Midnight Cowboy (26 page)

“Ain’t you gonna as’ me,” Joe said, “about how I done tonight?”

Ratso looked at him, but only with his eyes. His real attention was elsewhere. His face was empty of expression, and his eyes seemed to have lost some vital power. Not the power of sight, that was still there, but whatever power it was that made sight itself valuable,
that
seemed to be missing.

“I don’t care about going nowheres,” he said.

“You don’t care about goin’ to
Florida?”

“Nah. So why don’t you get some sleep already?”

Joe looked at the warm place next to Ratso and he thought about lying down. Then he looked at Ratso’s damp, wasted, bone-colored face, and the eyes sitting too deep in their sockets, and in his mind he heard the sound of the opening and closing of that drawer in the bedroom of Townsend P. Locke’s suite.

And then he knew he was going to have to get into that drawer. That was all there was to it. It had become a fairly simple matter.

“Well! If that don’t beat the devil!” he said. “Here I got ever’thing arranged, and you don’t care about going.”

“You got what arranged?”

“The whole shebang. All I got to do is make one stop, take me two minutes. Then I figure we get on the next bus. But hell, you ain’t interested, so I guess I’ll have to go alone.” He looked around the room. “I don’t suppose they’s nothing here I want. I got m’ass and I got m’elbows and I expect that’s about all I need.”

He walked over to the door. “Look, Ratso, I’ll—uh—see you sometime, huh?”

Now Ratso was sitting upright with his mouth and eyes wide open. There was a moment in which he and Joe Buck simply looked at one another, and then Ratso said, “So long.”

But he didn’t move. Neither did Joe.

After a moment, Joe said, “You don’ care nothing atall about going down there to Florida, is that it?”

Ratso licked his lips and frowned slightly. And then he said, “Nah.”

Suddenly and swiftly Joe moved back into the room. “Get your shoes on, piss-ant! Time’s awastin’!”

In a matter of seconds, Ratso had flung the blankets aside and was scrambling across the floor toward his shoes.

They took a taxi to the bus terminal. There was no luggage. Each had filled his pockets with odds and ends from the X-flat, and Ratso carried an Indian blanket. On the way, Ratso was breathing heavily and he complained often of the heat in his eyes. “What makes my eyes so hot? You know anything about hot eyes?”

Joe helped him onto a bench in the waiting room. It would have been easier to carry him, but Ratso wouldn’t allow it.

“Now wait here,” he said. “I won’t be but ten minutes.”

“What if they get me for loitering?”

“You crazy? You getting the twelve-fifty to Miami Florida. That ain’t loitering!”

“Okay, but what if that guy don’t give you no loot?”

“You don’t trust me, huh? Is that it? You don’t trust me? Just say it! Go on,
say it!”

“I
do,”
Ratso said. “Only—”

“Only shee-it!”

At the door, Joe looked back and saw Ratso wrapping himself in the blanket. He waited until Ratso looked at him, and then he waved. Ratso waved back. Joe hurried toward the street, and once he was on Eighth Avenue he broke into a run.

He ran all the way to the Europa Hotel and up the stairs to the fifth floor without once stopping to think; he felt that any thinking he might do would be the ruin of his plan.

He knocked on Locke’s door and then leaned against the doorframe, catching his breath. In a moment he heard a small
yes
from within the room.

“Towny?”

“Who is that out there?”

“It’s me, Joe.”

“Joe?”

“You know. That was here before?”

Joe heard the rattling of the safety latch, then the door opened. Townsend P. Locke was in a dressing gown, apparently naked underneath; he was barefooted.

“Good heavens!” he said.

“I got to talk to you.”

Locke looked at Joe for a moment, his eyes twitching uncomfortably, and then he glanced quickly at the safety latch as if he regretted having opened the door.

“Joe, honestly, it’s so late.”

“Yeah, but this is important.”

“Well, what in the world can it be about?”

“I, I can’t talk out here.”

“But I can’t ask you in, not at this hour.”

“Didn’t you say we was friends?”

“Well of
course!
But—”

“But you didn’t mean it, did you.” Joe stated this as he walked past Locke and into the sitting room of the suite.

Locke remained at the door. He looked at Joe with a frown. “Please. Just say what it is. What is it?”

“Shut the door.”

“Shut the door?”

“Yeah. You know. Shut it.”

Locke drew a deep, careful breath. Then he closed the door.

Joe said, “I got to have some money.”

“Oh.” Locke smiled. “Oh, of course. Of course you do. I should’ve, should’ve thought. Oh, I’m so sorry to make you ask for it, that’s not nice of me. I do understand these things. You boys always, uh, yes, and it’s perfectly reasonable. After all, it’s your—well, ha!—
income!
I’m afraid I was very selfish not to have thought of that myself. Just one second. You wait here.”

Locke went to the bedroom. Joe followed. Locke opened the drawer of the table between the twin beds and removed a wallet. Then he took a bill from the wallet and replaced it in the drawer.

Then he saw Joe in the doorway. “Oh!” His hand flew like an overweight pigeon to his throat. He took a step backward in fright, bumping the table and knocking the lamp off balance. But he caught it in time.

“You frightened me,” he said. “I thought you were waiting in
there!”
There was an edge of annoyance in his voice.

“Nah,” Joe said. “I thought I’d just save you a step.”

He looked at the ten-dollar bill in Locke’s hand. “Is that for me?”

“Yes,” Lock said. “And I consider that you’ve more than earned it, just for putting up with an objectionable old gentleman all evening. So don’t even thank me.”

“Towny,” Joe said, “I’m afraid I’m gonna have to have more’n that
ten.”

