Джеймс Кейн - The Enchanted Isle

“Mandy, it’s none of my business — tell me shut my big mouth and I shut it. But that don’t sound good to me; it don’t sound good at all.”

“How do you mean it don’t sound good?”

“Well? Suppose he’s not home. What then?”

“I can wait, can’t I? And call again?”

“Suppose he’s out of town?”

“...I hadn’t thought of that.”

“Suppose he married after the bust-up? The one he had with your mother? Suppose his wife answers?”

“...I can ask to speak to him, can’t I?”

“Suppose she asks who’s calling?”

“Well? Can’t I say?”

“And she says, ‘Oh my, I didn’t realize! Oh my, will you hold, Miss Vernick? Oh my, he speaks of you often! Oh my, he’ll be so excited!’ In the pig’s right eye she will.”

“You mean she wouldn’t like it?”

“Well, would you?”

“...OK, what am I going to do?”

“Hold everything, let me think.”

So he thought, and then: “One thing you should do, Mandy, is give it the old switcheroo, so ’stead of you leading to him, he’ll be leading to you. I mean, forget that pitch, that you call him and then he’ll ask you there — to his house, or wherever it is that he lives. Fix it that he comes to you — it’ll make all the difference, all the difference in the world. Meaning you must have a place to stay, a place you can ask him to, so he comes to see you.”

“How do you mean, a place?”

“Well, like an apartment.”

“I see, I see.”

“Then you invite him, like a lady does.”

“OK. But I can’t get a place tonight.”

“It’s what’s been bothering me, Mandy.”

“I’ll have to go to a motel.”

“That’s what’s been bothering me. You can’t.”

“Why can’t I?”

“They won’t take you in, that’s why. A young girl? Alone? Wants a single and bath? For what purpose, Mandy? For all they know, you could be using that room for business of a very peculiar kind.”

“Oh.”

“There’s plenty of that going on.”

“Well, what am I going to do?”

“I’ve been figuring on it, and I’m your friend, no? And what’s a friend for? We could go to the motel together.”

“...You mean, as Mr. and Mrs.?”

“Well, who’s going to know the difference?”

“I’d have to think about that.”

Then I told him, “OK.”

“I already said, you’re swell.”

“Rick, what name are we going to use?”

“Well, there’s a Baby Ruth sign — why not John P. Ruth and wife?”

“Better make it Richard P. Ruth — I might call you Rick by mistake, tip them off without meaning to.”

“Richard P. Ruth is good. Mrs. Ruth, hiya?”

“I’m fine, Mr. Ruth — how’s your own self?”

We both laughed and squeezed hands, and then I said, “Rick, there’s a motel — a little one, maybe not so expensive as the others. And we’re already in Baltimore. I’ve been here before and can tell by the brick houses with white doorsteps.”

“That motel was put there for us. OK.”

He got my bag and coat down, and at the next stop, which was in the same block as the motel, we got off.

At the motel the room was small and beat-up, but at lease it had twin beds, a bathroom with clean towels in it, and a bureau with big-enough drawers. But he hardly seemed to see it or notice what it was like, because all during the time I was putting my things away, and he was putting his things away — his razor, toothbrush, and comb, which seemed to be all he had — he was crabbing and crabbing and crabbing about what happened down at the desk. There, soon as he’d signed the card and asked for a double with bath, the woman said, “Second floor front. That’ll be eight dollars, please.” I was kind of surprised, as there was my luggage beside me, my zipper bag that I had, but paid with a ten-dollar bill, and when she gave me my change and key, I started upstairs. Rick followed along with the bag, but when we got to the room he burst out, “How does she get that way? Making us pay in advance? We look like bums or something?” I said it was more of the same, what he had mentioned before: “We’re kids and no one believes us, that we’d pay for our room or anything. Always, we get the short end of the stick.”

For me that covered it, but he went on and on, taking the one chair that we had, while I sat on one of the beds, and he kept going on, even while we ate dinner, which we did around six o’clock, at a coffee pot up the street, an all-night joint that the woman directed us to. We both had the roast beef sandwich and buttermilk, and pie a la mode for dessert. And on the eight dollars, I would like to have given it a rest, but he kept on about it — so even the counterman threw me a wink — about the dirty tricks being played on him by everyone, especially by his father. He’d go into a long, mixed-up story that didn’t make any sense, like about the tires that had been hid in the family garage, then found there by the police, and then begin asking questions that didn’t have any answers: “Could I know that bunch would steal those tires, then stash them in our garage? Would he believe me, that I didn’t know they were there? Why would he pay for that loot? To save me, as he said? From having to go to Patuxent? Or to make me look like a bum?” Then, when I’d kind of lost track, he’d switch off to another mixed-up thing, about slinging sodas the previous summer. Then: “And that drugstore, reporting me on my cash to him, that I was short. Would he believe I wasn’t? Would he make them come up with their slips, so I could prove I was clean? Oh, no, he had to pay, for the same noble reason — to keep me from doing time.” And next, the bitterest squawk of all, was about some girl who lived next door to him and gave him $7.50 she had made selling Girl Scout cookies door-to-door to keep for her until Monday, so she wouldn’t spend it Saturday night. And: “When I gave it back to her, she said it was seven-teen-fifty, that I’d nicked her out of a tenspot that was part of the money. I hadn’t. I know what she gave me, don’t I? But would my father believe what I said? I give you one guess if he would. Once more he paid, but this time he said was the last — that’s when he put me out.” And that’s when I wanted to tell him, “Cool it, enough is enough.” But then I thought, “Wait a minute, Mandy! Who talked whose ear off today coming in on the bus? And who listened real nice? Took your side and did the best he knew how to help you out of your spot? He did, that’s who. So fix up your face and keep still. Maybe he does have a squawk. The lease you can do is listen.” So I did, saying, “Oh my, I can hardly believe it” and “That was really awful” and “Your father would do that to you?” All while we were finishing dinner I talked like that, and during the walk we took afterward. It seemed funny later, when I drove the getaway car after we held up the bank, that those places I had to know to do my part right I’d already noticed real close on the walk I took that night: the chopper-blade factory, a two-story concrete building with black marble framing the entrance and THE COLYPTE CORPORATION in brass letters over the door and a chopper blade over that; the branch bank of the Chesapeake Banking and Trust Company, a block and a half beyond the stoplight, on the cross-street in between; and the phone booth on the cross-street, a half block up from the bank, where it crossed my mind for a moment that I could call Mother and ease her mind, but what crossed my mind next was: I didn’t want to.

It was still not yet eight o’clock when we got back to the motel, though with daylight saving time it was broad daylight. But we bought two Evening Suns and after watching TV a few minutes went on up to the room. Then for the first time Rick made a pass: “Well, what do you say, Mandy? We having a roll in the hay?”