The Cocktail Waitress

by James M. Cain

  “Yeah, we were somewhere. I recall your making me apologize for it. Maybe we can begin where we left off.” And with that, first putting his arm around me, he slid his other hand right where he’d put it that night, and I locked my legs, in exactly the selfsame way. But he kept sliding his hand higher, up, up, up, stroking with his index finger as he went—until his hand was inside my hot pants, and then working its way across. And then, almost before I knew it, it was in a woman’s most intimate spot, and I was turning to water. Instead of clamping tight to resist, I was quite limp, and have to admit, enchanted his hand was there. It had been a time, not just since Ron’s death but for nearly a year before, and I forgot how much I missed it. Sitting there with Tom’s strong hands on me, I felt like my ribs might crack from the force of my heart’s pounding behind them. Then he suddenly took his hand away, and began unbuttoning my pants, at the placket on one side, and I was wriggling to help, to shuffle them off. My blouse came next, and his shirt, and then he was pushing me back, back against the pillow, his weight pressing down on me, his bare chest against mine.

  Then, then at last, I thought of Mr. White, and how important the plans were that I’d made for him, and how it could all go in the soup if I let this thing happen with Tom. And I thought of Ethel, and her charge that I was doing with my customers exactly what I was about to do; and of Private Church, who’d been blessedly silent for weeks, but might not remain so if he got wind of this, a lover after all, even if it wasn’t Joe Pennington. I thought of all of them, and fighting every instinct I had I got my hands clear and pushed, pushed Tom up and away. He fought me, playfully, and I fought him, to mean it, and at last bit him on the cheek. He began to growl, and I pushed some more, until I could sit up. My pushing reached the table, and suddenly it toppled over into the curtain. I jumped up, banging him in the face accidentally with my knee, got clear, slipped around, grabbed my coat, and raced through the nightclub, out the door, and over the lot to my car. I’d left my pants and blouse in the booth; I ran in just my panties, clutching my coat haphazardly in front of my breasts. Then I remembered my bag—and found it under my arm, how it got there I don’t know, I don’t remember grabbing it. Then into my car, snapping the safety catch down and winding the window up. In the bag I found my car key, but by that time Tom was there, shirt hanging loose, belt unbuckled, banging on the window and grunting: “Goddam it, Joan, open that door!”

  I didn’t open. I turned the key, stepped on the pedal, and when the motor spoke went into gear and backed. But to get off the lot, I had to turn and go forward. He raced to block me off, standing in front of the car and holding his hands up, like some kind of traffic cop. I ran straight at him, so he jumped up on the bumper and sprawled on the hood as I kept right on. Then I suddenly stopped so he toppled off. I swerved to miss driving over him and then kept right on, going straight home, the coat fallen into my lap, my body exposed by each passing streetlight so that anyone looking in might have seen. But I didn’t stop so I could put the coat on; I didn’t even slow down. I just said a silent prayer that no one would see me, and as far as I could tell, no one did.

  When I turned in my drive, the dash clock said three o’clock in the morning. “One of the great waltzes,” I thought, climbing out, unlocking the door, and going in.

  14

  In bed, I lay there terrified, for fear the doorbell would ring, and that if Tom was there, I would let him in. It didn’t, and at last I slept. Next day, I was able to put on my uniform, as I had the extra pair of hot pants Liz had bought me and my own substitute blouse, and so I was able to go down to work as usual. It was Liz’s week on the set-ups, so I got in just before five, and when I came out, after putting my coat and bag in my locker, there was Mr. White, at his regular place. I went over and asked: “The usual?”—but instead of the friendly nod he always gave me, he didn’t look at me. He just sat there, his face in a scowl, so I knew something was wrong. However, I went to the bar, where Jake had his order all ready, took it over and served it. “Will there be something else?” I asked, taking no notice how he was acting.

  “… No—nothing,” he said.

  “Nice weather we’re having,” I remarked, on purpose trying to sound idiotic, and all too well succeeding.

