John Steinbeck - Sweet Thursday

The advantages of a boiler can be listed as follows: it is absolutely rainproof; it is cozy; and it has wonderful ventilation. By adjusting the damper and firedoor you can have as much draft as you like.

Under the smokestack Mr. Malloy had built a little brick fireplace for cold winter nights. In addition to all of these advantages, the boiler was fireproof, windproof, earthquake-proof, and almost bombproof. These more than balanced the lack of running water, electricity, and interior plumbing.

There are those, particularly in Carmel-by-the-Sea, who say that Suzy’s choice of the boiler as a home was a symbolic retreat to the womb, and, while this may be true, it is also true that this womb had economic factors. At the Golden Poppy, Suzy had her meals free, and in the boiler she had free shelter.

Suzy took the money Joe Blaikey loaned her and went to Holman’s Department Store in Pacific Grove. She bought a hammer, saw, assorted nails, two sheets of plywood, a box of pale blue kalsomine and a brush, a tube of Duco cement, a pair of pink cottage curtains with blue flowers, three sheets, two pillow cases, two towels and a washcloth, a teakettle, two cups and saucers, and a box of tea bags. At Joe’s Surplus she bought a used army cot and mattress pad, bowl and pitcher and chamberpot, two army blankets, a small mirror, and a kerosene lamp. These supplies exhausted her capital, but at the end of her first week of work at the Golden Poppy, Suzy paid Joe back two dollars and a quarter out of tips.

The Row, in its shame, pretended not to see what was going on at the boiler or to hear the sound of hammering late at night. This was good manners rather than a lack of curiosity.

Fauna held out for ten days, and when she did give in to her natural nosiness she went secretly, late on a Tuesday night, when the Bear Flag was closed for lack of customers. From the window of the Ready Room, Fauna could see a little glow of light coming from the firedoor of the boiler. The smokestack put out a lazy curl of smoke that smelled of pine pitch. Fauna went silently out the front door and up through the mallow weeds.

“Suzy,” she called softly.

“Who is it?”

“Me, Fauna.”

“What do you want?”

“To see if you’re all right.”

“I’m all right.”

Fauna got down on her knees and poked her head through the firedoor. The transformation was complete. The curving walls were pale blue, and the curtains were stuck to the walls with Duco cement. It was a pleasant feminine apartment. Suzy sat on her cot in the light from the little fireplace. She had built a dressing table for her mirror and bowl and pitcher, and beside it stood a fruit jar filled with lupines and poppies.

“You sure fixed it up nice,” said Fauna. “Ain’t you going to invite me in?”

“Come on in, but don’t get stuck in the door.”

“Give me a hand, will you?”

Suzy pulled and boosted her through the firedoor. “Here,” she said, “sit down on the cot. I’m going to get a chair pretty soon.”

“We could make you a hook rug,” said Fauna. “That would look nice.”

“No,” said Suzy. “I want to do it myself. Would you like I should make you a cup of tea?”

“Don’t mind if I do,” said Fauna absently, and then, “You sure you ain’t mad?”

“I ain’t mad. You know, I never had no place of my own before.”

“Well, you’ve fixed it up real nice,” said Fauna. “I can lend you anything you need. You can use the bathroom over at the Bear Flag.”

“They got a shower down at the Golden Poppy,” said Suzy.

“Now look,” Fauna said. “You got me down and my claws wedged. Don’t put the boots to me.”

“I ain’t.”

“This here’s a nice cup of tea. I got to tell you one thing, Suzy. I don’t care if you want to hear it or not. I been wrong quite a lot, but you’re going about this wrong. Don’t rub Doc’s nose in it. That just makes a man mad.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Well, settling here. He can’t look out his window without you’re in his hair.” Fauna braced herself for the explosion, and it did not come.

Suzy looked at her hands. “I got real nice nails,” she said. “Down at the Poppy where I got my hands in water all the time I squidge lotion on. Keeps them soft. Fauna, you told me not to run away, and I didn’t. I felt like digging a hole in the ground and crawling in and I didn’t, because I think what you said was right. I’m going to do it right here in sight.”

“That ain’t what I said.”

“Don’t bust in!” said Suzy. “You said about Doc. Now I’m telling you once, and you can tell it all over the Row if you want, then I won’t have to tell it to nobody again. You just forget Doc. Doc ain’t got nothing to do with me. He come along and I wasn’t up to him—wasn’t good enough for him. Now maybe it won’t never happen again, but if it does—if there’s a guy—I’m goddam well going to be good enough for him, inside and outside, public and private; but mostly I’m going to feel good enough. Now you got that?”

“You better watch that cussing,” said Fauna.

“I don’t cuss no more.”

“You just—”

“Don’t try to mix me up,” said Suzy. “Did you get what I said?”

“Why, sure, Suzy girl! But I don’t see why you won’t let your friends give you a hand.”

“’Cause then it wouldn’t be me done it. Then I wouldn’t be no good.”

“You borrowed dough from Joe Blaikey.”

“Sure, from a cop. The same cop that was going to float me. He ain’t a friend, he’s a cop. When I get him paid back maybe he can be a friend.”

“You sure make it tough on yourself.”

“How else? You can’t cut off a leg with a banana.”

“You wasn’t never no hustler, Suzy. At least you wasn’t no good at it.”

“I know what I was, and I know what I’m going to be.”

“Doc?” Fauna asked.

“That’s done, I tell you! Get it through your thick head—that’s done!”

“Well, I guess I better be going,” Fauna said unhappily. She put the teacup on the little dressing table, got down on her hands and knees, and crawled to the firedoor. “Give me a boost through, will you, Suzy?”

Suzy stuffed her through the opening the way you’d stuff a sausage. And then she called, “Fauna!”

Fauna put her head in through the door.

“You been the best friend I ever had. If I’m tough, it ain’t at you, it’s at me. I was always mad at everybody. Turns out it was me I was mad at. When I get friends with myself, maybe I can get friends with somebody without no chip.”

Fauna said, “S’pose Doc come a-begging?”

“I ain’t no mantrap,” said Suzy. “I wouldn’t have him if he come walking on his hands. You can’t cure a sock in the puss with a sock in the puss. But if ever I like a guy again, and he lays it on the line, why, I’m going to have something to lay on the other side.”

“I miss you, Suzy.”

“I’ll be back when I’m right. I love you.”

“Oh, shut up!” said Fauna. And she clanged the firedoor shut.

Of all our murky inventions, guilt is at once the most devious, the most comic, the most painful. Was it planted by the group pressure of the tribe to keep the potentially dangerous individual off balance? Is it set in the psychotissue, watered and cultivated by ductless glands? Is guilt the unconscious device by which a man cries for attention in an unperceiving world, or can it be that the final human pleasure is pain? What ever its origin, we scream like cats in copulation, wolf-bay the moon, whip ourselves with the exquisite thorns of contempt, and generally have a hell of a good time at it.