Chapter 11
JOE CONTINUED TO PROWL THE streets of Miami Beach, to gaze at the swaggering rich, the pink hotels, the chrome and the glitter, to admire and dream. But the edge was off the original enthusiasm and excitement. He observed more coolly, at times almost with detachment. Some of the tanned and healthy-looking men had paunches and bald heads and worry lines in their foreheads. Some of the gaudy women who swung metallic purses and tripped about on gilded shoes, reeked with age beneath their loud perfumes, were gray beneath their bleaches, wrinkled beneath their pancake make-up, flat-chested beneath their falsies.
Gradually he began to spend less time at his wanderings and more with Fran and Helen. Ten each night would find him at the Seventy-Seven Club, sitting at a corner table, sipping beer, watching the show. Between performances, if she was not occupied with the suckers, Fran would slip over and chat with him a while. Though she wore satiny low-cut gowns and lots of make-up, laughed often and was more vivacious than ever, the long hours of night work were beginning to tell on her. Caught unawares, she sometimes looked haggard and worn. Her eyes had lost their sparkle and were circled with gray off-color skin. She smoked constantly, whenever her hands and mouth were not otherwise occupied, and her thin fingers were stained from cigarettes. She had developed a cough, which she treated with patent medicines.
Helen on the other hand seemed to be thriving in the warmth and sunshine. She had put on weight, her hair had become lustrous, her skin had colored slightly. If Joe did not wait till closing time at the Seventy-Seven, but returned home early, he would rise before noon the following day. He would spend six or seven hours with Helen, take her out to lunch and have long talks with her, in which he would occasionally make an earnest attempt to understand her. By now he had started to go to the beach, and sometimes he took her with him. She had a wonderful figure in a bathing suit, and would get admiring glances from the men around her, even the young among them.
Once when they had emerged from the water and were lying beside each other on the hot sand, Joe turned to her and asked, "Happy?"
She caught his hand in hers, squeezed it and murmured, "This is the happiest moment of my life."
He sought release in the sea. Swimming, being out there alone, he felt a sense of detachment from the past and future, of oneness with the present. He longed to go on swimming forever, never to return to the world of men-to what had been and could not be undone, to what must be. Now and then when he swam out too far a lifeguard would come after him in a boat and warn him about sharks, barracudas, and undertows. He would laugh good-naturedly and turn back; but later, thinking of it, he'd mutter under his breath. "Why don't they leave a guy alone-let him do what he wants? It's my own damn life!"
When he lay on the hot sand, and sometimes when he walked along the water's edge, he would think of his parents. In particular he would recall the last visit he had paid them, just before he set off for Florida. His mother's face would come to mind, as it had appeared at the final moment, just before he left her. A smile would twitch his lips, a smile in which sadness and tenderness were intermingled. However, he would frown when his father's face appeared. He would remember that his father seemed to hate him. "Well, let him-let him!" he'd tell himself defiantly. "But which of us is better off now?-which has more to show;'" His words would not console him. He felt bitter and unhappy, torn by a vague, indefinable sense of remorse.
At those times, too, he would think of the past-usually of Rudy Gowan and the rooming house first, then of the cheating, the petty larceny, the queers he had rolled. It made him uncomfortable to think back over all the things he had done. He had been no better than Cal Royce, the memory of whom actually sickened him now! Well, that was over and done with, never would he go back to it. lie had moved into respectability. The past was dead, so why not bury it?
At precisely this moment he would start to think of Helen. Wasn't he using her, in a way cheating her, having her support him and taking money from her? Was this any more respectable than cheating at cards, or rolling a queer? For all her thirty-one years, she was helpless, a baby in his hands. She trusted him, loved him, would the for him. She said he was giving her happiness. But eventually-he sensed it though he tried to shut it out of his thoughts-eventually he must harm her. Well, that was the future; and it was his policy to avoid thinking of the future.
So the weeks passed, and life took on a sort of routine, as it has a way of doing. His days were spent with Helen, except rarely when he went to the beach alone. His nights were spent with Fran at the Seventy-Seven Club, and now and then, when he waited till closing time, at her bungalow.
