A Hell of a Woman

by Jim Thompson

  “Well,” she drawled, “if it isn’t the king! And just as polite as ever, too.”

  “Okay,” I said. “You can hop back into your nightgown. I’ve seen you before, and I still say there’s better ones on sidewalks.”

  “Oh-yeah?” Her eyes flashed. “You rotten bastard! When I think of all the good guys I passed up to marry you, I—”

  “Passed them up?” I said. “You mean lined ’em up, don’t you?”

  “You’re a goddamned liar! I n-never—” She dropped the lipstick into the sink, and whirled around facing me. “Dolly,” she said. “Oh, Dolly, hon! What’s the matter with us?”

  “Us? What do you mean, us?” I said. “I’m out knocking myself out every day. I work my can off, and what the hell do I get for it? Not a goddamn thing, that’s what. Not even a decent meal or a clean bed, or even a place where I can sit down without a lot of cockroaches swarming all over me.”

  “I—” She bit her lip. “I know, Dolly. But they just keep coming back, those insects, no matter what I do. And I can just work from morning until night and this place always looks the same. And, well, I guess I just get tired, Dolly. There doesn’t seem to be any sense to it. There’s nothing here to work with. The sink keeps stopping up, and there’s big cracks in the floor and—”

  “So what about the other places we’ve lived? I guess you kept them all clean and pretty?”

  “We’ve never lived in a really nice place, Dolly. Any place where I had a chance. It’s always been some dump like this one.”

  “You mean they got to be dumps,” I said. “After you lazed and loafed around and let everything go to hell. You just don’t give a damn, that’s all. Why, dammit, you should have seen what my mother had to work with—how nice she kept the place we lived in. Seven kids in an east side coldwater tenement, and everything was as shiny and spotless—”

  “All right!” she yelled. “But I’m not your mother! I’m not some other woman! I’m me, get me? Me, me!”

  “And you’re bragging about it?” I said.

  Her mouth opened and closed. She gave me a long slow look, and turned back to the mirror.

  “Okay,” I said. “Okay. You’re a princess charming, and I’m a heel. I know you don’t have it easy. I know it would be a lot better if I made more money, and I wish to God I could. But I can’t and I can’t help it. So why not make the best of things as they are?”

  “I’m through talking,” she said. “I might have known it was no use.”

  “Goddammit,” I said, “I’m apologizing. I’ve been out in the rain all day while you were lying in the sack, and I come home to a goddamned pig pen and I’m sick and tired and worried, and—”

  “Sing ’em,” she said. “Sing ’em, king.”

  “I said I was sorry!” I said. “I apologize. Now, what about chasing your pets out of the grub and fixing me some supper?”

  “Fix your own damned supper. You wouldn’t like anything I fixed.”

  She laid down the lipstick and picked up an eyebrow pencil. A crazy, blinding pain speared through my forehead.

  “Joyce,” I said. “I said I was sorry, Joyce. I’m asking you to please fix me some supper, Joyce. Please, understand? Please!”

  “Keep on asking,” she said. “It’s a pleasure to refuse.”

  She went on making with the eyebrow pencil. You’d have thought I wasn’t there.

  “Baby,” I said, “I’m telling you. I’m kidding you not. You better drag tail into that kitchen while it’s still fastened onto you. You screw around with me a little more and you’ll have to carry it in a satchel.”

  “Now, aren’t you sweet?” she said.

  “I’m warning you, Joyce. I’m giving you one last chance.”

  “All hail the king.” She made a noise with her lips. “Here’s a kiss for you, king.”

  “And here’s one for you,” I said.

  I brought it up from the belt, the sweetest left hook you ever saw in your life. She spun around on her heels and flopped backwards, right into the tub full of dirty bath water. And, Jesus, did it make a mess out of her.

  I leaned against the door, laughing. She scrambled out of the tub, dripping with that dirty soapy scum, and reached for a towel. I hadn’t really hurt her, you know. Why hell, if I’d wanted to give her a full hook I’d taken her head off.

  She began drying herself, not saying anything at first, and I kind of stopped laughing. Then, she said something that was funny as hell, and yet it was kind of sad. She said it sort of thoughtful and soft-voiced, as though it was the most important thing in the world.

