Virgin With Butterflies (5 page)

When I came back, I skirted around a table where some people were doing something with some playing
cards in a little box, and then back to the roulette and my boy friend.

He didn't know I was behind him at first and he won quite a lot of blue chips.

“You're doing pretty good,” I says.

“You got to watch the spins,” he says. “This is no joint to look the other way when he's paying off. Who's your fat boyfriend?” he says, without looking up.

“He's no friend of mine,” I says, “just a hoodlum I know.”

“I'm glad you've come down to earth,” he says. “I saw you come down the street a while ago and join us at the door. You're all right, but you're funny,” he says.

“Why?” I says.

“Never mind,” he says, “but you ought not to leave your chips with strangers,” he says, “not in this place, anyway.”

“I choose my strangers,” I says.

“Thanks,” he says.

Just then Pimples put his fat hands on my shoulders.

“How're you doing?” he says, and looking at this kid, his little eyes got even littler.

“This is my friend Pimples,” I says. “What's your name?”

“Wens,” he says. Nobody said anything more until I had lost that pile of blues.

“Your money?” says Pimples, suspicious.

“His,” I says.

“Have a drink,” Pimples says.

“Don't mind if I do,” I says. “See you later, Mr. Wens,” and me and Pimples goes toward the bar.

“Hey,” says Mr. Wens, “what if I should lose all this?”

“Never mind,” I says over my shoulder, “your father will give you some more.” And we left him.

“I never seen you around this dump before,” Pimples said.

“I just started,” I says and we kept walking past the people at the tables.

When we got to the bar I was scared. I told you that I don't drink beer but what I didn't tell you is that I can't drink nothing at all. I often wondered why I don't do a lot of things. Other people do 'em, but when it's me, it either makes me sick or I just wouldn't want to. Drinking, or with men, or like that. It ain't that I said on the Bible that I wouldn't, like people do. I've talked about it, whether I would or ever will, or not. All of the girls I ever worked with didn't seem to talk of much else and either said, “Oh, you're sure nuts,” or “Look at this fur coat,” or like that till you are sure ashamed to let on you didn't, for fear they'll think maybe you're feeling you're better than them.

Well, there was a crowd around the bar and Pimples says, “What's all this so-and-so about me being let out by them stumble bums?”

“Somebody might hear us,” I says. “I guess you don't want people to know you got kicked around.”

“I never,” he says pretty loud, and two little pink spots come out on his greenish-white face and his little pig eyes looked like he was going to cry. “I blacked the Beaver's eye and I poked Yanci in the mouth and I took it away from 'em, didn't I? Look there, I got it, ain't I?”

“Don't talk here,” I says, “it's too crowded and we can't get no service. I better go back to my friend.”

“No, wait, listen for Chrissake,” and I saw he wanted to talk about it. I knew he was worried about getting kicked out. They're all like kids, these boys—at least around each other, that is. Who is leader and who ain't, they'll shoot and stab over that. I've seen it, often.

“Listen,” he says, “I gotta talk to you. Come on up.”

I said I couldn't leave my friend, but he was determined.

So, “Listen,” I says, “you're just trying to fool me. I bet that's a fine ring you swiped off of somebody. Lemme see.”

“Nuts,” he says, “it's just a phony, like them giant's rings they sell in the circus for a dime. I don't know nothing about no jewelry jobs. You know me, I work on alcohol, exclusive, me and my guys.”

“Your guys?” I says.

“Sure,” he says.

“That ain't what they say,” I says.

“Listen,” he says, “I'm drunk,” he says. “I never rightly looked at you before, but when I get a dirty deal, like that squirt Yanci trying to take this off of me, right there in Butch's place before everybody, I get my feelings hurt. And when I get like this I gotta have somebody be nice to me, see? I got a room here, see? Come on up.”

“And be nice to you?”

“Sure, I'll treat you right, what do you want?”

“What'll you gimme?”

