Eve (25 page)

“How do you know I know her?”

“You just said so.”

“Did I?”

“Look, let’s not go on like this. Let’s go somewhere for a drink.”

“All right. Where?”

“I’ve got a car. Let’s get off this lousy boat.”

“I’m not free.”

“But you said your gentleman friend had left you.”

She giggled. “I mean you’d have to pay me.”

I grinned at her. “Course I’ll pay you.” I pulled out my roll of money and counted it. I had fifteen hundred dollars. Well, I had won five hundred dollars so it wasn’t so bad. I gave her two twenties.

“Oh, I want more than that.”

“You shut up. That’s just a retainer. I’ll pay you more later on.”

She put her arms around me, but I shoved her off.

“Come on,” I said impatiently. “Let’s go.”

When we got back to the pier, we walked to the parking lot.

“Some car,” she said with open admiration when she saw the Chrysler.

I slid under the steering wheel and let her find her own way in. We sat side by side and looked at the moon. It was a nice moon and I was drunk, so right at that moment I felt pretty good.

“Is your wife having you watched?” the red head asked suddenly.

I turned my head to stare at her. “What the hell are you talking about? Who said I had a wife anyway?”

She giggled. “A dick’s been tailing you all evening,” she said. “Haven’t you spotted him? I thought maybe your wife was wanting a divorce.”

“What guy?” I asked sharply.

“He’s over there waiting for us to go.”

“How do you know he’s been watching me?”

“He’s never let you out of his sight since you were on the boat and now he’s waiting for you to go so he can follow you in that heap,” she said. “I can smell a dick a mile off.”

I remembered what Gold had said at our last meeting. “I shall certainly think of you both. In fact, I’m not going to forget either of you. If Carol is unhappy because of you, you will be sorry. I promise you that, Mr. Thurston.” So the heel was having me tailed.

“Ill fix him,” I said, cold with fury. “Just you stick around and watch me.”

“Atta boy!” the red head said, clapping her hands. “Give the little louse a sock from me.”

I crossed the parking lot and went over to him. As soon as he saw me, he straightened and took his hands out of his pockets.

I stood before him and peered down at him. It was dark, but not all that dark. He was a fat faced mild little man with rimless spectacles on his small fat nose.

“Good evening,” I said.

“Good evening, sir,” he returned, edging away.

“Has Mr. Gold hired you to watch me?”

He started to bluster, but I cut him short.

“Save it,” I said. “Mr. Gold told me about you.”

He looked sulky. “Well, if Mr. Gold told you, why ask me?”

I smiled at him. “I don’t like being watched,” I said. “You better take your glasses off.”

He began to get alarmed and looked wildly round the parking lot. But it was still early and there was no one but ourselves in sight. I reached forward and flicked off his spectacles, then I trod on them. They crunched on the concrete.

“I can’t see without my glasses,” he almost wailed.

“That’s too bad,” I said, taking him by his collar. I slammed my fist in his face. I was getting good at hitting people in the mouth. Like Imgram, this little stool pigeon had trouble with his bridgework. It got caught up in the roof of his mouth and he tried to hook out the broken pieces of bridgework. but I would not let him. I took his small hands in one of mine and I rammed him against the wall. His hat fell off and I shifted my hands to his ears and banged his head hard against the wall, using his ears as handles.

His knees sagged, but I held him up.

“Maybe you won’t be so anxious next time to watch me,” I said, shaking him. “If I see you again, I’ll smear you on a wall.”

I gave him a quick shove and he lost his balance and sprawled on the oily concrete. He picked himself up and began to run blindly down the street.

I lurched back for the Chrysler.

The red head was hanging out of the window.

“That was terrific,” she said, as I slid under the steering wheel. “You’re a great, big, beautiful savage.”

“You talk too much,” I returned and drove out of the parking lot and headed towards Hollywood.

Although I was pretty high, I wasn’t reckless enough to take any chance of being seen with this tramp. You didn’t have to look at her twice to know what she was, but she knew Eve and I was hoping she would tell me what I had always been wanting to know about her.

