Girls In 3-B, The (5 page)

After a while, heavy steps sounded and a stocky young man in a Marlon Brando undershirt came out of the inside door. "Why doncha come in when you ring
?
You ring, I push the button and unlock the door and you come in, see?"

"I'm sorry. The apartment
--
is it still for rent
?
"

"Sure, a nice apartment. The B apartment on the third floor. You wanna see it?" He shoved the door open. She followed him inside, wishing nervously that one of the other girls had come along. Suppose she took it, and then they didn't like it? Or worse, suppose she
didn't
take it; suppose the rent was too high or it was dirty, or something; how would she tell him? The old miserable uncertainty took hold of her.

She looked unhappily at the bare muscular shoulders of her guide, a common workman in his undershirt and old Army pants. Yes, but sort of good-looking too, the kind of fellow who appeals to women. Male and sensual, with big muscles. Thick curly hair. A good-natured face, with dark eyes and incredibly long and curly eyelashes. She asked, "Are you Italian
?
" and was afraid she had been rude.

"Sicilian, that's me." He threw out his chest. "Rocco d'Angelo. I live downstairs." She remembered seeing windows just above ground level
--
half-basement, English, basement, whatever they called it. So he would be the janitor or caretaker or superintendent. She smiled politely, trying to convey that a janitor is as good as anybody.

The apartment was all right; living-room with a davenport that opened out, all the standard furniture, rather shabby from a succession of tenants. She parted the heavy flowered curtains that looked clean but felt grimy, and looked out over a beaten backyard with garages and a child's swing. Two could sleep in the double bed, and the kitchenette range was new. Two and a half rooms. "How much?"

"Eighty."

She did quick arithmetic, standing between the bed and dresser. "Can I make a deposit on it
?
"

"Sure. Five, ten, how much you want to."

She consulted her little list, "Is there a place where we can do our washing?"

"In the basement. Come on, I show you."

The steps to the basement were cement and not so clean. Boxes of waste paper, tin cans and beer cartons stood on them. Rocco kicked a carton. "Goddam lazy bums, why they don't put their garbage all the way down
?
"

She realized that he was looking, not at the trash but at her legs. The expression on his face was the strained look she tried not to remember
--
not liking or admiration, but naked hunger: She felt suddenly cold. She walked ahead, but at the foot of the stairs, confronted with three closed doors, she had to stand back and wait. He brushed against her as he opened the first one. "In here. You put twenty cents here, see? and it does one load. Wash, rinse, everything. This here is the dryer."

"I see." She swallowed hard; her mouth had gone dry. It was quiet in the basement She could hear the purring of some electrical appliance, and a scrabbling behind the wall that threatened mice. Still, the house must be full of people this time of day. She nodded. "I'll talk it over with my friends and let you know."

"Nice clean house. You can use the phone in the upstairs hall. Close to the bus stop." Rocco gestured. "You want to have parties here, so you don't make too much noise it’s okay. Girls they like to have parties sometimes. Pretty girls have lots of company."

She said stupidly, "We don't know anybody yet."

"So what? I wouldn't mind to know some pretty girls myself. I ain't that old, I wouldn't like to look at a pretty girl. No, Rocco he's a good man with women."

Barby backed away a step. "Well, then, I’ll give you five dollars and you give me a receipt, is that right?"

"You come in and have a glass of wine, no hurry, just one little glass to get acquainted."

She hoped desperately that he had a wife. She could go into some garlic-smelling cluttered kitchen and meet a fat Italian mama and six or seven dark-eyed kids if she had to; it wasn't anything she much wanted to do, but she could do it and drink a glass of vino for politeness. She pulled her skirt seams straight, aware of his dark gaze fixed below her belt. He smiled deeply. At once she was aware of the first faint nausea, the throbbing at the temples.
Oh,
she thought,
not now, not here nor in the Y hotel, for God's sake, and a new job and everything, I can't stand it.

