David Goodis - The Blonde on the Street Corner

One of the girls said, “Where you going?”

George touched Ralph’s arm and said, “Where you going?”

Ralph was putting on his coat and moving toward the door. “I’m getting a pack of cigarettes,” he said.

“Your friends have got cigarettes,” Agnes said.

Ralph looked at George, and George said quickly, “He smokes his own special brand. He’ll be right back.”

George and Ken looked at each other and then they looked at the girl who sat alone in the dark corner of the room.

The front door opened and cold air leaped into the room, and then the door slammed shut.

Sunday was grey and cold. There was slush on the streets and slush on the windows. Slush flowed down the windows.

It was cold in the room.

Ralph opened his eyes and looked at the windows. He saw the grey and cold sky and the slush sliding down the glass. He banged his head into the pillow and rolled over. He was tired. He was cold. His toes were freezing. He peered over the edge of the patch quilt. His toes were outside the quilt. He pulled his toes inside. He yawned and rolled over again. He wondered what time it was. He had to take a leak. But he didn’t want to get out of bed. It was too cold. He was too tired. But he had to go bad. He cursed a few times and then he counted to five, figuring that on five he would jump out of bed and run to the bathroom and be back in bed before he was fully awake. But at five he was too yellow to get out of bed. He tried again, this time counting to three. Again he stayed in bed. His next try was fifteen, and this time he leaped out of bed and raced to the bathroom and came running back and took a dive into the bed, crawled under the quilt and told himself he was going to stay in bed all day. He wondered why he was so tired. He wondered what time it was. He remembered that he had slept badly. He had been dreaming. What had he been dreaming about? Why wasn’t this quilt warmer? A quilt should be real warm. This room was an iceberg. Again he looked up and over the edge of the quilt and saw the opened window. The window ought to be closed now. No wonder it was so cold. The window was wide open. It ought to be closed. How long would it take him to leap out of bed and close the window and get back in bed and fall asleep again? He counted to five. No go. He counted to fifteen. He told himself he wasn’t going to get out of bed again, window or no window. He rolled over and wrapped the quilt about him.

The door opened and Ewie’s voice said, “Out of bed.”

“Get out of here,” Ralph said.

“It’s one o’clock in the afternoon already. Out of bed!”

“Get the hell out of here,” Ralph said.

“Addie and me are doing the upstairs. We’re helping Mom. We’re not gonna wait for you. We want to get done with this room. You get out of bed or I’ll get the cold water.”

“You pour cold water on me and I bet I break your head.”

From the hall Addie’s voice shrilled, “Should I get the cold water, Ewie?”

“I’ll murder you! I swear I’ll murder the two of you!”

He bored himself into the pillow and wrapped the quilt tightly about himself and groaned a few times.

Addie came into the room with a glass of cold water. Ewie took it and moved toward the bed. She dipped her fingers in the glass and then she sprinkled water on Ralph’s head. He squirmed.

“God damn it,” he said.

“Get up.”

Ewie sprinkled more water. “Get up out of that bed, you bum,” she said.

He squirmed again. She sprinkled more water. He threw back the quilt and leaped out of bed.

“Now I’m gonna break your necks,” he said. His pajama pants started to fall down. He pulled them up and tightened them and made a fist at his two sisters.

“Just you lay a hand on me and you’ll be sorry the rest of your life,” Ewie said.

“Go on, get out of here,” he said.

“Hurry up and get dressed,” Addie said. “We want to finish with the upstairs.”

They went out of the room. Ralph dressed slowly. He looked in the mirror. He looked beat. He ran his fingers along the aged flannel suit. The smooth velvetiness of the flannel was gone and now it was like cotton. He looked out the window, at the grey cold sky and the slush in the alley.

Downstairs he made himself a big glass of orange juice and that was his breakfast. He smoked a cigarette. His mother was in the cellar, fixing things. His father sat in the living room and read the Sunday paper. He asked his father for the sport section. He read about a heavyweight fight out on the coast. He put down the paper and smoked another cigarette. He put on his hat and overcoat and walked out of the house.

He went over to Ken’s house, a block away.

Ken was home alone. He was almost always home alone. His parents were always at relatives’. Ken had two brothers and two sisters and they were all married and rented homes or rented rooms of their own. The parents were always visiting the children and Ken was almost always home alone. He didn’t get along with his parents. He didn’t get along with any of his married brothers or sisters. Home alone, he sat in the small living room, at a broken-down piano, with blank music sheets in front of him and a pencil in his right hand and a cigarette dangling from his lips. Stubs filled a glass ashtray on the piano.

The front door was open. It was always open. Ralph walked in. Ken looked at him and then looked back at the blank music sheet and pecked out a few more notes. Then he swung around on the stool and said, “What happened to you last night?”

“What do you mean?”

“Did you go home?”

“Yes,” Ralph said.

“What was the matter?”

“I wanted a pack of cigarettes,” Ralph said.

“She walked out a few minutes later,” Ken said. “And after that the party got a little wild.”

“Dippy?”

Ken nodded.

“What did he do?”

“He did everything,” Ken said. “But here’s the payoff. He says he’s going into the kitchen to get a glass of water. So he goes in and we hear him moving around in there and all of a sudden there’s a terrible crash. Honest to God I thought he got killed. We come running in there and we see Dippy on the floor, and a chair is overturned and Dippy has a towel to his head and it’s all red and the blood is running down in gallons over Dippy’s head.”

“Blood?” Ralph said.

Ken started to laugh. “That’s what we thought it was. But it was really ketchup. He poured ketchup all over himself and then threw the chair up in the air. It came down with a big noise and so we thought he fell down and busted his head. You should of seen him. The girls were scared to death.”

“Poor Dippy ”

“Mabel fainted.”

“You kidding?”

“So help me God she fainted dead away. She went out cold, stretched out on the floor and it was no joke. Just then Agnes sees the ketchup bottle on the sink and she figures that Dippy is pulling a phoney, so what does she do? She grabs the bottle and she starts to scream. She points to Mabel and she yells that Mabel is dead and then she” — he doubled up with choking laughter and burst out — “she whacks the bottle over Dippy’s head—”

“What’s funny about that?” Ralph said. “Did she hurt him?”

“She laid his head open!” Ken shrieked, and then fell on the floor, convulsed.

“I can’t see what’s funny about that,” Ralph said. “Did you take him to a hospital?”

“Wait a minute. Wait till I tell you what happened. Dippy’s bleeding. It’s not a big cut. But his head’s laid open. He falls down and this time Agnes thinks she really killed him or something. Honest, it was murder. In the middle of all the excitement, with Agnes screaming like a lunatic and George and me putting ice on Dippy’s head, who should come walking into the house but this Agnes’ mother and a whole train-load of kids. Well, that was the wind-up.”