The Neon Jungle (17 page)

“You wouldn’t tell Rowell about it?”

“I wouldn’t dare without getting his word first that he’d never use it except to move Lockter along, move him out of the neighborhood.”

“You’d take his word?”

“Yes.” Paul took a kitchen match off the mantel and struck it on the underside of the mantel and lit his cigarette. “Could that Dover boy take over the deliveries?”

“I think so. He seems very nice, Paul. And intelligent.”

“I’ll see Lockter tomorrow.”

“I told Jana to try to stay away from him. The other thing is very odd, Paul.” He listened intently as she told him the story of the altered receipt.

“But if Walter needs money, all he has to do is ask Gus.”

“If he needs it for something he can explain, don’t you mean?”

“What could he need it for that he couldn’t explain? I know how Walter lives, Bonny. He never goes out alone. He couldn’t get into gambling trouble or woman trouble because Doris wouldn’t give him the chance. Doris keeps an arm lock on him twenty-five hours a day.”

“She’s insecure, Paul. She’s just one of those people who need reassurance so badly that they go around guaranteeing, by the way they act, that they’ll never get it. And that makes them nastier. She makes his life hell.”

“Which,” he said slowly, “is probably the reason for taking the money. When he has enough…”

“Of course!” Bonny said. “I can hardly blame the guy. But it will be terrible for Gus. All the luck has gone, Paul. All the luck has gone out of that house. And it’s still running away like water, the little bit that’s left.”

“Even if Gus should find out, he wouldn’t go to the law. You know, he realizes somebody has been tapping the till. He told me. He thought it was Teena. I guess he didn’t make any real effort to check because he was brooding about Henry.”

“What will you do?”

“Tell you to talk to Walter.”

“Me! No, Paul.”

“Yes, you. You understand Doris better than he does, I think. Do you think there’s any way to handle her? Any way he could make his life more endurable?”

“I don’t know. She’ll be vicious and making trouble, and yet when you show interest in her, she’ll suddenly melt for a few moments. If she weren’t so pregnant, I know what I’d do. I mean, if I were a man. If I were Walter I’d shake her until her teeth rattled. I’d cuff her until she was too dazed to cry, and then I’d make love to her and comfort her, and let her know that the next time she turned mean, the very same thing would happen. She doesn’t respect him. And I think force is something she would respect. Walter is too gentle and meek. Almost frightened of her. It wouldn’t astonish me much, Paul, if treatment like that might turn her into a sweet and adoring wife. There’s something very nice under all her waspishness. But it couldn’t be done halfway. That would just make her worse. But of course, with Doris so pregnant, it can’t be done. She uses that like a weapon, anyway. She wears her baby like an insult to Walter. And he takes it.”

“Talk to Walter, Bonny.”

“It may not help.”

“What
will
help?”

She thought for a moment, smiled reluctantly. “Nothing else, I guess.” She stood up. “I should be getting back.”

“Not the way you came. I’ll drive you.”

He knotted his tie quickly and put on a jacket. Outside they got into the car. The motor whispered and caught and settled into a sputtering roar. He drove down the alley and out onto the dark street.

He parked by the curb in front of the Varaki house. There was a light in a second-floor window, and a fainter one in one of the small windows on the third floor under the eaves.

She put her hand on the door latch and said, “Thank you, Paul.”

He put his hand on her other wrist and turned off the car lights. They sat in the darkness. She could not see his face.

“No, Paul,” she whispered.

“No what? What are you saying no to?”

“I don’t know. Everything, I guess. No to all the things that can’t work out. No to whatever you think I am.”

He pulled at her, slowly and strongly, and she held herself away from him, and then let out all her breath and came into his arms, feeling a remote surprise at the way, in the cramped little car, they seemed to fit together without awkwardness. His lips were hard and firm against hers, and for a few moments she was conscious of being there in a discouraged little car, kissing a tall stranger, conscious of his worn cuff and slightly frayed collar, a sober and talkative man they called the Preacher. And then her cool watchfulness was melted away in the long kiss, a kiss that somehow destroyed her awareness of him as a lean stranger, and made him forever Paul, a close strength and warmth and need.