She walked mechanically through the door he held open. At once she knew she had made a dreadful mistake. This was no family kitchen redolent of tomato paste and echoing with voices. It was a bedroom, narrow and dark. A pile of detective magazines in one corner and a bottle of red wine on the dresser indicated how Rocco spent his time when he wasn't doing chores. The unmade bed fascinated her and filled her with shuddering revulsion; she couldn't stop looking at it.

He poured wine into two small cheese-spread glasses. "You like Chianti? It's good."

"It's very good." It was sour enough to set her teeth on edge, but the warmth of unaccustomed alcohol spread through her and made her arms and legs feel loose, her apprehension less. She looked at the empty glass in her hand with some bewilderment.

"More?"

"No thanks. It's very good, but I have to go now." She kept her eyes fixed warily on the open door. As long as the door stayed open it was all right. She realized that she hadn't paid the deposit on the apartment, but it didn't matter. The only thing that mattered was to get out of here, somehow, anyhow. She would go away and never come back
--
she would never go anywhere alone again
--
she would never
--

His hands were warm and insistent. He held her at each side of the waist, carefully, so as not to startle her. "Pretty. I'm a man and you're a woman, huh? Beautiful woman. Why not?"

She wanted to scream. Surely if she screamed someone would hear her. She opened her mouth, but no sound came out; it was like those nightmares, with the snorting animal or the painted Indians chasing her, when her feet were fastened to the ground. She stood frozen while he shut the door, not bothering to lock it. He pushed her down on the unmade bed and sat down beside her. His hands were inside the neck of her dress now, moving slowly but confidently, as though he knew what he was doing and meant to enjoy it fully. She was afraid. And yet
--

His mouth was hot, tasting of tobacco and wine. He pushed her back against the bed, fumbling with her girdle.

There was a crack across the ceiling. She opened her eyes wide and tried to focus on the crack, but it wavered and blurred and finally, when she gasped with the surprise and pain of his entrance, it went away. Then it came back again. She thought dimly, "But it's not the first time." On her bedroom ceiling at home there had been a small water stain; her eyes traveled from it down the wall to the doll's house that still stood in the corner of the room.

She stirred, trying to breathe. Such a heavy weight.

When she came out of the building it was dark. The lights of oncoming cars blurred and wavered in front of her, and, looking at the apartment house across the street, she discovered that part of it simply wasn't there
--
the building had holes in it. The street lights were ringed with halos that shattered when she looked directly at them. Her head throbbed. She staggered, hailing a cruising taxi. The address was gone from her mind; she had to concentrate, frowning, to remember it. "Please hurry, I'm sick." It flashed across her mind that he might reasonably think she was drunk. "I have a migraine headache, will you please hurry."

"Hey, that's tough. My wife has that, she has to go to bed for two, three days at a time. I guess it’s no joke."

She was in no state of mind to sympathize with anyone else's troubles.

When she reached the Y she was unable to stand up. The driver half-supported, half-carried her into the lobby and stood there waiting until Annice came down to pay him and help her up to bed.

“Damn!" Annice said. She stared blankly at the place where she had left her books and handbag, fifty minutes before. There was nothing there except a couple of reference volumes waiting to be returned to the stacks.
Maybe it’s the wrong table,
she thought hopefully, looking around. But no
--
there was the ink stain in one corner, shaped like the map of Australia. She pushed her way through a cluster of last-minute borrowers to the desk. "Has anybody turned in some books and a tan pigskin purse?"

The student librarian shook his head. "Nobody's turned in anything. Where did you leave them?"

"On that table right over there."

"Well, don't holler at me. I didn't take your stuff." He had a pleasant, rather round face and a nice voice with a hint of southern drawl. Not the kind of boy to steal anything. She snapped, "I never said you did. It's too bad if a person can't set something down and find it there when they get back."

"What did you do, just walk off and leave your stuff?"

"I didn't do it on purpose. I was thinking about something more important," she said with dignity. "I was making up a poem."

"Oh, one of those."

"Why not?"

