The Wayward Bus

by John Steinbeck

  The doorknob of her bedroom turned and then there was pressure against the door. Norma stiffened and stood rigid. Only one hand moved, and it frantically rubbed at her eyebrows and succeeded in making gray smudges on her forehead. And now there came a knocking at the bedroom door. A light, courteous knocking. She put her brush on the dresser, smoothed down her dress, and went to the door. She pushed the catch and opened the door a crack. The face of Ernest Horton was looking in at her. His tight, hairy mustache arched over his mouth.

  “I thought I’d take my sample case out of your way,” he said.

  Norma still held the door open only a crack.

  “You folks have been so nice and all,” he went on. “I don’t want to be any more nuisance than I have to.”

  Norma slowly relaxed, but she was still breathing a little hard. She opened the door and stepped back. Ernest, with a smile of embarrassment, came into the room. He went to the bed.

  “I should have made this bed,” he said, and he drew the sheet and blanket up and began to pat the wrinkles out.

  “No, I’ll do that,” said Norma.

  “You didn’t even wait for your tip I promised you,” said Ernest. “But I’ve got it for you.” He made the bed neatly, as though he had done it many times before.

  “I could have done that just as well,” said Norma.

  “Well, it’s done now,” he said. He went to his big sample case. “Mind if I open this? I want to get some stuff out.”

  “Go ahead,” said Norma. Her eyes filled with interest.

  He laid the big sample case on her bed and snapped the catch and threw back the lid. There were wonderful things in the case. There were cardboard tubes and handkerchiefs that changed color. There were exploding cigars and stink-bombs. There were voice-throwers and horns and paper hats for parties and pennants and funny buttons. There were silken pillows like the one on the wall. Ernest was extracting six of the artificial sore feet in their flat packages, and Norma had moved close to look into the wonderful sample case. Her eyes had been caught by a series of photographs of picture stars. They were not like any she had ever seen. The pictures were pressed and molded into thick sheets of sheer plastic at least a quarter of an inch through. And there was another curious thing about them. The pictures did not look flat. By some trick of bending, or possibly of refracted light, the faces were rounded and had depth. They seemed to be three-dimensional, and the frames were eight by ten inches in size.

  On top was a lifelike, smiling picture of James Stewart,1 and projecting from under that was a second picture of which she could only see the hair and a part of the forehead, but she knew that hair and that forehead. Her lips parted and a shine came into her eyes. Slowly her hand moved into the case and lifted James Stewart aside. And there he was, Clark Gable, looking round and full. It was a serious, intense pose, the chin out, the eyes level and intent. It was such a picture as she had never seen. She sighed deeply and tried to control her breath so that it could not be heard. She lifted the picture out and stared into the eyes, and her own were wide and hypnotized.

  Ernest watched her and saw her interest. “Isn’t that a knockout?” he said. “It’s a new idea. Notice how it looks round, almost like a statue?”

  Norma nodded, speechless.

  “I make a prophecy,” Ernest said. “I go down the line and lay my word on it. That little number is going to wipe every other kind of pictures right off the map. It’s acid-proof, moisture-proof, lasts forever, won’t ever turn brown. It’s molded and baked right inside the frame. It’ll last forever.”

  Norma’s eyes never left the picture. Ernest reached for the picture and her fingers tightened on it like claws.

  “How much?” Her voice came out a throaty, rasping growl.

  “It’s just a sample,” said Ernest. “It’s something to show to the trade. It’s not for sale. You order them.”

  “How much?” Her fingers were white with pressure. Ernest looked at her closely. He saw her face intent and set, jaw muscles rigid and nostrils flaring a little with controlled breathing.

  Ernest said, “They bring two bucks retail, but I said I was going to give you a nice tip. Would you rather have that than a nice tip?”

  Norma’s voice was hoarse. “Yes.”

  “Well, then, you can have it.”

  The whiteness went slowly out of her fingers. There was a light of glory in her eyes. She licked her lips. “Thanks,” she said. “Oh, thanks, mister!” She turned the face of the picture toward her and pressed it against her. The plastic was not cold, like glass, but warm and soft-feeling.

