Shabby Street

by Orrie Hitt

  “This is where Joe fell and broke his neck,” Julie said. “Nobody wanted the place, so I took it and fixed it up.”

  “All by yourself?”

  She nodded.

  “The tile on the floor and the painting and all that?”

  “It wasn’t so hard.”

  She sat down on the davenport, near the light, and I sat down beside her.

  “I don’t know how you did it.”

  “You get so you can do things,” she said. “If you have to.”

  “Yeah.”

  We talked some more about the street, some of the people we’d known, and how lousy it could be. The program on the radio changed over to a news broadcast, and she turned it off. The night became still outside and the insects beat against the window screen. Finally we got around to why I was there, sitting beside her, and all of the nearness I’d felt for a few minutes slipped away.

  “Do you think twenty payment life would be best for the baby?” she wanted to know. “Or an endowment policy?”

  “If I were talking to somebody else, I’d say an endowment.”

  “Why?”

  “There’d be more commission in it.” I lit a cigarette and the smoke slid over and across her face. “But the twenty payment would do just as good and cost you a lot less.”

  “I think I’ll take that, then. One for a thousand.”

  “You’re doing the right thing, Julie.”

  I removed an application blank from my coat pocket, crossed my legs and held it on one knee.

  “This is the first one I’ve ever filled out,” I said.

  “I’ll have to take it easy.”

  “I’m not rushing you.”

  I started asking her questions.

  “What’s his name?”

  “Arnold.”

  I didn’t want to ask her, but I had to.

  “Arnold what?”

  “Wilson,” she said, tonelessly; I didn’t look at her. “Just Wilson.”

  He was eight months old and I put that down She said he’d never been sick so I answered no to all of the diseases. When I got to the part that asked her husband’s name I just put down that she was divorced.

  “Thanks,” Julie said, watching as I did it.

  She signed the application and I gave her a receipt for the first monthly deposit. She put the receipt in her pocketbook and I stuck the application and money in my pocket.

  “Pretty damn hot,” I told her. “I wish I had a beer.”

  “You like beer,” she said. “So do I, sometimes.”

  It was early, the kid wasn’t crying and there were just the two of us.

  “I could get a couple of bottles at the corner,” I said. “If you’d like.”

  She got up quickly, went across to the radio and turned it on again. She kicked off her shoes and started taking the bobby pins out of her hair.

  “It’s too late,” she said. “I’ve got to get some sleep.”

  I didn’t say anything. I moved over and stood behind her. Her arms were up, her hands fiddling with her hair, and I could see the jutting points of her breasts. Her back had a deep arch to it and her hips tight against the skirt. Before she knew what I was doing I put my arms around her, my hands against her flat stomach. I pressed in close and bent down and kissed her on the neck.

  “What the hell’s the matter with you?” I demanded. “Can’t you have a beer with an old friend.”

  She felt around with her right foot, got her shoe on again and kicked me savagely in the shin. I let go of her. Very calmly she began to fool with her hair again.

  “Next time,” she said, “wait until I ask you.”

  “I’ll be so old I won’t be able to do anything about it.”

  “That’s what I mean.”

  She went over to the door and held it open for me. There was a slight smile curving her lips and I had an idea that she wasn’t quite as sore as she sounded.

  “Good-night,” I said.

  “Good-night, Johnny.”

  “Thanks for the app.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  I heard her close and lock the door after me. I grinned and thought about what I had missed and what I had got. I had missed her again, but there were no ground rules that said I couldn’t keep trying for the jackpot. And I’d written my first life insurance application, which would put me in good at the office in the morning.

  I kicked a piece of broken glass out of the way and turned left on Clarke Street. It wasn’t very far down to the house and the old lady would be glad to see me.

  Like hell she would.

  CHAPTER VII

  Home, Sweet Home

  HALF-WAY DOWN the street I turned in at a dimly lighted house. Most of the windows lacked curtains and the yellow shades had ragged edges along the bottom. This was home.

  “Kill the bastard!” somebody was yelling next door. “Cut his — ”

  I pulled open the screen door and went inside. It was hot and dark in there but I didn’t have any trouble finding the string. I started up the stairs and I noticed a lot of plaster on the steps but I didn’t bother looking to see where it had come from. I looked, instead, to see if there was a light under the living room door of the downstairs apartment. There was. I decided that Lili must have had a run of good luck and that she was taking the night off — spending it alone.

  I went on upstairs and into our front room. It smelled of ham and cabbage and last night’s beer. I listened and pretty soon I could hear the old man snoring it off. Even without looking into the bedroom I knew just how he’d be sprawled out on top of the old brass bed. His shirt would be open, his mouth gaping wide, his false teeth somewhere on the floor. Sometimes he lost his teeth on the way home and the next day the kids would pick them up and bring his choppers back. Once they’d been gone for a week and he’d damned near starved to death.

  I went through to the kitchen. My mother stood at the sink, slowly washing some dishes, her shoulders bent far forward.

  “Hi, Mom!” I said.

  She swung around, looking at me, and for a couple of seconds I thought she was going to start bawling. But she didn’t. She just shrugged and went back to washing dishes.

