Herbert Lieberman - City of the Dead

Returning with Konig’s fresh glass of wine, the waiter scowls down at the girl. Unable to forgive her for cadging food, he mutters and goes off.

When she’s finished the cutlet and salad, she starts with the bread and butter.

“Want something to drink?” Konig growls. “Milk? Soda?”

“Nope.” The girl hiccoughs, wipes her butter-smeared mouth with a napkin, then pulls a half-smoked cigarette from the cuff of her jeans. She leans forward to the table candle, lighting the cigarette, her face glowing suddenly in the guttering flame.

“Sorry I don’t have one for you.” She inhales the smoke deeply.

“That’s all right. I don’t use them.”

She sits back now in her seat. Content. Hugely satisfied, she gazes around the room now at the young, effusively chatty couples, all involved in themselves. Then suddenly she’s looking at him again, first sideways, then directly, head-on, the eyes once more impudent and suggestive. No longer a trace there of that momentary desperation and pleading. She gazes boldly at him, but it is all rather bogus. Postures and attitudes learned from cheap television serials and trashy films.

“Aren’t you gonna eat?”

“No. I’m not hungry.”

“Sorry about all that fuss.” She glances at the waiter, still smoldering at her from a corner of the room. “He’s such a bastard anyway. Pardon the language.”

“That’s all right. Forget it.”

“Wanna buy some postcards?”

“No. Thank you.”

She pushes a stack of cards toward him. “Look at ’em.”

“No, I said I—”

“Go on—just look at ’em.”

“Oh, God.” He sighs and snatches up the cards, flicking idly through them. Views of the George Washington Bridge. Statue of Liberty. Empire State Building. Shea Stadium. Fulton Fish Market. Then suddenly a glossy, postcard-sized photograph of a girl naked on a bed, legs up and parted. Then another, same girl, on her stomach, buttocks up, thrust assertively outward.

Konig glances at the girl now smiling wickedly opposite him, two columns of smoke wafting from her nostrils. “If you like those you can have them for twenty dollars.”

“Oh?” Konig feels her leg brush his under the table. “I’m afraid not.” He flicks to views of the meat market and Times Square by night.

“If that’s too much I could maybe let you have it a little cheaper—like eighteen?”

“No, I really don’t think so.”

“Fifteen?”

“It’s not the price.” Konig laughs, feeling a little foolish. “I’m a little past that.”

“Oh, come on now, Daddy,” she taunts him softly. “You’ll do just fine. Leave it to me. Make you happy. Make you feel real good.”

In spite of efforts to be stern, Konig grows giddy. The thought of his weary old bones in bed with that child, feigning passion, struggling to be amorous, is laughable. “Betchya good.” The girl laughs. “Betchya real good.” Konig smiles in spite of himself. “You must be all of fifteen.”

“I’m nineteen.”

“Oh, come on.”

“I am. I’m nineteen.”

“You’re nineteen like I’m twenty-two. Where you from anyway? Texas? I’ll bet Texas, with that drawl.”

“Not Texas,” the girl sulks. “Close though.”

“Oklahoma,” Konig says, seeing something register in her eyes. “It is Oklahoma, isn’t it?”

“That’s my business.”

“I recognize that accent. Spent enough time in the Army down there. What’s the big secret anyway?”

“No big secret. I just don’t care to say.” The girl scowls, cross-armed and adamant. “Come on, Daddy. Let you have those cards for fifteen. Special to you. Three ways. Straight, French, and Greek.”

“That’s all I need,” Konig groans. “I’d probably expire.”

“Don’t talk that way. You’re not as old as all that.”

“I’m older. I could be your grandfather.”

“Bet you’re hell in bed. I can tell just by lookin’ at you. I like older men anyway. Used to know an old buck back in Tulsa—” Her voice breaks off abruptly as she sees triumph glow in Konig’s eye. “Aren’t you smart though. Stop lookin’ so smug. Ain’t been in Tulsa for years.”

“What’s your name?”

“Heather.”

“Heather?”

“Heather Harwell.”

Konig gives her a long, dubious gaze.

“Now what’s wrong with that?” the girl protests. Suddenly a huge belly laugh from Konig. Several people turn and stare at them. The peppery little Neapolitan glowers in their direction.

“Heather Harwell.” He chuckles more quietly. “Boy, you really can pick ’em.”

“What’s so funny?”

“Sounds like the name of a comic strip. The Adventures of Heather Harwell. Girl Postcard Hawker, Infant Hooker.”

“Shhh.” The girl stares anxiously around.

“What’s your real name?”

The girl sits stony and tight-lipped.

“Your family in Tulsa?”

“Boy, you ask a lot of questions.”

“Heather Harwell’s not your name. No one from Tulsa is named Heather Harwell. They all have names like Minnie Turl.”

“It’s my professional name.”

“Your professional name?” Konig hoots. “You mean the name you hustle under?”

“Shhh.” She tries to silence him again. “For pity sake, will you quit screaming that out? It’s the name I model under. I’m a model.”

“For dirty postcards?” Konig laughs cruelly.

Defiance blazes in her eyes. “For fashion magazines. I’ve been in Vogue and Harper’s —”

“Oh, come on.”

“Well, I have. And maybe someday I’ll be in television commercials. I’ve got a friend says he knows people who can help me.”

“I’ll bet he does. But just for now it’s dirty pictures.”

“That’s not my regular line,” the girl snaps. “And besides, they’re not dirty. Dirtiness is—”

“—in the eye of the beholder,” Konig taunts her cruelly. “I see.”

“Come on, Poppy. Let’s not fuss. Come home with Heather.”

“Your folks know anything about what you do up here?” Konig sees something like fear register in the girl’s eyes. “I bet they don’t even know where you are.”

“Come on, Daddy-o. Heather’s pad is right around the corner. Twelve fifty—special to you.”

“Answer me.” Konig suddenly bears down hard. “Your family doesn’t know you’re here.”

She starts to get up, but he pushes her roughly back down in her seat. “You’re a runaway, aren’t you?”

“How come you ask so many questions?”

“How long have you been on the lam?”

“You some kind of cop?”

“I’m no cop.” Konig feels something like rage mounting in him. “When’s the last time you spoke with your parents?”-“

The girl flushes violently. “Leave me alone.”

Just then the maître d’, scowling and indignant, steams up to them and flings the check on the table.

“I didn’t ask for that yet,” Konig snaps, and the little Neapolitan retreats before the Chief’s glowering visage. Konig turns back to the girl. “Answer me.”.

“Answer you what?” All at once she is coy and provocative, fingering the fabric of his sleeve. “I’ve never heard such a silly lot of questions. First of all, I’m nineteen years of age. What the law calls a consenting adult. I’m not a runaway. In order to be a runaway, you gotta have something to run away from. Either a home or a family. I most distinctly have neither, having lost all of my family in an air crash.”

“I’m sorry,” Konig mumbles, momentarily buffaloed by the sweet, almost childish candor of the girl. Then his trained, somewhat jaded eye suddenly detects the treacherous little actress-liar at work there behind the furrowed brow, the long, lugubrious face of mock tragedy.