We stopped at several bars on our way to Hollywood and I tried to get her to talk, but she hedged. I was careful not to press her because I didn’t want her to know how anxious I was to talk about Eve. The red head preferred to talk about herself and that was a subject in which I had not the slightest interest. I let her chatter away, scarcely listening to what she had to say, but I kept buying her drinks hoping that if she drank enough liquor she might be persuaded to talk about Eve.

Every bar we went into was crowded and I kept losing her and then finding her and that did not help in getting her to tell me what I wanted to know.

“I’m sick of this,” I said, leaning against the bar and holding her arm just above her elbow. “We’ve got to go some place quiet. All this noise and talking confuses me.”

“Well, if we go some place quiet it’s going to cost you money,” she returned, resting her small turned-up nose on the rim of her glass. “It’s going to cost you a stack of dough.”

“Don’t let’s keep talking about money,” I said. “To hear you talk you’d think that’s all there is in the world to talk about.”

She leaned heavily against me. “S’matter of fact,” she said, “that’s all I am interested in, only I wouldn’t let everyone know. It’s not lady-like, is it?”

I regarded her. She was getting tight all right. If she had a few more drinks she wouldn’t know what she was talking about. I bought two more double whiskies and while we were drinking them I had a bright idea. I’d take her out to Three Point. It was a bright idea because it killed two birds with one stone. I would get her to talk about Eve and she would keep me company. I was not going to stay at Three Point all night by myself. Why should I? Why should Carol and Russell suddenly leave me flat without caring whether I’d be lonely or not? I decided it was the brightest idea I had thought up for a long time and I got quite excited about it. I would take this big, soft-bodied red head on the terrace and we’d watch the moon lighting the hills and Bear Lake and we’d talk all night about Eve. That seemed to me to be a pretty good way of passing the time until Carol returned.

I explained my idea to the red head.

She leaned more heavily against me. “Suits me,” she said, “but it’ll cost you a stack of dough and I’d like some of it now.”

I gave her two twenty dollar bills to keep her quiet and steered her through the crowd into the moonlit street.

“You’ll have to do better than this,” she said as she almost fell into the Chrysler. “You can’t make a girl tight and drag her off some place to look at the moon without it costing you a stack of dough.”

I told her not to worry and she said that she never worried, but it would be a good idea if I began to worry because although she was alone in the world and tried to act like a lady she had a lot of expenses and she just had to have a lot of money. After she had said all that she went to sleep and she did not wake up until I stopped the Chiysler on the sloping ramp of the garage at Three Point.

She yawned and followed me along the short path that led to the cabin.

She clung on to my arm and stumbled as she walked but after a moment or so, the mountain air steadied her up and she began to look around.

“Gee,” she exclaimed. “Isn’t this elegant.”

“Well, here we are,” I said. “Come out on the terrace and look at the moon.”

But she was wandering around the lounge staring at everything, a little incredulous and a little bewildered.

“This must have cost a stack of dough,” she muttered to herself. “I’ve never seen anything to beat this. It’s terrific.”

She was overwhelmed and so envious that I decided to give her a little time to get used to the room before we settled down to talk. So I let her wander around while I fixed drinks in a large cocktail shaker.

Even after I had fixed the drinks, she was still pawing my books, my pictures, my furniture and my ornaments.

“What are you staring at?” she demanded, turning suddenly.

“You,” I said.

She came over and flopped down on the settee by my side. She put her soft arms round my neck and tried to bite my ear. I pushed her off.

She blinked at me. “What’s the matter?”

“Come out on the terrace,” I said, suddenly disgusted with her. I wanted her to tell me about Eve and then to go.

“I’m all right here,” she said, lying back, her red hair making a startling splash of colour against the white suede cushion.

“Have a drink.” I gave her half the contents of the cocktail shaker in a tumbler.

She spilt some of it on the carpet before she gulped it down. Then she hit herself on her chest with her clenched fist and let out a long gasping breath. “Whew!” she exclaimed, “that went right down to my feet.”

“That’s where it was meant to go,” I said and got up to refill the shaker.

