Psyche (33 page)

Talking to Monique was like listening to the introductory music
of a song: you waited patiently for the words, and then you knew where you were. It might have been annoying. For some reason it was not.

It was the first of many casual lessons, and at the end of it Monique said,
“Bien
, you're going to be good, honey. Damn good.
Et maintenant, regardez ce que j'ai acheté aujourd'hui
. Look what I bought with the little nest egg I found on the poker table last night. C'est
beau, n'est-ce-pas?”

Psyche, looking at the very beautiful gold bracelet on Monique's slender arm, said thoughtfully, “It's lovely. You mean you won enough in one night to buy something like that?”

“Oui, et pourquoi non?
The boys don't play for chicken feed, you know.”

Psyche was on easy terms with all “the boys”, and it was a tribute both to her and to Bel that all but one of them had left her strictly alone. The one who had attempted to overstep his privileges had done so only once. Bel had seen to that.

Wandering around in the earlier part of most evenings, emptying ash-trays, refilling glasses, and laughing at well-meant pleasantries, Psyche had enjoyed the party atmosphere without ever really becoming a part of it. Now, after thinking it over carefully, she could see no reason why she should not join in the principal public activity indulged in at Bel's place, and some very good reasons why she should.

She spoke to Bel after dinner that night.

Bel was in her room struggling into a black satin dress that allowed very little leeway for anything other than existing in it. “That you, baby? Here, help me get into this damn thing, will you?”

“You should either have this dress let out, or have your foundation taken in,” Psyche remarked frankly. “Bel, will you do me a favour? Lend me ten dollars.”

Bel's face, a somewhat overblown rose, emerged from the neck of her dress. “That's more like it, baby. You're almost talking sense now. But I'm not lending it. I'm giving it.”

Psyche hesitated momentarily, and then gave in. “All right. Thank you very much, Bel.”

Something in her manner caused Bel to look at her more closely. “What are you aiming to do with this ten bucks, baby? Not that I wouldn't give you a hundred and mind my own business, if that was the way you wanted it.”

“I'm going to get into the game to-night, if it's all the same to you.”

“You'rekidding me!”

“No.”

“But it wouldn't be proper!” Bel said, and saw nothing laughable in what she was saying.

Psyche had been smiling, but she became suddenly serious. “Look, Bel, don't let's be silly about this. I'm not a child, you know.”

“Ladies don't play poker,” Bel said stubbornly.

“For heaven's sake, Bel, I'm not a lady either!”

All the hardness, the shrewd smart veneer of a woman who had fought her way up out of the gutter, seemed to drain away from Bel's face, leaving her pretty features soft and vulnerable. “You were meant to be a lady, baby, and though maybe you don't know it, in lots of ways you are one now. I was never meant to be any better than I am, but you've got class, and you're going to have something better. Just how it will come, I don't know, but it will. If you got into any kind of trouble through me, I'd want to go out and cut my own throat.”

Though really touched. Psyche was not to be deflected from her purpose. “I won't get into any trouble, I promise you,” she said quietly. “After all, there isn't so much difference between playing and watching the others play. I'm there, in either case.”

“You'll just lose your money.”

“If I do, then that settles it. I won't play again.”

Psyche suspected, and quite rightly, that Bel gave in at this juncture only because she was positive that the money would be lost very quickly.

The boys were beginning to arrive when Psyche went up to her room to change into her one dress. A blue cotton, it was not particularly suitable for a late November evening, but she knew that in it she looked even younger than her nineteen years.

Naturally straightforward, she nevertheless saw nothing unethical in using every weapon at her command when entering lists of this kind. She looked on poker as a game of wits, and felt that anyone foolish enough to risk his money in such a way deserved to lose it. This was a point of view she never changed throughout her lifetime.

When she slipped into an empty chair next to Joe, there were already six in the game. May and five men.

May, flowing forth from blue satin, supporting a weight of jewellery that it must have been a task to carry around, stared at her with pale blue eyes wide and astonished. “Hon, are you sure you know what you're doing?”

