Evan Hunter - Candyland

Cindy puts on her black peignoir. Like a butterfly, she flits toward the door, opens it, and is gone without a word. Fatima pulls on the peonypatterned wrapper, picks up her shoes and stockings. "Get dressed, Michael," she says, "Somebody'll come up to take you down." Barefooted, she pads to the door, reaches for the knob with her free hand, turns to him. For a moment, she seems about to say something more. Instead, she nods wearily, opens the door, and then closes it softly behind her.

He listens to her bare footfalls going down the hall. He looks at his watch. It is ten minutes past two. Was it really an hour? He can't believe it was really an hour. And even if it was, couldn't they have given him a few extra minutes? For six hundred bucks? Psychiatrists get less than that, for Christ's sake! All he'd needed was a few extra minutes. Was that a lot of time to ask? Angrily, he begins dressing.

There is another knock on the door. Soft this time. Discreet. A gentle rapping.

"Come in," he says, but the door is already opening. He's never seen the girt who stands there, tentatively peering in at him. She was not one of the "nice selection" presented to him when he arrived. Is she part of a new shift? Or had she been with a customer? She looks Hispanic, wearing a green silk wrapper belted at the waist, high-heeled shoes, of course, curly black hair trimmed close to her head, large brown eyes, pouty mouth painted red. He is still sitting on the bed, putting on his socks and loafers.

"I'm supposed to take you down," she says. No accent. Maybe she isn't Hispanic. Or maybe she was born here. Maybe she's from Brooklyn, like Fatima, who looks like she's from Morocco.

"In a minute," he says.

She waits impatiently in the doorway, leaning against the doorjamb, hand on her hip. He slips into the other loafer, rises, says, "Okay," and follows her out. As they head down the stairs, he says, "I didn't see you before."

"I was busy," she says.

"I have a raincoat," he says.

She turns to look at him. She appears angry but he figures she's only puzzled.

"Downstairs," he says. "Cindy took my raincoat to hang up."

"Okay, we'll get it."

He follows behind her, watching the movement of her ass under the green silk.

"What's your name?" he asks her.

She turns to look at him again.

"Blanca," she says. "Why?"

"What are you doing now, Blanca?" he asks.

"What do you mean?"

"Are you busy now?"

She looks him over, hands on her ample hips.

"What'd you have in mind?"

Appraising him. Eyes gliding down to the front of his trousers, coming up to meet his again.

"What I have in mind is a secret room with a narrow bed and a little blue light," he says.

"All that, huh?" she says, and smiles.

"All that."

"I don't know about the little blue light," she says. "You got a hundred bucks for me?"

"I've got time left on my hour."

"Time, I see," she says, and nods. "I didn't know we gave chits for time here."

"Check it with Cindy and Fatima. They'll tell you."

"They're with clients right now. Also, it's not the girls who keep time," Blanca says. "It's the manager. He just sends one of us around to knock on doors."

"So let me talk to the manager," he says.

"I don't know if he's available right now. We got kind of busy all at once." She looks him over again. "Whyn't you just slip me an ace, I'll find a bed someplace, take care of you real quick."

"Let me talk to the manager first, okay?"

"Whatever, I'll see if he's around," she says. "What kind of coat did you say?"

"A raincoat. Tell him I've got time coming."

"He'll want to hear that, all right. Wait here," she says, and uses a key to open the door with the hanging letter B on it. There is the glow of the red light as the door opens. Heidi flits by in her sheer white baby doll nightgown just as the door closes again. He waits in the hallway, eager to talk to the manager, eager to straighten this out. He has a seven hundred-dollar investment here already, and even a small portion of that should buy the twenty minutes or so he needs with Blanca.

The door opens.

"You want to come inside a minute?" she says. "I don't know which one is yours."

He steps inside, and is suddenly awash in red light and the cloying scent of incense. Only Heidi in her white baby doll nightgown is in the room now, lying in deep uffish thought on the velvet thrift-shop sofa earlier occupied by fat Irish Alice in her Wizard of Oz slippers — though she too seems to be otherwise engaged just now, We got kind of busy all at once. Blanca leads him to a closet where there are three almost identical raincoats hanging on a pipe rod. He would be hard pressed himself to tell which one is his, were it not for a small stain on the right sleeve, which he spots at once. He has been telling Grace about that stain for months now. Grace does not like taking things to the dry cleaners. Grace does not like doing anything in this fucking world but take three baths a day and polish her fingernails and toenails. That is what Grace likes to do.

"This one's mine," he says, and takes the coat off its wire hanger.

"You still here?" Heidi says, and grins at him, the gold tooth in her mouth flashing.

"I'm waiting to talk to the manager," he says.

"I'll go get him," Blanca says. "We got a room with a little blue light, Heidi?"

"You want a little blue light?" Heidi asks him.

"How about both of you and a little blue light?" he says. "I've got plenty of time coming."

"He thinks he has time coming," Blanca says.

"No kidding?" Heidi says, and grins as if she's just heard something very comical. "You really think so, Michael?"

"That's what he told me," Blanca says, and goes out of the room, presumably to search for the manager.

He looks over at Heidi, who is now lying on the couch. White baby doll nightgown. Long blond hair. No underpants. Shaved close below, He says nothing for several moments, just keeps looking at her. She smiles at him again, the gold tooth flashing.

"What time do you quit here?" he asks at last.

"Around three-thirty, four o'clock," she says. "Why?"

"I was thinking after we get this time business straightened out…"

"The time business, right."

"After you and me and Blanca find that room with the little blue light…"

"Oh, sure, the blue light."

"You might want to come back to the hotel with me."

"Gee, a hotel," she says, and rolls her eyes in mock wonder.

"It's not far from here, Fifty-sixth and Sixth," he says. "What do you think?"

"I think it's not allowed, is what I think. But lees talk about that later, okay?" she says and raises her eyebrows to indicate someone is standing behind him.

"Sir?" a voice Says, and he turns to see a very large black man in blue jeans and a white tank top shirt standing near the telephone just inside the entrance door. "You wished to see me, sir?"

"Are you the manager?"

"I am. Is there some kind of problem, sir?"

"No problem at all," Ben says. "Whoever I spoke to on the telephone. "

"Yes, sir?"

"… promised complete satisfaction. Well, I just now…”

"So what's the problem, sir?"

"I just now paid Cindy and Fatima a hundred dollars for the basic massage, plus an additional six hundred for…”

"Tell me what's bothering you, sir."

"What's bothering me is I think I have some time coming," Ben says. "To honor the basic contract."

"Which contract is that, sir?"

“Complete satisfaction," he says.

"From what I understand, sir, the girls spent a full hour with you…"

"That's debatable. In any case, our understanding…"

“Maybe next time you shouldn't drink so much."

"What?" Ben says.

"They told me you'd been drinking."