  “I guess I can get along with only one sample,” Ernest said. “See, I’m swinging south. I won’t go back to the head office for six weeks. I figured to spend two weeks in L.A. That’s a great place for novelties.”

  Norma carried the picture to her dresser and opened the drawer and shoved the picture down under a pile of clothes and closed the drawer. “I suppose you’ll get to Hollywood,” she said.

  “Oh, sure. That’s even better than L.A. for novelties. Then, it’s kind of like my vacation too. I’ve got a lot of friends there. I have my vacation and get around and see things and I see the trade too. Kills two birds. I don’t lose any time. I got an Army friend works in a studio there. I always run around some with him. Last time we had a party it started out in the Melrose Grotto.2 That’s over on Melrose, right next to RKO .3 And that really was a party! I wouldn’t really like to tell you what we did do, but I never had so much fun in my life. And then my friend, of course, had to go back to work at the studio.

  Norma had become as intent as a setter pup watching a bug. “Your friend works in a studio?” she asked casually. “Which one?”

  “Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer,”4 said Ernest. He was repacking his sample case and not looking up at her. He did not hear the rasp of breath in her throat or the unnatural tone that came into her voice.

  “You go into the studio lots?”

  “Yeah. Willie gets me a pass. I go and watch them shoot sometimes. Willie’s a carpenter. Worked there before the war and now he’s back there. I soldiered with him. Awful nice fellow. And what a guy at parties! He knows more dames, he’s got more phone numbers than you ever saw. A big thick black book full of phone numbers. Even he can’t remember who half the dames are he’s got the phone numbers of.”

  Ernest was warming to his subject. He sat down on the little straight chair beside the wall. He chuckled. “Willie was stationed in Santa Ana5 first of the war, before I even knew him. Well, the officers got to know about his black book and they’d take Willie into Hollywood and he’d get dames for them and then Willie got a pass when he wanted it. He was making out good when they shipped his outfit out.”

  Norma’s eyes took on a quick look of annoyance during this recital. Her fingers picked at her apron. Her voice became high and then low. “I wonder if it would discommode you to do a favor for me?”

  “Sure,” said Ernest. “What do you want?”

  “Well, if I was to give you a letter and you was—er—were on the MGM lot and you happened to see Mr. Gable, why I wonder if you’d give it to him?”

  “Who’s Mr. Gable?”

  “Mr. Clark Gable,” said Norma sternly.

  “Oh, him. You know him?”

  “Yes,” said Norma frostily, “I’m—I’m his cousin.”

  “Oh, I see. Well, sure I will. But maybe I don’t go. Why don’t you put it in the mail?”

  Norma’s eyes narrowed. “He don’t get his mail,” she said mysteriously. “There’s a girl, a secretary like, that just takes it and burns it up.”

  “No!” said Ernest. “What for?”

  Norma stopped to consider this. “They just don’t want him to see it.”

  “Not even from his own relatives?”

  “Not even from his cousin,” said Norma.

  “Did he tell you that?”

  “Yes.” Her eyes were wide and blank. “Yes. Course I’ll go there pretty soon,” she said. “I’ve
had offers and once I was just about to go and my cousin—Mr. Gable, that is—he said, ‘No, you’ve got to get experience,’ he said. ‘You’re young. You’re not in any hurry.’ So I’m getting experience. You learn a lot about people in a lunchroom. I study them all the time.”

  Ernest looked at her a little skeptically. He knew the fantastic stories about waitresses who became dramatic stars overnight, but Norma didn’t have the bubs for it, he thought, nor the legs. Norma’s legs were like sticks. But, then, he knew about two or three picture stars who were so plain without make-up that no one would recognize them off the screen. He’d read about them. And Norma, even if she didn’t look it—well, they could pad her out, and if her cousin was Clark Gable, why, that was an “in” you couldn’t beat. That was the breaks.

  “Well, I hadn’t thought much about asking Willie to get me a pass this time,” he said. “I’ve been out there quite a few times but—well, if you want me to I’ll go right in, find him, and give him your letter. What do you suppose they throw away his mail for?”