Psyche looked around with a hesitant smile. “Does anybody mind? It looks like such fun.”

It was exactly the right approach. The men were all over forty, and hard-headed business men, but no girl as young and fresh as Psyche appeared just then could have failed to appeal to their more sentimental side. With wicked satisfaction she saw winks exchanged, and smiles grow paternal. It would not last long, she knew, this advantage she had seized, for these men were not like Butch and his cronies. Still, it should last just long enough for her to get a reasonable stake. After that, she was more than prepared to meet them on even terms.

“You know how to play, baby?” Joe asked doubtfully.

“Oh, yes.” While telling the exact truth. Psyche managed to make it appear that she probably did not know.

May, who had as keen a nose for money as she had for French perfume, and who hated to see anyone wilfully throw it away, was genuinely upset. “You'll be just giving your candy away, hon. Whyn't you watch instead?”

“But I would like to play—so much.”

“Well, I guess it's your funeral, hon, but I sure hate to see you do it.”

Trustingly, Psyche looked from one face to another. “I don't have to lose, do I? I might win, mightn't I?”

“How much dough have you got, honey?” Joe asked gruffly.

“Ten dollars.”

It was a pittance, compared with the sums that crossed that table every night of the week, as Psyche well knew. But if she had started with fifty, or even twenty-five, she would not have won their sympathy or nearly as much of their money.

It was two hours before they really began to credit what was being done to them, and by then Psyche had won more than three hundred dollars. Cashing in her chips from time to time so that she never had too obvious a stack in front of her, her tactics were perfect from start to finish. In addition to this, she played in phenomenal luck. It was her luck that helped to blind them.

“The girlie's sure got beginner's luck,” they told one another.

It was Joe who first recognized her for the expert she was. “I thought you said you couldn't play this game, honey?” he said softly.

Psyche's smile was no longer
jeune ñlle. “On
the contrary. I said I could.” “And you can.”

“I can,” Psyche told him calmly. “You raising me, Joe, or seeing?”

They were not angry, any of them. Instead, they took it as a wonderful joke on themselves, as Psyche had hoped they would.

“That's a smart little cookie, that kid of yours, Bel,” they said, chuckling.

“She's a good kid, too, and don't you go forgetting it,” Bel told them defensively. Far from pleased with the result of the experiment, it was some time before she could accustom herself to the idea of seeing Psyche at the poker table nearly every evening. Her definition of a “nice girl” was even more rigid than had been Mag's conception of a “bad girl”.

A cold wind was rattling bare branches in the park, and grey skies were heavy with a promise of snow soon to come, when Psyche asked Bel if she would help her to buy some warmer clothes.

“I'm used to the little shops now,” she told her, “but in a department store, buying something like a coat, I wouldn't know quite what to do.”

Bel was only too glad to go with her, and for the occasion wore
her best black coat, a small black hat with a two-foot red quill in it, and a pair of colossal silver fox furs. In a red purse that could have passed for a small suitcase she put some extra money to assist with purchases she suspected would stagger Psyche by their cost. She was quite right in thinking that Psyche was ignorant of the price of good clothes, but she had erred in another direction.

They had already threaded their way through the main floor aisles of the big store to which she had chosen to go, and were waiting for the elevator, when she asked casually, “How are you fixed for money, baby?”

“I have thirteen hundred dollars,” Psyche replied without hesitation.

Bel almost fainted. “Come again!” she gasped.

Psyche repeated what she had said. It had taken her a long time to count it all, but she had done so twice, and was quite sure of the amount.

“My God!” Bel whispered. “And to think that I worry about the girls keeping too much cash in the place. Have you won all that from the boys?”

“I must have. It hasn't come from anywhere else.”

Recovering from the initial shock, Bel looked at her with mingled respect and exasperation. “You sure know what you're doing, don't you, baby? Well, when we're through here, you're going to put what you've got left in a bank. Didn't you ever think of what the cops would say if they found all that dough in your room?”

