by Sara Gran
She glanced at us, and then away, stopping her eyes on the filthy curtain across from her.
“She got any clothes?” I asked Jezebel.
“I can find some,” she said. Before Jezebel walked away I took a twenty out of my purse and handed it to her. “She’ll need dope, too,” I said. She nodded and left.
Nadine looked at me, and then back at her favorite stain on the curtain. Her hair was down loose and it was dull and stringy. It hadn’t been washed in days, maybe weeks. Her face was covered with a sheen of grease and spotted with pimples.
Jezebel came back with a ratty white summer dress and a pair of worn-out brown mules. She tossed them on the bed, on top of Nadine.
“Put them on,” I told her. Slowly she sat up, and took off the robe, showing arms covered with track marks and sores. Slowly, as if she were lifting a hundred pounds, she pulled the dress over her head and slipped the shoes onto her feet. The dress didn’t cover up her arms enough. I took off my jacket and eased her arms into it. It was like picking up a doll. She didn’t help and she didn’t resist.
Jezebel reached into a pocket of her dress and pulled out a handful of papers. I didn’t count them. I figured whatever she gave me was the best I was getting out of her. I took them and put them in my purse. Nadine followed the papers with her eyes, and for the first time I saw an expression on her face. Hunger.
“Come on,” I said to Nadine. “We’re going.” She stood up slowly, wobbling a little. I took her arm with my hand, to balance her, and we walked out.
We were halfway to my apartment when I realized Nadine had no idea who I was or where we were going. So I told her the whole story. About how someone hired me and I thought it was her parents and it wasn’t, and how I got framed for murder, and how it turned out to be Jim, and he was dead now and this was his car, which was mine now.
“So?” she said at the end. It was the first time she had spoken. Her voice was small and young.
“What do you mean?” I said. We were on my block. I saw an empty spot across the street and I parked the car.
It started to rain, big warm drops of summer rain.
“So what about me?” she said, with a little bit of a whine. “I mean, no one was looking for me after all. Nobody wanted you to find me. So what’d you come and get me for?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
We sat in the car and watched the rain.
“Am I coming home with you?” she asked.
“I guess,” I said. “You have anywhere else to go?”
She shook her head.
“What am I gonna do?” she said after a minute.
The first thing she was gonna do was take a bath, because she was disgusting. But I wasn’t going to say that, because junkies hate baths. Then I’d taper her down as slowly as I could with the dope I’d bought from Jezebel. After that she’d have to stick it out, because I wasn’t buying any more. I’d already made up my mind about that. When she was through with the withdrawal she could work with me, or get a job waiting tables or ringing up sales in Woolworth’s, or maybe she could get a job at someplace nice, like Saks or Bergdorf’s. She was pretty enough. Or she could leave and go back to Jezebel’s or go to college or do whatever the hell else she wanted to do. I’d done my good deed for the day and now it was up to her.
But I didn’t say any of that. Instead I said, “Hey. You know, I went out to Westchester. I met your parents.”
She froze. She opened her mouth to speak but nothing came out.
“Yeah. And while I was there I broke your neighbor’s window.”
I looked at her. Her face unfroze and for a short quick moment she was beautiful again, and her lips moved toward something like a smile.
“Oh yeah?” she said.
“Yeah. And if you get yourself cleaned up a little bit we can go back and do it again.”
She came closer to a smile. We got out of the car and went to the Sweedmore. Lavinia gave Nadine a sharp look but she didn’t say anything. She couldn’t; I was probably the only girl in the place paying her rent on time every Friday. But a thousand bucks—seven hundred now—wasn’t that much, and I didn’t know how much longer that would keep up. We walked up to the third floor. Two girls were coming down the stairs, girls about Nadine’s age, laughing and talking a mile a minute about where they would go dancing that night.
“Hey, Joe,” one said. “How’s it—”
But then she saw Nadine and stopped and they hurried down the stairs.