  “They just want to work him to death and then throw him away like an old shoe,” said Norma passionately. Wave after wave of emotion swept over her. She was in an ecstasy, and at the same time panic was crowding up on her. Norma was not a liar. She had never done anything like this before. She was going out on a long teetering plank and she knew it. One question, one bit of knowledge on Ernest’s part, would throw her off and hurtle her into a chasm, and yet she couldn’t stop.

  “He’s a great man,” she said, “a great gentleman. He don’t like the parts they make him do because he isn’t like that. Even Rhett Butler 6—he didn’t like to play that because he’s not a rat and he don’t like to play rat parts.”

  Ernest had lowered his eyes and was studying Norma through his eyelashes. And Ernest was beginning to understand. The key to it was creeping into his brain. Norma was as pretty now as she was ever likely to be. There was dignity in her face, courage, and a truly great flow of love. There were only two things for Ernest to do—to laugh at her or play along. If there’d been any other person in the room—another man, for instance—he probably would have laughed to protect himself from the other person’s scorn, and he would have been ashamed and more boisterous because he could see that it was a powerful, pure, and overwhelming thing shining in this girl. This was the thing that kept the neophytes lying through the nights on the stone floors in front of the altars. This was an outpouring of an attar of love, of a naked intensity that Ernest had never seen before in anyone.

  “I’ll take the letter,” he said. “I’ll tell him it’s from his cousin.”

  A look of fright came on Norma’s face. “No,” she said, “I’d rather surprise him. Just tell him it’s from a friend. Don’t tell him a single other thing.”

  “When do you think you’ll be going down there to take a job?” Ernest asked.

  “Well, Mr. Gable says I ought to wait another year. He says I’m young and need experience studying people. I get pretty tired of it sometimes, though. Sometimes I wish I was there in my own house with them—those—big, thick curtains and a long couch, like, and I’d see all my friends—Bette Davis and Ingrid Bergman and Joan Fontaine,7 because I don’t mess around with that other kind that’s always getting divorced and things like that. We just sit around and talk about serious things, and we study all the time because that’s how you get ahead and be a great actress. And there’s lots that treat their fans mean; won’t sign autographs and things like that, but not us! Not our kind, I mean. We even have girls right off the streets sometimes in for a cup of tea and talk and just like they were us because we know we owe everything we got to the loyalty of our fans.” She was quaking inside with fear and she couldn’t stop. She was getting far out on the plank and she couldn’t stop and it was about to throw her.

  Ernest said, “I didn’t understand at first. You’ve already been in pictures. Are you a star already?”

  “Yes,” said Norma. “But you wouldn’t know me by the name I’m using here. I have another name I use in Hollywood.”

  “What is it?”

  “I couldn’t tell,” said Norma. “You’re the only person anywhere around here that knows anything about me. Now, you won’t tell, will you?”

  Ernest was shaken. “No,” he said, “I won’t tell if you don’t want me to.”

  “Keep my secret inviolate,” said Norma.

  “Sure,” said Ernest. “Just give me the letter and I’ll see he gets it.”

  “You’ll see who gets what?” said Alice from the doorway. “What are you two doing alone in a bedroom?” Her eyes roved suspiciously about for evidence, skimmed over the sample case on the bed, stopped on the pillow, inspected the spread, and then moved to Norma. Alice’s eyes traveled up her feet and legs, lingered a moment on her skirt, hesitated on her waist, and then settled on her flaming face.

  Norma was almost sick with embarrassment. Her cheeks were splotched with blood. Alice put her hands on her hips.

  Ernest said placatingly, “I was just getting my sample case out of the way and she asked me to take a note to a cousin of hers in L.A.”

  “She’s got no cousin in L.A.”

  “Yes, she has too,” Ernest said angrily, “and I know her cousin.”

  And now the rage that had been trying to get out of Alice all morning burst from her. “You listen to me,” she shouted. “I won’t have you drummers diddling my hired girls.”

