Girls' Dormitory (9 page)

There was nothing to say and Peggy said nothing.

"You'll like the dorm," Mrs. Reid repeated. "When I went to college I was in a dorm and I found it was fun. You live very close together and you get to know each other better."

"Well—"

"As I say, I didn't want to make you move but it couldn't be helped. It wouldn't be fair to the other girls."

Mrs. Reid talked on and on but Peggy didn't listen to her. This was terrible, just terrible. She was being torn away from Helen and their precious moments together would be ended. Unless—

She smiled.

"Thank you for telling me," Peggy said.

She had money, plenty of money, and they could always go to a hotel. No one could stop them. Nothing could stop them. They would not be cheated, now or ever.

"That's a nice dress you have on," Mrs. Reid was saying.

"Do you like it?"

"Very much. Only it is a little low in front, don't you think?"

"Maybe."

"You have such nice breasts I can't blame you for not wanting to hide them. But if you wear that to school I'm afraid they'll tell you about it."

"I never wear it to -school."

"Just around here?"

"Just around here."

"That's all right, then. Here we are just one big happy family."

Peggy wondered how Mrs. Reid could be so blind about the things that Jerry Dixon did. He spent more time in some of the rooms upstairs than he spent in his own room in the cellar.

"I just thought I'd tell you," Mrs. Reid said.

"All right."

"I hope you're not angry."

"No, I'm not angry."

Peggy noticed that Mrs. Reid was inspecting the top of her dress very closely.

"I'm glad you're not. I didn't want you to be."

"Well, I'm not."

"It'll be cheaper in the attic, too. Some of the other girls on the floors may want to move up there and save money. They'll have first chance."

"When will it be ready?"

"As soon as I can get Jerry off of his lazy rear and get him working at it."

"That may take some doing."

Thelma Reid laughed.

"I sneak up on him slowly," Mrs. Reid explained. "I use the power of suggestion. I give him a choice of doing the impossible or doing what I want him to do and he always picks what I want him to do. You have to be clever with men."

"I guess you do."

"And careful. They're like dynamite with a short fuse."

"And lit," Peggy said.

Mrs. Reid moved out into the hall.

"I guess Helen will be looking for me."

"I guess she will."

"Don't be too upset about the dorm. You'll enjoy it there."

"I hope so."

Mrs. Reid started down the hall and Peggy closed the door. She turned, leaned up against the door and tears filled her eyes. Everything was going wrong. Everything. And things had been so good, so good.

Sobbing, she fled to the bed.

The attic was a mess. At one time, years before, somebody had done it over with unpainted plasterboard, but then it had become a nest for all of the junk in the neighborhood. There were trunks, some empty, some full, broken window shades, reed blinds for the porch, fishing poles that were so old they broke at the slightest touch, old coats and shoes and umbrellas that flew apart when they were opened.

"Holy hell," Jerry said in disgust.

It was an awful job, a miserable job. He was almost sorry that he hadn't waterproofed the walls in the cellar instead of playing around in the attic. Thelma had said he could do one or the other and he had made his choice. He sighed and kicked an old wash rack out of the way. The choice had been a poor one but now he was stuck with it.

Besides, this wasn't as hard as waterproofing the cellar walls would have been. The man at the hardware store said you really had to work when you did a job like that.

"Wear your arm out," the man had said.

Jerry wasn't afraid of wearing his arm out but for forty bucks a week Mrs. Reid was entitled to just so much. He smiled as he remembered how she looked at breakfast that morning, so soft and nice and young. In fact, the more he saw of her the better she looked. And when she came up to the attic in the afternoons to help out, she almost drove him crazy. She bent over the trunks to look through them, and she was all woman, every swollen inch of her. A couple of times, with the bottle close, he had thought of asking her if she wanted a drink but he had put it off, saving the liquor for somebody who was better. Marie Thatcher was better. Marie would do anything for a drink or for a man.

