Chapter 6
She was a tall brunette with a stunning figure and a hauntingly beautiful face, an exceptionally big girl, almost six feet, which was the reason she'd been chosen to make five hundred dollars that night. A smaller girl in the role they'd planned would not have carried the dramatic impact.
There was only one flaw in the physical perfection of this girl: the look on her face. A sullen look; a look full of hatred and bitterness as though hatred and bitterness had been her diet for a long time and had molded itself into her otherwise flawless features.
She sat alone in a small room in a nameless place, awaiting her call to go before a nameless crowd in a larger room nearby.
The walls of the room she was in were thick, but she could still hear the sounds coming from the big room. She had the image of that room in her mind: a square, dark enclosure, the only light focused on the center of it where a wrestling or boxing ring had been
Si erected, complete with ropes and canvas and the stink of heavy cigar and cigarette smoke twisting and billowing in a lazy cloud against the light.
The sounds she heard were occasional roars from the crowd out there, the packed nameless faces in the darkness around the raised ring.
There were other sounds, too, from the ring itself: a quick scream of pain, a bellow of anger or a cry of triumph from one of the actors in the sickening dramas out there.
These performances were highly successful, commanding dizzy admission fees because of their elemental nature. They were not artificially staged displays of standard filth. The evil genius who had devised them had thought of something better. They were contests with the actors really antagonists competing for big cash prizes.
This was what the tall brunette was thinking about as she sat there in that tiny room sat there naked and ready to perform. The prizes, the money, that was what she filled her mind with in order to crowd out the rest.
And when she heard a particularly loud shriek of despair from the bigger room and knew why the girl had cried out what she was losing that made her yell like that the tall brunette decided five hundred dollars wasn't enough.
So, a few minutes later when the door opened, she turned her sullen eyes on the man who had come for her and said, "I'm not going on."
He jerked his cigarette from his mouth and said, "Now let's can that jazz. You're the feature act."
"That's why. I'm the feature. For a lousy five hundred bucks. I want a thousand."
"Why you chiseling witch! I'll "
"You'll do what? Have me beaten up? A lot of good that'll do you. It won't keep those wolves out there from pulling you in two when they don't get a feature."
"I ain't got that kind of dough. I didn't pull it in."
"You're a lying crook. You clipped that gang of mongrels fifty bucks a head."
He glared at her. "So you think you've got me over the barrel, huh?"
"I get my money first. I don't shoot for prizes."
He shrugged. "Okay, but no more dough after tonight. From now on you go out and scratch like the rest."
"After tonight I stay out of your lousy rings."
"And another thing. They don't like being muscled the boys uptown. This is no skin off my nose. When I account for the dough I just tell them you nudged me. They might send a guy or two to see you."
"I'll gamble on that. It's the grand or I don't go on."
The man snarled wordlessly and stalked out. He came back a few moments later and threw five one-hundred-dollar bills on the floor.
"Okay, root for 'em."
She trembled with rage. "Someday they're going to find you with a knife in your gut."
"Be in the ring in three minutes," he snarled. He went out, slamming the door.
After he left, the girl picked up the money. She couldn't take it with her. She was stark naked. And she saw the possibility of being robbed while she was out there in the ring taking her lumps. The first payment was safe. She'd gotten that earlier in the evening and slipped out and mailed it to herself at a corner mailbox.
But this five hundred was different. Finally, she pulled her chair close to the wall and stood on it. She reached a hole high in the cement and pushed the money in out of sight.
Then she got down and stood facing the door for a long moment; after which she straightened her shoulders, raised her head, and strode naked out into the big room...
A roar greeted the girl's appearance. She ignored it, keeping her eyes on the ring as she approached it. Her opponents in the contest to be staged were already in the ring, waiting for her. They grinned as she climbed through the ropes. All three of them.
They were midgets...
Back in the nameless crowd, a local executive was entertaining an important customer. The executive was an old hand at this sort of thing. He'd seen every kind of exhibition of this kind that had ever been devised.
His guest, however, was new to the stag shows. He'd come reluctantly, timidly. But after seeing a girl knock another girl senseless, strip off her clothes and tie her in a lewd position to a ring post, he'd gotten excited. Then there was that mixed tag-team match; two couples against each other; with one of the men finally getting the opposing girl in the middle of the ring and taking her while she'd strained to reach the hand of her partner while he clung to the ring rope.
