Virgin With Butterflies (4 page)

Then they was all anxious as anything to tell me. “He'll be at Harry Mulloy's,” they says, all of 'em at once. “He's got a room there in the hotel part. He's been staying there for a week.”

And I says, “Suppose somebody, I won't say who, went there and was to get to talking to him, a girl I mean, in the gambling part, I mean.”

“Yes,” they says, “go on.”

I went right on.

“And suppose she got him to thinking that this phony ring had kind of got under her skin, see? And that maybe if he wasn't too crazy about that ring, see, that maybe she could forget about his pimples and his fat, do you see what I mean?”

Well, they saw all right, and it didn't seem to occur to them to wonder why I would do all this for them. Punk hoodlums is like that—dumb.

But Pimples wasn't no high-school bandit, not by no means he wasn't, nor was he a police blotter, neither, and I felt that old flutter of wings in the pit of my stomach when I thought of me going to Harry Mulloy's for any reason, especially this one.

“What's the conference for?” says Butch, moving down to that end of the bar to get a clean towel. “You running for election as the chief gun moll for these guys?”

“Sure,” I says, “that's it.” And then when he turned away, I told 'em quick and quiet what to do.

They said, yes, there was a switchboard at Mulloy's and I said to fix the phone girl and when I took the pimply face's phone off of the hook she was to give 'em the go-ahead and they was to come up quick. I thought I could handle it.

I don't know what came over me that I even thought I could try it, but I patted my stomach through Butch's satin and told the butterflies to keep still, but they didn't. For in three quarters of an hour from that minute they went to town, like a flock of eagles having the hysterics. That's when I did vomit, but by that time it didn't matter hardly at all, except manners. I remember Pop
saying to me at the Sunday school picnic back in Mattoon, Pop aid, “Remember, it ain't never what you'd call really good manners.”

Well, I couldn't ask Butch to let me go out again. The bar was near the door so I couldn't get by him without him asking where I was going.

Millie was crying into her next soda and her head was down against Red's shoulder. Moe was serving at a table, so I took the coat and went into the Ladies' and hid the tray and the cash box away up on top of that square tank, up over the john. And I put on the coat and come out and sidled along the little hall to go out the alley door, but it was locked, so I got out the window and there I was in the alley.

B
LACK AS YOUR HAT IT WAS
,
all the way down to the next street. So I hurried toward that and I could see there was nothing between me and it. I couldn't see a thing behind me where there wasn't no light to see it against.

After I had passed the back of the Greek's and heard dishes rattling—getting washed, but not too well washed—I came to the corner. Just as I turned, I took one more look back in that black alley and a cold chill run up me thinking how dark it was. Then I turned the corner, it seemed like I heard a car start back up in there, but I couldn't be sure.

To get to Mulloy's I had to go past Butch's, but I crossed to the other side and hoped nobody would see me go by. Of course I could have gone around the block, but anybody that knows what's around that block would sure understand why I just couldn't do that, not ever.

As I passed the Greek's—on the other side of the street—I saw Jeff in there having a cup of coffee and I was sure glad. If Jeff had known what I was getting ready to do now he would have cussed louder than Pop did the time I ran off to Champagne with a strange drummer in his Ford and had to fight him all the way
there. And Pop, when he found out about it, thought what you couldn't very well blame him for thinking, and me not saying a word. How could I?

Pop didn't even know Willie was in jail up in Champagne. He thought like Ma did that Willie had gotten a job in Chicago after he had left Uncle Ulrich's butcher shop. Willie had gone up to Champagne with the money he got out of Uncle Ulrich's cash drawer, and got himself into some trouble with a girl that had advertised in the Mattoon paper for a job. Uncle Ulrich had answered the ad with a letter but Willie had opened the letter before it was mailed. After he read it he thought he could use the letter and the money as a kind of an introduction to the girl. And so that's what Willie did. And that's how he had gotten himself into jail.

So there he is, in the Champagne jail for what they call assault in the papers.

Well, it was awful. Willie called me up at the beauty parlor and so I was the only one knew he was in jail in Champagne. And I had to go see Uncle Ulrich at the shop, which I would have rather died than do at any time, especially having to ask a favor.

I had to try to get Uncle Ulrich to promise me that when it was time for the trial he'd go to Champagne and get Willie off, because Ma was beginning to show signs that scared me. So I just had to get Uncle Ulrich to promise.

I didn't need no safety pin this time, for Uncle Ulrich was so mad he never even thought of anything like that and that was a relief, because by this time we were living with them and I had to watch my step and his, too.

