Evan Hunter - Candyland

"It's on the left," he hears her say. "Next door the laundromat."

The driver pulls the cab over to the curb. The woman takes Ben's wallet from her tote, opens the bill compartment.

"They cleaned you out," she says, and hands the wallet to him.

Reaching into the tote again, she takes another wallet from it, opens it familiarly, hands the driver a ten-dollar bill, waits for change, and then tip him. Ben is on the curb side, he slides out first, puts his wallet into the right hand pocket of his trousers. He knows they haven't cleaned him out completely because he heard them talking about travelers cheque being no good to them, but he doesn't want to look now, not with the rain coming down so heavily. He'd run for her building if he knew which one it was, but there are doors on either side of the laundromat There are still people in there doing their laundry. He wonders what time it is. He stands swaying on the sidewalk in the rain, fearful he will lose his balance and tumble into the gutter again. The taxi pulls away from the curb, tires spreading a canopy of water. The woman axon to him, takes him by the elbow, and leads him to the doorway on the left of the laundromat.

He closes his eyes and leans against the doorjamb as she fumbles for keys inside the tote. "Don't nod out on me now," she says, and he hears the click of a key being inserted in the keyway, and then feels her arm around his waist again. He opens his eyes. She has pushed open the door and is helping him into a vestibule the size of the one where he was beaten. There is an inner door here as well, etched glass with a running diagonally across its face. She inserts another key and then — her arm still around him — helps him inside and toward a narrow flight of steps leading upward at a precarious angle. He remembers his mad tumble down the steps at the XS Salon.

"You okay?" she says.

“Mm.”

"Stay with it."

“Okay.”

His lip is swollen. Something has crusted under his nose, either blood or snot or both. He feels completely disoriented. He knows he should not be here, but he also knows he cannot allow himself to enter a hospital. He can barely see through his left eye. His entire face throbs with pain. He knows that if she loosens her grip around his waist, he will fall and possibly hurt himself even further. But he can't go to a hospital where they will ask him what his name is, ask him where he lives, ask if there is anyone they should contact, anyplace he should be, the truth is he does not know where he should be. And here is as good a place as any. He suddenly wants to cry.

"Careful," she says.

Side by side, as if joined at the hip, they move down the third floor corridor to a door at the far end. Bracing him against her, she inserts a key, shoves open the door, and half-carries, half-drags him into the apartment. She eases him onto a sofa, and moves away from him to turn on a light. He winces against the sudden glare.

She is wearing a blond wig, cut in bangs on her forehead, falling straight and loose to her shoulders. She is wearing a little red monkey fur jacket over the purple leather skirt and a shiny purple blouse. She has thick lips and a flat nose, dark brown eyes lidded with purple 'mascara that glitters. She is a woman in her thirties, he supposes. He closes his eyes again. She helps him out of the soaking wet raincoat. He feels her easing his sodden loafers and wet socks off his feet. Something lands on the sofa beside him. He pulls back his hand, opens his eyes wide, turns his head, almost screams aloud when he sees a pair of Yellow eyes staring back at him.

"Just my cat," she says.

Her cat is a huge tabby, all black and gray, with eyes the size of quarters, sniffing around him, whiskers bristling. He is afraid the cat will bite him. Or claw him. Or whatever it is cats do to strangers. But he is purring loudly. Or she. Or it. Whatever it is, Ben wishes he had never allowed this blond black woman to take him here, wherever here is. What is he doing here, anyway, sharing a sofa with a cat the size of a young lion? He shifts his weight, trying to move away from the creature? But the cat nuzzles his arm and his hip, and the blond black woman says, "He's very friendly, ain't you, honey?"

He gives the cat a jitty look intended to state unequivocally that he does not choose to be friends with a cat, not this cat or any other cat in the world.

She is unloosening his belt now.

"Lift," she says.

He raises his hips, and she pulls his pants down over his ass and lower them past his knees and ankles, and tosses them onto an easy chair alongside the couch. The cat is still nuzzling him. He doesn't wish to appear rude because the cat's mistress did, after all, pull him out of the gutter and is now treating him with more gentleness than he's known all night long, but he truly does not like cats, nor dogs, for that matter, OK — Jesus Christ what is that in the corner! He sits up with a start because the first thing that registers is a sense of spectral whiteness, and then he hears a croaking sound like that of a witch, and then sees a distinct flutter of whiteness, and he realizes all at once that there's yet anther living creature in this apartment even before she says, "Just my bird."

He does not like birds, either.

"All you need to start your own ho house," she says, "is a little pussy and a cockatoo.”

She grins broadly.

“Get it?" she says. She has very white teeth.

"I get it," he says. His lips still hurt when he tries to talk.

She yanks off his undershorts and tosses them onto the trousers. He is too aware of this sudden menagerie everywhere around him to feel any embarrassment, even though the woman must think his cock looks shriveled and wet and limp, which it is. He suddenly hurts all over again, especially in the groin because he possibly aggravated something when he jumped up a moment ago. He is now fearful the cat will jump onto his naked lap in a further display of good fellowship. Or perhaps the white bird will fly into his face. Or worse, mistake his little boy's pee-pee which it has suddenly become — for a white worm instead of a grown man's cock. Or maybe there's also a pimp on the premises because all he needs now is for yet another angry black man to throw him down the stairs again. He almost asks her whether she has an angry pimp who calls non-African-American clients "Whitey" and throws them down the stairs. He does not want to meet any more macho muscle men tonight. He does not want yet another gallant musketeer imagining a princess in a baby doll nightgown was insulted by hi, had language when all he wanted to do was explain that he had some time coming. But she is busy loosening his tie and unbuttoning his shirt, and he doesn't wish to seem ungrateful for her hospitality and concern, any tart in a storm, he thinks. Her fingers move swiftly and expertly. She has undoubtedly unbuttoned many a man's shirt in her career as Hooker With a Heart of Gold. He still has one eye on the cat and another on the bird in the corner, who, he now realizes, is in fact a cockatoo. She has taken off the tie and shirt now, and tossed them onto the rest of his clothes so that they form a forlorn little heap on the easy chair.

“You smell like a toilet bowl," she says.

"Thanks," he says, and winces because his mouth and his left both hurt when he talks.

"Let's get you cleaned up," she says, and offers her hand to him. He takes it, allows her to pull him off the couch and onto his feet to the accompaniment of a sudden chorus of screeches from the white bird on its perch. The cat leaps off the couch, begins trailing Ben as if he's a long-lost, newly discovered master, following him over what Ben now sees is a worn Persian rug, toward an open door beyond which is a small bathroom. There is a smelly red plastic litter box just inside the door, and then a standing sink with a mirror over it, and then an old fashioned claw-footed bathtub.