She hadn't made it, much to the delight of the crowd.
These things had fired the executive's guest, and his curiosity reflected his aroused interest.
"That girl's already got her clothes off."
"Sure. This one will be a little different. I've seen it done a few times."
"The three midgets "
"It's three against one."
"Good Lord!"
"It's up to them to take her. That's why they've got a big girl."
"You mean ? "
"Wait'll you see it. It'll be something to tell the boys back home at the club."
The guest shuddered. He remained silent, but he thought how terrible it would be if anyone back home ever found out he'd come within miles of a place like this.
The brunette had climbed into the ring now. She stood alone, distainful, sullen, in one corner, while the three midgets whispered in the corner opposite.
"How can she stand there like that?" the guest marveled. "Stark naked "
"They get used to it."
"They must pay them fortunes."
"Not necessarily. It depends on how broke they are, how bad they need money."
A tall thin man in a dinner jacket and a black tie added a grotesquely festive note to the proceedings as he climbed into the ring. He held up his hands. "All right, men. The feature of our performance the high spot of the evening the contest you've all been waiting for. I don't have to tell you about it. Some of you have seen contests like it before and have probably told the others."
The crowd was getting restless. Nerves were tight. Sensibilities at a high pitch.
"Cut out the speech and let's get going," someone yelled.
"We didn't come to hear a lecture."
The man held up his hands good-naturedly. "Okay, men. Okay. Nobody has to hit me with a brick wall."
"It might be a hell of a good idea."
There was raucous laughter.
"Just let me introduce Margie, our star."
The man made the introduction as he backed toward the ropes. The brunette ignored the hand-clapping and the shouts.
"I'm betting on you, baby!"
"Want me to come up and give you a hand?"
"You can tear those monkeys apart, sweetheart."
The guest's nerves tightened. "Exactly what's going to happen?"
The executive's eyes were glued to the ring. The guest and his interruptions had become a nuisance.
"They're going to take her if they can. They got fifteen minutes. If she's on her feet when the bell sounds, she wins."
"But "
"Just watch and see," the executive snapped irritably.
The guest subsided. He stared at the ring, the heavy pall of tobacco smoke stinging his eyes.
A bell sounded and the three midgets bounded out of their corner. The girl went up on her bare toes, her shoulders hunched slightly forward and the guest was fascinated by the movement of her lush breasts as she moved along the ropes.
The midgets moved in, forming a line in front of her. Suddenly one of them feinted and rushed at her. She crouched and leaned forward, her fist doubled. But the midget did not come within range of her arm. He skidded to a quick halt and scrambled back into the line. He laughed and jumped up and down and waved his arms. The crowd laughed with him.
A second midget performed the same maneuver. But he was a little too daring. Her timing perfect, the girl took a step forward and hit him with her doubled fist, sending him staggering back.
Now the audience roared as the watchers leaned tensely forward in their seats.
The girl continued to circle around the ropes, keeping them at her back. Until someone yelled, "All right, sister. Play fair. Give the little guys a chance."
Play fair, the guest thought. God! Is this real? Or am I having some kind of a terrible nightmare? He was feeling faintly nauseous from the high keening excitement, but he ignored it and peered through the smoke at the ring, not wanting to miss an instant of it.
The midgets became angry, one of them running to the edge of the ring. He waved his arms, pointed at the girl and complained to the man in the dinner jacket in a high-pitched voice.
"We want our money back! We want our money back!" Several malcontents took up the cry, but it was stilled by a sudden maneuver on the part of one of the midgets.
Thinking that possibly the girl's guard would be down while the complaint was being made, he suddenly rushed in and hurled himself at her ankles. He wrapped his small, twisted body around them and it appeared that he would be able to hold her until the other two could come to his aid.
And he almost succeeded. But the girl, standing in a corner at that moment, braced herself on the ropes with both arms and lifted her legs, kicking out savagely. She shook the midget loose and as he lay exposed in front of her she stamped hard on his belly putting her whole weight on that leg.
He squalled in a high pitched voice, rolling away as he clutched his stomach. He kept on rolling until he reached the middle of the ring where he lay clutching himself with both arms.
The other two midgets knelt beside him. Then one of them raised his fist and shook it at the girl.