Nadine looked at them like they were from another planet.
We got to my room and I unlocked the door and went inside. Nadine followed slowly, looking around like something might jump out and bite her.
“This is it,” I said. “You can stay here until something better comes along.”
“Thanks,” she said. “I . . .” She didn’t finish her sentence.
I opened the closet door.
“Here. Pick something out. It’ll be too big, but it’ll fit better than that.”
She looked for a minute and then took out a blue dress. It was the one Jim had bought for me. She looked at me.
“That’s fine,” I said. “You can keep it. I’ll be right back.”
It was funny, it made me a little nervous, having her out of my sight. Like she might take off and run back to Jezebel’s. But so what if she did? If that was what she wanted, there was nothing I could do about it.
I locked the door behind me and went down to the front desk and gave Lavinia a nickel for the phone. I called Shelley.
“She’s here,” I said.
“Joe, what the hell are you—Oh. Her.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Nadine. I mean, you said you wanted—”
“No,” she said. “I do want to. I do. I’ll be right over.”
Chapter Thirty-one
Nadine had put on my blue dress and thrown the clothes from Jezebel’s in the trash. She sat on the bed and rubbed her arms, like she was cold. I went into my purse and took out the papers and the works Jezebel had given me. I tossed the works and one paper on the bed next to her.
“Here,” I said. I put a record on the phonograph and sat down on one of the chairs. I looked out the window while Nadine did what she needed to do. It took her long enough. Afterward she just sat quietly. One paper wasn’t much of a fix for her.
“Where’s the bathroom?” Nadine asked. I told her it was down the hall and she stood up. She stopped when she got to the door and looked at me. I thought she was going to say something but she didn’t; she turned around and left.
While she was gone there was a knock at the door. It was Shelley. She was all in white again, this time in a summer dress.
Shelley smiled in a kind of shy way, like she had before. “Hey Joe,” she said. “Thanks for calling me.”
“Come in,” I said.
Shelley came in and looked around my room. She looked a little squeamish, like maybe she’d catch something if she touched anything. Like she hadn’t grown up in a room just like this one.
“She’s here?” Shelley said. She walked around, looking at my things.
“Yeah, she’ll be back in a second. Sit down.”
She walked over and looked at the record player. “What’re you listening to? It’s nice.”
“Billie Holiday. ‘He’s Funny That Way.’ Something like that.”
“Can I turn it up a little?”
“Sure. Go ahead.”
Shelley turned up the record loud and then she sat on the bed. I wondered if she would take Nadine home. It would save me a whole lot of trouble, but didn’t seem likely. Maybe she would get her a room here at the Sweedmore while she was cleaning up. Give her a little money until she could get a job or whatever she wanted to do.
“You want some coffee?” I asked.
“Okay,” Shelley said.
I went to the corner table where the hot plate was. I filled up the percolator from a pitcher of water I kept on the floor underneath.
“You�
��re sure it’s the right girl?” Shelley asked.
“Of course,” I said. “It’s her. Why wouldn’t it be?”
Shelley didn’t answer me.
I picked up the coffee and a spoon. But then I stopped.
The right girl?
Was there a right girl and a wrong girl?
Shelley didn’t even know Nadine. What did she care if—
I dropped the coffee on the table.
Oh, Jim. I am so, so sorry.
I started to turn around and there was a loud crack and I fell back against the table like I’d been punched.
Shelley had shot me.
No one had any idea Jim was mixed up in dope again.
A long time ago he took some pictures of me—you know, to sell.
He said he was gonna get me in pictures. . . .
Sometimes he takes pictures of the girls to sell to magazines.
Jake Russo, Real Estate . . . rents places all over Manhattan.
You know, there’s a lot of out-of-work actors in this town, Joe. I know people who’d kill for any kind of work.
Maybe this wasn’t about the drugs, after all. Plenty of people had reason to kill McFall.
I’ve been thinking about Shelley. I’m not sure if you should trust her as much as you do.