"You big hunk of man, you," Marie would tell him. "You drive me out of my mind."

"You were crazy before I started."

"Well, it's natural, isn't it?"

"As natural as sleep."

"You're better than the boys from school."

"Am I?"

"You're older. You're more experienced. You don't fumble and I hate a man who fumbles."

"Who fumbles?"

"You'd be surprised. The ones you think are men lots of times turn out to be boys, little boys who really think that it's dirty."

"Isn't it?"

"Not in the least, not if you like somebody. You don't have to be in love or anything like that. It doesn't have to be serious."

Jerry was glad to know that it didn't have to be serious. He didn't want to get serious with anybody. Not that he could get serious about Marie. Nobody could. She was ugly-looking and walked with a funny gait, but she did give freely and wildly of her body. Now, if she was only that blonde, that Peggy, things would be entirely different. That Peggy could send a guy, she really could. Now that she was beginning to smile at him when they met he found himself seeking her out, almost acting like a little boy who was grateful for any favors that came his way.

"Damn," he said. "Women."

A man couldn't live with them and he couldn't live without them. They said it was a man's world but the women held the whip, that was for sure. Any guy, himself included, would go through hell for something like that girl. She had ten grand, but even if she had been a picket fence with half her spokes knocked out, he would still have been interested.

"Good morning," she would say.

"Hi."

"Nice morning."

"Fine."

"It must keep you busy with the heat and the snow and the attic and everything."

"It does."

Friendly, that's what she was. Friendly and just begging him to pick up the cue. And what did he do? He started to ask her for a date, lost his nerve—these were the only times in his life that he had lost his nerve—and later sought comfort in the contents of a bottle. She could be had. She was asking for it. Only he was stupid, real stupid and he didn't know up from down.

He kicked a box out of the way, a box with some old magazines in it. The sides split open and the magazines slid out all over the floor. He looked down and whistled. Thelma Reid's husband must have been quite a man. Beneath the household and homemaking magazines there was a bunch of girlie books. He picked one up and leafed through it. Hot, real hot. Shapes in there like that blonde on the third floor, shapes that would strain your eyes after one brief look.

He threw the magazine aside and went to get the bottle hidden in another trunk. Well, maybe Reid had to get his kicks that way. A lot of guys did. That's why they could sell those magazines like crazy.

He found the bottle, uncorked it and lifted it to his mouth. The liquor stung his throat but it tasted good going down and warmed his stomach.

He closed the trunk and sat down on the lid, thinking. He had to do something, and he had to do it fast. Forty bucks a week. Seventy bucks a week. Peanuts.

He had another drink.

What was the matter with that Helen Lee any more? You'd have thought she had reformed or something. She hated that place on Kennedy Street and weekends he had a real rough time getting her to go down there.

"I don't want to," she'd said. "I'd rather starve."

"Don't worry. You either do or you'll starve."

"Maybe."

"No maybes about it. You will."

"Let me worry about that."

He had sneered at her. "Don't tell me that you're going to get a job in the five and ten and make as much all day Saturday as you can make in fifteen minutes —if you keep your mind on your work."

"Shut up!"

"Not me. I don't shut up. You shut up. We started this together and we're finishing it together."

"But that Frank—"

"What about him?"

"I didn't tell you. He's taking twenty-five percent of everything I make."

"Who says?"

"He says. Either that or he goes to the college and tells them what I am. I—Jerry, I'm afraid."

"The bastard!"

"He meant it. He honestly did. And what do I have left after I give him that much and then your part?"

"I earn mine."

"I know you do."

"What I do to Frank I won't charge you for. What I do to Frank is on the house."

"Jerry—"

"I'll fix him. I’ll fix that louse. I'll make him wish that he had left you alone."

"Jerry, I wish you wouldn't!"

"Rest easy. I will."

And he would.