She stayed where she was, crouched there in the corner, gripping the ropes. Until one of the midgets left his partners and again went to the edge of the ring to complain to the master of ceremonies.
Then, quite suddenly, the girl galvanized into action. She raced across the ring in the direction of the lone midget.
The executive, seeming to remember that he had a guest with him, turned and shouted above the din. "If she can throw any of them out of the ring he can't come back."
The girl reached the midget before he realized she'd left her corner. The guest saw the quick look of fear on his face as he strove to dodge and skitter away.
But the girl got her hands on him. She must, at one time, have had some training in wrestling, the guest thought, because she was lifting the midget expertly. She was strong, too, as evidenced by the way she lifted him above her head preparatory to throwing him out into the crowd.
He fought and writhed desperately, putting her slightly off-balance. This saved him and put the girl oil the road to defeat. It gave the midget in the center of the ring time to come to his partner's rescue.
He did this by lunging at the girl and hurling his body against the backs of her legs after the manner of a clipping tackle in football.
The girl teetered, struggling valiantly to hold her balance. But she did not succeed and went over backward, tossing the midget into the center of the ring instead of out of it.
She fell heavily, flat on her back, and the two active midgets moved swiftly. They must have been trained in this maneuver because they rushed in on either side of her and each of them wrapped themselves around a leg.
The girl fought desperately, and she might have succeeded in fighting free if the midget she'd kicked hadn't come back into the action.
He came back viciously, savagely, taking several short, waddling steps and then hurling himself through the air to come down squarely on the girl's belly with the whole weight of his body.
He didn't weigh a great deal, but his weight, delivered in that fashion, brought a squall of agony from the girl as her mouth flew open and her eyes fairly bulged from her head.
A roar went up as though every man in the audience felt the punishment. The girl's hand went automatically to her abused belly, any gesture of defense momentarily forgotten. The midget that had incapacitated her rolled off, came to his feet and pumped up and down in glee.
Then, grinning hideously, he drew back to repeat the brutality. This time, it was different. Forewarned, the girl was able to fend him off even in her reduced condition. She used her hands to push him at just the right moment to keep his weight from landing squarely on her body.
"You got her!" a voice from the audience screamed. "You got her. Don't let her up!"
And it appeared that this was true. With all three midgets concentrating on the girl's legs, they were too much for her. They pulled her legs taut and kept her feet off the mat, thus depriving her of leverage. She could only kick and struggle. The blow in the belly had weakened her. Sensing their advantage, they began clowning, humiliating and degrading her. Keeping her legs stretched, they began pulling her in a circle around the ring. She continued to fight, clawing at the ring and trying to reach them with her hands.
But they kept out of range.
"All right," the raucous-voiced man in the audience yelled. "Quit horsing around! Get on with it. We want to go home."
The executive leaned close to his guest. "It all hinged on that second when she had the one midget over her head. If she could have thrown him out of the ring she'd have won. That's how these things go."
Suddenly, the guest loathed his perspiring host, sitting there talking about this blatant filth and brutality as though it were some kind of scientific exhibition.
His skin crawled as the girl, beside herself with rage and humiliation, began screaming curses at the midget.
It's like something out of Dante's Inferno, the guest told himself numbly. The ring blurred. He squeezed his eyes tight shut and snapped them open and the place cleared again.
The two midgets were amusing the audience by jumping in opposite directions while clinging tight to the girl's ankles.
"Make her yell!" a new voice yelled, and the guest knew that the owner of the voice was no longer a man; he'd turned into an animal.
He blinked again, and while he had his eyes closed a fresh roar went up; he opened them to find that the midgets had flipped the girl over on her belly while still retaining control of her legs.
This gave her the opportunity to come up on her knees, one she promptly took advantage of. But she was only falling into a trap they'd prepared because the third midget hurled himself hard against her buttocks, slamming her down against the canvas.
Doggedly, she tried it again. This time they let her crawl a foot before the midget slammed her down a second time.
Now he stayed in close and necks craned and fresh animal roars went up as the girl began to fight frantically, clawing backward at him and then pounding her fists against the canvas.
"Give it to her!" A voice roared.
But a second voice dissented. "The hell with that stuff! We can't see. Get on with it."
Again the executive explained. "The little guy's getting even. He wouldn't do that to her if she hadn't stomped him."