  “That was my last good pair of stockings, Dolly. You ruined my only pair of stockings.”

  “Aah, hell,” I said. “I’ll give you another pair. I’ve got some in my sample case.”

  “I can’t wear those. They never fit around the heel. I guess I’ll just have to go barelegged.”

  “Go?” I said.

  “I’m leaving. Now. Tonight. I don’t want anything from you. I can pawn my watch and my ring—get enough to get by on until I land a job. All I want is to get away from here.”

  I told her all right, if she wanted to be stupid: those number fives of hers weren’t nailed to the floor. “But I think you ought to mull it over a little first. You ought to stick around, anyway, until you run across a job. You know there’s no nightclubs in a burg like this.”

  “I’ll find something. There’s no law that says I have to stay in this town.”

  “Why the hell didn’t you get a job before this?” I said. “If you’d ever contributed anything, tried to help out a little—”

  “Why should I? Why should I want to? I should get out and work for a guy that couldn’t even say a nice word in church?” Her voice rose and went down again. “All right, Dolly, I said it all a while ago. I’m me, not someone else. Maybe I should have done a lot of things and maybe you should have, but we didn’t and we wouldn’t if we had it to do over again. Now, if you’ll excuse me…let me get cleaned up a little…”

  “Why so damned modest all of a sudden?” I said. “We’re still married.”

  “We won’t be any longer that I can help it. Will you please leave, now, Dolly?”

  I shrugged and started out the door. “Okay,” I said. “I’m going downtown and get some chow. Good luck and my best regards to the boys on the vice squad.”

  “D-Dolly…is that all you can say at a time like this?”

  “What do you want me to say? Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater?”

  “D-don’t you…Would you like to kiss me good-bye?”

  I jerked my head at the mirror. “That?” I said. “Three guesses, toots, and the secret word is still no.”

  I went on out, turning my back like a damned fool; and the next thing I knew a scrubbing brush socked me in the skull. It hurt like hell, and the dirty names she was yelling at me didn’t exactly help it. But I didn’t sock her any more, or even curse back at her. I’d said enough, I guessed. I’d done enough.

  I loaded my sample case into the car, and took off for town.

  I killed a couple hours, eating and doctoring my account cards, and went back home.

  She was gone but her memory lingered on, if you know what I mean. She’d left me something to remember her by. The bedroom windows were pushed up to the top, and the bed was soaked with rain. My clothes—well, I just didn’t have any clothes.

  She’d poured ink all over my shirts. She’d taken a pair of scissors and cut big holes in my suit, the only other suit I had. My neckties and handkerchiefs were snipped to pieces. All my socks and underwear were stuffed into the toilet.

  A real swell kid, didn’t I tell you? A regular little doll. I’d have to do something nice for her if I ever ran into her again.

  I went to work, straightening things out the best I could, and it must have been two in the morning before I got through and stretched out on the lounge. Worn out, burned up, wondering. I just couldn’t get it, you know. Why, if she didn’t like a guy an
d didn’t want to get along with him, had she gone to so damned much trouble to get him?

  I’d met her in Houston about three years ago. I was crew manager on a magazine deal, and she was pushing cigarettes in this dive; and I used to drop in for a ball every night or so. Well, she started playing for me right from the beginning. The way she hung over my table you’d have thought she was the cloth. I couldn’t lift a drink without seeing her through the bottom of the glass. So—so one thing led to another, and I began taking her home from work. What’s a guy going to do, anyway, when a chick keeps throwing herself at him? I left her at her door a few nights, and then she let me come inside. And she had one of the nicest little efficiency apartments you ever saw. I guess they had maid service in this joint, and with just herself to look after she got by pretty good. Not that I made any inspection of the place. I had my mind on something else. So I said, howsa about it, honey, and—boing! She hauled off and slapped me in the kisser. I jumped up and started to leave. She started crying. She said I wouldn’t think she was a nice girl if she did; I wouldn’t want to marry her and I’d throw it up to her afterwards. And I said, Aw, now, honey. What kind of a guy do you—

  No, now wait a minute! I think I’m getting this thing all fouled up. I believe it was Doris who acted that way, the gal I was married to before Joyce. Yeah, it must have been Doris—or was it Ellen? Well, it doesn’t make much difference; they were all alike. They all turned out the same way. So, as I was saying: I said, What kind of a guy do you think I am? And she said…they said…I think you’re nice. I—

  …I went to sleep.