He sat at a small corner table, which by tacit understanding had become his when the place wasn't too busy. He made no new friends; his experience with Cal Koyce had discouraged him. He spoke casually with the waiters and entertainers, but when they tried to get familiar he damped them with a curt or cynical remark. He loved watching Fran dance. She wasn't just a hip-wriggler, she had real talent. She wasn't cheap or vulgar, like some of the girls, and her ankles weren't -----rimmed with dirt. It made him feel somewhat smug to see other guys ogling her, and know that they could not have her because she was his. "Let 'em look-looking can't hurt-let 'em sweat!"
If he waited till the end of the show he would ride home with her in a taxi and make love to her. Afterward they would sit in the kitchen and she would make him coffee. lie didn't want the coffee but he let her make it because it pleased her. She wished to do more for him-cook his meals, wash his clothes and darn his socks. She said she wanted to be like a wife to him, swore that it was the first time she had felt this way about a man.
She wished especially to sleep with him. She wanted to cuddle up in his arms and bury her head in the hollow of his neck, wanted to hug his strong arm to her breast, feel his warm breath in her hair. He rejected her gently.
"Not tonight trail. Next time maybe."
But next time was the same, and so was the time after. She began to realize that he was purposely avoiding sleeping with her, that regardless of his promises he most likely never would. She did not question him as to why, because she was too proud. She continued to wait and hope.
Joe himself could hardly have said why. lie hadn't bothered to think about it. He would just rather sleep with Helen, that was all. II he had taken the time to dunk it out, he might have realized that he was more at ease with Helen, more comfortable. When he awoke with her he felt clean and refreshed, and-strange to say-almost respectable. Deep in him, unrealized perhaps but none the less present, was a yearning for respectability-for the outer show of it, at any rate. He knew that sleeping with Fran would not give him this.
At last Fran could take it no longer. She began to question him. When his answers turned out to be evasive and indefinite, she lost patience and told him why.
"You're a kid, that's why! A silly kid with a mother complex." It was a theory which she, who had read a few sensational magazine articles on psychiatry, had picked up. Helen, or Aunty as she called her, was a mother symbol to Joe. "You're afraid of hurting mother-being a bad boy and staying out all night, sleeping with a girl like me!"
He laughed at her when she said it; but later, thinking of it, he frowned.
She began to tease him, asking him if he was going to grow up, give up being a Momma's boy. She became bitter and yelled at him and tried to slap him. It was she who got slapped, of course, but this didn't soften her anger. If anything, it was a puff of air on the flame.
She rubbed her cheek, and coming close to him again, said, "I'm not sharing you with your aunt any more-d'you understand ?"
He reminded her that she had called Helen his mother a few days ago.
"Aunt, mother-I don't care what she is to you."
"You'll go on sharing me."
"Why will I?"
"Because you're got no choice," he said, and started for the door.
She got in his path and softly, grimly, said "You're wrong. You don't know me. Leave now and it's for good!"
He hesitated, but at last returned to the couch and sat down. "I couldn't walk out on Helen if I wanted to."
Flushed and breathless with victory, she lit a cigarette and sat down beside him. "Why couldn't you?"
He told her what Helen had said she would do if he walked out on her. "And she means it," he went on, "I can tell you that. She means it all the way down the line!"
Fran's eyes narrowed as he spoke, the stained fingers that held the cigarette trembled ever so perceptibly. Suddenly she laughed, softly at first then louder. The laughter was shattered by a cough. Smoke had got into her eyes, causing them to tear. When she had dried them, she shook her head. A forced smile on her lips, which had gone bloodless, she said:
"Aunty:' No, not her. Not the type. She threatens often but never quite does."
He said that she had threatened only once. And that he was convinced she would do it.
"I never shared a man in my life"-she did not look at him, she seemed to be Looking inwards. He was uneasy and-perhaps for the first time since he had left the Bronx-cowed. He did not want to lose Fran. She was a tramp, she was worthless and evil; yet this was what he wanted and needed in a girl. The Wicked must cherish the Wicked, otherwise they are alone and lost in a world of the Good.
"You're not sharing me," he said. And he explained to her that though he slept with Helen he had very little to do with her, as he put it "in that way."
She reminded him bitterly of the morning, which seemed a long time ago now, when the three of them had slept together in the same bed. Her eyes glittered as she spoke, and her voice was muted, almost inaudible.
"That never happened to me before. And I won't forget it, ever!"