by Jim Thompson
Red laughed, blushed, and gave him a feverish kiss. Grabbing his hand, she began dragging him through the place. It was a penthouse with a three-sided view of the city. In the immense living room, with its ceiling-high fireplace, was a full-size grand piano, ivory finished to blend with the snowy white carpeting.
There were two bedrooms and a maid’s room, three baths and a powder room. In the master bedroom, Red wheeled and put her arms around his waist, breasts shivering with excitement.
“Don’t tell me,” she begged. “I don’t want to know how much. But—just a little hint?”
“Not half what it’s worth to see you pleased.”
“You darling! I’m going to make it up to you today…for last night, I mean.”
“You couldn’t be a little more specific?”
“Anything! You k-know?” Her body seemed to be on fire. “Anything!”
“Big category,” Mitch pointed out. “Little girl.”
“You’ll see. Now, about that hint…”
“We-el, a very well-known public figure is reputed to have stayed here.”
“How well-known?”
“The well-knownest. The biggest.”
His meaning suddenly sank in on her. “You mean the Pres—!” She put her hands against his chest and firmly pushed him away. “Out! Out right this minute! I want to get into something comfortable before I faint.”
Mitch sat down in the living room and picked up a telephone. A parade of servants began to arrive: A maid (she went with the apartment and he was to ring whenever she was wanted); bellboys with morning papers, blooms for the flower vases, and an assortment of liquors for the bar; a waiter with breakfast.
Signing the various checks, with suitable tips penciled in, Mitch estimated that their total was at about one hundred and fifty dollars. He sighed, unconsciously. He summoned Red, now dressed in a form-fitting housecoat, and they went out on the terrace to breakfast.
Her hair blazed in the morning sun. Her skin seemed as delicately transparent as the porcelain cup that she lifted to her lips. She ate delicately, but enthusiastically, the food reacting like a tonic to her. Food did to her what drink did to other people. The brown eyes sparkled joyously; the high-cheekboned face seemed to glow with contentment.
Mitch smiled, watching her. She smiled back at him, a little defensively.
“So I’m a pig. There wasn’t too much food around when I was a kid.”
“Do you remember our first meal together?”
Red pointed to her mouth: speech was impractical at the moment. She chewed, swallowed, and shuddered ecstatically. Then, she said of course she remembered, how could she ever forget a thing like that—adding casually that it was about five years ago, wasn’t it?
Mitch laughed. “Stop trying to trap me. You know damned well it’s over six years.”
“Six years, three months, twelve days,” she nodded, and smiled dreamily. “Wasn’t it funny the way we met, dear? Strange, I mean.”
“What was funny about it?” Mitch said. “I was looking for you.”
“You mean you were looking for someone to work with.”
“I mean I was looking for you,” Mitch said.
And that was true.
But he hadn’t known it until he’d seen her.
Red stood up abruptly, and silently held out her hands. Mitch took them and kissed them, then picked her up and carried her into the bedroom.
4
One of the world’s worst trains—the absolute worst in the belief of many people—runs from Oklahoma City to Memphis. It has no diner. Its cars are of pre–World War I vintage, without air-conditioning or other common comforts. Its schedule is presumably the product of a comic-book writer. The many and prolonged delays are variously attributed to such causes as holdups by Jesse James, impromptu hunting and fishing parties by the crew, and funerals for passengers who have advanced into and died en route of old age.
Most of those who ride it do so because they must. The occasional exceptions are usually sufferers from semantic insanity, interpreting discomfort as quaint and the insufferable as interesting. Mitch had boarded the train because it was the quickest connection out of Oklahoma City, and he needed to get away from the city fast.
He was feeling very despondent at the time, having just fired his assistant. He was afraid that if he lingered around her he might weaken and hire her back. Which would have been very bad for both of them.
She was a very good kid, in his book. A former model and bit-actress, she had enough class and looks for two women. She had, in fact, almost everything going for her but one thing—she was a sucker for the sauce. The weakness hadn’t showed up for quite a while; probably it was the strain that brought it out. But there it was, and it kept getting worse.
Mitch talked to her like a father. He scolded her. Unhappily, he spanked her, pointing out that she should be ashamed to need such punishment at her age. Nothing did any good. She continued to louse him up, invariably getting drunk just when he needed her worst.
The realization came to him finally that she just couldn’t help it, that if she was ever to get better it would not be around him.
So she wept heart-brokenly, and he got a little blurry-eyed himself. But there was only one thing to do, and he did it, and jumped town on the first thing he could grab.
He may have been very tired—he had been up with his ex-assistant for two nights running. Or he may have simply fled into sleep to escape the nightmare of the train. At any rate, it was around sunset when he returned to wakefulness and found this red-haired babe sitting next to him. Her duds were obviously discards from a rummage sale, and she was eating some horrible guck out of a paper sack.
She turned abruptly, looking at him out of the coolest, steadiest eyes he had ever seen. And suddenly he pieced those eyes and the hair and that complexion together with the rest of her, and he saw her as she could be. At the same time, he realized how he must look to her; unshaven, red-eyed, his suit rumpled, his shirt sweaty and soot-stained.