“You know you’re the first guy who’s ever taken me to his home,” she said, stretching out full length on the settee. “I can’t understand it.”

“Don’t try to,” I said. “There are some things that pass all understanding.”

She giggled. “I bet your wife would be wild.”

“Shut up, you little slut,” I said.

“If I were your wife and I found out you brought women back to my room I’d be wild,” she said. “I think it’s a filthy trick to pull on a girl.”

“All right,” I said, coming back to her and shoving her legs away so I could sit down, “it’s a filthy trick, but I’m lonely. My wife left me alone. That’s a filthy trick too, isn’t it?”

She brooded for a moment. “You’re right. A wife should never leave her man alone, I’d never leave my man alone if I kept one long enough to call him my man,” and she giggled.

“I bet Eve Marlow never leaves her husband alone,” I said casually.

The red head giggled. “She gave him the bird years ago.”

“Oh no, she didn’t. She was with him tonight.”

“Who? Don’t talk wet. That’s not her husband.”

“Oh yes he is.”

“That’s all you know about it.”

“Now don’t let’s argue. I know Eve better than you do. I tell you that was her husband.”

“That shows you don’t know her better than I do,” the red head said. “I’ve know her for years. Her husband’s Charlie Gibbs. She left him flat seven years ago. The poor little bastard. The only thing he ever did wrong was never to have any money. She still sees him from time to time when she wants to practise cursing. Can’t she curse too.” The red head threw back her head and laughed until she had to mop her eyes which she did on her sleeve. “I’ve heard her curse poor little Charlie. It’s made my ears burn. Instead of smacking her one on her kisser, he just cringes.”

Now I was getting somewhere. “Tell me about her.”

“There’s nothing to tell. She’s a tart. You wouldn’t want to know about a tart would you?”

“Yes I would. I want to know all about her.”

“Well, I’m not going to tell you.”

“Oh yes you are, because I’ll give you a hundred dollars if you do and you’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

Her face lit up. “It’ll cost you more than that,” she said without much conviction.

“No, it won’t.” I took a hundred dollar bill from my pocket and flicked her nose with it. “Tell me.”

She grabbed at the note, but I was too quick for her.

“When you’ve told me and not before. I’ll keep it so you can see it and I promise you you’ll have it.”

She lay back and looked at the bill with such intensive greed that she sickened me. “What do you want to know?”

“Everything.”

She told me and all the time she was speaking her eyes never left the hundred dollar bill I was holding.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

THERE is no point in telling you Eve’s story as I learned it from the red headed girl as she lay on the settee, maudlin with drink and anxious to earn the money I dangled before her. At first, in order to please, she mixed fact with fiction and I had to ask her many questions and go over the same ground many times before I finally learned enough of the details which, added to what I knew already, enabled me to form what I believe to be an accurate account of Eve’s life.

It was only after the red head had fallen asleep — the hundred dollar bill tucked safely in the top of her stocking — and I had gone on to the terrace and had turned over in my mind what she had told me that the story finally took shape. It was like solving a difficult jig-saw puzzle and some of the pieces only appeared after I had thought back and remembered certain things that Eve had said, certain things she had hinted at and certain things that she had denied.

I had known, of course, that the key to Eve’s extraordinary behaviour to me was her strong inferiority complex. I had guessed all along that this was the psychological pivot upon which her behaviour turned, but up to now, I did not realize why she should suffer from such a strong inferiority complex. When I learned that she had been illegitimate and, as a child, had had that fact continually brought home to her, I began to understand things that had previously puzzled me.

The stigma of illegitimacy can be most harmful to a child’s psychological make-up if the parents show in any way that the child is unwanted. No more crushing blow can be given to a child’s sensibilities if it is allowed to think that its birth is different from that of other children. Its companions — little savages that children are — are quick to seize upon any hint of illegitimacy and the child can suffer much misery by their brutal persecution.

Her parents — she was her father’s daughter by another woman — had no patience with her. Her foster mother hated her since she was a living sign of her father’s infidelity, and when she was young, she whipped her, and locked her in her room in the dark for long hours when she became too big to flog.