“Oh? Oh really?” Locke’s voice was suddenly very thin, scarcely audible. His face was frozen in an expression that had little connection with the activity behind it. “Isn’t that a pity! Because I’m afraid I don’t have any more cash. I mean money.”

“I got to have fifty dollars.”

“Fifty!”

“This was a pretty long evening here, Towny, wouldn’t y’say? Even if you did decide to be a good boy?”

“But Joe, I—I simply don’t have it.”

“Yeah, well I don’t have no time neither, no time to set here all night while you tickle yourself to death looking. I got family, goddammit, an’ I got to get ‘em down to Florida quick. Now you reach in there and peel me off fifty dollars.”

Locke backed against the drawer.

“I understand, Joe, honestly I do. And I agree with everything you—” Joe came toward him. Locke gasped. “What’re you going to do?”

“Get out o’ my way.”

“You’re wasting your time. There’s nothing—”

Joe hit the man across the face with the back of his hand. Locke fell against the bed, not from the force of the blow, but from his overreaction to it. He quickly pushed himself upright and fell to his knees, throwing his arms around the night table, blocking the drawer with his body. He lowered his head, watching Joe out of the corner of his eye, and began to whimper like a woman or a child. Joe grabbed a handful of the white hair and turned the man’s face toward him. “Let go, let go that table.”

“No, no! I won’t! There’s no money here! There’s just private things!”

Joe hit the man across the face again, this time with his open palm.

The man continued to whimper and moan, but he didn’t move. Joe struck him again, this time harder and with a closed fist.

Locke cried out, and then he said, “I deserved that! Oh yes, I did, I deserved it!” His moaning continued again, but in a much higher key than before. Still he clung to the night table with both arms.

“I brought this upon myself!” he said. “You should hit me again! My thoughts, all evening my thoughts have been disgusting, hideous. Is this blood on my face?” He tasted the blood that was coming from his nose. “I’m bleeding! Oh, thank God, I’m bleeding! I deserve to bleed!”

“Turn loose that fucking table.” Joe had begun to sense that he was coping with something more than a man protecting his money. There was in Locke’s refusal to let go a kind of glee, almost fervor. His eyes were shining, his mouth and teeth were clenched in a stupid, smiling position, giving him the look of a fat, crazy fish. His face had deepened in color, and blood was running from his nose, into his mouth, over his teeth, down his chin.

Joe picked up the table lamp and held it high in the air. “You want to give me fifty dollars? Or you want your head broke open?”

The expression on Locke’s face made his preference perfectly clear: He looked with longing at the lamp, and his body remained pressed against the table.

Realizing what was being required of him, Joe began to feel sick. It began to seem that the positions were reversed, as if Locke held the weapon and Joe was being threatened by it; that if further violence were to take place, it would clearly be against himself, but upon the body of Locke.

“Please let go that table, mister,” he said.

Locke shook his head.

Joe swung the lamp down toward Locke’s face, bringing it to a halt several inches short of contact. Locke cried out, but this time with pleasure. His body went limp and he loosened his grip on the table. Joe did not at first understand what had taken place. He hadn’t struck the man, and yet Locke had given up the battle.

Then Joe looked down and saw the evidence of the gratification Locke had received. Locke was still in the throes of some emotion, but Joe couldn’t tell whether he was laughing or crying. But he did know in just what way he had been used by the red-faced, white-haired, blue-eyed man from Chicago, so that when he removed the wallet from the little drawer in the night table and found in it one hundred and twenty-one dollars, he put the entire amount in his pocket.

Joe left the room. Locke said,
“Thank you, thank you.”

Passing through the sitting room, Joe suddenly realized what he had seen as he left the bedroom: Locke, sitting on the floor, his head against the bed, his mouth wide open in a weird, blood-covered smile, and next to him, on the night table, a telephone.

Joe hurried back into the bedroom and found Locke scrambling to his knees, reaching for the receiver.

Joe called to him:
“Hey!”

Locke cried out in surprise. He spun around and faced Joe. They looked at each other as if each of them realized that the worst part of the evening still lay ahead of them.

Locke said, “I wasn’t going to call anybody! Honestly

I wasn’t.”

“Keep still.”

“Honestly! I was just—”

“Shut up.”

Joe tried to think. All he could see was Locke and the telephone, the telephone and Locke, and he knew that one or the other of them had to be placed out of commission long enough for him to leave the building. So he went over to the night table and pulled at the telephone until the metal box broke free of the wall. But still the connection had not been severed. He had to set the telephone down while he pulled the cord loose from the little metal box. Then he picked up the phone again and listened. It was silent.

Locke had taken this opportunity to run into the sitting room, and he had almost reached the hallway when Joe, still carrying the disengaged telephone, arrived in the room to stop him. He shouted,
“Hey!”
and threw the instrument at Locke’s head. Locke turned around just in time for the instrument to connect with his mouth, dislodging his dentures. He began to gag and spit, and then a set of teeth emerged from his mouth and he fell to his knees in pursuit of it.

Joe still held in his mind the image of the man and the telephone, the telephone and the man, and in his confusion he still felt it necessary to subdue the two of them. He therefore pushed Locke to the floor, sat astride his chest, and shoved the telephone’s receiver into the toothless mouth.

There was blood on Joe’s hands and, foolishly, instinctively, he wiped them on his jacket. Then he got to his feet and looked around the room. Locke’s blood seemed to have spread in impossible ways. It was all over the man himself, it was on the carpet and on the woodwork. It was as if something terrible—call it evil and picture it a dragon—had raced about the room leaving its imprint everywhere.