William Gresham - Nightmare Alley

Zeena sighed gustily. “Take your time, kid. Maybe you just ain’t met the right fella. And Stan here ought to be ashamed of himself. Why, me and Pete was married when I was seventeen. Pete wasn’t much older’n Stan. How old are you, Stan?”

“Twenty-one,” Stan said, keeping his voice low.

Approaching a curve, Zeena braced herself. Stan could feel the muscles of her thigh tighten as she worked the wheel. “Them was the days. Pete was working a crystal act in vaudeville. God, he was handsome. In a soup and fish he looked about two feet taller than in his street clothes. He wore a little black beard and a turban. I was working in the hotel when he checked in and I was that green I asked him when I brought in the towels if he’d tell my fortune. I’d never had my fortune told. He looked in my hand and told me something very exciting was going to happen to me involving a tall, dark man. I got the giggles. It was only because he was so good-looking. I wasn’t bashful around men. Never was. I couldn’t have kept that hotel job a minute if I had been. But the best I’d been hoping for was to hook some gambler or race-track man-hoping he would help me get on the stage.”

Suddenly Molly spoke. “My dad was a race-track man. He knew a lot about horses. He didn’t die broke.”

“Well, now,” Zeena said, taking her eyes from the point of ruby light ahead long enough to send Molly a warm look in the darkness. “What d’you know. Oh, the gamblers was the great sheiks in my day. Any gal who could knock herself off a gambling man was doing something. We started when we were fourteen or fifteen. Lordy, that was fifteen years ago! Seems like yesterday some ways and like a million years in others. But the gamblers were the heartbreakers. Say, honey-I’ll bet your dad was handsome, eh? Girls generally take after their fathers.”

“You bet he was handsome. Daddy was the best-looking man I ever saw. I always said I’d never get married until I found a man as good-looking as Daddy-and as sweet. He was grand.”

“Umm. Tall, dark, and handsome. Guess that lets you out, Stan. I don’t mean about being tall. You’re tall enough. But Molly likes ’em dark.”

“I could get some hair dye,” Stan said.

“Nope. Nope, never do. That might fool the public, Goldy Locks, but it would never fool a wife. Less’n you wanted to dye all over.” She threw back her head and laughed. Stan found himself laughing too, and even Molly joined in.

“Nope,” Zeena went on, “Pete was a real brunette all over; and, boy, could he love. We got married second season I traveled with him. He had me doing the back-of-the-house steal with the envelopes at first, in an usherette’s uniform. Then we worked out a two-person act. He worked the stage, with his crystal, and I worked the audience. We used a word code at first and he used to ring in that part of the act as a stall while another girl was copying out the questions backstage. I’d go out and have people give me articles and Pete would look into his crystal and describe them. When we started we only used about ten different things and it was simple, but half the time I would get mixed up and then Pete would do some tall ad-libbing. But I learned. You should of seen our act when we were working the Keith time. By God, we could practically send a telegram word by word, and nobody could tumble, it was that natural, what we said.”

“Why didn’t you stay in vaudeville?” Stan asked intently. Suddenly he knew he had said the wrong thing; but there was no way to recall it, so he kept quiet.

Zeena paid close attention to her driving for a moment and then she rallied. “Pete’s nerve began to go back on him.” She turned and looked back into the rear of the van at the curled, sleeping figure, covered with a raincoat. Then she went on, dropping her voice. “He began muffing the code and he always needed a few shots before going on. Booze and mentalism don’t mix. But we do as well in the carny, figuring up the net at the end of the year. And we don’t have to cut no dash-living in swell hotels and all that. Horoscopes are easy to pitch and cost you about twenty-five a thousand. And we can take it easy in the winter. Pete don’t drink much then. We got a shack down in Florida and he likes it down there. I do a little tea-leaf reading and one winter I worked a mitt camp in Miami. Palmistry always goes good in a town like Miami.”

“I like Miami,” Molly said softly. “Dad and I used to go there for the races at Hialeah and Tropical Park. It’s a grand place.”

“Any place is grand, long as you got the old do-re-mi in the grouch bag,” Zeena said. “Say, this must be it. They’re turning. I can tell you I ain’t going to sleep in the truck tonight. Little Zeena’s going to get her a room with a bathtub if they got any in this town. What say, kid?”

“Anything suits me,” Molly said. “I’d love to have a hot bath.”

Stan had a vision of what Molly would look like in the bathtub. Her body would be milk-white and long-limbed there in the water and a black triangle of shadow and her breasts with rosy tips. He would stand looking down at her and then bend over and she would reach soapy arms up but she would have to be someone else and he would have to be someone else, he thought savagely, because he had never managed to do it yet and always something held him back or the girl seemed to freeze up or suddenly he didn’t want her any more once it was within reach and besides there was never the time or the place was wrong and besides it took a lot of dough and a car and all kinds of stuff and then they would expect you to marry them right away and they would probably get a kid the first thing…

“Here we are, chillun,” Zeena said.

The rain had slackened to a drizzle. In the lights of headlamps the roughnecks were busy tearing canvas from the trucks. Stan threw his slicker over his shoulders, went around to open the rear doors of the truck. He crawled in and gently shook Pete by the ankle. “Pete, wake up. We’re here. We’ve got to put up.”

“Oh, lemme sleep five minutes more.”

“Come on, Pete. Zeena says to give us a hand putting up.”

He suddenly threw off the raincoat which covered him and sat up shivering. “Just a minute, kid. Be right with you.” He crawled stiffly from the truck and stood shaking, tall and stooped, in the cool night air. From one pocket he drew a bottle, offering it to Stan, who shook his head. Pete took a pull, then another, and corked the bottle. Then he drew the cork out, finished it, and heaved it into the night. “Dead soldier.”

The floodlights were up and the carny boss had laid out the midway with his marking stakes. Stan shouldered planks that fitted together to make Zeena’s stage and drew one bundle of them from the van.

The top of the Ten-in-One was going up. Stan gave a hand on the hoist, while watery dawn showed over the trees and in houses on the edge of the fair grounds lights began to snap on in bedrooms, then in kitchens.

In the growing lavender of daybreak the carny took shape. Booths sprang up, the cookhouse sent the perfume of coffee along the dripping air. Stan paused, his shirt stuck to him with sweat, a comfortable glow in the muscles of his arms and back. And his old man had wanted him to go into real estate!

Inside the Ten-in-One tent Stan and Pete set up the stage for the mental act. They got the curtains hung, moved the bridge table and a chair under the stage, and stowed away the cartons of horoscopes.

Zeena returned. In the watery gold light of morning lines showed around her eyes, but she held herself as straight as a tent pole. “Got me a whole damn bridal suite-two rooms and bawth. C’mon over, both of you, and have a good soak.”

Pete needed a shave, and his gaunt, angular face seemed stretched tighter over his bones. “I’d like to, sugar. Only I got to do a few little chores first in town. I’ll see you later on.”