“No,” Psyche said slowly. “No, I didn't.” It was the kind of thing she did not think about if she could help it. In so far as was possible she kept her eyes shut to the interpretation that the law would undoubtedly read into her presence at Bel's place.

Although refusing to look at the practical hazards of her position, she had begun to worry more and more about the effect that the kind of life she was leading might have on her as a person. The gambling in the evenings, the idle thread of gossip that ran through the days as the girls drifted in and out, the smiling don't-give-a-damn cynicism that characterized all of them but Kathie—these
things would be bound to leave their mark on her if she stayed with them too long.

Abruptly, waiting for an elevator that was slow in coming, she saw that she could not, must not let herself be stamped in a manner that she knew instinctively was all wrong for her. Hers was a tough, combative spirit, but she was not hard. If she were to become even a little hard, to lose sight even briefly of the vague goal toward which she had been striving for so long, she would be lost, would have taken a turning from which there was no going back. And, as she stepped into the crowded elevator after Bel, she came to two lightning decisions: she would play no more poker with the boys, and she would leave Bel's place as soon after Christmas as she could. Bel had had some justification for being disturbed about her. Bel had been right, and she had been wrong.

Thank God, she thought to herself, thank God for whatever it is that makes me see these things in time.

The discreetly dressed saleswoman, who came across a discreet beige carpet towards Psyche and Bel, noticed Psyche first and for a moment thought she recognized her. But she had only waited on Sharon once, and that some months earlier, so the memory was not clear, and, when she took a good look at Bel, vanished entirely before a train of thought that led anywhere but back to Sharon.

“Are you being waited on?”

“No, just waiting,” Bel replied pointedly.

There were occasions when this particular saleswoman regretted the polite servility that her job imposed upon her. “What may I show you?”

“Coat, hat, suit, wool dresses, size fourteen,” Bel said succinctly.

“We don't usually show hats in this department, but if you wish one to go with a coat or suit it can be arranged. Take a seat, please, while I see what we have.”

Psyche, sitting down with Bel on a beige velvet loveseat, looked around at floor-length mirrors, subdued lighting, and artificial
flowers almost more beautiful than the real thing, and was impressed. “It's nice, isn't it, Bel?”

“A real sucker's layout,” said Bel, tapping a cigarette on a red thumbnail before lighting it. “But they've got good things if you know how to choose them.”

The saleswoman came back with a bright blue fitted coat, and a small blue hat garnished with pink feathers. Psyche, putting these on, saw in the mirror a self she had never seen before, and hesitated between being very pleased and equally displeased. The pink feathers, lying close to her cheek, made her clear skin appear slightly flushed, and the blue accentuated the rich gold of her hair.

She turned toward Bel. “What do you think?”

“What do you?”

“I—I don't know. They're a little——”

“They're more than a little, baby,” Bel said shortly, and addressed the saleswoman. “Do you think the kid looks good in those duds?”

“Well, madam, I——”

“Be your age, sister.”

“I was only trying to dress her to please you, madam,” the saleswoman replied stiffly.

“Then you're doing a bum job of it,” returned Bel equably. “Just forget about me. Take a good look at the kid, and start all over again. Pretend she lives on the hill, and is going to say ‘Charge it! ‘ and maybe you'll do better.”

An hour later Psyche was in possession of a new wardrobe, and very happy with the choices they had made, all of them good, all of them plain.

“The plainer it is, the more they'll soak you for it,” Bel told her while the saleswoman was making up the bill, “but you'll get style for your dough.”

“The feathers were pretty, though weren't they, Bel?” Psyche asked, a little wistfully.

“Real pretty. They would have looked just fine on May.”

Psyche suddenly felt no regret, only gratitude to Bel for having recognized clearly what she herself had merely sensed. Impulsively she put her arm around Bel's plump shoulders, and gave her
a quick hug. “How and where did you learn to be so wise, Bel?”