She added him up, item by item, and sympathy came into her face. “Eat something,” she said, proffering the sack of guck. “You’ll feel better.”
Mitch said no, no, he was just fine; but Red knew he wasn’t. Papa had been like that a lot, and he always felt better after mama gave him a cold sweet potato and some pone.
Mitch did a little nibbling. The conductor came through, taking orders for box lunches to be telegraphed ahead to the next stop. But the girl grabbed Mitch’s hand as he started to reach for his wallet.
“They charge a dollar a piece for those things! You just save your money to get straightened out with!”
“But, really—”
“The idea! Throwing money away, and you with barely a stitch to your back!”
She was unaware, obviously, that baggage could be checked on one’s ticket. Born and raised in a jerkwater community, a village dying with the cropped-out land around it, there was much that she did not know. But she did know, oh, how well she knew, a jobless propertyless drunk when she saw one.
“You’ll feel better in the morning.” She patted his hand. “Papa always does.”
She went on talking, apparently trying to cheer him up with papa’s unceasing miseries and the concomitant troubles of his family. Things had been pretty nice for a while, what with her two older brothers joining the army and sending home allotments. But they kind of had papa’s talent for messing themselves up, and had soon messed themselves into death as a result of their own misconduct. So there was not only no more allotment money, but also none of the emoluments usually associated with service deaths.
Of course, everyone at home worked when they could, chopping and picking for others as well as cropping their own. But when land wouldn’t even make a quarter-bale an acre, well, where were you? Particularly where were you when you had a force (family) the size of papa’s?
“I worked in the library until they closed it down, and then the general store until it closed, and th
en the telephone exchange until it closed. There just wasn’t any reason for them anymore, you know. Everyone was leaving who could. But papa was ailing again, and mama was pregnant again,”—a note of bitterness, disgust?—“and at least they have a house where they are, and…”
She, Red, had been elected to go to Memphis. To get a job immediately and promptly send some money home. “And don’t think I won’t!” she declared, her chin jutting out. “Uh, what kind of work do you do—uh—”
“Mitch. Mitch for Mitchell. Do you mind being called Red?”
“Why should I? Uh, what kind of work did you say you did, Mitch?”
He decided to level with her; she seemed to be the kind you could do it with. “I’m a gambler.”
“Oh? I guess you’re not very good at it, are you?”
“What if I told you I was very good? That I had ways of winning almost all the time.”
“I’d say you should,” she said firmly. “If you can’t win, you shouldn’t play. But if you’re so good, why—?”
He told her why briefly, giving her a glimpse of his bankroll by way of documentation. The reaction was not the one he had expected.
“So you were lying to me!” Her eyes flashed fire. “You sat right there and told me you’d got drunk and lost your job, and didn’t even have enough to—”
“Why, no, I didn’t. I didn’t say anything.”
“You did too! Just the same as! I tried to be nice, and you made a fool out of me!”
Mitch asked her if she wanted him to find another seat, and she tossed her head with a “Humph!” That was the way with liars, she said. First they lied to you, and then they ran.
“I could give you a job, Red,” he persisted. “You’d make a great deal of money, and—”
“You hush up! I know the kind of job you’d give me!”
“No, really…”
“Hush!”
Mitch hushed. The train grew very cold with the coming of night, and he lowered the windows around them. Then, shrugging down in the seat, he tried to pull his coat across his chest.
Red primly opened her suitcase. Making a production out of it, she took out a bulky something and began tucking it around her. At last, settled back cozily, she shot a haughty glance at Mitch.
“You see?” she said. “You could be warm too if you hadn’t lied to me.”
“That’s all right,” Mitch said. “You need your blanket for yourself.”
“Blanket? This is my coat, darn you!”
She flounced around in the seat, turning her back to him. There was a long moment of offended silence, and then she faced around to him, laughing.
“I guess it does look like a blanket, doesn’t it? Here, come on and get under it.”
Of necessity, they had to move close together, almost face to face. The lights dimmed and went out, and there was only the Ozark moonlight drifting through the windows, and Red said it was almost like being in bed, wasn’t it?
“Well, yes and no,” Mitch said. And Red gave him a reproving pinch.
“Mitch…did you mean it about the job?”
“Yes.”
“It’s, uh, kind of dishonest, isn’t it?”
He shrugged. “It depends on your viewpoint, I guess.”
“And—and you really think I could do it?”
“I think so.” He hesitated carefully. “I could be wrong, but sizing people up is a big part of my business, and you seem to fit the bill. In any event you’d have to work very hard with me, get a lot of training before you were ready.”
“Naturally,” she nodded. “You have to work hard if you want to get any place in this world. Uh—about how much would I make, Mitch?”
“Twenty-five percent of the take, after expenses. That could be a thousand or more a week, but there are a lot of weeks when you don’t work.”
She had one more question to ask, but she fumbled around it. She was afraid, she said, that he might get the wrong idea about her.
“I think I know what you have in mind,” Mitch said. “The answer is no, not as far as I’m concerned. Those relationships can and do develop, but—”
“Hush!” she said, strangely cross. “I’m nineteen years old, for goodness sake! You don’t have to spell everything out like I was some little kid.”