"It looks to me as though he's gotten more than even already."
"They'll pull her over and hook her feet in the ropes and finish it now."
"I think I'd just as soon not see it," the guest said. Then, without waiting for a reply, he got to his feet. "I'll wait for you outside."
He left and the executive looked after him angrily. Why did he have to be like that? The executive's thoughts, written clearly on his face, were frustrating.
He knew that he should go with his guest. It was only common politeness. Also, there the matter of business. There was a big order at stake. The guy wasn't taking this exactly as he'd expected. Maybe he was sore. Maybe more harm had been done than good and he ought to be out there apologizing, straightening things out.
But damn it, he wanted to see the end of this.
That was what he'd paid the imagine price for. And it was about over. Another ten minutes maybe, or a little more. It depended on how fast the midgets were.
Already they had the girl at the edge of the ring with the ropes twisted around one of her ankles. They were pulling the other leg out now, getting the rope around it. This was the big finale.
The roar of the audience deepened, became more vicious. The hell with the guy! He wanted to see this. He'd smooth the guy out after it was over. Buy him a few drinks...
Ten minutes later, he hurried out to find his guest standing at the curb taking slow, deep breaths
"Well," he said cheerfully, "how did you like that?"
"I don't quite know. What happened?"
"They finished it. Each one of them gets a turn at her." The executive laughed. 'It's only fair The spoils of war, you know."
The spoils of war! God, the guest thought. What else went on in this world that he didn't know about? That he didn't care to know about?
"Come on," the executive said, "we'll go to my club and have us a nightcap or two before you turn in."
"I'd rather not. I think I'll go right to my room. I'm tired."
The executive didn't like his tone of voice. There seemed to be a coldness in it. He wondered if he'd lost the order.
There was no doubt in the guest's mind.
No doubt at all ...
The hole seemed to be higher now, standing on tiptoe, the girl could just reach the wadded bills with the tips of her fingers. She strained upward, got a fragile grip on one and drew it out. That got the bill close enough for a harder pull, and soon the money was in her fist.
"Okay, baby. Give it here."
A cold chill ran through the girl's abused, degraded body. She almost lost her balance as she turned and looked down at him.
How had he entered so noiselessly? Concentration on her task had no doubt helped him.
His hostility was formed into a yellow-toothed grin now as he stood there with his hand extended.
"So that's where you stashed it. Clever. I hunted all over hell while the midgets had you tied up getting their kicks. I couldn't find the dough. I figured you must have been smart."
"No!" the girl screamed. "It's not fair! It's my money! I earned every dirty cent of it."
He snapped his fingers. "You want to give me the loot or do you want a busted gut?"
He grabbed at the money as she came down off the chair, got her by the wrist and twisted it. She was a big, well-muscled girl, but no match for him and she slipped, writhing to her knees.
He held her that way for a few moments, enjoying his triumph; enjoying the stream of abuse that flooded out at him from between her beautiful lips.
He grinned. "You wanna give me what the third midget got by twisting your arm?"
The girl cursed, either from the memory of what he referred to or from sheer loathing of the man.
Then he tired of his pleasure, of baiting her. He snapped his fingers. "Okay, baby the loot."
When she didn't comply instantly, he applied pressure to her arm and she twisted away from him with a shriek of pain. He reached for the money.
But he didn't get it because the door opened again at that precise moment, and the man was suddenly in bad trouble.
His trouble came from another man, one that the girl-now crouched in a corner of the room did not see as being much of a protector. He was well-dressed, too slim to be a fighter, and with a thin, sensitive face that didn't fit into this cesspool of sick, rotten sex.
But he proved to be deceptive. Without taking time to assess the situation, he'd stepped in, taken her tormentor's head in his two hands and twisted it; used it as a sort of knob to spin the man away from her and send him crashing against the table.
The man's reaction was completely normal. He yelled, "Why, you creepy louse!" and lunged into combat.
But he flew out again as the slim intruder seized his wrist, twisted it, executed an odd little dance, and sent his opponent crashing head-first against the cement wall.
Paying no further attention, he turned to the girl. "What seems to be the trouble."
"He tried to steal my money."
"Well, I don't think he wants it now." The girl stared at her rescuer and did something she hadn't done in a long time tried to cover her nakedness. She'd long since lost all consciousness of modesty or decency or any thing else of that nature.
