James Cain - The Cocktail Waitress

“I’ll wash them,” said Ethel, reaching for them.

“No, I’ll do it, of course.”

“I’ll wash them!” she snapped, and took them from me. “And how about his medicine, for the pain …?”

“All gone,” I said. “Used up in the first two weeks.”

“But Ron said the doctor gave you a month’s worth!”

“It might have been a month’s worth,” I said, “if Ron hadn’t continually aggravated things by pulling Tad around by the arm, or slapping him when he got mad.”

“And you didn’t buy more?”

“With what money?”

By that time Liz was camped down by the sofa, having a look at the broken leg. “I don’t get this,” she announced. “It’s not any bust-off, Joan-it’s a pull-off, has to be, as all the pins are here, and nothing’s really been broken. Only time I’ve seen the like was in the bar when a drunk got to rolling around one night and gave a yank to a table leg.”

“Oh, those things happen,” I said.

Ethel said nothing, as of course Liz was so close to the true explanation, involving Ethel’s brother, my husband, that it wasn’t at all funny. I said: “I’ll see if the coffee’s coming on for ready,” and went back to the kitchen. I made the coffee, put it in the pot, put sugar lumps in a bowl, and opened the last tin of condensed milk. But when I got back to the living room with it, Ethel was ready to go, and did, shaking hands with me, and bowing coldly to Liz. Liz was still in front of the sofa, sitting tailor-fashion on the floor, and when Ethel had gone, said: “I’ll bring my do-it-yourself kit over and fix this thing-it’ll be no trouble at all, just a glue job, with twenty-four hours in a clamp-I have the glue, I have the clamp, I have the book of instructions. The kit was a gift from my boyfriend, my regular boyfriend, that is, the one who comes on Sundays and pays my rent, kind of. At least most of the time. And if you think it funny he’d give me such a kit, so do I-but the real funny part is that he’d give me anything, so I’m thankful for small things.” She saw me about to say something and interrupted before I could. “… And if you think it funny that I have a regular boyfriend when I told you I sometimes go with other men, too, picked up in the bar, well-so do I. I don’t pretend to understand it. But I keep doing it, and I won’t tell you it’s just for the extra money.”

“What else is there?”

“Their asking, I guess,” she said. “They’re so eager sometimes. It takes the curse off gray hair. You know what I mean, Joanie? At a certain age, we need assurances.”

I set down the coffee things. “At any age, Liz.”

“I suppose so.”

She poured herself a cup, and I was glad to see her do it, since I hated for the milk to go to waste.

“Joanie, explain something to me, please.”

“If I can. What?”

“It’s about your sister-in-law.”

“She’s not too friendly, Liz. She blames me for what happened to her brother-my husband, Ron. And then there’s my son. She’s taking care of him now, supposedly to help me, but what she really would like is to keep him.”

Joan nodded as though I’d just confirmed something she’d been thinking. “She didn’t think I could see her, but I could, out of one side of my eye. And that bundle of soiled clothes, the ones you were going to wash that she grabbed out of your hand, she was holding them to her face, burying her nose in them, and smelling them, Joan, I’d swear that’s what she was doing-I can’t be mistaken about it. She was smelling your little boy’s clothes, not the clean ones, the dirty ones.”

“It doesn’t surprise me at all.”

“Well, what would make her do that?”

“She’s hipped on him, Liz. She always was, but even more since Ron’s death. I’m telling you, she’s trying to steal him off me.” I explained about Ethel’s surgery, the hysterectomy I suppose it was, and she sat thinking that over. Then: “Are you willing, Joan? You want to give the boy up? Is that how you want it to be?”

“I’m here to tell you it’s not.”

“Then you got a thing on your hands.”

“I know I have, but as of now I’m helpless to move in and block it.”

“Why’d you let her take him in the first place?”

“She forced it,” I said, “made it clear I could go along willingly or she’d call the state and have him taken away from me permanent, by showing them how we were living. Never mind that it was Ron that reduced us to it. She’d just show them we had no gas, no electric, no money in the bank, that I had no income and no prospect of earning any …”

“Well, she’d have been wrong about that.”

“That’s so,” I said, “but now that I’m working, it means I couldn’t take Tad back even if Liz were willing. Not while I’m out eight or nine hours a day, six days out of seven, and Tad still so young. He needs care and attention, and if I’m not around-I have to leave him with her, whether I like it or not.”

“She’s got it bad, Joanie.”

“Don’t I know it.”

Liz had a second cup while I finished my first, and when I’d washed up she said we should be getting started, “so you get there by four o’clock. Jake’s particular about his set-ups.”

“O.K., but there’s something I have to do first.”

What I had to do was look up Earl K. White III in the phone book. I did, and he was listed, at least his residence was, on one of the streets of College Heights Estates, the swank part of University Park, but no phone. I looked in the District book, and sure enough he was there, in boldface type, with “Investment Secs” after his name. What that meant I didn’t quite know, but I looked under that head in the yellow book, and lo and behold there was a big ad that went something like this:

Earl K White III

Investment Securities

Successor to Earl K. White, Jr.,

And Earl K. White -

Three Generations of Financial Stewardship

Since 1913

MEMBER, NEW YORK STOCK EXCHANGE

That seemed to cover everything. At last, I knew who Earl K. White III was. I rejoined Liz, telling her: “O.K., let’s not keep Jake waiting.”

Mr. White came in at five on the dot, and Mrs. Rossi, or Bianca, as she now told me to call her, brought him directly to my station, giving him the same table as he’d had the day before. He ordered tonic as before, and of course Jake had the bottle open and was pouring by the time I got to the bar. I took it to the table, served it, disposed of the bottle, and took my place by the men’s room, all in just a few seconds. But he beckoned me over, telling me: “If you tried, you could be more sociable, Joan.”

“I come when called,” I answered.

But we both laughed, and knew we’d been playing games. “I thought about you,” he remarked. “All during the night.”

“And perhaps I thought about you.”

“How long have you been widowed, Joan?”

“… Four days.”

“Four-what did you say?”

“Days-since late Saturday night. Sunday morning, really.”

He stared, and I thought I’d better tell him a bit more, at least enough to avoid making a mystery out of it, which I saw no need to do. I went on: “I’m the Joan Medford you probably read about in the papers, who put her husband out of the house, and then was told next day he’d driven off in a borrowed car and crashed it on a culvert — or culvert headwall, I guess it was.”

“Why-yes, I did read about it. I’m sorry.” And then, as he seemed to remember more: “The police figured in the item I read about it- facing them isn’t so good.”

“You could say that, Mr. White.”