I meant it. I liked him.
Then he named a price and I didn't think much of it and I gave one with a better name, which he countered, and I countered it, and we settled somewhere in between, and then he gave me a card that said I was employed by the Cochrane Enterprises.
'How's the grouch bag holding?' he asked.
'All right. I've got a few bucks.'
Damn few. Five bucks was the truth. But I didn't want to start out by touching the boss.
'Got a place to sack?' he asked. 'There's a bunkhouse around behind the Watusi Village. Some of the boys use it.'
I knew those bunkhouses. They're used by the rummies who swamp up the lot and by the alky-paralyzed geek. Though this place wouldn't have one because there is nothing homey about a geek's atmosphere.
'I'll make out,' I told him.
'All right, Thax. I'll have Gabby set you up a stand. Keep your nose clean.'
'Like a whistle,' I said. I really did like him.
It was dusk when I came out and Neverland was full of clamor. Cochrane's lot got a good play.
The place was laid out like a wagonwheel with a big garden in the hub. It had a fountain with colored lights and liquid music coming out of the water and that sort of thing.
The Coke and popcorn and ice-cream vendors wheeled their barrows up and down the flowered lanes and hawked their appeals to the common hunger and thirst of the citizenry. Little, overpainted, short-skirted highschool girls ran around in shrieking batches with armloads of kewpie dolls and peanuts and floss candy, and small gangs of pimply, shaggy-haired teenage boys prowled doggedly after them, laughing and smirking and desperately trying to show everyone just how goddam rough and manly they really were by yelling _Aw hell_ and _My ass_ in their pubertyshrill voices.
And the luck boys were there too. It's easy to spot them when you know what to look for. There was one-a big curly-haired, rose-cheeked man who might have passed for a prosperous lawyer-who was holding up his hand to attract the attention of a more or less middle-aged group of marks.
'The management has requested me to warn you that there's been a report of a pickpocket in here this evening. Please, ladies and gentlemen, watch out for your wallets and purses. And
It was an old dodge. I grinned at the luckboy and held up my five dollar bill and put it back in my pocket.
I went over and joined the gang of lusty-eyed marks in front of the kootch bally stand, telling myself I might as well get some use out of my Neverland card. But the truth was I wanted to see that dance of Billie's. The girl who collected tickets gave me a funny little look when I flashed my card but I didn't think anything about it.
The little theater was dark, except for the lighted stage, and it looked like some fairy designer's idea of a lush seraglio with all the Far East draperies on the walls and the scimitars and the swords with the rippled blades and the high domed ceiling with luminous stars painted on it.
The orchestra sat gook-legged on a Persian rug and they were dressed to look like Malay pirates I guess. They had two-three wood drums and a couple of pick and twang gutstrung boxes that looked like the barbaric cousins of the guitar. And there was a horn.
Three nautch girls in skimpy harem-type outfits were on stage and they went through their gyrations like they weren't being paid enough for it, showing a lot of meaty white thigh and breast. It wasn't much. I found myself a vacant seat in the back where I figured Billie wouldn't be able to see me in the dark.
Then she came out and they hit her with a pink spot. She was wearing some lawbreaking sheer turquoise veils and a lot of bangles and heavy makeup and that was about it. She was incalculably voluptuous.
One of the drums said
It had a lot of the Yankee Go Go in it and maybe some of the South American Mandango and damn little that was indigenous to the Far East. But that was all right because the marks hadn't paid the price of admission to see a National Geographic type show. They simply wanted to see near naked girls gyrate.
It began with a surge that vacuumed us out of the darkened room, out of the night and Neverland, and we were spellbound and tense as we went drifting along on a throbbing plain of savage fantasia.
Her floss hair flying, her hips whirling on an oiled spine, shoulders arched and arms out and hands fondling invisible and suggestive objects, she started to shed her veils, tossing them off with an air of ecstatic abandonment. The last one hung poised on her tremulous breasts, and she reached for it and tore it down to her waist and it clung there for a moment, tight to her damp form as she whirled and whirled, and then it flew off.
The drumbeat pulsated fever in our blood and rushed us through a wild panorama of paganism. It was unabashed desire swept by flesh and pink light and throbbing sound. It shattered in the physical and regrouped with a turquoise and gold spurt. It fired the senses and split the soul. It ended with a rush and threw us brutally back to the world and the night and the little darkened room. It left us shaky and sweaty and maybe even a little afraid. Afraid of ourselves, I suppose. Or of our desire. Or that our desire would go unassuaged.
There was a lot of applause for Billie, except from the female portion of the audience who looked rather arch and cold about the whole thing. Billie was good. I don't mean she would ever end up as Fred Astaire's partner, but for a baref ace sex dance she had it.
The girlfriends of the male marks were too disdainful and above it all to comment on the dance, but some of the wives had a thing or two to say and they didn't mind who heard them. The husbands seemed rather reticent and averted their eyes as they filed out of the room. One heavy woman with jowls like a fat bulldog's stormed by me dragging her mousy spouse in her overly perfumed wake.
'Shameless!' she hissed at him in a stevedore's voice. 'The most shameless exhibition I've ever witnessed. I can't imagine why you insisted on seeing such a vulgar display, Walter.'
Poor little Walter sent me a prideless glance of despair and murmured, 'Yes, honey.'
I didn't get off free either. The strip barker tagged me as I was walking out.
'Thaxton? Billie Peeler wants to see you a minute.'
'Me? Why?'
'I wouldn't know, Jack. But be sure and look me up and tell me all about it when you find out. Promise?'
Then he grinned at me in a nice way so I didn't go ahead and call him a smart bastard as I'd started to.
Billie came through a side door wearing a wrapper that covered her up like a nun, and I could see from her eyes that she was about to be peeved. The barker gave me a wink and patted Billie where he shouldn't and went off about his own business.
'Did Rob Cochrane give you a job?'
It was no good my saying no because the ticket girl must have already told her I had a Neverland card.
'Sure and he did that, the darlin' bhoy.'
'Then why did you have to come sticking your banjo eyes in here?' Now she was mad.
'Why not?' I already knew but I wanted her to tell me.
'You know damn well why. It's all right for a bunch of marks to goggle at me when I look like Eve, but it's something else if someone I know pays to do it.'
'I'm safe then. I didn't pay. I used my Peter Pan card.'
I grinned at her. 'I'm just kidding, Billie. I'm sorry. Really.'
'Well-' her voice wasn't as peevish now, 'you should have known better. That little bitch Sandy who collects the tickets saw us talking earlier on the lot. She thought it was very funny that you should sneak in to see me in the altogether as soon as you got a free pass.'
'I'll send her a bomb for Easter,' I promised.
She looked at me and we smiled at each other and then for a long moment we didn't seem to know what to say next.