But now, for some strange reason, instinct took over and as she crouched there, she put one arm across her breasts and spread her other hand over her thighs.
"If you like," he said, "I'll wait and see that you get safely away."
When she did not answer he said, "I'll dump our friend here in the alley while you get dressed. Then we'll leave."
She watched as he lifted her unconscious tormentor to his feet, put an arm under his shoulders and dragged him from the room with his feet dragging.
"Don't be long," he said. "I'll come back and wait for you in the corridor."
The girl stared for a while. Then she got up and began to dress...
"My name is Flame," the girl said, and he accepted it. It wasn't her real name of course, but she'd disowned the other one, the one that associated her with home and parents and all her beginnings. She was now Flame, the girl who had been born one bitter night when three young human animals, skilled at their calling, had broken her in, given her her first hours of intensive training for her life ahead. They'd enjoyed their work and had been thorough; when they got through, she was familiar with every abnormal sexual gambit ever devised by man to be perpetrated on women.
But that seemed a thousand years ago, and now she was sitting in a cocktail lounge with the first man who had been decent to her since she could remember.
It wasn't genuine though, his decency. It was only his pitch. They all had pitches because they all wanted the same thing. Most of them rushed into it and then threw the money on the dresser and left. This one was a little more refined in his approach. Or maybe he figured, by being nice to her, that he could get it for nothing.
Well, the hell with that noise. He'd find he couldn't.
"My name is Barney Williams," he said. Then he smiled and raised his glass and said, "Here's luck."
She drank with him, wondering when he'd get around to suggesting a room upstairs in the hotel they were in.
But he seemed to be in no hurry. "Are you new in town?" he asked.
"I've been here about a year. I came from Cleveland."
"I'm from farther west myself. I started life in Des Moines, Iowa."
"They're all good towns to get away from."
"Uh-huh. I wasn't born in Des Moines. A little burg called Appleton. Maybe five hundred people."
"My little town was Gravesend, and it was a good name for it. The cemetery was on a hill behind it. The tombstones were all you could see."
He had nice eyes and when he smiled, he did something to her.
This realization should have been pleasant. At least it should not have been as bitter as it was. But the bitterness was quite natural for Flame because it highlighted her weakness. Men.
That was how it had been right from the beginning; all during the time of her younger years; during the time she'd sensed it as being wrong and had fought against it.
But it had beaten her long before she'd been channeled into her present way of life, had recognized her talent for sex as being the only one she had.
Men. She would meet a man and sit down with him for a drink and he'd begin getting to her, drawing her, attracting her. And before long, after she quit fighting it, the path from a cocktail table to a bed became very short.
That was how it had been. She hadn't been taken by accident. The punks on the lookout for female sex material have brains, too. They see talent; they even spot it. And she'd eased herself into the bedroom where they'd initiated her into the big time. She hadn't been pushed.
All that was water under the bridge, though. The surprising thing was now. In her present status as a professional, what had once been a thrill had become business. It had been a long time since a man across a table had been anything but a business proposition; the thrill of proximity had long gone.
But here it was again. A man attracting her physically.
All this flashed through her mind as Barney Williams smiled at her and created the illusion that he was thinking of her as a lady.
"Yes," he was saying, "we leave the small towns and go out to lick the world. And somewhere along the line we always wish we could go back." He gave her a quick smile. "Do you ever wish you could go back?"
"I don't know. I never think of it any more."
"Sometimes it isn't worthwhile ... "
That was how their conversation started. Flame wasn't sure, later, just how it went from one subject to another until they arrived at the place where Barney Williams said, "Art Ringler controls all the commercialized sex in town. I work for Vince Kane. He's no lily himself, I'll admit that, but he hates the cynical exploitation of girls."
"They all claim to."
"But Vince Kane will stand or fall on it. He and Ringler are meeting head-on. And Vince needs help."
The illusion that Barney Williams liked her for herself alone died somewhere along the way, and its death hurt a little. But there was a compensation. He wasn't maneuvering to go to bed with her. And he was a decent guy.
"Which one will win?"
Barney shrugged. "Who knows? There's one thing sure, though. Ringler can be hit only in one place. Did you ever deal with him?"
"No. I never met him in my life."
"But you've heard the rumors. You know he's the kingpin in the vice rackets."
