tile in contrasting colors of gray and blue. The walls were painted a deeper gray and the ceiling an inviting red. None of the furniture was anything to brag about, but the new slipcovers were clean and colorful.

  “Not bad,” I said, looking around. “You must be a first cousin of the landlord.”

  Or sleeping with him, I thought.

  She turned on the radio and the music came on, soft and low. The light from the lamp was just enough to wash over her, bringing out the blondeness of her hair, the redness of her lips, the full, sweeping lines of her figure.

  “You remember Joe Card, Johnny?”

  “Yeah.”

  Joe had worked for the railroad and he’d got a big settlement from them when he’d lost his left arm while switching trains in the yard. He’d blown his money away on drink and clothes. At one time or another, he’d taken care of about half of the women along the street.