David Goodis - The Blonde on the Street Corner

“George.”

“Thank you, George. My name’s Mabel.”

They were making introductions, the six of them. The other two were out of it. Edna was staring at the carpet. She wanted to go home. Ralph was leaning against the wall, near the door. He had been standing alone and the girls had not noticed him. He did not look at any of the girls.

“What do you do?” Pauline said. She sat on the sofa. Ken sat beside her, on the arm of the sofa, and lit a cigarette for her.

“I’m a songwriter,” he said.

“Oh. You write songs?” Pauline said.

“That’s right.”

“Gee, that’s wonderful.”

“What’s wonderful about it?” Ken said.

“Writing songs,” Pauline said.

Mabel sat in the center of the sofa. George sat beside her. Neither of them said anything. Mabel was thinking that George had real nice blond hair. George wanted Mabel to stand up so he could see what she looked like when she stood up. She looked sort of fat. He didn’t mind if a girl was fat as long as she didn’t look like a bag. She was soft, anyway. When he had picked her up off the floor his hands were under her arms and she was nice and soft. But if she was a bag he wasn’t going to have anything to do with her. He should have taken a good look at her when she was standing up before. He turned his head sideways to get another look at her face and she turned her head toward him and he turned his head away.

Agnes sat in a chair and Dippy stood in front of the chair. Agnes looked Dippy up and down and kept expressing varying degrees of disgust. She looked over at the sofa and glared at Mabel, who had the best-looking one of the lot. This thing in front of her was something that should be either in a museum or a zoo.

“Put on the radio,” Dippy said.

Agnes leaned over to the side and switched on the radio. She looked Dippy up and down and said, “Can you dance?”

“I’m a great dancer,” Dippy said.

“I can imagine,” Agnes said.

Conga music clicked out of the radio. Dippy began to do his version of the Conga. George and Ken burst out laughing. Agnes looked at Mabel. Mabel looked at Pauline.

Agnes said, “What is that supposed to be?”

“This is the Conga,” Dippy said. “One — two — three — kick.” He kicked with his right foot and his shoe missed Agnes’ chin by two inches. She ducked her head away and nearly knocked over a lamp.

“God help us all,” she said.

“One — two — three — kick,” Dippy said. He kicked again and came within an inch of knocking a few teeth out of Agnes’ mouth.

She yelled, “Now you cut that out or there’s gonna be trouble.”

Mabel said to George, “What’s the matter with your friend?”

“He’s all right,” George said.

Dippy took Agnes by the wrist and said, “Dance with me.”

Agnes said, “Jesus Christ — this is awful.”

“It could be worse,” Dippy said. He resumed his version of the Conga. Agnes stopped and looked him up and down and then he grabbed her again and they were dancing.

“Oh, my God,” Agnes said.

Dippy’s eyes were half-closed. Always when he danced with a girl his eyes were half-closed. No matter how homely she was, he would half-close his eyes and imagine her to be devastating. He would drift into the stream of the music. He would forget where he was. He would hold her lightly, gently, and gently he would lean his head forward and let his lips touch her cheek, just below her ear-

“Say, what the hell do you think you’re doing?” Agnes said, pulling her face away.

Dippy scarcely heard her. Eyes half-closed, he drifted. The Conga had stopped and now the band played a Tango. Soft, languid music, brightened by the click of castanets, and Dippy was in Spain. Soft music of the Tango. A bright green shawl over the shoulder of a senorita. Phillippo Wilkinerino, the great Spanish dancer, was doing a Tango. Wonderful night in Spain.

George and Ken screamed with laughter. Mabel was beginning to see how funny it was. Pauline was half-smiling. She sort of pitied the guy.

“Watch out, damn it,” Agnes said. “You’re breaking my arm.”

“Do the Tango,” Dippy said.

“Is that what you’re supposed to be doing?” Agnes said.

“The Tango,” murmured Dippy, drifting with the wonderful music.

Again he leaned his head forward and again his lips touched Agnes’ cheek, just below her ear. She drew her head away and looked at him puzzledly.

“Say, what’s the matter with this guy?” she said.

They were all laughing.

Dippy drifted.

Weak light threw a dim glow on the left side of the room. On the right side it was dark. In the darkness Ralph leaned against the wall. He looked at the floor. His eye traced a vague design in the rug, snaking through hazy green, weaving and writhing through loops of hazy grey, and the torn fuzz of the carpet, snaking toward the right. The vague design ended there, where a chair was. A chair, and someone’s legs. A girl. He looked at her legs. The shoe on her left foot was torn. Her stocking showed through the jagged gap in the dull black fabric of the shoe. He kept looking at the hole in the shoe. He slouched lower against the wall and looked at the torn shoe and the torn rug. Again his eye traced the vague design, swimming through the green and grey haze. Beyond that there was music and noise and jumping around. A lot of laughing. He didn’t want to look at that. He was feeling very low. He looked at the torn shoe again. He turned his head and his eye followed the line of stocking up to the orange of the dress, dim in the darkness, and up the orange of the dress through the vague and colorless darkness to the circle of white there that was the face of a girl who sat in the chair. He half-turned and kept looking at her face. There was nothing in his mind now except the slow-painted portrait of what he saw. And he saw the vague yellow hair, unglowing and plain yellow around the white face, and the plain eyes that were vague yellow, and the plain straight nose and the plain lips that seemed to be orange like the orange of the dress and the white of that face. And the eyes, the yellow eyes that he could see so clearly now because the face was turning and the eyes were looking at him. He was gazing at her and she was gazing back at him and although it was so very dark here in this part of the room, at the same time it seemed to be lit by something that was even brighter than a lamp could ever be, and he was looking at her yellow eyes and he knew that she was looking straight back at him. Neither smiled. He did not know that he was not smiling. He did not know of seconds flowing by as he looked at her. He moved along the wall and then he was standing beside the chair looking down at her. She was looking up at him. He knew now that he had been looking down at her for a long time. He wondered how long he had been looking at her.

He knew that he had to say something and he didn’t know what to say. Then he heard her voice. It was low-toned, and soft, and sort of vague.

She said, “Who are you?”

“I’m Ralph Creel.”

“I’m Edna Daly,” she said.

They looked at each other.

Then he was turning his head away. He didn’t want to look at her now. He was afraid to look at her.

He walked across the room and stood in the glow, the weak yellow glow of the lamp beside the sofa. In the center of the room George was dancing with Mabel, and Dippy was dancing with Agnes. The radio blared. A dance band played “Five O’Clock Whistle.” The four of them were bumping around out there in the center of the room. On the sofa Ken made observations on life, and Pauline was laughing. The music splashed into the crowded room.

Looking across the room now, his eyes slicing through the light and the jumping dancers and the flicker of shadows bouncing from the walls and falling from the cracked ceiling, Ralph saw the darkness across the room. And in the darkness he saw her again, her orange dress, her face, her yellow eyes looking at him now. He went into the next room and grabbed his hat and coat and started for the front door.