What did Shelley tell you?
What did Shelley tell me?
All I saw was the car. A brand-new Rocket 88.
I’d thought there was only one person in the world who knew me well enough to make it all work. But there were two. And I’d picked the wrong one.
I’d been wrong about everything. Right from the start, I’d been wrong about it all.
She got me in my side, right at my waist. My dress was torn and I was bleeding. Blood was pouring down my clothes and pooling on the floor.
I felt like I was on fire where I’d been shot.
“Shelley,” I said, turning around. My knees were weak. It was hard to stand up. “Shelley. How could you?”
Shelley stood up off the bed. She was holding a gun. It was pointed right at my heart.
My sister.
Now she didn’t look like that girl in the paper at all. There was nothing so sophisticated about her now. She was just the same girl I’d always known, the girl who wanted treats from the Automat, the girl who wanted a new dress every year, the girl who always, always, got what she wanted.
And I’d always given it to her. My sister.
“McFall had pictures of you,” I said. My mouth was dry and it was hard to speak.
Shelley was angry now. “I needed the money. You were shooting all your dough up your arm and I needed money. That was ten years ago. Last month he calls me up. He kept those pictures, all this time. He was gonna blow my whole career. I paid him off twice but he still wanted more. And that goddamn little prep school whore, she was there the last time I met McFall for a payoff. I don’t know why the hell he brought her along. I guess he really had a thing for her.”
“Oh, Shelley.”
My knees buckled and suddenly everything was sideways. I had fallen down.
The pool of blood on the floor was bigger now.
“You should have taken the jail time,” she said. “That’s what you were supposed to do. You should have taken the murder rap for McFall and let the girl disappear. You should have let her go. Then I wouldn’t have to do this. She probably would’ve killed herself sooner or later anyway. I wasn’t worried about it. But you had to go and find her and bring her back. You had to be the big hero and save the girl.”
“Jim was never selling dope at all,” I said.
Shelley smiled. “I don’t know who McFall ripped off for all that dope, and I don’t care. Maybe it was Jim, after all. But I doubt it. I didn’t have nothin’ to do with that. I just needed to find McFall and get rid of him. Once you started looking around, Joe, once I saw that you weren’t gonna let it go, it had to be someone. I knew Springer had a hard-on for Jim anyway. He always has. Anyway, it was you who wouldn’t give it up, Joe. It was you who wouldn’t do what you were supposed to. All I did was point you in the right direction.”
“How’d you know what Springer was thinking?” I asked.
“I still got some friends from the old days,” she said. There was something like a smirk on her face. “I’m not stupid, Joe. I know who to stay friends with. Who to stay friends with and who to let go.”
So now Nadine had to go, because she knew about the pictures McFall had of Shelley. Because I had tried to save her.
And now I had to go, too. Because I would still try to save Nadine. Because I knew everything.
But those were just excuses. This was just her way to get some use out of me before she got rid of me. I knew the real reason, we both did.
Because every dance lesson she took, every dinner I bought, every new dress she wore, she knew how I paid for it. Because she couldn’t bring friends home to a sister who wore short dresses and smelled like cheap perfume. Because every time one of our mother’s boyfriends got fresh with her, I should have protected her. Because every time she let the old man at the candy store maul her for a soda, I should have bought her the soda instead. Because no matter how many hours I spent on the street, we still lived in a filthy rooming house. Because when I couldn’t stand it anymore and I started sniffing dope to sleep through it all, I gave her even more to be ashamed of. Because even though you can’t pay for dance lessons working at Woolworth’s, I still should have found a better way. Because after I got hooked on dope, I stopped spending the money on her and spent it on drugs instead. Because she’d had to change her name so no one would know we were related.
Because I was everything she’d come from, everything she never wanted to be.
“Jesus, Shelley,” I said.
