James Cain - The Cocktail Waitress

“O.K., but one more call and I’ll scream.”

“I’m doing this for you, let’s remember.” He shoved my hand aside and lifted the receiver.

I didn’t scream, but I began slapping at him again as he sat there at the telephone table, the way I’d slapped him that night at the Garden. He got up, put his arms around me, wrapped me up, and held me until I calmed down. “I’m sorry,” I said, still trembling. “-I have a temper, as perhaps you’ve found out.”

“Well, you’d better get it under control, Joan, at least where I’m concerned. It’s not my fault Jim skipped.”

That was enough to set me off again. “Not your fault? Not your fault?”

I then recited it at him, the whole book, beginning with the first night, what he did to me and what I did to him; then my signing the bond for his friend Mr. Lacey, and then the thanks I got, being taken to a so-called nightclub that was really a hot-sheets motel in flimsiest disguise-I really screamed it at him, until I was hoarse and could hardly talk. When I collapsed into a chair and started to cry, he took his handkerchief out, wiped my nose, and asked: “Are you done?”

“I guess so. Please, will you go home?”

“Not just yet I won’t. First off, Joan, on this litany you keep hurling at me. When a woman is really sore, when she hates a man for what he’s done, she doesn’t entertain his offers night after night, she tells him so and cuts him cold.”

“Not if he’s a long-standing customer and she’s a waitress who needs her job.”

“O.K.-maybe. But at least, the one night he makes no invitation, she doesn’t proffer one of her own, I think you’ll agree with that?”

I said nothing.

“So then we come to Jim Lacey, and why you signed his bail. Well why did you, Joan? Why?”

“Because you asked me to.”

“I didn’t at all; I never asked you to.”

“O.K., maybe it was so you’d know I wasn’t a pauper, so you would stop treating me like some kind of cocktail girl-”

“You are a cocktail girl!”

“O.K., I’m a cocktail girl, and to thank this poor waif for helping your friend, you take her to a whorehouse.”

“I had a reason for that too.”

“Explain it, please.”

“I had the impression that you liked me, that you might want more of my company than you could have just chatting at the Garden. But I wanted to take you somewhere special for it-somewhere where the lights would be dim and the music low, where people would be having a good time. A place where we could be with each other and not be bothered, but with a touch of excitement, too. You may not have cared for the Wigwam, but the fact is, it’s an exclusive club- they’ve hosted some of the most famous and influential people in this town, perhaps even a president or two.”

“That doesn’t mean a thing to me.”

“I thought at least it would be nicer than promoting an invite here, or suggesting you come back to my house. That felt too much like- well, like what Liz does, where it’s for money, not because two people want each other so badly they can’t stand it.”

“You think I wanted you that badly?”

“I know you did. You admitted you did.”

“In that moment! I lost my head for a moment. But I woke up quick enough, and when I did I ran out of that place practically naked, just to get away.”

“It was more than a moment. When I was unbuttoning your pants, who was it helping me? Who pulled your blouse off? And who was it unbuttoned my cuffs? Unless there was a third person in there with us that I didn’t notice, it was you, Joan.”

Step by step, he took me back over what I had done, from the day of Ron’s funeral on. “You want me to say it plain?”

“All right, all right, all right-I wanted you, I admit it. I’m human, and the way you touched me I couldn’t help it. I-”

“O.K., O.K., O.K., now we’re getting somewhere. So the question is why did you run? Why didn’t you hold still for what you wanted, what I wanted, what we both wanted? I’ll put it in three little words: Earl, K, White. I’ll add a fourth and fifth if you like-”

“… The Third.”

“The Third. A worn-out, washed-out scarecrow, old enough to be your father and then some, ugly to look at and I bet worse still to touch-but, he’s got money.”

He stopped then and waited for me to say something. And finally I did. “Don’t knock money. I need it. You need it. Show me the person who doesn’t need it.”

“I wouldn’t sleep with an old man to get it.”

“Yes you would. If he’d have you. If he knew the governor and could get you that contract for the goddam nettles. You know you would.”

A half hour must have gone by, with him at the window, just standing there, looking out. The phone didn’t ring once.

Then suddenly he said: “I was going to suggest we get some dinner, but as I feel now, I don’t want to. If you need me, let me know. I’m in the book.”

And he left.

Around seven, I went over to the Royal Arms, had something to eat, then drove back and went to bed. I spent an utterly miserable night, still worried sick over the situation, still up in the air about Lacey, and in pieces at what Tom and I had said to each other. I woke at three and then again at six, at which point there was no sense trying to fall asleep again, so I sat in the living room looking out at the street until the sun came up.

Tom had tried phoning everyone he could think of the day before, except for one person, leaving her out for an excellent reason-but as nothing had come of any of his calls, it was the only thread left to pull. I had myself some breakfast, put on a dark suit, combed my hair back and pinned it up, then pulled the White Pages from the cabinet and flipped through until I reached the Ls. I was afraid they might not be in the book, what with his being something of a public figure, but there they were. I copied out the address, got into my car, and just thirty minutes later was pulling up in front of their house, a modern split-level home with tile roof and towering shrubs framing the porch.

The door opened before I even shut off the ignition. The woman standing behind it was thickset and middle-aged, I would say perhaps fifty, with gray hair, and light blue eyes that sized me up as I approached. I said: “Good morning. Mrs. Lacey?”

“… Yes, I’m Pearl Lacey.”

“I’m Joan Medford, Mrs. Lacey. You husband and I have-”

I’d been about to say a friend in common, but she didn’t let me get that far. “Medford! My god. I never expected you to show up here. Well, you surely don’t have to tell me what you and my husband have-I can imagine well enough.”

“You can’t, as it’s not anything like-”

“I’ve heard it before, dear, and from ones that looked prettier than you. What happened, he’s not taking you with him? Is it your fragile constitution, you just can’t bear the tropical heat? Or tell me, did he cheat on us both …?”

I was taken by surprise, not so much by her anger, as I’d prepared myself for her drawing the same conclusion Deputy Harrison had, as by her recognizing my name. But her next remark explained it: “You poor thing-standing his bail and then nothing to show for it but the brush. And after all those evenings you two must have spent together when I thought he was working on his sewer projects. Well, I suppose in a way he was.”

“Mrs. Lacey, I’ll have you know there were no evenings together, or nights, or days. I only met your husband once, and the only thing that passed between us that time was a handshake.”

“There’s no need to lie anymore, dear, certainly not to protect him.”

“I’m not.” Something in my voice stopped her, made her look at me differently.