Mary Jenkins - Innocent in Chicago Volume One

And she found exciting and stimulating the swift movement of her life, the contrasts between her various friends. With her loves, one night she could dine and drink in the plushest restaurants and bars, sleep in beautiful apartments, meet well-known figures of public life, and with Frankie the next night visit the smoky dives and cluttered apartments and studios of their Bohemian friends – artists, writers, prostitutes, dope pushers where they would drink, smoke marijuana, laugh, eat prodigiously and freely make love with each other.

It was just after she had moved in with Frankie that she had found out he was selling marijuana, cocaine and heroin. Although she had not yet tried the latter, she now smoked the former whenever she was with Frankie and their friends, and had even brought Frankie a few new, lucrative customers through her contacts with wealthy lovers.

One evening she went to the "960 Club" where she was to meet him. He used the club as one of the places where he sold narcotics to clients who knew he would be there almost every day in the early part of the evening, slipping them the joints of marijuana or capsules of heroin as they sat at the bar or at one of the small, dimly-lit tables.

Frankie had not arrived yet so she sat down with a friend named Al who was also waiting for him. Al was a journalist who had quit his paper in order to write the novel he had been trying to start for seven years. Each day he would laboriously hack out five pages of what he was convinced was priceless prose and each night he would get high on marijuana and then read them out loud to whomever was around laughing uproariously at his own efforts, and toss them into the fireplace. If no one came to visit him at night, he would prowl around until he found one of his friends to drag home to listen to his reading. But as he was liberal with his "joints" there were usually several people who would drop in on him and "going to blow at Al's readings" became almost a standard procedure. That was how Cynthia had met him: when she had been taken over by a mutual friend.

Now he was sitting hunched over the table, his thin, hawk-like face morose and bleak.

"What's the matter, Al?" Cynthia said as she sat down. "Haven't you turned out your five pages for tonight's reading?"

He looked at her without speaking, grunted, sighed and stared down at the table again.

"What's bugging you? Come on, tell Mommy."

He sighed again. "When's Frankie coming? I'm out of joint." He looked up at her. "I don't hear any uproarious laughter. That was supposed to be a joke." He rubbed a bony hand over his face.

"He should be here soon. How about a drink on me?"

"Naw. Thanks anyway. You now I only drink coffee or milk." He dipped his finger in the spilled coffee on the table and began tracing designs. "I don't have any vices."

She almost laughed in his face, but he looked so unhappy, she only smiled and then said, teasingly, "Why, Al, I'd heard that you were beginning to consider your writing as a vice."

"Yeah, I'm about to give it up. I'm getting in a rut."

"What you need is a different system."

"I was thinking of buying a tape recorder and dictatin' my five pages a day." He smiled wryly. "Think of all the money I'd save. Then I wouldn't have to burn up five pages every night, but could just switch it back and erase it."

Cynthia laughed. "That might work, but I've got a better idea."

"What?"

"Instead of writing when sober and reading when high, why don't you reverse it?"

He straightened up and looked at her, his face brightening.

"Hey, that's an idea." He rubbed his chin. "By God, I think I'll do it. I'll get a lot of pot from Frankie tonight and start in tomorrow. At least it can't be any worse than what I'm writing now." He leaned over and kissed Cynthia on the cheek. "My God, Cynthia, that's really a brain wave."

Just then Frankie sat down beside them. "Hello, you two," he said.

"Hi, darling," Cynthia said. "Al's starting in on a new routine."

"Yeah, fine," he said. "Look, baby, why don't you go back and talk with some of the gals 'til I get through here."

"Okay, Frankie. See you, Al."

She got up, went back-stage and chatted briefly with some of the show girls, most of whom she knew were Frankie's customers. Then she walked down to Torchy's dressing-room. Torchy was just pulling off her gloves and hanging up her coat.

"Hi there, honey," Torchy said. "How's tricks?"

"Okay." Cynthia sat down before the other dressing-table.

"How about some gin?" Torchy said, waving a hand toward a bottle.

Cynthia poured them both a drink. She had become good friends with Torchy, often sitting in her room and talking while Mike was busy outside, and before she had to go out with clients. Although her jealousy over Frankie's attentions to other women had often prevented her from making friends with them, she knew Frankie and Torchy had grown up together and now were nothing more to each other than old friends and therefore Cynthia liked and trusted her. Now she sat and watched Torchy as she undressed, gossiping about their friends and laughing about Al's new method for writing the great American novel.

When Torchy was nude, she turned her back to Cynthia and walked over to the wardrobe.

Cynthia stared at her white, plump buttocks and then burst out laughing. Right in the center of one white, rounded buttock was a bright pink halo of teeth marks.

"Torchy," she said, choking on the drink of gin she had just taken, "have you seen your rear?"

"Yeah, I know," she said. "Looks great, doesn't it? That new boy-friend of mine is so damn near-sighted he can't tell the difference between his steak and my rump." Nude, she stood with her back to the full-length mirror, peering over her shoulder at her buttocks.

"Think I'll work up a new act," she chuckled. "How about another set on the other cheek and one on each breast?" She began wriggling so that her breasts swirled in circles and her buttocks rotated massively, the pink marks jiggling up and down.

"The bites right around each nipple in a circle," Cynthia said.

"With the tits painted to look like a tongue."

"In luminescent paint."

"So when the lights go out – it's crazy! Four sets of choppers glowing and twirling!"

They both laughed.

"And they could bill you as 'The Right Size, Bite-Size Girl'!"

Torchy walked over to the dressing-table, saying pompously, "But in the meantime, the show must go on." She picked up some cake make-up and handed it to Cynthia. "Here, cover it up for me, will you, honey?"

Cynthia began smoothing it over her pink indentations.

"By the way," Torchy said, "have you and Frankie heard about the party?"

"What party?"

"Shoo-fly's throwin' an orgy next Wednesday over at his pad. It'll be a real big blow, honey. Films and all."

"Sounds crazy."

"It'll be. It'll be."

She handed back the make up and Torchy sat down and began patting her face with cold cream. "By the way," she said, looking at Cynthia in the mirror, "I don't want to stick my nose where it has no business, but have you heard what Gypsy's up to?"

"No, why?" She had often wondered what had happened to her.

"You mean you've heard nothing since Frankie kicked her out and she got fired here?"

"No, nothing."

"Well," Torchy said as she fluffed powder over her face and body, "she's livin' with a tough hood named Flip."

"So what?"

"So she's spreadin' lots of dirt about you and Frankie. I figure she still must be in love with him and is still so mad and jealous she's tryin' to do him in. Anyway, this Flip is real gone on her and believes every word the bitch says, about how Frankie used to beat her up, made her into a junky, got her pregnant so she had to have an operation which ruined her insides, and a lot of other stuff. So she's now tryin' to get this Flip to beat Frankie up. The only trouble is that this Flip is such a moron he might do it, so you'd better warn Frankie."