David Goodis - The Blonde on the Street Corner

He said, “Pop — do you have any loose pennies on you?”

Mr Creel put a hand in his pocket and took out a half dollar, a quarter, and three pennies.

Ralph was looking at the half dollar.

Mr Creel said, “I’d like to give it to you, son, but I’m taking your mother to the movies tonight. Take the quarter and the three pennies.”

“Thanks, Pop. I’ll just take the three pennies ”

“Take the two bits.”

“No. Just the three cents.”

His father shrugged and gave him the three cents.

Ralph looked starvedly at the quarter as it re-entered his father’s pocket. He said, “Treat Mom to a soda after the movies.”

His father looked at him, said nothing, only looked, and then picked up the newspaper again.

Ralph started to call himself names. Two bits. He had passed up two bits. He had passed up all the money in the world. It wasn’t the first time he had pulled a dumb stunt like this. It wasn’t the first time his old man had offered him more than just loose pennies, and he had nixed it.

A quarter. A solid, round quarter. That meant another pack of cigarettes. It meant a coke. It even meant he could be a big man and treat one of his friends to a coke. And he had passed it up.

He looked down at the three cents in his palm. Big deal. Three cents. A penny for Indian Nuts. And the other two cents for loose cigarettes. He didn’t like to grub smokes from his friends. Sometimes he had to. Sometimes he even had to grab poison torches that Dippy rolled from a nickel pouch of tobacco. Dippy. He wanted to laugh. Dippy. He thought of the plastered-with-grease hair, and the rags that the guy wore, and the blankness in the guy’s eyes, and then he thought of George and Ken, and himself, standing on the corner, outside the candy store. So what? A lot of corners. A lot of candy stores on corners. A lot of guys on the corners outside the candy stores. In this big city a lot of guys on corners. And a lot of big cities in this big country. A lot of corners in all the big cities in the big country. A lot of guys on the corners. A lot of them? Millions of them. Millions of guys on the corners in the big cities. Standing around with their hands in their pockets and waiting for something to happen. What could happen? An earthquake, a flood from a busted sewer, a great big black sedan filled with gangsters being chased by a police squad car, a runaway milk-wagon horse, two kids fighting in the street, a chariot made of solid ivory, drawn by six white horses, and the chariot would be filled with bars of solid gold. And it would come up to the corner where all the guys were standing, and they could just walk over and help themselves to the bars of gold. Then they could go around to the back alley and shoot crap for the bars of gold. Real action there. Instead of starting with a nickel roll they would flip the bars of gold on the cracked cement of the alley and they would have a big play on the first roll. And one of the men would be a big winner. He would have twenty bars of gold, maybe worth about seven hundred thousand dollars. To have seven hundred thousand dollars. Once in a library he had read something that said something about how men with a lot of money spent all that money on clothes and dames and games and travel and everything that had a lot of gloss on it or glitter or glimmer. Glow and gloss and glitter and glimmer, the big men. The big men with the dough and the high grade felt hats and their lavender convertibles with the top down whizzing along a black street in the black night toward a place all lighted up with green and orange and pink and pale blue lights and a circular dance floor that was polished black marble or polished black glass, with a band on a silver bandstand, and nine terrific broads dancing in a straight line and the glitter and the glimmer, the high grade everything that was in this high grade place, the big men talking big, everything big, the glitter, the glimmer, everything big and smooth and high grade. The big men. Big winners. Winners in a great big crap game. Big men, smart men, lucky men. The glitter, the glimmer, the gloss and the glow. And the emerald studs in a white shirt front and seven thousand bucks. Seventy thousand bucks. Seven hundred thousand honest to God dollars. Sing, dice. On the corner, outside the candy store on the corner. On a lot of corners. On a lot of corners in a lot of cities. On the corners of the big cities in this big country. A lot of guys on a lot of corners. A lot of guys standing around with their hands in their pockets and waiting for something to happen in the year of Our Lord, 1936.

It was Saturday night. Dippy was combing his hair. He had black hair and it was thinned. He put a lot of this ten-cent grease on it and plastered it down over his head. He smoothed it with the palm of his hand, kept smoothing it until it was a shiny black cap. He liked the way it looked. He looked at himself in the mirror. He did not smile but he nodded slowly. He looked quite good. He wore a white shirt that had a starched collar. The edges of the collar were frayed. There was a smudge on the collar but nobody would notice that. He wore a green and brown tie. Best of all he wore a suit that his brother had worn only three times. And nobody would notice his torn shoes. Even if they did, his good-looking sleek black hair would make up for that.

In this little row-house he lived with his mother and his brother and his brother’s wife. His brother was forty-three and had been married for four years. He was a lawyer and he averaged about fifty a week. His wife was a fat blonde. She had a mouth. She didn’t like Dippy. Dippy didn’t like her. She didn’t like Dippy’s mother. Dippy’s mother didn’t like anybody — except Dippy. She couldn’t do enough for Dippy. She was sixty-seven years old. She called Dippy “boy”. He called her “toots.”

One day Dippy came in the house and saw his mother crying. He asked her what was the matter. She told him she had a feeling that Clarence and his wife would someday go away and leave her alone without anything at all. And Dippy said, “Don’t you worry, toots. I’ll stay with you. I’ll always stay with you.” She stopped crying and she held his hand tightly. She said, “You’re a good boy.” He nodded slowly, unsmiling, and he said, “Sure.” He knew that Clarence would not move away, even if the fat blonde wanted to.

All Dippy had to do was to tell Clarence some of the things he had found out about the fat blonde. He knew a lot of things she had done and he knew some of the things she was doing now. He didn’t want to say anything to Clarence because he didn’t want to hurt his brother’s feelings. But if Clarence ever decided to move out and leave his mother with nothing at all, then it would be time for Dippy to say something. He really didn’t like the blonde. Her name was Lenore. Once she came into the house while the guys were there and she heard one of them address her brother-in-law as Dippy. Later on she called him that. She said, “Hello there, Dippy.” He walked over to her and said, “Don’t you call me that. My name is Philip. You can either call me Philip or you can call me Mr Wilkin. But don’t call me Dippy.” She laughed and said, “But that’s what you are, aren’t you? You really are dippy, aren’t you, Dippy?” He walked across the room and picked up a heavy green glass ashtray. He walked back and held it near her head. He said, “How would you like me to break this over your head?” Her eyes widened, and she stepped away from him. Whenever he remembered that night, he was delighted with the memory.

He turned away from the mirror and looked again at his shoes. He really needed a new pair of shoes. As soon as he got another day’s work on an oil burner job he would go out and buy himself a new pair of shoes. Anyway, the least he could do now was to shine those he had on. He leaned over and put his foot on the bed and rubbed his sleeve across one shoe, and then the other. They looked all right.