David Markson - Epitaph For A Dead Beat

“It’s disgusting, isn’t it?* Dana agreed. “Started drinking at three ‘clock. You ‘magine that?”

“I don’t have to imagine,” the girl said. “You’re a mess.”

That disheartened Dana briefly. “I am?” She glanced down into the pasteurized cleavage at the top of her dress. Then she looked back to the mousy girl, lifting her gaze to approximately the same anatomical vicinity. It wasn’t being very fair. Several seconds passed. Then Dana snickered.

“Well, of all the—” The girl whirled and stomped off.

Dana sighed. “All I said was I was drunk. She didn’t have to call me a mess. You think I’m a mess?”

“You’re no mess,” I said. She wasn’t. She had too much raw sensuality to move sloppily. She just swelled and receded, like surf.

“I’m glad you say that,” she told me. “Been drinking all day, you know?”

“Audrey,” I said.

“Oh, sure, Audrey.” She brightened up again, nodding toward the first closed door. She beckoned. “Shhh—”

I followed her over. She twisted the knob, then pushed in the door silently. The room was dark and I reached past her and fumbled for a switch. A muffled masculine voice changed my mind.

“Let’s just leave it be, shall we?”

“Oops!” Dana fell against me. I could see the vague form of a bed in the gloom as I eased her out of the way.

I got the door almost back where it belonged, then stopped again. There were two pair of shoes on the floor, both at least size twelve.

“Not Audrey,” Dana told me with assurance. “Not Audrey ‘tall.”

I closed it, then stood there shaking my head. It didn’t rattle. There had been two motorcycle crash helmets inside also.

Dana was already lurching onward, undismayed. She turned and winked at me from the next door, then threw it inward gleefully. This time there was a light on. I followed her in, a little grimly.

Furniture was not one of McGruder’s passions. The room contained a single uncovered cot set about a foot away from a side wall, a straight chair under a high barred window, a telephone on the floor. I supposed we would have to make the grand tour. I turned back, but Dana had slipped around me to the door.

She was being playful again. She pushed the door shut and leaned against it, peering up at me slyly from under her dark brows. That made her about as coy as Mae West. The girl would have been bringing out the eroticism in every man who had run into her since she was fifteen, and I had to wonder what she would be like when she was sober. I pressed a fist along her cheek, then gestured toward the outside.

“Uh-huh.” She nodded sincerely. “Find Audrey. Lil while. That’s a promise.”

“The faster we find her, the faster we get drunk.”

“Drunk already. Started to get drunk at—”

“I know. Three o’clock. You were home all day.”

“I tell you that?”

“I think so, yes.”

She frowned. “You’re not drunk ‘tall, are you?”

“Things keep coming up. You know how it is.”

“Shame,” she said. “Guy like you.” Her eyebrows had knit. Then suddenly she beamed. “Got it,” she told me brightly. “Doesn’t matter if you’re drunk or not.”

“I’m glad. You’ve got what?”

“Nope, doesn’t matter ‘tall. Got something better. Was going to save it, but it just makes me sick when I’m drunk myself.”

I had a pretty good idea what she was talking about. I waited while she hunched those lush shoulders and reached into her bosom, showing me the top of her gleaming dark oblivious head. It was folded into a small tube of white tissue, and she had difficulty unwrapping it. Finally she held out the thin marijuana reefer.

I gave her my best rueful smile.

“You mean you don’t want it?”

“Maybe later, huh? As soon as we find Audrey.”

She was pouting. “Just don’t understand. Don’t understand ‘tall. Not drunk. Won’t accept generous’st offer I can make. What do you do for kicks, anyway?”

In her soused way she was seriously troubled. I had to grin at her.

It took a minute. Then her eyes lit up. She giggled absurdly.

“Well, crying out loud, why didn’t you say so in the first place?”

I grinned some more. “We can go now, can’t we?”

“Crying out loud. Never thought of it. How do you like that?” She pursed her lips. Then she nodded decisively. “Well, by golly, nobody’s going to say Dana ‘Dea’s no sport. No, sir, nobody’s going to say that. You just don’t go ‘way and I’ll—”

This time she was a step ahead of me. She lurched downward, pawing at the hem of her skirt, and came up with two handfuls of it. There was no slip under there to hamper the friendly little impulse. She laughed in delight, crossing her arms as she straightened, and then yanked upward. Her head disappeared in a twisted red tangle.

She got stuck, squirming like something trying to work its way out of a cocoon, and her voice came merrily out of the depths. “Well, where’d you go? Crying out loud, have to give a poor girl some help—”

She needed as much help as Lady Chatterley. She was stumbling toward the cot, bent from the hips. I was probably going to regret it on cold winter nights in the future. I knew I was. The girl had a pair of thighs that could have sent the Crusades wandering off down the wrong roadway. I gave her a swift whack where her bright orange girdle was stretched most memorably and sent her sprawling.

She let out a startled little cry, skidding across the mattress with her arms flung outward and her calves flailing. I headed for the door.

I stopped again. I wasn’t sure why, except that the incident should have merited some inane comment or other, and she hadn’t made any. She had scampered to her knees and was staring into the gap between the cot and the wall. The dress had unfurled a bit, but she was still going to catch half a cold. She turned toward me, grinning stupidly.

“Told you,” she said. “Didn’t I tell you? Didn’t believe me. Said I’d find old Audrey.”

I had taken out a cigarette. Dana frowned then, but not because I dropped it.

“Don’t understand. Lots of swell beds around. Why would she sleep on the floor?” She shook her head. “And how do you suppose she went and got all bloody that way?” she said.

She was down there, all right. Her skin was warm and pliant, but there was no trace of a pulse.

I hadn’t expected one. The knife was still sticking out of her breast, like a pencil out of a sharpener.

I turned fast because of Dana. She was on her feet, beginning to get it. She was standing lopsidedly, missing a shoe. A minute earlier it would have made her fall on her face.

“Is she — is she—?”

“Yes.”

Her eyes widened. Her mouth opened again but this time it made only some small gurgling sounds, like a clogged toilet. She spun, breaking for the door.

The dress was still knotted around her hips. I caught a fistful of it. Something tore when I jerked her back.

“Kiss me!” I told her.

She looked at me as if I were mad. I was mad as a loon, but I knew enough to keep her away from that mob out front. She was still gaping when I brought up a short right and tagged her on the point of her gorgeous chin.

I got an arm around her before she could fall. It was like carrying a Volkswagen, but I got her onto the mattress.

It left me light-headed. It also left me with a corpse on the floor and an unconscious girl on the bed. I had a remote idea that the situation called for some firm, decisive action.

So I raised Dana’s hips and pulled her dress down.

Middle-class morality is primeval. There was a key in the door and I got myself over there to turn it. I came back and eased the cot farther from the wall. The body rolled onto its spine.