  5

  Pay-E-Zee had seventy-five stores across the country. I’ll tell you about this one, the one I worked for, and you’ll know about them all.

  It was on a side street, a twelve-foot-front place between a shine parlor and a fruit stand. It had two small show windows, with about a hundred items in each one. Men’s suits, women’s dresses, work clothes, bathrobes, wristwatches, dresser sets, novelties—more stuff than I can name. Why it was there, I don’t know, because it wasn’t once in a month of Saturdays that we got a customer off the street. Practically all the selling was done on the outside by me and five other guys.

  We did a volume of about fifteen grand a month, with collections running about seventy-five per cent. And, yeah, that’s low all right, but our mark-up wasn’t. With a mark-up of three hundred per cent you can take a big loss on collections. You’ll still do better on a fifteen-g volume than most stores do on fifty.

  I was a little late getting in that morning, and the other collector-salesmen were already gone. A heavy-set guy—a “just looking” customer—was thumbing through the rack of men’s jackets. Staples was in the office at the rear, a space separated from the rest of the store by a wall-to-wall counter.

  Pay-E-Zee didn’t have the usual office employees. Just the credit men-managers like Staples. I laid out my collection cards and cash on the counter and he checked one against the other.

  He was a little guy of about fifty, gray-haired, paunchy, sort of baby-mouthed. Back in the days when he was ringing doorbells, they’d called him The Weeper. He’d get on some poor bastard’s doorstep or maybe call on him on the job, and then he’d howl and cry and carry on until they could hear him in the next county. He wasn’t up to the rough stuff, so he’d pull that. And they’d have to come across to get rid of him.

  He talked kind of sissified, not with a lisp, exactly, although you kept expecting one. He finished the check, and smiled at me pleasantly. He removed his glasses, polished them slowly and put them back on again.

  “Frank,” he said. “I’m disappointed in you. Very, very disappointed.”

  “Yeah?” I said. “What’s the beef now?”

  “Such clumsiness, Frank. Such preposterous ineptness. We did things much better in my day. Why in the world didn’t you steal from the profit and loss file—the inactive p. and l.’s? If you were at all clever, you might have got away with it for years.”

  He shook his head sadly, looking like he was about to cry.

  I forced a laugh. “Steal? What the hell you handing me, Staples?”

  “Oh, Frank, please!” He held up a hand. “You’re making this very painful. Pete Hendrickson’s employer called me yesterday; his ex-employer, I should say. It seems that he wasn’t very favorably impressed with our way of doing business, and he felt constrained to tell me so.”

  “So what?” I said.

  “Frank…”

  “All right,” I said. “I borrowed thirty-eight bucks. I’ll have it back for you by the end of the week.”

  “I see. And what about the rest of it?”

  “What rest?” I said. “Who you trying to crap, anyway?”

  But I knew it was no use. He sighed and shook his head, looking at me sorrowfully.

  “I’ve only had time to spot check your accounts, Frank, but I’ve already found a dozen—uh—defalcations. Why not get it off your chest, my boy? Give me the total amount of the shortage. I’ll find out, anyway.”

  “I couldn’t help it,” I said. “It was the rain. It’s cleared up now, and if you’ll just give me a few weeks—”

  “How much, Frank?”

  “I’ve got it all written down.” I took out my notebook and showed him. “You can see for yourself I was going to pay it back. Hell, if I didn’t intend to pay it back I wouldn’t have written it down, would I?”

  “We-el, yes.” He pursed his lips. “Yes, I think you would have. I know I would have. It looks much better in such unpleasant eventualities as the present one.”

  “Now, wait a minute,” I said. “I—”

  “Three hundred and forty-five dollars, eh? Why don’t you just dig it up, like a good boy, and we’ll consider the matter closed.”

