Chapter 8

Hope sang her first song the next night. She was nervous and really pretty amateurish at first, but the customers gave her a hand anyway, and by the end of Monday night she was giving them stuff that they could applaud just for what it was. Everything went along all right.

People began to come back to hear us play and some of the boys from around town came up now and then to listen and sit in for a few numbers. The Greek came around and grunted at the proper intervals and we were doing good.

For that first week I fucked Hope most of the time, and since all of the other guys had seemed to agree that the way we met her was something to be forgotten that was all right too. We spent a lot of time out on the lake in a canoe, and we did some fishing and swimming and she got a tan that made her look ravishing in the white evening gown she usually wore on the stand.

Things went on like that until Saturday, the band getting better all of the time and no squabbles. On Saturday night there was a crowd there that one of the waiters said was the biggest he had ever seen at the place. At about eleven o'clock that night everything was going good and we had just finished a Latin-jazz number that I still wish had been put on tape, when one of the waiters came up and said that there was a woman in one of the booths who wanted to see me.

He pointed her out to me, and I had never seen her before in my life, but he said that he was sure that it was me that she wanted to see.

So I left the stand and went over to her. She was a very sexy-built broad.

She asked me if I was who I am, and I said yes, that was me, and she asked me to sit down. She told me her name. Laddie Jones.

"Do you know Eddie Pelter?" she asked me.

"I know him."

"He sold you half a lottery ticket."

I had forgotten about that. I still didn't see the connection, because she wasn't the kind of girl that Eddie would know.

"I guess he did. So what?" I said.

The girl looked at me. "There's a spot on your tie," she said.

She scratched it off with her finger and brushed it away.

"I bought the other half of that ticket," she said. The drawing was today and that ticket won."

I figured it must have been a couple of hundred dollars anyway. I could use that just then.

"How much did it win?"

"Eighty thousand dollars."

People were talking and drinking all around us, and nothing had happened when she said that. There wasn't even any applause. She just said it quietly and calmly.

Over on the stand Nickie was at the piano playing the little break that meant he wanted me back for the next set, and there was this girl I had never seen telling me that I owned half of eighty thousand dollars.

"Will you say that again," I asked.

She did. Eighty thousand dollars. And I owned half of the ticket that had won it. I looked over at the stand and Nickie was making signs for me to get the hell back for the next number, and he didn't look any too pleasant about waiting. So I got up from the table and told the girl to be sure not to go away and I got back on the stand.

"What the hell," Nickie said. "I don't give a damn, but the Greek is watching us."

"Okay, okay," I said.

"That's some doll," Skeets said. "Why don't you have her come around."

"What's her name?" Joey asked.

"Would you guys mind playing some music," Nickie grated.

We played through the set and then I put down my instrument.

"This is important," I told Nickie. "I have to talk to her."

"What's the rush? If you've knocked her up, another few minutes won't hurt," Nickie said.

"It's about money."

"Don't let her hook you for more than fifty bucks. For fifty bucks she can get a good doctor," somebody said.

I went back to where this Laddie Jones was sitting, and I was surprised to find my hands shaking when I lighted a butt. I hadn't known I was nervous.

"You know we won't get the full amount. There are taxes and things," the girl said.

That was more in line with the way things happen. I would probably end up with that hundred bucks after all. But when she told me about how much would be left it was still a lot of loot.

"I still think there's been a mistake. If this is on the level, it's the first straight thing that Eddie Pelter ever steered me to. I suppose I ought to give him something to encourage him," I said.

"The people who run the lottery gave him a percentage bonus. You probably won't see Mr. Pelter again after he gets it."

She was right about that. The first thing Eddie did after he got the money was to buy a car and try to go into the business of smuggling Cuban exiles in through Canada at a thousand dollars a head. The government didn't go for the idea, and I didn't get a chance to see Eddie before they put him away.

We talked details about getting the money and so on, and then I asked her what she was going to do with her share.

"I haven't the slightest idea. Do I have to do something with it?" she asked.

"I guess not. But most people who have a slice of dough like that fall into their hands begin to make plans for getting rid of it. You go to the movies, don't you? You must have seen one of those stories."

"I have—it always seems terrible to me—all that money falling into the hands of such wholly incapable people."

I was still trying to figure things out. The name she had given me had a more or less familiar ring, but I knew that I had never seen her before and, as I said, she didn't seem like the kind of a girl that would be chummy with Eddie Pelter.

"I'm not a snob. But for those awful individuals you mentioned—the sweepstakes winners one sees in the movies—"

"Yes, that certainly is terrible. How did anyone like you come to know a creep like Eddie Pelter?"

The girl stopped a waiter and ordered another drink and I told him to bring me one too. I noticed Nickie frowning at me.

Poor old Nickie.

"What do you mean, anyone like me? Why did you say it that way?"

I told her she wasn't the kind of girl that I generally saw with Eddie, and that she didn't act like any of the broads who were around in places where Eddie hung out. She raised her eyebrows at that.

"You really don't know who I am then, do you?" she asked.

"I know that you said your name is Laddie Jones. Should that mean something to me?"

"Did you ever hear of Rutherford R. Jones?"

Then I caught on.

"I don't read the society columns," I said. "But I suppose I've heard of you."

"It's amazing to meet someone like you. But it's so absolutely refreshing. You've heard of the Milk Fund, haven't you?"

"What does that have to do with it?"

"I thought that you might at least have remembered my name in connection with the last drive we had. You must certainly have heard about the Jazz Festival we had last year. Or perhaps being a musician, you'd remember if I told you that we had Duke Ellington and Dave Brubeck play for us."

"I guess I remember hearing something about that. Why didn't you hire a troupe of performing elephants too?"

"But we did. I can see that you didn't take much interest in the Festival."

"I'm afraid not. Did anybody?"

She told me that everybody who mattered was there.

"Incidentally, I'm expecting a contribution from you now, you know."

"I'm sorry. I don't think that I want to subscribe to the Milk Fund."

"But it's charity. Do you realize the extent of the good work the Milk Fund accomplishes every year?"

"I'll look into it. We can talk about it some other time. I'll have to get used to the idea of having that much money before I start getting rid of it."

She looked at me over her drink and smiled by pouting her lips.

"I don't believe that you approve of me," she said.

"That doesn't matter, does it? We both happened to be on the same lottery ticket. That's all there is to it."

"It's the strangest feeling. Quite weird, really But I'm intrigued. Your disapproval absolutely fascinates me. I'm glad that I came up here."

She sure was one cool chick.

"I wondered about that," I said. "Why didn't you send your lawyer or someone like that? You could have saved your time for your—Milk Fund."

"But that would have spoiled the entire adventure. And it's been so thrilling, all of it."

She looked around over the floor, at the people dancing and the people sitting and drinking, as though she expected another thrill from that. I thought of the thrill I'd like to give her by pushing my penis into her very social twat.

"I have a job here," I said. "At least until I have that money in my pockets. I'll have

a half hour off in a little while, if you want to wait. I can talk to you then."

"I think I'll wait," she said coolly.

So I went back to the stand and played until midnight. The boys had plenty to say about her, but I didn't tell them who she was or why she was there. After we had played a couple of numbers, she got up and went out. I thought that maybe she had changed her mind about waiting, but at a few minutes before twelve she was back again and sitting in the same place. At the intermission I got over to her before any of the boys had a chance to decide that they wanted to be introduced.

"This isn't a very good place to talk," I said. Let's go out and walk some place."

"I rented a canoe. We could go out on the lake. That's private enough, isn't it?"

I noticed when we went out that Hope was watching us closely, and she didn't look too happy either. I waved to her and she brightened up some and waved back.