Then her face was in the hollow of his throat, and his lips made some inarticulate sound against her hair, and she could hear the slow drum of his heart.

She pushed herself away and her laugh was abrupt and nervous. “You make me feel like a damn girl.”

“I know.”

“How would you know?”

“For once, Bonny, I don’t want to think or explain.”

She laughed again, a small quick sound like something breaking. “Let’s let explanations wait. Because once we explain it to ourselves, Paul, that’s going to be the end of it.”

“Is it?”

“Of course.” She pressed her palms flat and hard against his cheeks, kissed him lightly on the mouth. He caught her wrists, kissed the palm of each hand, and let her go. She got out of the car and turned and looked in at the darkness where he was for a moment, then slammed the car door hard and went without a word into the house.

She readied herself for bed with great haste, wanting to hold to her mood of glowing excitement. Yet once in darkness she felt it slipping away as inside her the carefully compartmented acid ate through its walls.

What are you, Bonita, to revert to schoolgirl reactions? What are you pretending to be? A rather pathetic impersonation, my dear. For you can give Paul a rather professional imitation of love, complete with the automatic sighs, the contrived kissings, a tremulousness as fake as a four-dollar violin. Like the imitation of love you gave Henry. Maybe the vividness of the raw memories had become a bit blurred in the past few days because you’re coming alive again. But they will not be blurred in Paul’s mind. He will always be aware of all the fingerprints on you. He’s vulnerable because he’s lonely, and you’re an attractive wench, and so he’s giving emotional overtones to a basic need while you aid and abet.

The spreading acid ate away the dream, and she was taut in her bed. As dawn came inevitably closer, she knew that this was the longest night of her life, longer even than that first night she had spent in jail, in the female tank, in the sick air and the cat sounds.

She heard the sounds in the old house. She heard Jimmy and the old man get up and heard the clatter of the truck as they drove out, leaving the house again in silence. And then she heard a softer sound, a stealthy movement, the creak of a board. She thought what it could be and came quickly out of bed, snatching her dark robe and putting it on. The doorknob was cold in her hand as she turned it slowly. It opened without a sound. She looked toward the head of the stairs, saw the cat creep of movement, saw in the faint light of the stairway window that Vern Lockter was going soft and easy down the stairs. When he was no longer in sight, she went quietly to the stairs. The stair carpet was bristly under her bare feet. She looked cautiously down the darker length of the second-floor hall just in time to see Vern disappear through the door of the bedroom of Gus and Jana. He eased through and she heard a very muted click of the latch on the door. She stood then, waiting for an outcry that she sensed would never come. The old house was silent. There was no flaw in the night stillness. Far off a train made a hooting, a metallic frog in the pond of the night. She shivered then, hearing in the hooting an ancient note of derision. The night was a still violence. She turned and went back up the stairs and down the hallway to her room. She shut the door and threw her robe aside and got into bed and felt a childish need to hide under the bedclothes.

VERN LOCKTER drove the Thursday-morning delivery route with ragged impatience. He raced the lights, cut corners, squealed his wheels in the driveways. He thumped the orders on the kitchen tables, trotted back to the truck. He knew that his haste was not making the time go faster, yet he felt as though he had to hurry. It seemed the only way to ease the tension within him. He kept remembering how it had been, the sense of strength and power he had felt when he had walked through the sleeping house.

He remembered how he had stood beside the bed, barely hearing her whisper, “Oh no, oh no, ohno ohno ohno ohno…” slurring the words into meaningless incantation. An incantation that had stopped as he had slid in beside her.

And he remembered the half-heard dismal sound of her crying as he had left her.

Doris sat in the dim morning cave of the living room. The life within her kicked lustily and she put the needle into the pincushion and held the palm of her hand against herself and felt the soft thumping against her hand. You could hate it, and hate the thought of the clumsiness and hate the aching back, and remember the awkward and customary discomfort of the moment of conception and hate that too. But then, unaware, would come these moments of a strange warm excitement. Moments, almost, of pride. My son, my daughter, my child.

The joyous moment faded and she snatched up the needle again. What will you have, my child? A thoughtless, meek, stupid, ambitionless father. A stinking inheritance of a weary little market. Oh, God, I wanted so much and now I’m trapped, forever and ever and ever. How did it happen?