  “Hello,” she said.

  I went over to the kitchen table and sat down.

  “Where’ve you been?” she wanted to know after a while.

  “Around,” I said.

  It was as hot in there as plate glass in the sun and the smells were all mixed up with it. My whole life on Clarke Street seemed to walk into the room and come showering down around me. I could see it in the chipped china on the drainboard, in the cracked and grease-stained paper on the walls, in the way my mother’s bare feet spread out, wide, on the linoleum floor. I saw it all and I wanted to throw up. I’d seen and known enough of it all to last me forever.

  “You been around, all right,” she said, letting the water out of the sink. “Like always, you been around where nobody could find you.”

  “I didn’t know you were looking.”

  “I wasn’t.”

  “So it didn’t make any difference, then.”

  She dried her arms with the dish towel and wiped it across her face. Her sagging breasts rose and fell against the stays of her corset. I wondered, vaguely, if she’d ever gotten a Spencer corset. She’d been yelling about one ever since I’d been a kid.

  “I don’t know why you don’t stay home,” she said. She took off her apron and gave it a heave into a corner. “It ain’t natural, livin’ the way you do.”

  “I’ve got a right to do what I want.”

  “The way you act you got plenty of rights,” she said, scuffing her feet along the floor. “Look at you!”

  “So what’s wrong with me?”

  “God, he asks what’s wrong with him! Lookit the new suit, would you? And the shoes. A-ha, nothin’s too good for Johnny Reagan.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “That’s me.”

  “You should worry about me.”

  �
��I’m worrying.”

  “I’d drop dead if you did. You ever worry about the rent ‘round here? Only God knows how I ever pay it. And the grub. You ever do any worryin’ about that? You ever worry that Sam’s not here, not payin’ any more?”

  “Look,” I said, “when I was home I paid board, didn’t I? When I don’t live home and I make enough dough I always send you some, don’t I?”

  “What’s ten dollars these days?”

  “Well, hell.”

  She kept walking around the kitchen, her bare feet making funny sounds. Her face was almost beet red and I knew that she was getting ready to burn out a bearing, or something.

  “Ha!” she yelled, standing in front of me. “Lookit the suit! Just lookit him! A fancy Dan! You ever do any worryin’ about anything?”

  “I got four brothers,” I told her. “We can leave the old man out of it. You sell them on the idea and I’ll do twenty percent of all the worrying that’s done around here.”

  “They got families.” She walked back to the sink and took a drink of water. The water would be hot and taste of chemicals. “They’ve got themselves to think about. George’s kid’s been terrible sick. That costs. And Mary’s expectin’ again. They don’t know what to do.”

  “They could stop having so many kids,” I told her. “They must be nuts.”

  “I don’t know what’s gonna become of them.”

  “I’m telling you what they should do. Sleep alone.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” she admitted. “They got no sense.”

  “How many times am I an uncle now, huh? They multiply so fast I can’t keep track of them.”

  She had to think that over for a minute, counting on her fingers.

  “Seventeen,” she said.

  “They must all be hot stuff.”

  I got up and walked over to her. She looked so small and miserable that I bent down and kissed her. She never liked to be kissed so she wiped the spot on her cheek off with the back of one hand.

  “Here’s ten,” I told her, sticking the bill into the pocket of her dress. “I’ll send you more regular, as much as I can.”

  “Thanks, Johnny.” Her gray eyes clouded over, like she was in pain. “I shouldn’t talk that way to you, Johnny. It’s only that — ”

  “Forget it,” I said.

  “You’re the only one that ever put much cash in here.”

  “The rest of them have troubles, I guess.”

  “And your father’s a lost cause.”

  “He’s no great shakes,” I admitted. “But he’s all right, only when he drinks.”

  “Which is most of the time.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And he’s been doin’ other things, too.” Her face grew suddenly hard and angry. “You know what he’s been doin’?”

  “I haven’t any idea.”

  “That little bitch downstairs,” she said, her lips quivering. “He’s been after her, and her young enough to be his own daughter!”

  “Business must be getting tough for her,” I said.

  “You really think she — does?”

  “Hell, yes!”

  She kept looking at me, breathing hard, and her eyes got cold.

  “There’s only one way you could know.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I guess that’s right.”

  She looked hurt, like I’d slapped her. Maybe she was thinking that I’d wasted my money. She was wrong. It hadn’t cost me anything.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I told her. “He’ll either stay drunk or get over it.”

  She didn’t walk all the way out to the door with me. She hung back, telling me she wished I wouldn’t go, and crinkling the ten spot.

  “I’ll send you some more,” I said. “I’ll try to make it enough.”

  “I won’t hold my breath on it.”

  I told her so long and went out into the hall, closing the door after me. I went down the steps fast.

  The light was still on in Lili’s front room. I didn’t bother knocking. If she was busy the door would be locked. If she wasn’t occupied she’d like to see somebody walk in. She didn’t often bring her work home with her, except for the neighborhood stuff, and she was pretty careful about that.

  “Hello, big shot,” she said lazily.