“Sorry. What was it you wanted to ask?”
She told him, adding that he probably thought it was none of her business. Mitch said that he didn’t think anything of the kind. She had every right to know if they were going to be working together, and he was more than glad to tell her.
Behind the deliberate words, his mind raced. He wanted to tell her the truth—but what was the truth? He hadn’t heard from Teddy in years. Probably she had divorced him, or perhaps some public-spirited citizen had killed her. It hadn’t mattered until now. Now it mattered a great deal.
If he wanted this redhead, and, his disclaimer to the contrary, he did want her, all the way, work and play, he could give her only one answer. He knew it—sensed it—just as he knew—sensed the potential treasure of her body and face and mind.
“No,” he said, “I’m not married. I was married, and I have a small son in boarding school, but my wife is dead.”
“Well, all right, then,” Red said. “Now, you put your arms around me—no, this way, silly!—and we’ll be real nice and warm.”
“Just like we were in bed?”
“Hush,” she said. “I’ll let you know when I want you to get fresh with me.”
…In their penthouse bedroom, Red raised her arms to permit the removal of the housecoat, then, head bowed submissively, eyes half-closed, she went to the bed and spread herself upon it.
Mitch began flinging off his clothes. He had disposed of two shoes, one sock and a necktie when the door chimes sounded.
5
The youth entering hotel work may follow one of several courses. Since he is surrounded by many temptations in the form of women, drink, and opportunities to steal, he is very often fired. But if he is able to behave himself (or to cover up his misbehavior), he normally has little trouble in (1) advancing to a responsible position, (2) not advancing—remaining a uniformed menial, or (3) using his hotel contacts to get good non-hotel employment.
Strangely—strangely on the surface, that is—most youths do the second thing.
The hotel boy, you see, is ageless. As long as he is reasonably able-bodied, he is a “boy” at sixty-five just as he was at sixteen when he began his career as a page, valet, or bellhop. Throughout the years his earnings remain about the same; he is making no more at the end than he was at the beginning. Contrariwise, however, he is making as much at the beginning. And to exchange his handsome tip-earned income for one of the low-pay jobs through which he must climb to the top is very hard for a youth to do.
Still, quite a few do make the exchange. They are repelled by the specter of themselves as uniformed grandpas. Or some interested executive takes them in hand, ordering them to get with it or get out. Or they are afflicted with late growth, suddenly finding themselves too large for the role of flunky. In any event, and for one reason or another, many of the young men Mitch had worked with as a bellboy had risen to highly responsible positions.
Foresightedly, and simply out of liking, he had helped them along the privation path to the top. Now, with rare exceptions, they were ready to help him: out of liking and gratitude; out of practical considerations—who is ever beyond the need of a safe buck? (and with a smooth character like Mitch it was always safe); out of the hotel man’s contempt for the genus chump. And any non-professional gambler who gambles is considered a chump.
Inevitably, he will be taken. So why shouldn’t a friend do the taking?
…Mitch flung open the door. On the threshold stood a plump, rosy-cheeked man in striped trousers and morning coat. Grinning almost to his thinly haired scalp, he held out his arms.
“Mitch, you sweet bastard! I just discovered that you’d checked in!”
Mitch let out a
groan of feigned dismay. “Turk! God save us all, it’s Turk!” He dragged the plump one into the apartment, calling word of his arrival to Red. “All is lost, honey. Turkelson’s here.”
Turkelson chuckled delightedly as Red came running in. She hugged him enthusiastically, kissed him on top of the head and accepted a kiss on the cheek. “Is there no way,” she asked, turning to Mitch, “to escape this character?”
“That,” said Mitch, “is the question on everyone’s lips.”
“Well, he’d better behave himself,” Red said severely. “He’s thirty stories up.”
Mitch urged him to sit down, before his weight pushed him through the carpet. Then he asked what Turkelson’s position was at the place—did he wash dishes or clean out the johns? Turkelson chuckled that he had applied for both jobs, been rejected as untrustworthy and forced to accept the post of resident manager. Actually, he added with the faintest trace of gloom, the job was not as good as it looked. Practically everything was a concession—food, drink, laundry and valet, newsstand, florist shop, and so on—leaving him only the management of the hotel proper.
“But I do all right.” He brightened. “And I see you kids are certainly making out. When you can pop forty-five hundred for a month’s rent—”
Red let out a yipe, and appeared to faint. Mitch shook his head disgustedly.
“Oh, God, Mitch!” Turkelson slapped his forehead. “I should have know you wouldn’t tell her.”
“Why should I have to with you in the same country?”
“But that’s what I came up for, one of the things. To do something about it, I mean. Red, you dream creature, if you’ll pass me the phone please.…”
She passed it to him. Abruptly, he became a different man: imposing, humorless, voice cracking with authority as he spoke to the room clerk.
“…now you know better than this, Davis! You should know at least. Other things being equal, the rate in a case of this kind is governed by the availability of space and the desirability of the guests. We want people to come back, you know. Or did you have some other idea?…Well, all right, then. All right. But consult me, hereafter. Oh, yes, and make this, uh, thirty-seven-fifty.”