Jimmy Dover studied the vegetable rack for a moment. Funny how quick you could start liking something. Pale crisp green of lettuce, dark feathery green of the carrot tops. Royal gleaming eggplant purple. Tomato red.

He liked going out in the truck with the old man in the predawn, when the lights were bright on the stuff that had come in from the farms. They kidded around out there, and they all knew the old man. He kidded too, but in a kind of heavy way, as if he didn’t feel like it. He was shrewd, all right, about knowing what to buy, knowing what was best. You could watch him carefully and pick up a lot of tips. And he’d always answer questions. Not like some guys who want to make a dark secret out of anything they know. It was all pretty tricky. There were fifty things to learn about tomatoes alone, and he’d always thought tomatoes were tomatoes, and so what? There sure was a lot of work to the grocery business, but at the same time there was a lot of fun to it, too. You could see the old man liked it, just from the way he handled stuff. On this night-school pitch it might be a good idea to take courses that would help you in the grocery business. Purchasing methods and calories and bookkeeping and stuff like that. Maybe advertising, too. And that diet stuff. They all seem kind of gloomy around here, though. That Lockter won’t give you the time of day. Only time he says anything is when he wants something done right now. Same with that Walter. Rick is a sort of a dumb guy. Bonny is nice, though. And Jana is sort of nice. When the kid gets back, that Teena, maybe she’ll cheer them up. They’re probably all worried about her. She could be cute once she gets fixed up. It looks like I’m getting through this week O.K. But I wish these people could be more friendly, sort of.

Rick, at the chopping block, with his back to the store, made a quick slit in a T-bone steak that he suspected was going to be tough, fingered the small glossy cylinder out of the pocket of his apron, and thumbed it into the slit. That was the next to the last one of the week. It had become a meaningless game. You do anything enough times and it seems like you stop thinking about it. He wrapped the steak, tied it, snapped off the string, weighed it, and crayoned the price on the outside. He carried it out into the storeroom and gave it to Walter.

He walked solidly back and found two customers waiting. He gave them his big smile and said, “Got some nice pork chops today, ladies.”

Teena, in pajamas, canvas slippers, and gray bathrobe, walked down the gravel path slowly with the thin nurse. The sun felt hot. This was the first walk. It felt like coming out of the movies in the middle of the afternoon. Like daylight was surprising. Her legs felt trembly, and the sun hurt her eyes.

“Too fast, honey?” the nurse asked.

“No. This is O.K.”

“We can go all the way down to those benches. Then we’ll sit a little while and go back.”

“O.K.”

“Then after we go back you’ll finish all your lunch tray today.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“We got to put some meat on you, honey. You look like a picked chicken.”

“I don’t care how I look.”

“Then after lunch I’ll fix you up nice in the solarium where you’ll have people to talk to.”

“I don’t want to talk to anybody.”

“Here we are, honey. We can sit in the sun for a little while. Doesn’t it feel good, though?”

Gus stood heavily and watched the colorless little man tenderly open his worn case of gleaming brass weights. There were four scales to check in the store. The same little man came in and checked them each time, always with an air of somber dedication. Gus, while watching him, was thinking of Jana, and of her oddness on this morning when he had arisen at four to go with the new boy to the farmers’ market. Usually her sleep when he left was that of any healthy young animal. On this morning she had clung to him and asked him not to go. For a time he had tried to be patient with her nonsense, but then in irritation he had pulled his arm from her grasp. Women had strange moods. Jana had always seemed so quiet and patient. And her sweetness of body had brought back, for a time, the energies of younger years. But now there was too much worry. Henry. Teena. Too many cold things to think about.

The Judge sat like a cross child in his hot bath, soaping his body. It had been an unpleasant failure. Guillermo had just used his imagination this time. True, she had been young enough, but filled with a callous, un-co-operative indifference. Damn it, the girl had acted
bored.
That did not flatter a man. And then there was the business of the envelope. A girl of the proper instincts would have accepted it discreetly and tucked it away. But this young person had ripped it open, fanned the three bills, shrugged, and put the bills in her purse. She had made him feel gross and old and ridiculous.