  Then at last he looked up. “How could you do that to me?” he asked, his voice half choked. “How could you? How could you?”

  “Do what, Mr. White? Why don’t you explain yourself?”

  “You know what I mean, don’t stand there pretending you don’t. How could you go to that place? That—Wigwam? That whorehouse?”

  “How do you know where I went?”

  “Don’t try to tell me you didn’t. You were seen, going into it with a man, at two o’clock in the morning.”

  “Was I seen coming out?”

  “Answer me! I asked how could you?”

  “Answer me, Mr. White. Apparently, you had a spy following me, a CIA man maybe, or someone in your pay. Well you should dock him for not sticking around, because if he had stuck around, for no more than fifteen minutes, he’d have seen me come out, and he couldn’t have stuck around, because if he’d seen me he’d have remembered it. I came out running, I’ll have you know, holding a coat in front of me to cover what was bare—which is to say everything, or nearly so, since I had a struggle inside with a fellow who thought he could have me if only he got my clothes off. But he couldn’t—I assure you I got out of there with everything else intact, what we might laughingly call my honor. I agree it’s kind of a whorehouse, but I didn’t know that until after I went in, I thought I was being taken to a place to have a quiet drink. Now I do know what it is, it’s a place I’ll stay away from. Is there something else you want to know?”

  “… Are you telling me the truth?”

  “Your man didn’t report my exit?”

  “… No.”

  “Well then he must have walked away or he would have—I’m supposed to be quite an eyeful with no clothes on, if my departed husband can be believed, and your man surely would have told you about it if he’d seen the sight. Perhaps even shown you pictures. And now, if you’ll excuse me—?”

  I caught Liz’s eye and motioned her over. “This is Miss Baumgarten,” I told him, “Liz to her many friends. She’ll bring you whatever you want.”

  I went back to the locker room and stretched myself out on the bench. In a couple of minutes Liz was there. “He wants to see you,” she said.

  “I’m kind of busy just at the moment.”

  “Joanie, the guy’s nuts about you—the whole place knows it, been knowing it all summer, even if you don’t. And as much as I’d like to say I prefer Tom for you—you don’t brush something like that.”

  “Who says I’m brushing him? Please just tell him what I said.”

  “… Just right now you’re busy?”

  “That’s it. Tell him so.”

  I don’t quite know why I played it that way. For a moment there, serving his order, I had had a horrible hunch I had lost Mr. White, had broken beyond repair what we’d had, based as it was, at least in part, on his sense that I was a ‘lady,’ or at least more ladylike than Liz. But then, there seemed to be something squashy in the way he was acting toward me, and I could feel it somehow that if I played it right I still might call him mine. But the last thing in the world, I knew, would be for me to lead to him. It had to be him to me, or he’d look down on me. So I let Liz go with her message, and didn’t move off the bench. In a minute or two she was back. “He’s gone,” she whispered. “And he didn’t like it much, you not coming out. At least to tell him goodbye.”

  “He’s not supposed to like it.”

  “Joanie, with a fish like that on the hook—”

  “You play him, you keep the line tight.”

  “I wouldn’t play him that way, but—”

  “He’s not your fish.”

  What I would say to Tom, I hadn’t the faintest idea. What I had thought I would say, as I rehearsed it during the night,
was that I expected to be getting married, and couldn’t risk an involvement with him. But now that I’d been caught by surprise, now that Mr. White knew what I’d done, or almost done at any rate, and had acted as any man would, I didn’t know where I was at, and for that reason hated to face it, the scene I would play with Tom. But anticlimax, he didn’t come. As his time approached I grew nervous, knowing “There was a reason” was no reason at all, and expecting a miserable mess, but when closing time came, he still hadn’t showed and there I was, not only with nothing to say but no one to say it to. And it went on for some little time—I not only didn’t see him, but didn’t hear where he was, or anything about him. He simply stopped coming, and no one had any news.