  “Nobody’s touched her,” Ernest said. “Nobody laid a hand on her.”

  “No? Well, then, what’cha doing in her bedroom? Take a look at her face.” The hysteria boiled over in Alice. A heavy, throaty, screaming voice came from her throat. Her hair fell about her face and her eyes rolled and watered and her lips became cruel and tight, as a fighter’s do when he is slugging a half-conscious opponent. “I won’t have it. You think I want her knocked up? You think I want bastards all over the place? We give you our beds and our rooms!”

  “I tell you nothing happened!” Ernest shouted at her. He was overwhelmed with hopelessness in the face of this craziness. His denials sounded in his ears almost like admissions. He didn’t understand why she was doing it, and the injustice made him sick to his stomach and rage was rising in him too.

  Norma’s mouth was open and she was catching the microbe of hysteria. Whinnying cries came from her with every panting breath. Her hands fought in front of her as though they were trying to destroy each other.

  Alice advanced on Norma and her right fist was doubled, not like a woman’s fist, but with the fingers folded tightly and the knuckles up and outstuck, the thumb laid close against the first joints. Her words were thick and moist. “Get out of here! Get out of the whole place! Get out in the rain!” Alice descended on Norma and Norma backed away and a terrified scream came from her mouth.

  There were quick steps in the doorway and Juan said sharply, “Alice!”

  She stopped. Her mouth sagged open and her eyes grew afraid. Juan came slowly into the room. His thumbs were hooked in his overalls pockets. He moved toward her as lightly as a creeping cat. The gold ring on his amputated finger glimmered in the leaden light from the window. Alice’s rage poured over into terror. She cringed away from him, passed the end of the bed and into the blind alley until she came up against the wall, and there she was stopped.

  “Don’t hit me,” she whispered. “Oh, please don’t hit me.”

  Juan came close to her and his right hand moved slowly to her arm just above the elbow. He was looking at her, not through her or around her. He swung her gently about and led her across the room and through the door and he closed the door on Norma and Ernest.

  They stared at the closed door and hardly breathed. Juan led Alice to the double bed and turned her gently and she sagged down like a cripple and fell back, staring wildly up at him. He picked a pillow from the top of the bed and put it under her head. His left hand, the one with the stump finger and the wedding ring, stroked her cheek gently. “You’ll
be all right now,” he said.

  She crossed her arms over her face and her sobs were strangled and harsh and dry.

  CHAPTER 5

  Bernice Pritchard and her daughter Mildred and Mr. Pritchard sat at the small table to the right of the entrance door of the lunchroom. The little group had drawn closer together. The two older people because they felt that in some way they were under attack, and Mildred in a kind of protective sense toward them. She often wondered how her parents had survived in a naughty and ferocious world. She considered them naïve and unprotected little children, and to a certain extent she was right about her mother. But Mildred overlooked the indestructibility of the child and the stability, its pure perseverance to get its own way. And there was a kind of indestructibility about Bernice. She was rather pretty. Her nose was straight and she had for so long worn pince-nez that the surfaces between her eyes were shaped by the pressure. The high, gristly part of her nose was not only very thin from the glasses, but two red spots showed where the springs regularly pressed. Her eyes were violet colored and myopic, which gave her a sweet, inward look.

  She was feminine and dainty and she dressed always with a hint of a passed period. She wore jabots1 occasionally and antique pins. Her shirtwaists had always some lace and some handwork, and the collars and cuffs were invariably immaculate. She used lavender toilet water so that her skin and her clothing and her purse smelled always of lavender, and of another, almost imperceptible, acid odor which was her own. She had pretty ankles and feet, on which she wore very expensive shoes, usually of kid and laced, with a little bow over the instep. Her mouth was rather wilted and childlike, soft, and without a great deal of character. She talked very little but had in her own group gained a reputation for goodness and for sagacity; the first by saying only nice things about people, even people she did not know, and the second by never expressing a general idea of any kind beyond perfumes or food. She met the ideas of other people with a quiet smile, almost as though she forgave them for having ideas. The truth was that she didn’t listen.