Well, when he said he wouldn't go and that he'd let
Willie get what was coming to him, I was pretty hopeless. So I tried my last bluff. I said I knew why Uncle Ulrich had wrote the letter. I didn't know this but I said I did. And I didn't really know why Nettie, his other cashier, had left Mattoon, either, but I said I did, and that if he didn't go up there and do something for Willie, I would tell Aunt Helga and Pop all the things I knew about—things him and Willie had been up to, both separate and together. So when the time for the trial came, he went. But I didn't trust him not to just pretend that he had tried to help and couldn't. So I just had to get to Champagne and see for myself. Well, I got to Champagne and sat right in the front row and you bet Uncle Ulrich saw me sitting there, and he didn't dare not do what he had promised me. And him being a prominent butcher from out of town with money and influence and a good lawyer, he got Willie off.

And that's why I couldn't explain to Pop why I rode with that soft-lipped drummer to Champagne. And that's why Pop cussed and swore so, just like Jeff would have done about me now if he hadn't been drinking coffee in the Greek's and not seen me as I went by on the other side of the street.

“What'll I do when I get to Mulloy's?” I thought, and “What are you doing,” I thought, “going on this wild goose chase? That little gentleman is nothing to you, what if he has got eyes like Spot? That's not enough to make you go to Mulloy's where you've only ever been once and swore never to get into nothing like that again.”

Mulloy's is a kind of a slumming place, see? It's a hotel and what they call swell people come there late at
night to gamble, and for all sorts of stuff, I'll say. And these socialites, or whatever they are, sure spend money like pouring it down a rat hole.

I remembered that night when I first got to Chicago with a dollar sixty-five and no prospects and there, waiting for me to give me my first workout was Harry Mulloy. And if it hadn't been for a miracle I might not be here now but somewhere I don't like to even think of. For Mulloy sure made it all sound believable—how was I to know what extra work there was to being a hat-check girl at his place. But except for a miracle, which was practically the entire police force of Chicago that chose that minute to raid Mulloy's place, I would have found out and no mistake. So I spent my first night in Chicago in jail, and I'll bet no jail ever seemed sweeter or safer to any girl since the world began.

Well, I decided that night that the world was too big for me to run it and so I made up my mind that I'd do what I could to get out of the mess I was in, but I knew that whatever it was that saved me that night—whether the Hail Marys or the Lutheran prayers—I sure was taken care of then and always, I guess. And so, from then on, I didn't worry about what's in the future.

I was walking fast now to outrun a drunk that fell out of a dark doorway and took after me. Only he kept running into things so I was able to keep ahead of him. And just about then I began to feel like maybe I hadn't only hurt my knees. There hadn't seemed to be any glass in 'em when I had looked, but now I felt something up above my left knee. Then suddenly I knew what it was.

It was that wad of bills the Indian gentleman and I had been playing pitch and catch with. I had stuck it in my stocking in the taxi. So I got the bills out of my stocking and by that time I was nearly to Mulloy's and I knew what I was going to do.

A big party of North Side people drove up in their cars as I got there, some of the men dressed up in boiled shirts and the women and girls in long dresses. They was calling back and forth to one another, all a little drunk and silly. And so I just fell in with them, so it didn't look like I was coming in all alone.

“What a lark,” one old gal that ought to have been in bed kept croaking. “Isn't it?” she said to me.

“I don't know yet,” I says and there was Mulloy. I knew him but he didn't know me. It was crowded at the place you got the chips, and he was helping the ladies.

“Reds,” the old dame says, and she fished two twenties out of her gold bag and gave 'em to Mulloy. When she got her reds she moved on and he looked at me.

“Blues,” I says, and crackled a new hundred dollar bill into his palm. He bowed and I could have laughed into his face. That Mulloy, I knew him all right, his smooth blue chin and his clothes like a movie actor, so neat, so quiet and so gentle. I can hardly believe it now, how little I really knew when I first came to Chicago, and how surprised I was a man could be so really downright bad.

Now I think of it, wasn't it funny that I should see Mulloy the first night I was ever in Chicago, and now to have to come here and see him again, on the last night I was to be in Chicago for a long time, though of course I didn't know that then. How could I? It was like fate or
something. Like a word I learned once that I'll never forget—the word was predestination. There was a man I met who kept telling me about it, and I'd never heard the word before nor since.

I didn't know much about religion, see? Of course I had heard a lot about it as a kid, first with Catholics and after that with Lutherans, but I didn't pay much attention. Oh, I enjoyed getting confirmed and taking my first communion, I remember having a wreath and a veil and white slippers. Willie had a white taffeta bow on his arm and a rose with asparagus pinned upside down on his coat. With the Lutherans I mostly remember the picnics. Ma was a Catholic but Pop was a Lutheran. So he had to join the Catholics to get Ma, but that was the last time he went to either church—except once. So we was both religions, I guess.