  “I’ll write you a check,” I said. “For God’s sake, Staples, if I had any money or if I’d been able to beg or borrow any, I wouldn’t have taken this.”

  “Mmm. I suppose so. What about your car?”

  “Who’s got a car? Talk to the finance company.”

  “Furniture?”

  “Nothing. I rent furnished. I’m telling you, Staples, I don’t have it and there’s no way I can get it. All I can do is—”

  “I see,” he said. “Well, that’s certainly too bad, isn’t it? Very depressing. The company isn’t at all vindictive in these matters, but…I suppose you’re familiar with the law of this state? Anything over fifty dollars is grand larceny.”

  “Look,” I said. “What’s that going to make you? What the hell good is it going to do to have me slapped in jail? God, if you’ll just—”

  “Well, it might do quite a bit of good,” he said. “A man faced with a long prison sentence often thinks of resources he’s previously overlooked. That’s been our experience.”

  “But I can’t! I won’t!” I said. “There’s no one that will help me. I haven’t seen any of my relatives in years and they’re all poor as hell anyway. I don’t have any close friends or—”

  “What about your wife?”

  “I’m telling you,” I said. “There’s just one way I can get that dough. Give me six weeks. Give me a month. Three weeks. I’ll work seven days a week, sixteen hours a day until—You’ve got to, Staples! Just a few weeks, a—”

  “Oh, I couldn’t do that, Frank!” He shook his head firmly. “I’d love to, but I honestly couldn’t…Officer!”

  “For God’s sake—Officer?”

  It was the guy I’d thought was a “just looking” customer. He sauntered up behind me, a toothpick bobbling in the corner of his mouth, and gripped me by the elbow.

  “Okay, Buster,” he said. “Let’s go bye bye.”

  Staples beamed at him. He smiled at me. “I can’t bear to say good-bye, Frank. Shall we just make it au revoir?”

  6

  It may sound funny, but it was the first time in my life I’d been in jail. That’s the God’s truth, and I’m kidding you not. I’d crisscrossed the country, been in eve
ry state in the union at one time or another; and some of the deals I’d worked were as raw as a tack-factory whore. But I’d never made the can. Guys all around me did. Guys working right across the street from me. But never me. I guess I just don’t look like a guy who’d get out of line. I may talk and act that way, but I don’t look it. And I don’t, if you know what I mean, really feel it.

  It was about ten o’clock in the morning by the time they got me booked and locked up. I looked around the tank, the bullpen, and I’m not snobbish or anything, you understand, but I went over in a corner and sat down by myself. I just couldn’t take it, somehow. I couldn’t believe that I was part of this, that I was in the same boat with these other guys and a lot worse off maybe. Me, old Dolly Dillon, in the jug on a grand larceny rap? It was crazy. I felt like I was dreaming.

  I knew better, but all that day I kept thinking that Staples would soften up. He’d realize that I couldn’t raise anything in here, and he’d withdraw the charge and let me work the debt off. I kept thinking that, hoping it, and I figured out just the proposition I’d make him. My rent was paid for the month, and I was paid up with the finance company. So I’d say, Okay, Staples, here’s what I’ll do with you. You buy me a few meal tickets and pay for my gas and oil, and everything over that…

  I remembered that the store owed me money. Two—two-and-a-half day’s wages if they’d allow a half for this morning. So, hell, there was twenty-five dollars right there. All I actually owed was, well, call it three hundred in round numbers. That wasn’t any money, for God’s sake! I could make it up in no time, now that Joyce had pulled out.

  I knew Staples would get me out. I mean, I knew it.

  And I guess you know he didn’t.

  The next day came and passed. And I began to think about other angles, other ways I’d get out. They were all as hopeless as the Staples deal, but I dreamed up one after another. Maybe some crew would hit town, and they’d know what I could do, and they’d all take up a collection—they’d find out where I was some way—and…Or maybe I had a big bonus coming from one of the companies I’d worked for and the check was just now catching up with me. Or maybe one of my kinfolks back east had passed on and I was down for the insurance. Or maybe Doris would pop up with a roll. Or Ellen. Or—or someone. Someone had to, dammit! Something had to happen.