"Everybody hears rumors."
"But those rumors are true."
It was Flame's turn to shrug. "So what?" And now her rapport with Barney Williams manifested in a strange way. Her illusion gone, she used him to fill another need in her life. A buffer against loneliness. Someone to talk to, a confidant with whom she could be herself and pour out her bitterness on the terms she understood it.
"When you're being dragged around a fight ring on your naked bottom by three midgets," she said bitterly, "you haven't got much time to think about the rumors you've heard."
"I suppose not," Barney replied thoughtfully. "But afterward you think about it. You want to hit out at somebody."
"That's for sure!"
"Well, you've got somebody to hit at."
"You mean Ringler."
"Who else?"
"But that's crazy. Ringler doesn't know I'm alive."
"You can make him know you're alive. You can sue him."
"I can what?"
"File suit against Ringler." Barney leaned across the table. "Look here-what does it come down to? Why were you in that ring tonight. Not from choice."
"Simple. For money. For a thousand backs."
"How would you like to make a hundred thousand bucks?"
"Are you kidding?"
"Not at all. You can do it."
"You're crazy."
"I'm not crazy."
"How?"
"Publicity. Unless you're afraid of it."
"I'm afraid of nothing."
"All right. Tonight they gave you a thousand dollars for taking your clothes off and degrading yourself in front of a lot of men. You have to concede that that's the hard way."
"I suppose you're telling me there's an easier one."
"There is. In a couple of months you can work it so you'll get an offer for your life story from a national magazine. They'd probably offer you fifty thousand. And it would be worth it to them."
"Why?"
"Publicity. People will want to read about the girl who sued a big vice lord. The publicity would make you."
"You're wrong. The publicity would get me killed."
"Not a chance. You'd be guarded like the gold in Fort Knox."
Flame wasn't having any. It was too crazy in the first place. It wouldn't work. But even if it did, they'd get her. She wouldn't have a chance. She'd seen something like that in Detroit, one of her stepping stones to the so-called big time. There'd been a girl there, a pretty little fireball who hadn't sued any big vice lord. All she'd done was threaten to take a very small grievance to a reporter friend of hers. That was all she'd done, and the way they'd killed her hadn't been pretty. Flame hadn't been in at the death, but she'd seen the girl afterward and what she'd seen substantiated the rumors of how it had been done. The boys had had some fun in the process.
All of that for just threatening to talk to a reporter.
"They'd kill me," Flame said.
He thought for a moment, not putting on any more pressure. Then he said, "They wouldn't. You'd have friends. You wouldn't be walking the street alone. But that's not the point. It's the way you see it that's important. So we'll forget the whole thing."
He gestured toward the waitress, calling for the check, and something happened to Flame. Maybe it was that word friend, what it implied. Or maybe she didn't want Barney Williams to go out of her life. Maybe she wanted to see him again to a point where her fears were diluted. After all, he was there. He was real. He was flesh and blood. And the fears were vague intangibles.
"Can I think it over?"
"Sure sure, why not?"
"Thanks."
"But in the meantime, will you do me a favor."
"What favor?"
"Move now tonight. Let me get you out of wherever you're living and put you in a different place."
"Then T was right. Even being seen with you is dangerous."
"No. But you've forgotten what happened. That joker who tried to take your money."
"Oh, him..."
"He might try to get at you."
"All right. I'm staying at the Belmont Hotel."
"We'll ride over there. You can pack your bag while I wait, and then I'll take you to a place that character won't know about. But even if he did find you there, he'd lose an arm and a leg trying to reach you ... "
They went out together and regardless of what bad happened that night, regardless of anything, Flame was happier than she'd been in a long time ...
Barbara's phone rang. It awakened her, and she looked at the clock and saw that it was three-thirty in the morning. She let the phone ring four times before she found the courage to pick it up. Then, when she answered it, her voice was small and timid.
"This is Barney. I want to apologize for calling you so late."
"That's all right, Barney. It's nice to hear your voice at any hour."
"This might sound weird, and don't hesitate to say no; but I'd like to come up and have a cup of coffee."
"I'd be delighted."
"I promise not to let it become a habit." She laughed. "The coffee, or the late visit."
"Both."
"Why don't you call both of them minor vices?"
"I will. I'll be there in twenty minutes..."