  I pushed the door shut. She was stretched out on the davenport. The only thing she had over her was a newspaper. A small newspaper, The Daily News. It didn’t cover much.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Hot, isn’t it?”

  “Enough.”

  She wasn’t a big girl, not in length, but she was big in a lot of other ways. She had red-blonde hair filled with natural curls, and she kept her face in good condition. I’d heard, once, that she’d been a model someplace or other and I hadn’t doubted it. She had the face and the figure and those blue eyes of hers wouldn’t have had any trouble with a camera.

  “Where you been keeping yourself, Johnny?”

  “None of your business.”

  She frowned and her eyes grew dark.

  “Maybe you’re not welcome here, Johnny.”

  “Maybe.”

  I walked over and stood by the davenport. I tried not to look at her, except her face, but I couldn’t miss the way the paper left her breasts almost bare and how it hardly covered her further down.

  “You stay away from my old man,” I told her.

  “He won’t go broke,” she said. “He isn’t young any more.”

  “I’m telling you, Lili.”

  “All right, you’ve told me.”

  “My old lady won’t stand for it.”

  “A lot you care for her!”

  “On this I do,” I said. She was making me sore. Maybe I wasn’t all a son was supposed to be, but no chippie like Lili was going to start waltzing my old man around. “Hell, there’s nothing in it for you, anyway. You ought to know better than to pick on a guy like that.”

  She swung her legs off the davenport and got up very slowly. I watched the newspaper slide away and fall to the floor. I met her look and she knew what I’d been thinking.

  “Got cheated, didn’t you?”

  She was wearing a very brief pair of black panties and her bra had been so far down, one of those used with strapless evening gowns, that I hadn’t been able to see it.

  “I wasn’t paying,” I said. “How could I get cheated?”

  I saw her hand coming. I reached up and grabbed it, just as it whacked against my face. I brought it down alongside of me, twisting it.

  “Johnny!”

  I hadn’t been near her in a long while and there’d only been that one time for us. I guess there could have been others but I’d never gone in much for anyone like Lili. Not that I’d thought I was any better, just because it had seemed so unnecessary.

  “You staying away from the old man?” I wanted to know. I twisted her arm some more. “Say you will!”

  She tried to back up but I wouldn’t let her. When I put some more pressure on her arm she came up against me, breathing hard.

  “Let go,” she whispered, biting her lower lip. “I should get myself pulled apart for a stupid thing like this!”

  “That’s better.”

  I pushed her away from me. She walked around the room, shaking her hand, getting the blood down into her fingers.

  “Well, you got what you want,” she said. “Why don’t you get out of here?”

  “Okay.”

  I started over to the door but I thought of something and I stopped.

  “Say,” I asked her, “have you got any life insurance?”

  “You’d better stay out of the sun, Johnny.”

  “Don’t get wise, Lili. You know what I mean. You pay a half a buck a week and you get a policy that pays off when you die.”

  “Well, that’s great,” she said. She went back to the davenport and sat down. Her face was flushed and the rest of her body had taken on a new glow. She didn’t look bad at all. “That’s the best I’ve heard today. I w
ork all my life and somebody else picks up the loot after they plant me. To hell with that.”

  “I wasn’t thinking of that so much,” I told her. “Any life insurance pays off when you die, but I was thinking of a policy that you could collect in money, yourself, someday.”

  “Maybe I should have an accident policy,” she said, tossing her head back and laughing. “If you know what I mean.”

  I told her that I knew but that I didn’t have one and it wouldn’t be any good to her if I did. I kept talking about how she ought to save some money, what an endowment contract could do for her, and it wasn’t long before I was over on the davenport with her. She kept her eyes closed, listening, and she didn’t open them when I kissed her.

  “You ought to do all right in the insurance business,” she said.

  I had an application in my pocket and I got that out. She answered all the questions I asked her and when I got to the part about her occupation she said she was an entertainer.

  “I could show you,” she said.

  I asked her the rest of the questions, the medicals and the other stuff, and she signed the app without bothering to look it over.

  I got up and walked to the door.

  “When the policy comes through I’ll give it to the agent on this debit and you can pay him.”

  “What’s he like? A nice fellow?”

  “Sure.”

  Her eyes looked dreamy and she smiled. She was going to get fooled. The guy who worked Clarke Street was in his seventies.

  I told her goodnight and went out, feeling good. It was my first day selling and I had two apps.

  One bastard.

  And one joy girl.

  Nothing but the best.

  CHAPTER VIII

  Business before Pleasure

  IT TOOK ME almost three months to get my feet out of the mud. There’s a lot of angles to being a life insurance salesman and you either learn them or you get tossed out of the business.

  “Nice sale,” Connors would tell me.

  “Thanks.”

  He never asked if I lied or told the truth or anything like that. When it got to my turn I’d drift into his big office and put my report down on the top of his desk. He saw the industrial applications I wrote, the nickel-to-a-dollar-a-week kind, and he saw the fives and the tens and the twenties in the ordinary department. He liked those ordinary applications because ten or twenty thousand dollars of life insurance protection meant a fast buck for him. Not that he needed the money. He had so much coming in all the time and he was so lousy with success that he should have had somebody scratching his back for him.