“As much as that mush you was rouletting with. Don't stand there looking big eyed, come on up, for Chrissake.”

“Come up and what?”

“And be nice to me, you dope.”

He didn't know about the butterflies. I was just standing still for a minute and they turned into eagles.

“What are you stalling for? Want the dough first? No soap. I work strictly C.O.D. What's the matter, you think I ain't got the dough? Look.” And he showed a roll.

“I don't want your money. I like jewelry,” I says. “Will you give me the ring if I'm nice to you, like you said?”

“Listen,” he says. We were going by the switchboard, and I could hear the girl saying, “I'm sorry, but Mr. Grossi can't be disturbed.”

Pimples was still talking.

“This is a phony, see? And I gotta keep it to show those mugs that when I'm boss, they can't even pick up a Lincoln penny without asking my permission.”

“I know,” I says, “but if they was to gang up on you to take it back off of you, wouldn't it be better to be able to say, I gave it to a girl? That's why I want it. If I'm going to be your girl, maybe I want to let them see I got it from the boss, like they do in the movies.”

“Say!” he says. “You ain't so dumb at that,” and he started into the elevator.

“Is it a bargain?” I says.

“Come on in the elevator,” he says. “We'll talk upstairs.”

But I just stood there and the elevator girl looked at me half asleep. Then when he stood in it and me outside she turned and grinned right in his fat face. It's funny how easy these small-time bad men can be tripped up.

“Okay,” he says quick, “get in,” and I did.

His room was like all the rooms in Mulloy's, I guess—bed, chairs, bureau, one window propped open by a red-edged black Bible that was pushed out of shape because the window cord had broke.

Poor Pop, he was rigging new cords on the parlor window at Aunt Helga's when they came and told him what had happened at the butcher shop. And he sure looked sick when he came into the beauty parlor, still carrying a piece of that window rope. And then him and me hurrying to the shop, thinking what this would do to Ma. Because Ma couldn't never think that Willie was really responsible. I guess she saw Willie as just a little boy. But he was over six feet and ought to have had sense enough to know, in the first place, that the doctor would never believe he had brought Darlene there for somebody else. I guess we ought to have known something was wrong with Ma, from the way she was with Willie. If we had read it all, somewhere, we would have said, “That woman's getting crazy.” She sure was right about poor Willie for once, and I hope that's some comfort to her, up there on the hill. But of course nobody can tell what she's thinking, sitting there. If she's thinking at all, that is. Maybe that's what we were afraid of, Pop and me, hurrying along to the butcher shop that day, me with the buffer still in my hand and Pop carrying that old piece of frayed window rope. Just like the one that must have broken in this window, here at Mulloy's.

Pimples hadn't done more than switch on the light in the ceiling when I quit breathing. There I stood in the middle of the floor while he slammed the door. My
heart stopped, and two words kept hitting against my forehead from the inside of my head, “No telephone, no telephone.”

There had to be one, but there wasn't. I just stood there with my back to him—which a half-witted baby ought to have known enough not to do. But I was brought out of it with a bang, I can tell you. For I was grabbed, tight, from the back.

First I saw the ring on his left hand coming around my left side, and then I saw his right hand coming around my right shoulder. And I thought, “His sleeves is rolled up.” And then I thought, “No, they couldn't be rolled up that high.” And then I knew he had taken his coat off and his shirt, too—and his undershirt, if he had one—and then he was all over me and I was bent back.

He started kissing me, soft and wet, and suddenly he smelled like a sweating horse. I thought, “Here it comes. Manners or not, I'm going to be sick, right now.” And I was.

He had a bathroom all right and he must have been glad to see me go in it. When the door was shut I had a minute to think. I remembered what I had meant to do. Of course I hadn't thought it all out, but it would have been a pretty good thing in the movies. Like Mata Hari, that lady that they shot in the long black cape because she couldn't stick to one flag to spy for.

