James Cain - Serenade

They had got a little sick of bullfighting, but when they saw the ear they began to yell again. They passed it around, and felt it, and smelled it, and say “Peyooh!” Winston took it, held it up to his head and wobbled it, and they laughed and clapped. He got down on the floor again and bellowed. Juana laughed. “Yes, now you are no more jackass. Big bull.”

He bellowed again. I was getting so nervous I was twitching. I went over to her. “Take that stuff back. I’m fed up on bullfighting, and that ear stinks. Take it back where you got it, and— ”

I grabbed for the ear. Winston dodged. She laughed and wouldn’t look at me. Something hit me in the belly. When I looked around I saw that one of the fags in woman’s clothes had poked me with a broomstick. “Out of my way! I’m a picador! I’m a picador on his old white horse!”

Two or three more of them ran back and got broomsticks, or mops handles, or whatever was there, to be picadors, and began galloping around Winston, poking at him. Every time they touched him he’d bellow. Juana drew the espada , and spread the cape with it, like it was a muleta . Winston began charging it, on one hand and his knees, still holding the ear with his other hand and wobbling it. Pudinsky began to rip off the bullring music from Carmen. There was so much noise you couldn’t even hear yourself think. I walked over and leaned on the piano, with my back to it, till she would get the clowning over and I would have another chance to get her out.

All of a sudden Pudinsky stopped, and this “Ooh!” went around the room. I turned around. She was standing there, like a statue, the way they do for the kill, with her left side to Winston, the sword in her right hand, up at the level of her eyes, and pointing right at him. In her left hand, down in front of him, she held the cape. He was down there looking at it, and wobbling the ear at it. Pudinsky began to play blue chords on the piano.

Winston snorted a couple of times, then looked up at her, like he wanted a cue on what to do next. Then he jumped up, and back, but a sofa caught him. A man yelled. I jumped for the sword arm, but I was too late. That espada thrust isn’t something in slow motion, like you maybe have thought from reading the books. It goes like lightning, and next thing I knew the point of the steel was sticking out the back of the sofa, and blood was foaming out of Winston’s mouth, and she was over him, talking to him, laughing at him, telling him the detective was waiting to take him down to hell.

It flashed over me, that mob at the novelladas, pouring down out of the sol , twisting the tail of the dying bull, yelling at him, kicking at him, spitting on him, and I tried to tell myself I had hooked up with a savage, that it was horrible. It was no use. I wanted to laugh, and cheer, and yell Olé! I knew I was looking at the most magnificent thing I had ever seen in my life.

She spit into the blood, stepped back, and picked up the cape. For a second all you could hear was Pudinsky, over at the piano, gasping and slobbering in an agony of fright. Then they made a rush for the door, to get out before the police came. They fought to get past each other, the women cursing like men, the fags screaming like women, and when they got to the hall they didn’t wait for the elevator. They went piling down the stairway, and some of them fell, and you could hear more curses, and screams, and thuds, where they were kicking each other. She came over and knelt beside me, where I had folded into a chair. “Now, he no get. Goodbye, and remember Juana.” She kissed me, jumped up, and rustled out. I sat there, still looking at that thing that was pinned to the sofa, with its head hanging over the back, and the blood drying on the shirt. Pudinsky lifted his head, where it was buried in his hands, saw it, let out a moan, and ran over to a corner, where he put his head down and broke out into more sobs. I picked up a rug to throw on it. Then something twisted in my stomach, and I stumbled back to a bathroom. I hadn’t eaten since afternoon, but white stuff began coming up, and even after my stomach was empty it kept retching, and horrible sounds came out of me from the air it forced up. I saw my face in the mirror. It was green.

When I came out two cops were there, and four or five of the fags, and one of the girls in a dinner coat, and a guy in a derby hat. Whether he was the dick that had been waiting for Juana, and he grabbed some of them on the way out, I didn’t know. When the cops saw me they motioned me to stand aside, and one of them went back to phone. Pretty soon two more cops came up, and a couple of detectives, and next thing, the place was full of cops. There was one guy that seemed to be a doctor, and another that seemed to be a police photographer. Anyway, he set up a tripod, and began setting off bulbs and throwing them in the fern pot. Pretty soon a cop went over, motioned to me, and he, a detective, and I went out. I didn’t have any coat there, but I didn’t say anything about it. I didn’t know whether they had Juana, or even where she had gone, and I was afraid if I asked them to let me go to the apartment, they would come with me and find her. We went down in the elevator. Harry ran us down. When we got to the lobby, more cops were there, talking to Tony.

We got in a police car, drove down Second Avenue, then down Lafayette Street, and on downtown to a place that seemed to be police headquarters. We got out, went in, and the cops took me in a room and told me to sit down. One of them went out. The other stayed, and picked up an afternoon paper that was on the table. We must have sat an hour, he reading the paper and neither of us saying anything. After a while I asked him if he had a cigarette. He passed over a pack without looking up. I smoked and we sat for another hour. Outside it was beginning to get light.

About six o’clock a detective came in, sat down, and stared at me a while. Then he began to talk. “You was there tonight? At this here Hawes’s place?”

“Yes, I was.”

“You seen him killed?”

“I did.”

“What she kill him for?”

“That I don’t know.”

“Come on, you know. What you trying to do, kid me?”

“I told you I don’t know.”

“You live with her?”

“Yes.”

“Then what do you mean you don’t know? What she kill him for.”

“I’ve got no idea at all.”

“Was she in this country illegal?”

I knew by that Tony had spilled what he knew. “That I can’t tell you. She might have been.”

“What the hell can you tell me?”

“Anything I know I’ll tell you.”

He roared for a minute about how he could make me tell him, but that was a mistake. It gave me time to think. That illegal entry was a way he could tie me in, and hold me if he wanted to, and I knew the only way I could be of any use to her was to get out of there. Whether they had got her or not I didn’t know, but I couldn’t be any good sitting behind bars. I kept looking at him, thinking over the entries on my passport, and by the time he began asking questions again I had it all in hand, and thought I could get away with a lie. “So you quit that goddam stalling. One more thing you can’t tell me and I’ll open you up. Come on. She was in illegal, wasn’t she?”

“I told you I don’t know.”

“Did you bring her in?”

“I did not.”

“What? Wasn’t you in Mexico?”

“Yes, I was.”

“Didn’t you bring her in with you?”

“I did not. I met her in Los Angeles.”

“How you come in?”

“I rode a bus up to Nogales, caught a ride to San Antonio, and from there took another bus to Los Angeles. I met her about a week after that, in the Mexican quarter. Then I began working for pictures, and we hooked up. Then she came with me to New York.”