But then when I grew up I met this young man that was so serious about religion.

He was a Presbyterian minister, and I hadn't ever met any ministers so I got interested like I say. But after starting to tell me one night in a park about predestination, he kept burying his face in my neck instead of telling me more, and it seemed like his hands were predestinated to do a lot of exploring. So I quit seeing him and I never got to be a Presbyterian.

But anyway I remembered the word as I got my chips from Mulloy and went to the roulette wheel. Roulette is a game where a little ball jumps around in a round deep wheel with sides to keep it from jumping out. The wheel's a lot of numbers and things on it and it turns. But it stops turning after a while and then the man takes
a little hoe and scrapes in some of your little pile of chips and then they do that all over again until it's all gone and the game is over.

Roulette is different from stories about roulette. In stories about roulette, people put their last white chip on the red and then see an old friend and turn to say hello, and when they turn back, they can't see over the pile of chips that has grown up where they put that last white chip. But roulette is more like I told you.

While I was doing it, one of Mulloy's slickers with a white bat wing and fixed up to look like society—but he had too much oil on his hair so it didn't work—came up and tried to help me in case I really was society. But I put him off of me by saying, “Please, if you want to be nice, go and help Mrs. Palmer, she's simply losing thousands.” He got pretty excited.

“Which Mrs. Palmer?” he says.

“As if you didn't know,” I says, and he went off to ask somebody.

Names out of that brown roto section of the Sunday papers make boys like him jump like a flea had bit 'em where it would do the most good.

Well, when I had lost about half of my chips, a real society boy eased over to me.

“Hi,” he says.

And so, “Hi,” I says, right back at him.

“Pretty smart,” he says, “the way you got rid of that stooge of Mulloy's,” he says.

I looked him over. Maybe he wasn't a brown roto, after all, but he sure was a good imitation. Tie just enough mussed, handkerchief clean and good linen, but
it was just stuffed in his pocket, not measured so the four points stood in a row like those little houses Pop used to build near a factory, all exactly alike.

I used to say to Pop when I'd get away from the beauty parlor and take sandwiches and a bottle of beer for him and a bottle of Coke for me, and we'd sit on one of those little porches and eat our lunch together, “Gee, Pop, I wish we could live in one of these, don't you, instead of with Uncle Ulrich and Aunt Helga?”

“I sure do,” he'd say, and we'd sit there, smelling the new wood and the fresh dirt, and Pop smoking his old corncob, and we'd be pretty happy. But I kept thinking about how we needed to get Willie away from the butcher shop, which he was going back to as soon as his trial was over in Champagne. He told Ma he had missed her so bad he just couldn't go on working up in Chicago….

But anyway, this kid's handkerchief wasn't like that row of little houses, see?

“You seem to be losing a lot of your chips,” he says.

“What of it?” I says. “My father can buy me some more.” And he just looked at me and laughed.

“That's a pretty coat,” he says.

“Yes,” I says.

“India,” he says.

“Yes,” I says, and he kept right on looking at me.

“You don't wear any makeup,” he says.

“Neither do you,” I says, and he laughed again and suddenly he looked quick at the green cloth with squares and numbers painted on it and red and black and a lot of other stuff, and he reached out and took a mess of
blue chips off of the little hoe the man was pushing 'em with, and I had won.

And then I saw Pimples. He was watching me, so I made up to the society kid. He laughed a lot at what I said and he seemed to think I was a lot of fun. He kept his hands on top of the table, too, so I went on talking and playing, and Pimples went on watching.

So I says to this boy, “Keep an eye on my chips,” I says, “I'll be back.” I started for the Ladies' and passed by Pimples. And I saw the ring.

It was too big for him—the ring, I mean. He had to cramp his other fingers against it to keep it from falling right off.

Of course I didn't know, then, that it wasn't a ring made for a human finger at all. That's why the gentleman had had it hung on a chain around his neck, the very chain that I had paid Moe five bucks for and could feel in my pocket right that minute.

I stopped as I passed him. “I see you ain't bad hurt, Pimples,” I says.

“What do you mean?” he says, quiet. He was drunk. “Where'd you get to?”

“I had to go to a doctor,” I says. “I cut my knees on that bottle, but when I got back,” I says, “and saw your pals, I kind of got the idea they had ditched you,” I says. “And though they didn't say so, I got the idea they had messed you up some and sent you off,” I says. “I'm glad you ain't no worse hurt than what you are.” Then I went on to where I had started to go to.