  With Mr. White, however, things were different, and little by little, and then much by much, the situation changed. He was in the next afternoon, after the one I’ve just told about, still grim, but with no repetition of his hysterical outbreak. He ordered, then sat looking straight ahead, saying nothing at all. However, I wasn’t too bashful to speak. “In the first place,” I told him, beginning right in the middle without any small talk at all, “you can get rid of that snoop, that spy.”

  “I don’t have any snoop.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. White, you have one.”

  “You doubt my word?”

  “You want a straight answer to that?”

  “I demand a straight answer to it.”

  “I not only doubt your word, I call you a goddam liar. You do have a snoop, and if you want to know how I know I go by that look in your eye. So spit it out, Mr. White. You do have a snoop, don’t you?”

  “I have a man, O.K. But not to spy on you, for heaven’s sake.”

  “A snoop is a snoop is a snoop.”

  “This was a man that works for me, a man from down in the office, that I asked to keep an eye on you—not to spy, that’s the truth, simply to see that nothing happened to you after leaving here at night. That was all, I swear it was.”

  I let him stew a bit before I relented: “Then O.K. I believe you.”

  Because I knew he was telling the truth, or at least thought he was. I went on: “But in return for taking your word, taking your word on him, I must have your word it’s the end, that he won’t stake me out anymore, that you take him off my neck. What do you say to that?”

  “… Joan, if you insist, I say O.K., of course. But—”

  “I don’t need protection. Thanks to your great generosity, I have my own car now. I don’t ride with Liz anymore, I go straight home, let myself in with my key, and if I need the police can call them. Do I have your word you’re taking that tail off my back?”

  “Joan, I’ve already said it.”

  “Then O.K., let’s get on to the next matter.”

  He looked up in surprise, and I went right on, boring in: “About you and I, getting married. On that, you said you asked nothing better, and would go through with it gladly, except that your doctor forbade it, as a sure sentence of death. O.K., Mr. White, but whose life is it? Your doctor’s?”

  “… What do you mean, Joan? That it’s up to me to die to prove how I feel about you?”

  “No, Mr. White, it’s not. But, there is a way out.”

  “What do you mean, a way out?”

  “Way in, perhaps I should say. Mr. White, sex isn’t everything. There’s no reason at all that you couldn’t marry me, stay in your bedroom, and let me stay in mine. That way, you’d have me with you always, if I mean what you say I do to you, and I’d have you with me always, and I do confess that would mean quite a lot. In addition to which, I could quit this job serving drinks, which has been a godsend to me, but which I confess I could do without. And most important of all to me, I could have my son back, and give him the growing up a boy dreams of, in that beautiful house, playing on that beautiful grass, and rolling his tricycle on that beautiful drive. What use is all that house and those grounds with just you living there by yourself? You’ve told me how lonely you are, how much more you like it here where we can talk and be together. For god’s sake, Earl, why should a man like you have to come to a bar for companionship? Or in other words, once again to make plain what I mean: Who’s running your life?”

  “I’d love to have you helping me run it.”

  “O.K., then. What do you say to what I just now said?”

  “I say I’ll think it over.”

  “It’s what I want you to do.”

  It was two or three weeks after that, I would say in mid-September, so it was coming on for fall, before he came up with his answer—if you could call it that. He came in, ordered, and then, in the most casual way, said: “I think I’m going to say yes—but I must go to New York first.”

  “New York? You mean, now?”

  “I thought to leave tomorrow.”

  “For how long?”

  “Oh—better part of a month. Maybe more.”

  There was something peculiar about it, and I asked: “What’s in New York? Why must you go up there?”

  “Lawyer. He’s spending some time up there, working on a business deal for me, an important one.”

  “And what does he have to do with you and me?”

  “About such a marriage as ours, such a marriage as ours would be, there are quite a few legal angles. I’m not sure I know what they are, except in a general way. I think I should talk to him. And I need to be there to see to the deal as well.”

  “I see. I see.”

  “You could talk to a lawyer too.”

  “That might be a good idea.”

