James Cain - Serenade

She didn’t look at me. She was shooting it at me with her eyes staring straight again, and her feet carrying her back and forth with that sliding, shuffling walk. I opened my mouth two or three times to stall some more, but couldn’t, looking at her. “Well, what are you going to do? Will you tell me that? Do you know?”

“Yes. You go. You give me money, not much, but little bit. Then I work, get little job, maybe kitchen muchacha , nobody know me, look like all other muchacha , I get job, easy. Then I go to priest, confess my pecado—”

“That’s what I’ve been waiting for. I knew that was coming. Now let me tell you something. You confess that pecado , and right there is where you lose.”

“I no lose. I give money to church, they no turn me in. Then I have peace. Then some time I go back to Mexico.”

“And what about me?”

“You go. You sing. You sing for radio. I hear. I remember. You remember. Maybe. Remember little dumb muchacha—”

“Listen, little dumb muchacha , that’s all swell, except for one thing. When we hooked up, we hooked up for good, and—”

“Why you talk so? It is the end! Can you no see these thing? It is the end! You no go, what then? They take me back. Me only, they never find. You, yes. They take me back, and what they do to me? In Mexico, maybe nothing, unless he was politico . In New York, I know, you know. The soldados come, they put the pañuelo over the eyes, they take me to wall, they shoot. Why you do these things to me? You love me, yes. But it is the end!”

I tried to argue, got up and tried to catch her, to make her quit that walking around. She slipped away from me. Then she flung herself down on her bed and lay there staring up at the ceiling. When I came to her she waved me away. From that time on she slept in her bed and I slept in mine, and nothing I could do would break her down.

I didn’t leave her, I couldn’t leave her. It wasn’t only that I was insane about her. What was between us had completely reversed since we started out. In the beginning, I thought of her like she had said, as a little dumb muchacha that I was nuts about, that I loved to touch and sleep with and play with. But now I had found out that in all the main things of my life she was stronger than I was, and I had got so I had to be with her. It wouldn’t have done any good to leave her. I’d have been back as fast as a plane could carry me.

For a week after that, we’d lie there in the afternoon, saying nothing, and then she began putting on her clothes and going out. I’d lie there, trying not to think about singing, praying for strength not to suck in a bellyful and cut it loose. Then it popped in my mind about the priests, and I got in a cold sweat that that was where she was going. So one day I followed her. But she went past the Cathedral, and then I got ashamed of myself and turned around and came back.

I had to do something with myself, though, so when she went I began going to the baseball games. From that you can imagine how much there was to do in Guatemala, that I would go to the baseball game. They’ve got some kind of a league between Managua, Guatemala, San Salvador, and some other Central American towns, and they get as excited about it as they get in Chicago over a World Series, and yell at the ump, and all the rest of it. Buses run out there, but I walked. The fewer people that got a close look at me, the better I liked it. One day I found myself watching the pitcher on the San Salvador team. The papers gave his name as Barrios, but he must have been an American, or anyway have lived in the United States, from his motion. Most of those Indians handle a ball jerky, and fight it so they make more errors than you could believe. But this guy had the old Lefty Gomez motion, loose, easy, so his whole weight went in the pitch, and more smoke than all the rest of them had put together. I sat looking at him, taking in those motions, and then all of a sudden I felt my heart stop. Was it coming out in me again, this thing that had got me when I met Winston? Was that kid out there really doing things to me that had nothing to do with baseball? Was it having its effect, her putting me out of her bed?

I got up and left. I know now it was just nerves, that when Winston died that chapter ended. But I didn’t then. I tried to put it out of my mind, and couldn’t. I didn’t go to the ball games any more, but then, after a couple of weeks, I got to thinking: Am I going to turn into the priest again? Am I going to give up everything else in this Christ-forsaken dump, and then lose my voice too? It began to be an obsession with me that I had to have a woman, that if I didn’t have a woman I was sunk.

She didn’t go with me to hear the band play any more. She stayed home and went to bed. One night, when I went out, instead of heading for the park, I flagged a taxi. “La Locha.”

“Sí, Señor, La Locha.”

I had heard guys at the ball game talking about La Locha’s, but I didn’t know where it was. It turned out to be on Tenth Avenue, but the district was on a different system from in Mexico. There were regular houses, with red lights over the door, all according to Hoyle. I rang, and an Indian let me in. A whorehouse, I guess, is the same all over the world. There was a big room, with a phonograph on one side, a radio on the other, and an electric piano in the middle, with a stained-glass picture of Niagara Falls in the front, that lit up whenever somebody put in a nickel. The wallpaper had red roses all over it, and at one end was a bar. Back of the bar was an oil painting of a nude, and in the cabinet under it were stacks and stacks of long square cans. When a guy in Guatemala really wants to show the girls a good time, he blows them to canned asparagus.

The Indian looked at me pretty funny, and after he went back, so did the woman at the bar. I thought at first it was the Italian way I was speaking Spanish, but then it seemed to be something about my hat. An army officer was at a little table, reading a newspaper. He had his hat on, and then I remembered and put mine on. I ordered cerveza , and three girls came in. They stood on the rail and began loving me up. Two of them were Indian, but one of them was white, and she looked the cleanest. I put my arm around her, and after the other two got their drinks, they went over with the officer. One of them turned on the radio, and the other one and the officer began to dance. My girl and I danced. By rights I guess she was fairly pretty. She couldn’t have been more than twenty-one or two, and even in the sweater and green dress she had on, you could see she had a pretty good shape. But she kept playing with my hand, and everything I’d say to her, she’d answer in a little high squeak of a voice that got on my nerves. I asked her what her name was. She said Maria.

We had another dance, but God knows there was no point in keeping that up. I asked her if she wanted to go upstairs, and she was leading me out the door even before the tune was over.

We went up, she took me in a room, and snapped on the light. It was just the same old whore’s bedroom, except for one thing. On the bureau was a signed photograph of Enzo Luchetti, an old bass I had sung with years before, in Florence. My heart skipped a beat. If he was in town, that meant I had to get out, and get out fast. I picked it up and asked her who it was. She said she didn’t know. Another girl had had the room before she came, a fine girl that had been in Europe, but she had got enferma and had to leave. I put it down and said it looked like an Italian. She asked if I wasn’t Italian. I said yes.

There didn’t seem to be much to do, then, but get at it. She began dropping off her clothes. I began dropping off mine. She snapped off the light and we lay down on the bed. I didn’t want her, and yet I was excited, in some kind of a queer, unnatural way, because I knew I had to have her. It didn’t seem possible that anything could be over so quick and amount to so little. We lay there, and I tried to talk to her, but there wasn’t anything to talk to. Then we had another, and next thing I knew I was dressing. Ten quetzals. I gave her fifteen. She got awfully friendly then, but it was like having a poodle bitch trying to jump in your lap. It was only a little after ten when I got home, but Juana was asleep. I undressed in the dark, got into bed, and thought I would get some peace. Next thing, the conductor threw the stick on me, and I tried to sing, and the chorus stood around looking at me, and I began yelling, trying to tell them why I couldn’t. When I woke up, those yells were still echoing in my ears, and she was standing over me, shaking me.