He arrived in fifteen minutes and when he'd identified himself through the door, she opened it and met him in a pale blue gown and a hairdo minus the curlers she'd desperately rid herself of during the precious fifteen minutes.
"Hello, Barbara."
"Hello Barney. The coffee's ready."
He dropped his hat and coat on a chair and watched her as she poured the coffee. She was aware of the fact that there was something different about him; there was something on his mind.
She put the coffee down but he paid no attention to it, his eyes still on her. "You're so beautiful so clean."
She laughed. "I do bathe quite regularly. J wash my neck and ears the way my mother taught me to."
"You're mother must have been a wonderful woman."
"She was. She-"
"Let's not talk about your mother. Let's talk about you."
"Barney! What's happened to you?"
"I think I'm in love with you. But maybe not. It may be only the contrast."
"I'm afraid you'll have to explain that."
"I shouldn't, but J think I want to. It will give you some idea of how wonderful you are."
"I'm listening."
"The explanation has some very earthy aspects. They won't sound at all romantic."
"I'm a rather earthy person myself."
"I went to a stag show tonight."
Barbara blinked. "That's a great opening line, I'll say that for it."
"In all justice to myself I must say that I don't care for stag shows. I never did."
"But you were there on business, no doubt."
"That's exactly it. I was there on business. The business has to do with the way we plan to hit back at Ringler."
"The way you plan to hit back at Ringler."
"Vince Kane "
"You!"
"I don't understand."
"I'll explain it sometime. But not now. You're narrative is much more interesting."
"Okay. So I went to this stag show, and my job was to contact one of the performers."
"A female performer?"
"Yes."
"Oh, naturally. What other kind is there at a stag show?"
Barney paused. There was hostility in Barbara's voice but not enough to make an issue of. He wasn't sure whether he liked that or not. He would have probably been happier with more hostility in that it would have indicated a greater personal interest in him. But he went on.
"So I made a contact. A girl who follows that line of work so to speak. I took her to a cocktail lounge and talked to her, and the longer I talked, the more clearly I saw you."
"Now just a minute, Mr. Williams "
He overrode her. "The more clearly I saw you in contrast. She was a very beautiful girl. She hadn't even begun to wear out. In fact, she might have been a shade more beautiful than you are."
"Maybe we're getting a little too earthy here."
"Shut up," he said gently "You've got to listen to me. I sat there talking to this girl, giving her my proposition, and kept seeing you; you got bigger and brighter and more wonderful all the time."
He got up suddenly and took a restless turn around the room and came back and stood looking down at her.
"I'm lousy at explaining this."
"You're doing fine."
"Anyhow, when we left the place all I could think of was how clean and lovely, how wholesome and wonderful you are, and I knew I was in love with you."
"You just knew it? like that?"
"Yes. And then, later, the doubts came."
"The doubts?"
"Uh-huh. I thought about contrasts, and it occurred la me that it might be only the contrasts. I was with a girl who symbolized all that's weak and rotten and repulsive in life and so my mind, not liking that, went automatically to the sweetest, cleanest, most wonderful person I knew. Maybe that was it. Maybe I don't love you at all."
"I never knew you were a philosopher, Barney, but I should have known that you would be. Philosophers always have big blind spots, or so I'm told."
"I have a blind spot?"
"A huge one, but that isn't important now, either. Let's get on with what you were saying. You've given me the picture, now what do you want of me?"
"I had to come here and ask you what you think? Am I in love with you?"
She got up from her chair and stood close to him. "I don't know, Barney. I honestly don't."
He looked a little miserable. "I suppose it was asking to much hoping you'd know."
"I'll say this. If you aren't, it might do as a start. Maybe you need a little more time. If you do, I won't run away. I'll be here."
He took her in his arms and kissed her and then drew back. "Thank you," he said. "Thank you very much. I'll run along now and let you get back to sleep. I'll call you in the morning ... "
After he left, Barbara finished her coffee. Was Barney in love with her? He was such a strange, strange guy. Something clean in a very dirty world. At least he created that impression. But was it an illusion?
She'd been disappointed in the kiss. It had been chaste, passionless, gentle: a sister kiss. But perhaps that didn't mean anything. She would have to wait and see.
And maybe that was good because there was something she could ponder while she waited. Was she in love with Barney Williams?