  I left him, did one or two things at the bar, and thought over what he had said. Then I went back and told him: “It’s really the best way, I agree. You go now, have your month in New York, and if you forget me, O.K. I have other chances, don’t worry.”

  “… Stop talking like that!”

  “I told you go—then we’ll know where we stand.”

  15

  So he went, and for a time, things were very humdrum, we could even say a bit flat. I missed him coming to the bar each night; at least I missed his nineteen-dollar tips. Things went on I suppose for two or three weeks, into the early fall. It was the tail end of September by then, and I’d switched back from my summer hot pants to the velveteen trunks and pantyhose, which I’d just gotten on one afternoon when the bell rang, and when I opened the door it was Tom. I hadn’t seen him since that night, and no doubt acted cool. “… Oh?” I said. “Tom? What can I do for you?”

  “Joan,” he half stammered, “I have to talk to you.”

  “What about?”

  “I think you know, and I won’t enjoy it, I promise you. Just the same, I won’t talk on your doorstep.”

  “Then—come in, please.”

  I brought him into the living room, and asked him: “How would I know what you’ve come about?”

  “You haven’t seen this?”

  I noticed for the first time he had a paper under his arm, which he unrolled and waved around. “I don’t take the afternoon paper,” I told him. “What’s in it to concern me? What is this anyway?”

  He handed it over, and on page one, not the main story but big enough to make it onto the front page, was one about Mr. Lacey, the man whose bail bond I’d signed. It said:

  LACEY CASE CALLED:

  NO LACEY

  —or something like that. The story simply said that when the case of James Lacey, indicted municipal engineer, was called for trial that morning, “Mr. Lacey didn’t make the required appearance.” It then went on to say that “Melvin T. Lackman, Mr. Lacey’s attorney, told the court Mr. Lacey hadn’t arrived at his office as scheduled to accompany him to the trial, and that he had no information on where Mr. Lacey was. The court, in the person of Judge T. D. Enos, ordered a bench warrant issued for Mr. Lacey’s arrest.” That was all, except for a picture of Mr. Lacey, looking as I remembered him, only younger and not so fat. My stomach began telling me this was bad news, but I still wasn’t quite caught up. I asked: “Well? Where do
I come in?”

  “Joan, you signed his bail bond, that’s where.”

  “You mean, I lose my house? It gets taken and sold to pay the bond?”

  “On that, I don’t know yet—I’m as caught by surprise as you are, and know as little about it. Where I do know what I mean, is to stand by you one hundred percent—you did this thing for me, and I’m not letting you take the fall for it alone.”

  “That’s a lovely sentiment, Tom, but I don’t see what you can do, unless some of those projects of yours have ripened and you now have not one but twelve thousand dollars to spare.”

  “I think I don’t need it, and neither do you. If we can find that son of a bitch and bring him back for trial, we can let a court take it from there. But that’s what I think, and what I know is nothing. As of now, the first thing is to get a lawyer.”

  “… I don’t know any lawyer.”

  “So happens, I do.”

  He mentioned one I’d heard of, at the time of my real estate deal, with offices over in Marlboro, Dwight Eckert was his name, and Tom offered to drive me to see him. I thought to put in a call first, to find out if he’d be in, and it turned out he would be, after four o’clock. It was then going on for three, which just gave me time to change from my waitress clothes, and put on a suit I’d bought, which would do nicely, as the air by now had a nip in it. I excused myself, went back to the bedroom and started to change, when there he was, in the door. I asked: “Who invited you back here?”

  He leaned against the doorpost and crossed his arms. “Figured we could continue talking. Not like it’s the first time I’ve seen you undressed, brief though the last time was.”

  I was wearing no more than I’d been the last time, just my panties. I turned to him and held out my hand, palm up. “That’ll be twenty-five dollars, please.”

  “… What did you say?”

  “I said, pay. From being taken to visit a whorehouse, I learned some tricks of the trade. Now, you want to watch me undress, you pay to watch me undress. Twenty-five dollars, I said—payable now.”