Shelley walked toward me. “I wouldn’t have bothered you, Joe, once you were in the joint. You know, when Jake changed my name for me, he got me a new birth certificate and all that stuff. So no one would have known you were my sister. But I guess it’s better this way. You would have found a way to screw things up for me sooner or later.”
She crouched down so her face was closer to mine. I never knew how much she hated me until I saw her face right then. “You know, Joe, you never did a goddamned thing for me. You never did nothing for my whole damn life but cause trouble. You know what it was like, coming up, everyone knowing my sister was a whore?” She shook her head. “No, of course you don’t. Now for once you’re gonna be useful. You’re gonna disappear, and I won’t ever have to worry about you screwing things up for me again. You’re never gonna let me down again.”
She was right. I’d never let her down again.
I was burning up where I had been shot.
“When they—” I started coughing again. Blood came out of my mouth and splattered on the floor.
“When they find you?” Shelley said. “You and Nadine? I guess they’ll figure they were wrong about Jim after all. I guess they’ll figure they were right the first time, that you and McFall were both mixed up in some kind of a dope situation. Or maybe they’ll think it was Jim, and he had a partner. Honestly, Joe, I don’t care what they think. But they won’t think it’s me. No one even saw me come up here, except you. We got that old biddy at the desk out at her sister’s in Queens. Her sister had a big emergency. And you know, I don’t think anyone’s gonna worry about it too much. I wouldn’t count on making the papers. Two junkie whores gone. It ain’t too exciting.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Oh Jim. I’m so sorry.”
“What? If you’re gonna talk, Joe, you gotta speak up. I can’t hear you. It’s like that thing they say, speak now or forever hold your mouth, or whatever it is. ’Cause this is it for you, Joe.
“This is it for you, Joe,” she said softly.
She poked at me with the gun, and for a second I thought I saw something on her face—something like regret. But maybe it was my imagination.
I was bleeding a lot. I had thought she was going to
shoot me again but now I saw that it didn’t matter.
I was bleeding a lot. She didn’t need to shoot me again.
I heard a man say, “Hey, baby. Everything okay in here?”
My eyes were closed. I forced them open and looked up. It was a man in a pin-striped suit and a gray fedora. I knew him. He was waiting outside Paul’s when I went in. I’d seen him in Katz’s. In Bryant Park. In the restaurant where I ran into Shelley. He’d stopped by her table.
Shelley stood up. “Yeah,” she said. “I’m just waiting for the other one to come back from the powder room.”
“Hey,” I said. “I bet you drive a black Chevrolet.”
He looked at Shelley. He was a good-looking fellow, but he didn’t look nice. His face had deep lines in it and his eyes were set like stone. I wished Shelley could have picked a nicer guy.
“Did she say something?”
“I don’t know.” Shelley shrugged and started looking around my room. She opened the closet and looked at my dresses. “Look at this trash,” she said. “You’ve always been a dope, Joe, you know that? You’ve always been a goddamned dope.”
I was going to say something, but I forgot what it was.
The record kept playing. My eyes closed. It seemed now like it couldn’t have happened any other way. Like this was the way it was supposed to be. This was how it had to end. All the disappointments added up to this.
I heard Nadine coming back down the hall. Don’t do that, I said. Stop.
“Why?” It was Monte. He was sniffing a line of dope off the coffee table in our first apartment.
I loved that table. I loved our apartment and everything in it. It was ours. I was finally out of my mother’s place and on my own. I was going to have Shelley come and live with us, like a real family, just as soon as we got settled. Monte said everything would be different now. He’d take care of me, me and Shelley, and I’d never have to worry about making money again. I’d never have to let anyone touch me again. He was going to get a job at this factory in Brooklyn where his cousin worked, and he was going to take over paying for Shelley’s acting classes, he was going to give her money every week like I’d been doing. It had always been just me and Shelley. We couldn’t count on our mother. I worried about her so much that sometimes it hurt. Sometimes I couldn’t sleep at night. I loved Monte, but that was the real reason I’d married him. To take care of Shelley.
