Корнелл Вулрич - A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

The one that had spoken to him squatted down until she was no higher than his knee. Her gaudy petticoat settled itself around her in a splashy circle like red ink soaking through the macadamized road. She produced a pack of cards and began to tell them out before her on the ground in a double row.

She said: “I read your fute.”

“Read my foot?” he asked in astonishment. These foreigners could get so embarrassing.

“Fooch,” she said.

“Oh, future, you mean.”

She squinted up at him. “You got money?” she wanted to know.

He became cautious at once. “Uh-huh.”

She had all the cards face downward on the ground and began to turn them over here and there as though at random. A number of twos and threes made their appearance.

“You gonna not be very rich,” she said.

“Aw,” he sighed, “and I wanted a yacht with a little brass gun on the deck of it.”

Two queens came up, one of hearts and one of diamonds. “Two lady,” said the gypsy woman, “gonna loave you.”

“Both at one time?” he gasped. “What’ll I do?”

She shrugged her shoulders and laughed.

In college he was called Jonesy. Everybody knew Jonesy. One of those sporty snap brim hats always pushed back on his head, always going somewhere, always just back from somewhere else, always a wee wisp of something on the breath, always chewing cloves. Everybody liked Jonesy. The night of the prom a girl named Jemima Marsh, Jimmie for short, was his room guest. They had danced themselves almost to death. Toward three in the morning they went down to the gymnasium for a breathless leave-taking. It was pitch dark, and not exactly deserted either. They found a bench with the aid of a match.

“Jonesy,” said Jemima with a mouth full of kisses, “I think you’re awfully mean.”

“Wuff, wuff,” said Jonesy.

“Only don’t muss my hair,” said Jemima. “It took me all afternoon to get it brilliantined.”

“Oh, if that’s the way you feel about it—” Jonesy turned his back to her and stuck his hands in his pockets and sulked exquisitely. “Conceited,” he remarked over his shoulder.

“Thanks!” said Jemima angrily.

There was quite a silence between them. Jonesy tapped his foot and Jemima tapped hers and they both sighed and they both went ahead tapping and they were both very angry at each other.

All at once Jonesy felt a smooth fairylike little hand, smelling of dew and rosewater, travel down one side of his face and up the other in a scary, tentative sort of way. It was her way of telling him she was sorry. He pulled her down to him and kissed her with great enthusiasm and very little technique. Somehow she seemed a little different from what she had been before. It seemed she had lost weight, and he couldn’t quite recall the perfume she had on. There was a different aura about her. The kissing went on just the same, however. He heard someone say “Ooh, the nerve of you!” right close beside her ear, and then he got a terrible slap over one eye.

Suddenly Jemima’s voice rang out. “Wha’d she do, slap you? Here, don’t you slap him — he’s with me.”

“Then he shouldn’t grab hold of me like that,” said the other one.

“Well, go ’way from us,” answered Jemima.

There was a sudden loud splash directly in front of them, so that they were both bedewed.

“Oh, Lord, she’s in the pool!” cried Jonesy excitedly.

“I know,” answered Jemima calmly. “I pushed her. What she really needs is to cool off a little.”

He started throwing off his coat and the sleeves got caught. “Take it easy,” advised Jemima. “She probably can swim a lot better than you can.”

“Just the same,” said a muffled voice from below, “I didn’t come down here to swim. You’ll pay for my dress.”

“See my lawyers,” said Jemima disdainfully.

The girl in the pool began to cry and the low ceiling for the place made it echo and reecho so that she really managed to make some noise what with splashing around and sobbing out loud and saying things to them. Jonesy got down on his hands and knees and reached out for her.

“No,” she said. “You’ll say you saved me and you didn’t even jump in after me.”

“What are you doing out there?”

“I’m treading water.”

“Well, why don’t you come on in?”

“Well, where are the lights?” she wanted to know.

“They were disconnected on purpose at the beginning of the evening,” he admitted.

He caught her by the wrists and drew her slowly out like a captured mermaid. She was slim and supple. She kneeled on the edge of the pool and wrung out her dress behind her; then she got to her feet.

“Very fine thing you just did,” she remarked in the general direction of the red dot made by Jemima’s cigarette. “What do you think you are — a traffic cop?”

“You’re all wet, lovey,” was the only answer Jemima deigned to give.

“Better take my coat,” offered Jonesy.

She did take it but not the way he wanted her to. She took it and flung it into the water, where it did a Sir Walter Raleigh.

“There!” she said. “Now I feel better.”

“But I didn’t do anything to you,” he pleaded.

“I don’t care,” she said. “You didn’t jump in after me, did you? You’re a total loss.”

“You’re nothing to rave about yourself,” observed Jemima.

“Who was with you?” Jonesy asked.

“Nobody was with me. I was trying to get away from somebody. That’s how I came in here.”

Someone lit a cigarette lighter. Then a moment later the lights went on all over the place. The gymnasium was full of people, of the indoor sport variety. A young couple standing under a dry shower fixture jumped guiltily. In the center of everything the water, cause of all the disturbance, was heaving rebelliously under a surface unbroken as oil. It was acid green, and deep down in it swam the quicksilver reflection of the arc lights overhead. The coat had gone to the bottom but a white carnation had disengaged itself and remained afloat like a lotus on the infinite placidity of some Nirvana.

They saw each other for the first time. Beads of water clung to her lashes and her dress was like a huge cabbage. Her short hair was down over her eyes in a jet black bang that gave the look of a Japanese billiken. The pink on her cheeks had run a little bit. In fact her whole make-up had slid down toward her throat; it was lengthened out of all proportion. She looked funny. She looked cute. She looked adorable. She seemed to be about seventeen, but in all probability she was twenty. Her name was Sharlee. “Sharlee,” someone said, “what happened to you!” That’s how he knew her name was Sharlee. It was honey to the palate to say that name.

Sharlee sighed. “Keep away from me, McLaughlin, for the rest of the evening. My nerves are all woozy.” She shrugged her wet shoulders in horror and antipathy that seemed exaggerated, but most likely she was sincere.

Gossip was leaping up on all sides like wildfire. She wouldn’t have done it if she hadn’t been tight in the first place. My dear, certainly she had been tight, what then? She had said this and she had said that earlier in the evening. Dearie, she only did it because she thought her form showed up better under a wet frock. Kitty, kitty, nice kitty.

At length Sharlee covered her ears with her hands, walked backward and forward a couple of times, and cried out: “I’ll jump in it a second time if you don’t all clear out of here.”

The music started in to play again upstairs. They slowly faced around, two or three at a time, and turned toward the door. Their pocket flasks and Yale haircuts, their arched backs and panniers and flounces, their calves and jeweled heels, their perfumes and their whisperings, went up the stairs that youths in bathrobes and in running trunks were accustomed to use.