Max Collins - Quarry's deal

It was mid-morning and the front doors of the Candle Lite Playhouse had been open. I walked up the short flight of stairs onto the stage, where day before yesterday I had filled a plate with food, and my footsteps clumped hollowly on the floor of the stage.

Ruthy, on her hands and knees painting, turned and looked up at me and said, “Hi! Where’s Lucille?”

“The apartment,” I said. “She kicked me out. She had a bunch of cleaning to do.”

(Which made it convenient for both of us, as I could go do the snooping I needed to, and Lu could continue her surveillance of Tree, without either of us getting in the other’s way. And since I knew Frank Tree would not be leaving his apartment before nightfall and the Barn, and would in fact be spending the day in front of his television with a revolver in his lap-with time out only for bodily functions and perhaps the preparation and consumption of a TV dinner-I had few worries about what might happen while I was out.)

Ruthy was, like her lumpy companion, wearing jeans and a workshirt. Ruthy’s jeans, however, were tourniquet tight, and her workshirt knotted into a halter, leaving a succulent tummy, complete with navel, exposed, the buttons at the top open and giving me a skyscraper look down her impressive cleavage. It was a view she was aware of, and even exploited. Whether she was just a cock-tease in general, or had something in mind for me specifically, was, like my teased cock, up in the air.

She gave me a sly look that I had seen before (in her performance Sunday) and said, “Sure she isn’t cheating on you? It wouldn’t take twenty minutes to clean that place of hers stem to stern.”

I squatted down to talk with her and look her in the eye and not the gland.

“Lu’s like anybody else,” I said. “She’s just got to have a little privacy sometimes, and she’s got a right to it. It’s her apartment. I’m just a guest.”

“Well, if I had a guest at home like you, I wouldn’t send you out in the cold.”

“It’s not so cold. In fact the sun’s out for a change. Kind of a nice day out there. Too bad you’re stuck in here working.”

“Oh I don’t mind. It’s all a part of theater. It’s just as exciting to me to be backstage as center-stage.”

The lumpish girl, standing, stroking with a paint brush, rolled her eyes, without Ruthy seeing.

“Did you tell Lucille you were gonna stop by and see me?”

“No,” I said.

“I’m gonna be busy all day, Jack.”

“I figured you might be. I’ll tell you why I stopped by. I noticed in your program, Sunday, that there’s something called Candle Lite Productions, that does advertising work, locally. TV and radio spots, that sort of thing.”

“That’s right. This place used to be a church that did its own radio shows here. There’s a studio set-up on the second floor, where we do the recording. Why?”

“I thought maybe I could pick up some extra work. I thought your production company might be able to use a salesman, part-time, maybe?”

“Well, Jack, it’s not my production company, but I sure can talk to the boss lady for you. She’s here, now, if you want to see if you can see her.”

“That’d be great.”

“I’ll go get her for you. Give me about fifteen minutes. She’s probably just finishing her breakfast about now, and might not be dressed yet.”

“She lives here?”

“Sure. So do I. There’s four apartments here. She uses one, her ex-husband who manages the place has another, and me and another permanent member of the troupe use the other two. When I say I live in the theater, I ain’t kidding, booby. Be back in a flash. A fifteen-minute flash, that is.”

She stood up. Her jeans were so tight they were sucked up into her pubis. It was a wonder she could walk in the damn things, but she did, and then I was alone with her stocky coworker, who put down her paint brush and said, “Buy you a cup of coffee, friend?”

I took her up on it, and soon we were sitting at a ringside table, drinking instant coffee. Her name was Martha and she had pretty features buried in a pale round face and smoked two Camels in rapid succession as we talked.

“You want some free advice?” she asked.

“Price is right,” I shrugged.

“Stay away from that little cunt.”

I acted surprised by her language, then pretended to recover and said, “Well, I doubt it’s little. I get the idea she gives it plenty of exercise.”

“That she does. But you get my drift. I’m talking figurative cunts, not literal. And that’s a figurative cunt if I ever met one.”

“I’ve met a few myself. What makes her qualify?”

“You know that innocent, dumb, sexy blonde act of hers? Well, it is just an act. She comes on that way to the guys in the company, except for those she’s had in the sack a few times who she gives the cold shoulder once she’s bored and who come to hate her guts as much as the women, some of whom she comes on to too, though to most she’s shit personified from the start. The pits, my friend.”

“How so?”

“Aloof. Conceited ass, first class. The cunt thinks she’s Glenda Jackson and she isn’t even Mamie Van Doren. The pissy part is she gets all the good roles, or most of ’em, anyway. She really must’ve fucked her way into somebody important’s heart.”

“Isn’t she striking the set, like anybody else in the company?”

“That’s just what I mean. This is the first time since she came here she ever lowered herself to that. I don’t know how she rates, playing all those other dinner theaters all over, I mean that just isn’t done. You’re either part of a rep company or you aren’t. You got to be a name to be on the circuit. Unless you fucked somebody important, I guess. Look, I probably shouldn’t be telling you all this, but I heard you guys talking, I mean I was standing right there

… and if you’re shacked up with somebody already, don’t throw it away for her. Look the other way when she comes on to you. Ignore the cunt. She just isn’t worth it. Whatever you got now, it’s better. Believe me.”

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it. Besides,” she said, pulling some smoke up in her head and letting it out her nose, “she isn’t even all that hot in bed.”

I thought about that a while, and went back to the bar where the hot water was and made myself a fresh cup of coffee. Martha came along. She was starting on her third Camel.

“I hate these things,” she said, referring to the cigarette. “If I had a left nut, I’d give it for one goddamn half-smoked roach.”

“I hear it’s hard to score in this towm.”

Which I really had heard, having spent an hour on the East Side trying to score myself, before coming here this morning. The closest I came was a black guy in a khaki outfit in front of a place called Soulful Record Shop who said maybe next week. Things were as lean as Tree had said. The local anti-drugs campaign seemed pretty effective, from my superficial investigation, at least.

“Hard to score?” she said. “No harder than shaking oleo out of a dairy farmer. Haven’t you seen those hokey posters in the storefront windows? And heard the bullshit on the tube? And on the radio, and in the papers… D.O.P.E.? If ever an organization was aptly named, that’s it. You wanna know the ironic part?”

“What’s that?”

“Des Moines is supposed to be a sort of retirement village for Mafia types. Yeah. You can’t turn around in Des Moines without bumping into an Italian restaurant, did you notice? Even the food served here at the Candle Lite is catered by one of them.”

“I don’t see your point.”

“It’s just kind of funny. These Mafia types move out of Chicago and places like that and come to nice, quiet Des Moines to retire, to watch their grandkids grow up in zero crime rate. Only they can’t escape what they put in motion, you know? I wonder how many of these butts shouting law and order, how many of these D.O.P.E. s are Mafia types who started the problem themselves?”