Evan Hunter - Candyland

"Might be nice," he says.

"One, two?"

"Three, why not?" he says.

She comes back into the living room, hands him one of the glasses, and sits on the sofa beside him, pulling her legs up under her, making herself completely at home. The robe parts again. He glances at her shiny brown knees and thighs.

“Nice, huh?" she says.

"Yes."

Her knees? Her thighs? The music oozing from hidden speakers somewhere? The gin with the three olives floating in it? Or just being here in this room together at close to three in the morning? He sometimes feels that morning never comes. He sometimes feels he is trapped in a perpetual nighttime of long-legged, big-breasted, red-lipped girls incessantly beckoning, offering dark and secret candy. He would love to sit here beside this girl — this woman, she's forty, don't forget — and not be so completely cognizant of her legs, sit here sipping his drink without yearning for another stolen peek at her pussy, sit here just drinking peacefully with her and talking quietly to her without being constantly aware of her sexuality.

"Tell me about this guy you killed," he says.

"Nah," she says. "That was a long time ago."

"How old were you?"

"I don't want to talk about it."

"Why not?"

"Cause I'm not proud of it. I went to jail for it. It was just something had to be done."

"Why?"

"Why? Cause his older brother turned me out when I was just sixteen. Cause after his brother died…"

"Turned you out? What do you mean?"

"Put me on the street. To peddle my sweet little ass. Was the older brother who branded me with this," she says, and shows him her left wrist with the small blue scorpion on it, stinger tail arcing over its back. "Both of them belonged to this gang called The Scorpions, this was to show he owned me." She flicks her hand as if trying to shake the scorpion off her wrist, and then drops the hand into her lap. "His name was Roger, I cursed him day and night, he finally died of an overdose, I cheered when the son of a bitch turned blue. The one I stabbed was in, younger brother. He stepped right in, took full possession of me, put the red tattoo on my shoulder, you mine now, Sweet Buns, dig?"

She sips at her drink, nods, remembering.

"Beat me day and night, the son of a bitch," she says. "Winston was his name. He was maybe this high," she says, and extends the left hand with the scorpion on the wrist to indicate a person perhaps five-feet, four-inches tall. "Used a rubber hose on me so it wouldn't leave no bruises, didn't wish to mar my gorgeous face or bod. One morning, come back off the street, he asts me Whut you got for me, cunt? How much you bringin home? I tell him Winston, this is what I got for you, this is whut I'm bringin home, and I pull a sling blade out my purse and rip his fuckin throat wide open."

"Just like that, huh?"

"Well, not juss like that, this wasn't no crime of passion, Ben. I kill him cause the surn'bitch turned me onto scag. I been shootin heroin since I was seventeen, Ben. I'm a dope fiend is whut I am. You wanna run out of here now?”

“What happened? After you stabbed him?"

"He turned all red on me, the way his brother turned all blue 2 years earlier. An' I got sent to jail, end of story, cheers," she says, and clinks her glass against his.

"So now you're back to hooking," he says.

"It would appear so," she says drily, and takes a long swallow of gin. "Which is lucky for both of us, right? You get it? Well, I guess maybe you don't," she says. "The brothers used to call me Lucky. Short for Lokatia. Was them who turned out to be lucky, though, wun't it? On of them OD's, the other gets his throat slit, good riddance to bad rubbish. I hated that name Lucky," she says, almost spitting it out. "You like Lokatia?"

"Yes, I do," he says. "It's a good name."

"African," she says, nodding. "It means Gorgeous Gazelle."

"Is that true?"

"No, I made it up just now," she says, and actually giggles. She shoves herself off the couch, long legs flashing again, and goes to where she left the bottle of Gordon's on top of the cabinet and pours herself a fresh drink, and then carries the bottle to him, and arches one eyebrow in inquiry, and when he holds out his glass to her, splashes more gin in over the ice cubes. "Trade was slow tonight," she says. "I'm usually out till three, four in the morning. But I was already on my way home when I spied you in the gutter."

Here it comes, he thinks. Uh, I hate to ask this, Ben, but if we're going to get this show on the road, that'll be a hundred in advance. I know, it's tawdry, as a colleague of mine once remarked, but I do have to—

"You know what I think it was?" she says.

"I'm sorry?"

"The Kennedy boy getting killed. That's why nobody's out on the street tonight. They home watching TV."

"Maybe so. How old were you?" he asks.

"What do you mean?"

"When the President got killed."

"Oh. Three?" she says. "Four? I must've been four."

"Do you remember any of it?"

"Just John John saluting the coffin."

"That was something."

"Otherwise, I was too young."

"I was eight," he says. "That's all I remember about my eighth birthday. The President getting killed."

"Your eighth birthday, huh?"

"Yeah. You know, it's funny. All day long, I've had the feeling something happened that day."

"Something did happen. The President got killed."

"Oh, I know."

"So what do you mean, something happened?"

"Something else. "

"That's enough to have happened."

"I suppose so," he says, and shrugs.

She makes herself more comfortable on the couch, adjusting her legs, exposing again the long brown flank of her thigh, but only for an instant. Feigning discovery of her indiscretion — or perhaps really discovering that he can see Catalina on a clear day — she pulls a little-girl face and immediately tosses the flap of the robe over her leg again.

"You remember lots of things from when you was young?" she asks.

"Some."

"When's the first time you got laid?" she asks him.

It occurs to him that their only lingua franca is sex. This is not surprising. Sex is Lokatia's occupation and sex is his preoccupation, so why shouldn't they understand each other? The dialogue here is free and easy; there is no need for either a translator or an interpreter. He can just imagine sitting in the living room of the house he himself designed in Topanga Canyon, enjoying a nightcap with Grace and discussing this very same subject matter, oh sure. But here he is in a living room decorated like a Turkish whore house, with beaded curtains and mirrored throw pillows and a frayed Persian rug, and Sinatra singing while a big black and gray tabby and a white cockatoo sit listening like a baggy-pantsed comic and his straight man, and a very black. virtually naked hooker snuggles into his shoulder and encourage him to talk about — gee, guess what, kiddies? — the first time he got laid.

"I don't remember," he says.

"Everybody remembers the first time."

"When was yours?" he asks.

"When I was eleven," she says.

He looks at her.

"True," she says, and crosses her heart with the index finger of her right hand "It was very romantic. He was a Spanish kid from a HunTwennieth and Park. We were in the same Special Reading class at school. Him cause English was a second language, me cause I was dyslectic. We did it on a blanket we spread near the pigeon coops. it was a starry night in July, we could hear the pigeons cooing all the while, it was so romantic, really. It was summertime in Harlem. Everything was summertime."

"What was his name?"

"Hector. Why?"

"I don't know."

"Hector Lopez."

"Have you seen him since?"

"Hector? I think he's in jail."

"I mean… after that night."