Still sitting on the trunk he had another drink. That night he would go down to Kennedy Street and take care of Frank. He would take care of Frank good. He lifted the bottle to his lips again. He would make that little slob squeal like a torn cat under his foot. He would catch one of Frank's arms, twist it, and then he would push him down the stairs. Maybe Frank would get hurt and maybe he wouldn't. Jerry didn't care. The last couple of weeks he had lost a lot of money and he didn't intend to go on losing it. He would find another room someplace else and set Helen up in that. She had to go back to work. Her excuses were as lame as a duck with a busted foot.

"I don't want to any more, Jerry."

That was a lot of bull.

"What about me?" he had asked.

"Or with you. I don't want to do that either."

"You will if I say."

"If you say. But you'll be sorry."

He had said and he had been sorry. She had come down to his room in the cellar and it had been a waste of time. She had been as lifeless as a corpse on the way to the grave.

"For five bucks I'd want change," he had said.

She had laughed at him.

"Now I know what you are," he had said.

"What am I?"

"The other kind, baby. You're the other kind."

"What makes you so sure?"

"There's one way to tell."

"How do you tell?"

"The way I just tried."

She had laughed at him a second time.

"Maybe I hate you," she had said.

That was a possibility.

He finished the bottle, wished there was more, threw it in a pile of junk and got up from the trunk. He had to get to work. Mrs. Reid would be coming up pretty soon and she would yell at him if he didn't have something done.

She started complaining as soon as she got to the top of the stairs.

"You never do anything unless I'm right here to watch you," she said.

Jerry shrugged and indicated the magazines on the floor.

"I started in where your husband left off," he said. "Looking at the pretty pictures."

Silently, she examined a couple of the magazines.

"I never knew they were here," she said. "Can you imagine that?"

Jerry surveyed the junk in the attic and shrugged again.

"You could hide a car up here," he said. "And that's just a little old box."

She threw the magazines aside.

"You do a pretty good job of hiding up here," she said. She walked over to the trash pile and kicked at the empty bottle. "Yours?"

"It was, but you can have it."

"Fresh."

He looked at her. She wasn't mad. In fact, she was smiling a little.

"You're welcome," he said.

She was wearing shorts and a halter, the shorts red and the halter yellow, and he hadn't seen her wandering around in the house in that outfit before. Oh, in the summer he had, when it had been hot, but now it was winter and most of the time she wore dresses or a suit or something warm.

"You'll freeze to death," he said.

"It's not cold up here."

It wasn't. The roof and the sidewalls had been insulated at the time the plasterboard had been put on and the heat that came up the open stairway from the third story was sufficient. Maybe it wasn't as comfortable as some of the rooms but it wasn't cold and girls would be able to live there, all right.

"I'm having a truck come in the morning," she said, "to take the stuff away. Just carry all of this junk down to the back yard, pile it by the garage and leave it there. Tomorrow you can start painting."

He had been afraid of that.

"It's got to be painted?"

"Of course, it's got to be painted. You can't just put people in a place with bare walls. I wouldn't like it and neither would you."

"You should see my room in the cellar."

"Never mind. This is something else."

It was hard work, dirty work, carrying the rubbish downstairs and outside. Half of the things, like the reed blinds, fell apart When he picked them up.

"You ought to set fire to the place," Jerry told her. "Before I go through all of the motions."

"Don't joke about fires," she said. "Roger and I got burned out of one place when we were first married, and it was terrible."

"Nothing left?"

"Nothing."

"Don't let it bother you," he said. "What you've got here is no bargain."

She saved a couple of old clocks, glasses and pitchers that she said could be sold at auction and a sewing machine that wouldn't run.

"Treasures," Jerry observed sarcastically.

"A few dollars here and a few dollars there makes the world go round, Jerry."

"I didn't think you had noticed."

"I noticed."

"Not with my pay, you haven't."

She was seated on top of a trunk, cross-legged, and those legs weren't bad. They were smooth and brown and shapely.

"You get what you earn," she said.

"And I earn what I get."

"You might get more."

He looked at her.