John Steinbeck - Sweet Thursday

“I know,” said the Patrón.

“Well, the Bishop come through,” said Fauna, “and he give me holy hell for buying up them monkey heads.”

“You mean to say you bought them?” said the Patrón.

“Sure I bought them. I got a box of them in the woodshed. Everybody said I was a fool, but it paid off.”

“How’d it pay off?”

“Well, look,” said Fauna. “My bunch was honest and they shrunk honest heads. S’pose a shipment goes out and this joker Athatoolagooloo slips in a couple of his monkey heads—pretty soon nobody don’t trust nobody. Why, people would get to looking asspants at a real nice head. I bought them up to keep them off the market. I had my reputation to think of.”

“Yeah, but this joker—” the Patrón began.

“I know what you’re going to say—and he done it too. He had me. He charged me more for them monkey heads than I paid for the real article. He knew he had me.”

“That’s what I thought. Anybody would,” said the Patrón.

“Oh, it all worked out,” said Fauna. “If you ever buy a Chungla head you’ll know you got the best.”

“Yeah, but how about the joker?” said the Patrón.

Fauna opened up her desk drawer and took out a beautiful little item, black as polished ebony and no bigger than a lemon. “He made up real nice, didn’t he?” said Fauna.

The Patrón looked nervously away. “I got to get back,” he said. “I left my nephew in the store.”

“Don’t he play trumpet?”

“Drives me crazy,” said Joseph and Mary. “Got a new trumpet. Can’t get away from it. Made him go practice down on the beach. Figured the waves and the sea lions would kind of drown him out. The other night he give a passing signal to a Navy tug, and they’re still looking for what passed them. But last night was the worst. He was practicing down on the beach and he aimed his damn trumpet into the sewer pipe. Got resonance, he said. I don’t know if it’s true, but I heard that every toilet in the whole neighborhood give off with ‘Stormy Weather.’ [41] “Stormy Weather”: Blues song written by musician Harold Arlen (1905–86) and lyricist Ted Koehler (1894–1973) in 1933, about a heartbroken woman who has lost her man. Its first stanza sets the tone for the whole song: “Don’t know why, there’s no sun up in the sky / Stormy weather, since my man and I ain’t together / Keeps raining all the time.” Ethel Waters first sang it at the Cotton Club in Harlem, but it was also memorably performed by Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, and Lena Horne, who sang it in the movie of the same name in 1943. In 2004 it was chosen by the Library of Congress to be added to the National Recording Registry. Old lady Somers was taking an enema. I don’t believe what they said happened. I got to get back. That kid can break glass with a high note.”

“Come over and visit again,” said Fauna.

“You mind what I said about Suzy.”

“I will,” said Fauna.

It’s a funny thing, but you never like to trade at your own place. The store across the street has always got fresher cigarettes than you have. The girls at the Bear Flag never got cigarettes from the slot machine at the Bear Flag. When they wanted Luckies or a 7 Up they went to the Patrón’s. For that matter, nearly everyone in Cannery Row went nearly every place in Cannery Row nearly every day.

Joseph and Mary had hardly got back to the grocery before Suzy came in. You wouldn’t recommend Joseph and Mary as a celebrator of God’s loveliest creation, but if you wanted a quick assay on a babe you couldn’t ask for better than Joseph and Mary’s. If he was not involved in an emotional way he was good. Between the time Suzy got change and the time she pushed the Lucky Strike button on his cigarette machine, each had gone over the other and registered the result.

Suzy’s note: “Greaseball, smart and mean. Look out if he gives you something. A percentage boy. Smiles with his mouth. Eyes like a snake. May trip himself someday by being too smart.”

Patrón’s note: “Lousy risk for a house. A character. Won’t play the rules. Might reverse the field. Too friendly. If she likes a guy she might toss in her roll.”

The Patrón would have kicked her out of the Bear Flag. He knew that the only person you can trust is an absolutely selfish person. He always runs true to form. You know everything he’ll do. But you take somebody with an underlying kindness, and he might fool you. The only satisfactory sucker is the one who is entirely selfish. You never have any trouble with that kind. Fauna was laying herself wide open.

Joseph and Mary tabulated Suzy the way he might have bought a used car. Pretty good figure, good ankles and legs, too light in the butt and too heavy in the chest. That’s a bad sign: a good hustler is flat-chested. Face kind of pretty if she felt like it. Face reflected how she felt. Good-looking if she felt good. A good hustler has a mask, looks the same to everybody, pretty, but you don’t remember what she looked like the next morning. Suzy you wouldn’t forget. A real bad risk. Suzy liked people or she didn’t like them. That in itself was bad.

Cacahuete, the Patrón’s nephew, was dusting shelves, and he flashed a gold smile at Suzy.

Suzy lighted up. She didn’t smile—she grinned. Her lips were full and mouth wide, and when she grinned her eyes crinkled and something warm and scary came out of her. That’s a bad risk. On top of this was toughness, but not dependable dull toughness. Suzy might take a poke at Jack Dempsey. [42] Jack Dempsey: William Harrison Dempsey (1895–1983). World heavyweight boxing champion (1919–26) known as the “Manassa Mauler.” Fifty of his sixty wins were by knockout. She wasn’t smart. All in all, Joseph and Mary would’ve dumped Suzy in a minute. She’d be the kind of dumb dame who’d fall for some guy without finding out his bank balance. She was the kind, he thought, who’d give one guy a helluva lot of trouble but who’d be lousy playing the field. She had something of the same quality Doc had. The Patrón decided to warn Fauna again. This kid could be pure murder in a hookshop. Such was the Patrón’s reasoned opinion, and the Patrón was a professional. If you’d take a doctor’s advice about a disease, you’d surely take the Patrón’s about a hustler. Both could be wrong, of course.

The appraisals and judgments were almost instantaneous, so that by the time Suzy had opened her cigarettes, put one in her mouth, and lighted it, the judgment was complete.

“How are you?” Joseph and Mary asked.

“Okay,” said Suzy. “Fauna wants some yellow pads and a couple of pencils—soft pencils.”

The Patrón laid them out. “She does a lot of writing,” he said. “She’s used six pads in about a month.”

“She’s doing astrology.”

“You believe that stuff?”

“No, but it don’t do no harm.”

“I knew a guy made a good living with it,” said the Patrón.

“Oh, she don’t charge nothing,” said Suzy.

“I know,” said the Patrón. “I can’t figure why not. Fauna ain’t dumb.”

“She sure ain’t,” said Suzy.

Doc came in with two empty beer bottles. “Get a couple of cold ones back on the ice, will you?” he asked.

Suzy glanced at him, took him in, and looked away. His beard shocked her a little. She didn’t stare at him the way you don’t stare at a cripple.

The Patrón said, “Why don’t you put in an icebox? Then you can take a case at a time.”

“It’s easier to let you keep the ice,” said Doc.

“You know Suzy here? She’s new at the Bear Flag.”

“How do you do?” said Doc.

“How do you do?” said Suzy. She would have said “Hi” to anyone else.