James Burke - Half of Paradise

The door opened and the girl came in. She was thin and tall with long straight black hair, and she looked as though she had been up all night. She had on light blue shorts and a knitted sweater without sleeves. Her mouth was thin like a spinster’s, and she used her lipstick to make her lips look larger. She undressed by the bed and put her clothes on the chair. She looked at the crushed cigarette package on the floor.

“Say, this room ain’t a garbage can,” she said.

“Get in bed.”

“Listen. We have to keep our rooms clean. Miss Emma don’t like them dirty.”

“You ought to set fire to the whole goddamn place, then.”

“Wait a minute, mister. I’ve had a hard night. I don’t have to put up with any stuff from you.”

“I ain’t come in here to talk about your dirty floor. Get on the bed,” he said.

“I have to look at you first.”

A half hour later he sent down for a bottle. The girl asked for beer. She said whiskey made her sick. She got drunk very easily, and she talked obscenely while they made love. She hadn’t taken off her lipstick and she smeared it on the side of his face. He felt the whiskey go through his body, and he had that same thick feeling in his head of the night before, and the strain of the alcohol and sexual labor made him short of breath. He wished he had taken another girl. She had had only three bottles of beer, but she was very drunk. He drank down the whiskey and felt it hit hot in his stomach. The girl opened another beer and smoked a cigarette. She got up once to use the bathroom. They could hear the music from the jukebox down in the bar and she popped her fingers in time to the tempo. After a while she became half asleep, her mouth open, and lay relaxed on the bed and didn’t move her body with his.

“Go tell that woman to send in another girl,” he said.

“What’s the matter?”

“Just tell her to bring someone else in, and you can take the day off.”

“What’s wrong with me? You want a special kind of jazzing or something?”

“I didn’t pay you to fall asleep.”

“You must think you’re some kind of wonderful lay. I’ve had better lays from a sixteen-year-old boy than you. You don’t even know how to get it in.”

“Get the hell out.”

“I hope somebody else gives you a good case of clap, you bastard,” she said.

She put on her light blue shorts and knitted sweater and house slippers and left the room. A minute later somebody knocked on the door.

“Put something on. It’s me,” Emma said.

J.P. got up from the bed and slipped his trousers on. He felt dizzy when he stood up. Emma came in and shut the door behind her.

“What’s the trouble?” she said.

“Bring Honey in.”

“What’s wrong with the girl I gave you?”

“I don’t like her,” he said.

“I ain’t had any complaints about her before.”

“Send me another girl. I done paid for the afternoon.”

“It will cost you twenty-five dollars more,” she said.

“I already give you fifty.”

“You paid for Rita.”

“What difference does that make?”

“If you want somebody else you got to pay again.”

“The bitch went to sleep on me,” he said.

“She’s one of my best girls. I never had no complaints.”

“She sleeps with her mouth open.”

“A man told me last night she was the nicest lay in the house. Her customers don’t complain,” she said.

“I didn’t hire a wore-out whore that can’t stay awake.”

“If you’re one of these flip guys with different tastes you can go down the street. They’ll take care of you. I run a respectable place. There’s others waiting for this room that will pay extra to have Rita.”

She folded her heavy arms across her breasts and looked at him.

“All right. Here. Tell Honey to come in,” he said, giving her the money.

“She’s in another room now. You’ll have to wait a few minutes.”

After the woman had left he poured a glass of bourbon and sat in the chair and drank slowly and looked at his bare yellow feet on the floor. His fingers shook slightly on the glass. He thought about Honey and her soft belly and pink breasts. He had made love to the first girl twice, and he should have felt spent, but he could feel it go through him again, weak in the loins and the pit of his stomach, and he put the tip of his tongue between his teeth when he thought about it. He drank down the whiskey and filled the glass again. The bottle was two-thirds empty. He tried to remember what had taken place the last three days. Everything was confused in time, and he couldn’t concentrate on any one thing long without its becoming confused with something else. He knew that something had happened in a bar somewhere and there had been a fight. Maybe someone had taken him outside and rolled him. His watch. Yes, and his billfold. That had been it. There was a fight and he had been rolled. Saturday night he had been on the Jubilee. That was last night. He didn’t have his guitar with him or he could have played right. They had given him one of them goddamn electric things that sounded like somebody was twanging on a strand of baling wire. The only person who could use an electric guitar was Charley Christian, and he was dead. A man gave a guitar its tone. It didn’t need nothing else but the man playing it. J.P. could hear and feel the rosinous squeak of his fingers working over the frets and the chords vibrating through the dark wood.

The girl he had wanted came into the room. She had on a pink robe and sandals. Her hair had dark and light amber streaks in it. He expected her to smile or to make some show of recognition when she saw him. She didn’t speak, and her pale blue eyes looked at him for a moment and then turned away blankly as she took off her robe and dropped it over the brass bedstead.

“Miss Emma said you give Rita some trouble. This is just a straight date without no trouble, hear.”

“I didn’t bruise nothing of yours the last time I was here,” he said.

“Miss Emma says you give Rita a bad time.”

“I didn’t pay for no drunk whore to yawn in my face.”

“Well, I don’t want no trouble. Rita says you were acting flip. I give a straight lay and that’s all. You go see one of the other girls if you want something else.”

“Do you remember me?” he said.

“Lots of fellows come in. They’re one and the same to me, honey.”

She lay down on the bed in a receptive position. She rubbed the insides of her thighs with her palms. He poured a drink in his glass from the fifth and drank it down.

“Let’s go, honey. There’s others waiting,” she said.

“Get on top.”

“That means you got a complex about your mother.”

“Watch it.”

“Some fellows want to lay their mother and they don’t know it. I read it in a magazine once.”

“Get on top and do what you’re supposed to,” he said.

“I know my job. You don’t have to worry about that.”

She got on top of him and smiled stupidly. She raised up on her knees and then sat back. She touched him and adjusted herself again, supporting herself with one arm, and sat once more on his legs.

“You’re going to have to do better than that,” she said.

“It’s the whiskey.”

“You give Rita all you had. You ain’t got another lay in you,” she said.

“Wait a minute. I’ll be all right. I was all right before you come in here.”

“Are you saying you can’t get nothing on for me?”

“No. It’s just the whiskey. I’ll be all right in a minute.”

“Come back tomorrow,” she said.

“I hired you for the afternoon.”

“You ain’t got it to put in, honey.”

“I paid seventy-five dollars for you and that other bitch, and you ain’t taking off.”