“What am I going to do?” I says, and I saw there was no bolt on the door and no key, either.

You see, what I had planned was this. I thought I'd get up here, let him tell me all his troubles about the gang, and then when he got ready for me to be nice to
him, I'd take the phone off of the hook. And when the boys came up I'd play them off against each other.

Oh, yes, I sure had been pretty smart to think up such a nice movie. I must have seen myself, like Ginger Rogers, trailing my white satins down the steps with the ring in my hand and laughing back over my shoulders, while the four punks held Pimples, struggling and kicking, back up there by the banisters in the upper hall.

“You certainly planned to be clever,” I says to myself. “Well, sister, now's your chance.”

“Hurry up,” he yelled through the door, and I went to the bathroom window for a breath of air and to look out. It was as black as the alley out back of the café. I turned my back to the window and leaned against the wall.

When I heard a knock on the outside hall door, I kept quiet to listen. And I heard Pimples say, “What do you want?”

I couldn't hear what was being said out in the hall. Then after a minute the bathroom door busted open and Pimples says, “Stay in here, see? Don't open your goddamned trap or I'll close it for keeps.” And he shut the door again.

I couldn't bear the thought of standing there in that bright bathroom with who knows who looking in, so I switched off the light and stood there in the dark, listening while Pimples opened the outer door.

It feels funny when you're in a little strange bathroom standing in the black dark, as if all the whole world had died, and you had died, and you was all alone.

Poor Willie, that's how he must have felt at that last minute with that black cap over his eyes, or whatever
they do. I felt like him, and I felt sorry to think he had had to go through it even after all the bad things he had done. But I always knew it had been mostly Uncle Ulrich that had made Willie bad, though I didn't believe Willie when he said on the stand at Dr. Harwood's trial that it was Uncle Ulrich that got him to take the little McComber girl to Dr. Harwood. But at the end in that death house Willie surely must have thought, “This time it ain't my fault.”

“But this,” I says to myself in the little bathroom, “this is my fault.” And I stood there with my hand on the wet marble washstand behind me. “I got myself into this and I got nobody but myself to blame.” And that was when it first came over me that somebody else, besides me, was in that dark bathroom. Something sure was in there. It didn't take hold of me. It just touched my elbow and stayed there.

I didn't move or yell. And then the butterflies began to act up in my stomach again. But I didn't feel sick because I had already been that—good thing, too.

When he spoke close to my ear, cold chills went up my arm and right on up the back of my neck. It was sure just like those horror pictures.

“Keep still,” he mumbled.

“Who are you?” I says.

“Yanci,” he says, and then I knew why he couldn't talk plain. Yanci's was the lip Pimples had busted.

“I came in the window,” he says. “When we started to fix the operator, she gives out that this is a cheap room, see, and that these cheap rooms here ain't got no phones in them, so I came up. But there was another guy
that came up in the elevator with me, and he got out at this floor, too, a little bit ahead of me, and he stopped at Pimples' door. So I climbed out of the hall window onto the fire escape, see? And I listened at this window. It was open and dark, so I got in. What's cooking?” he says.

“He knocked on the hall door,” I says. “He's talking to Pimples now.”

“Who is he?” he says.

“How would I know?” I says. “What did he look like?”

But just then we heard Pimples' voice, mad as a hornet, yelling, “Get the hell out of here before I poke you, see?” And we both kept right still and listened. This other man, whoever he was, laughed loud and drunk sounding, and then we heard something that sounded like somebody had crashed on the floor hard. Then there was a hand on the knob of the bathroom door. Yanci, like a cat, went back into the dark corner under the window. The door opened and the light was hitting me in the eyes so bright I couldn't see right away who it was standing there, laughing like a silly drunk, saying, “Come out, Lady Teazel, come out.” First I thought he said Lady Teaser, but it wasn't that, I heard it plain. And it was Mr. Wens, drunker than you would think anybody could ever get in such a little while.