Andrew Vachss - Two Trains Running

“It’s only learning if it’s the truth, Tussy. If a lie gets passed from person to person, they’re not learning, they’re being tricked.”

“Did you get this way from the business you’re in?”

“What way?”

“Thinking so… black all the time. Like everything is crooked and rotten. Is that from being in real estate? I heard, from people who come in the diner, it can be a real cutthroat business, real estate.”

“No. I learned it… a long time ago. And not in any one place.”

“I… Oh, good Lord! Do you know what time it is?”

“It’s… almost one o’clock.”

“In the morning.”

“I didn’t realize.”

“Neither did I. My goodness.”

“I’m sorry if I-”

“Oh, you didn’t do anything. I just got… lost. In talking. And I don’t have to go to work tomorrow, anyway.”

“Right. No Mondays or Tuesdays. I was hoping…”

“What, Walker?”

“That you would let me see you again.”

“Tomorrow, you mean? Well,” she said, grinning in the darkness of the car’s interior, “later today, actually.”

“Yes. Anytime at-”

“Would you like to come over for lunch? In the daytime, it would be perfectly fine.”

“With your neighbors?”

“You think I’m silly, don’t you? I’m just not a… flashy person. My girlfriend-”

“-Gloria.”

“Oh, you really listen, don’t you?”

“I listen to you. Every word you say.”

“I guess. Anyway, to show you what a flop I am at being, well, not wild, exactly, but… one time, Gloria talked me into trying out at the Avalon.”

“What’s that?” Dett asked, images of strip joints stabbing his mind.

“It’s a dance hall. You know, one of those dime-a-dance places. It’s very classy, actually. The men had to wear ties. And they didn’t serve liquor. Gloria said it would be fun. Plus, we could make some money.”

“But you didn’t like it?”

“Well, I was a little afraid of it, at first. I mean, can you see me as a dance-hall girl? I’m way too short, and way too… plump.”

“No you’re not.”

“Oh, you have a lot of experience with dance halls?” she said.

“I was never even in one,” Dett told her, truthfully.

“I was just clowning around, Walker. I know you were being nice. I’m no good at taking compliments-I never know if someone’s just being polite.”

“I wasn’t. I mean-”

“Oh, stop it!” Tussy said, smacking him playfully on his right arm. “I understand. Anyway, one night in that place was enough for me. At first, I was afraid nobody would ask me to dance, and I’d just sit there, a little wallflower, until Gloria was ready to go home. But a man came over right away. And then another. I could have been on my feet all night.”

“What didn’t you like, then?”

“You know.”

“Being grabbed?”

“Yes. When I was in high school-I was only a freshman, so it was my first year-I used to love to dance. But this, it wasn’t dancing at all. The men couldn’t dance. Or, more likely, they wouldn’t dance. All they wanted to do was paw. Some were nicer about it than others, but… one man, he just reached down and grabbed my bottom! Right out on the floor.”

“That’s when you slugged him?”

“I wish I had! But I was too… shocked to do anything but pull away from him. I went right over and told Gloria we were leaving. And she didn’t argue.”

“I’ll bet she didn’t,” Dett said, admiringly.

1959 October 06 Tuesday 01:40

“I figure, whatever that man wants to know, might be something we want to know,” Silk said.

“You figured right, brother,” Rufus said.

“So-what do we know?” Kendall asked, a shade softer than hostile.

“My woman, Lola, she told me everything. But, the way they do it, there ain’t a single clue about the man who comes by for that kind of taste.”

“You came all the way over here, tell us that?”

“Ice up, K-man,” Darryl said, quietly. “Let the man say what he come to say.”

Silk nodded gratefully at Darryl, then said, “But here’s what we do know. The woman who brings the girls to that ‘blue room,’ she’s the one who sets the whole thing up. Puts the girls in that leather thing to hold them, tells them how to get ready, how to act… all that. Now, any madam might do that for her girls, especially for a high-paying regular. But somebody got to know when the trick is coming, ’cause it take time to get everything ready for him. Somebody got to let him in. So somebody got to know his car, see his face, hear his voice…”

“The madam,” Rufus said.

“That’s the one, Brother Omar,” Silk confirmed. “This Ruth girl, she knows. She knows all of it.”

1959 October 06 Tuesday 01:44

“I wish you could come in,” Tussy said, as Dett’s rented Buick turned off the main road. “For coffee, I mean,” she added, quickly.

“But it’s so late…”

“It’s not that,” she said. “I’m wide awake. I usually don’t even get home from work until past midnight.”

“Your neighbors-”

“Oh, they’re probably asleep. Who stays up this late if they’re not working? It’s just…”

“The car, right? Standing in front of your house.”

“How did you know?”

“People,” Dett said, shrugging.

“I don’t see where what I do has to be so much their business,” Tussy said, defiantly. “It would just be for-”

“I can drop you off,” Dett said. “Walk you to your door, and drive off. And then come back.”

“But what difference would that make? You’d still-”

“Nobody would see me coming,” Dett said, so softly Tussy had to lean toward him to be certain she heard. “The back of your house, there’s nothing there except a big ditch and some empty land.”

“That’s where they stopped working,” she said. “The builders, I mean. They cleared all the land behind us after the war. It was supposed to be the next Levittown. But it was a stupid idea.”

“Levittown?”

“No, silly. That was a great idea. I read where it sold out in just a few weeks. But that was because they built it where there was work. Maybe not right there in Levittown, but close enough to where people could commute.

“What was there like that around here? It was all factory work back then. Plants and mills. The men who worked in them already lived here. So, when everything dried up after the war, so did the big ‘development.’ I don’t know who owns that land now, but it can’t be worth anything.”

“You know a lot about land, huh?”

“Well, not like you. I mean, not like a real-estate person. But I love reading about houses. Little ones, not big mansions. I like looking at pictures of houses in faraway places, and thinking about the people who live in them.”

“Like Levittown?”

“Yes. But, you know, those little houses, they’re not like mine.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, they’re all alike. They look different from the outside-I think they have five or six different fronts-but inside, they’re all the exact same. It would be like living in one of those housing projects, only all on the first floor.”

“No, it wouldn’t,” Dett said, steering onto Tussy’s block.

“Why do you say that?” she asked.

“I’ve never been to Levittown. But it’s all individual homes, isn’t it? They may be all the same, but each little house, somebody owns it. It’s yours. You don’t have people on top of you, or below you. You have some… privacy.”

“I’ve never seen a project, except in magazines. They look like awful places to live.”

“They are.”

“Oh,” she said, as Dett pulled the car to the curb in front of her house.