He smiled. "Honey, this place is just lousy with poets. Every campus is, I guess, but this one's worse than most. Sculptors and painters, too, all fifty-seven varieties, but the poets are the worst." He looked as if the idea pained him. "You don't have to have any special equipment to write poetry, and if the critics don't like it, you can publish an article in the little no-pay magazines and complain how stupid they are. Do you write free verse with no punctuation, or are you one of those romantic sonnet girls?"

"I'm not going to talk about it," Annice said. "You wouldn't understand."

"Okay, okay, what are you going to do about lunch?"

Annice stopped in her dignified retreat. Her own helplessness was suddenly borne in upon her
--
no carfare, no lunch money, no change for the endless small purchases a student was always making. Not even a dime to telephone home. She could borrow, of course. She had struck up casual friendships with a dozen people who would surely lend her a dime and might even let her have a dollar. It was nothing to get excited about. But for a moment she was filled with pure terror, seeing herself helpless and lost. It was worse than uncomfortable, it was almost physically painful. She said weakly, "I don't know."

He dug into his pocket and came up with handful of small change which he counted soberly, like a man at a newsstand. "I'll treat you to lunch if you'll order something cheap."

"Oh
--
all right. When do you get off?" Anything for a free meal, the girls said, meaning not quite anything
--
but still it was a break to have a man, almost any man, pick up the tab. It lent a girl status. She was happily conscious of curious looks as she tucked her hand through his arm and left the library.

"I meant it when I said cheap. One hamburger. You can have two orders of fries, though, they're only twenty cents."

"And get fat?"

"Little meat on your bones wouldn't hurt you any. I like girls cornfed."

They sat at the counter in Walgreen's, with a magazine rack at one end and a case of electric pads and bathroom scales at the other. "Just one coffee. I'm a poor farm boy."

"You're kidding."

"Am not." His name was Jackson Carter and he came from a wide spot in the road in Missouri, named Jackson Center after his mama's folks. Jackson Center was purely Southern. "Any place where they farm with mules is in the South, I don't give a damn what the Texaco road maps say."

"I'm from the farm too. I hate it."

"Well, I wouldn't go that far. Makes no difference how many electric gadgets they have or how many horsepower the old tractor has, farm folks don't change much, that's true. They've got a good way of living
--
for them. Of course if it doesn't happen to be your way you're out of luck." He thought this over and nodded. "You have to fit the pattern, you can't diverge."

"Do you diverge?"

"I'm not a fairy if that's what you mean. There's plenty of them around, have you noticed? I'm an old-fashioned guy
--
I like women," She giggled. "No, I mean
--
that's a good way to live if that's what you want to do. Me, I want to be a physicist. Turn the atomic stuff to some useful purpose."

"You ought to be at U. of Chicago, then."

"That's all I can do to work my way here."

He was twenty, had worked two years in a filling station, been stock boy in a drugstore, done a short term in a canning factory where the workday was maybe sixteen or eighteen hours. That was tough; when you got a run of peas or beans you stayed on till they were processed, then laid off maybe a couple days. "You were supposed to sleep, but I had a big deal on with a truck-farmer's daughter and I didn't do a hell of a lot of sleeping." Annice felt a sharp pang of jealousy.
It’s nothing to me,
she reminded herself.

Now he worked as a librarian and posed for art classes. "Not in the nude, but I sure would if I had a chance
--
it pays better." He lived in a cooperative rooming house with seven other boys; they did their own cooking and cleaning. "All I'm scared is, somebody's mother might come in some day and drop dead."

They went on talking after the tired waitress laid down their check, cleared away the plates and swabbed the counter; they talked through Annice's French class and Jack's gym section. By this time they had known each other since childhood and she felt perfectly at ease with him, partly because she didn't have to impress him.

"Not that I'd ever get excited about anybody like that," she told the girls that evening. "He's too ordinary. But he's nice even if he doesn't have any feeling for important things like poetry."

Pat asked, "Did you get your stuff back
?
"

"Oh, gosh, no. I put a notice on the bulletin board though. Maybe somebody'll turn it in. I'd like to have my purse back even if they keep the money."

"How much was it?"