chair, the skirt of her loud print dress pulled high over her thighs. She looked at Alice and jerked her head disdainfully.
A slim, good-looking fellow about her colour with conked yellow hair and a hairline moustache sat on the middle of the davenport. He was dressed in tan slacks, tan and white sport shoes, and a cream-coloured rayon shirt. His face was greasy and his eyes were muddy from drinking. I followed Alice into the small, cramped room, wondering how she knew such people; they were more the kind of people I should know.
'Stella, Bob,' she said. I nodded to the dumpy girl.
Stella said, 'Bob, Chuck,' waving her finger.
The blond boy stuck up a sweaty languid hand. I dropped it as soon as possible.
'Bob, Dimples,' Stella went on.
I nodded to the long-haired girl. She didn't look at me; she was eyeing Alice with a petulant, jealous look. I flopped down on the chair beside her and looked at her smooth yellow thighs. 'Nice gams,' I commented. She stood up and let her dress fall.
A gallon bottle of wine and three dirty glasses sat among the littered ashtrays and half-emptied cigarette packages on the little cocktail table in front of the davenport. Against the back wall was a Philco combination player with records stacked on its top. Beside this was a door leading into the bedroom. Across the room was another door into the kitchen, where Alice had gone with Stella. After a moment they came back with two clean glasses and Stella filled them with the cheap warm Tokay.
'Champagne?' I murmured facetiously. Stella rolled me a look, grinned, showing a gaping hole in the middle of her upper teeth.
She moved over to the player and said, 'We were just getting ready to play some jive.' She had a husky liquor voice with queer undertones and she wasn't even half pretty. But there was an animal sensuousness in her actions and she moved with a slow slinky grace. My gaze followed her on its own.
She put on Harry James's 'Cherry,' stacked several other records on the arm drops, and did a slow-motion boogie to the hot licking lilt of James's trumpet, rolling her body from breasts to knees in undulating waves. Near the end of the piece she broke the slow, smooth motion of her boogie and put frenzied jerks in it.
'Well, knock yourself out, girl,' Dimples muttered.
'Goddamn, that knocks me out!' Stella said with feeling when the piece came to an end. Then she asked suddenly, 'Where you kids been, all sharpened up?'
Dimples said, 'Doesn't Alice look lovely?' in a saccharine voice.
'We had dinner and went for a drive,' Alice murmured affectedly.
I stuck a cigarette in my mouth and said, 'Alice had a wonderful time,' talking around it. I looked up just in time to catch her furious glance.
Stella looked curiously from one to the other of us. 'What happened?' she asked. 'Didn't they want to serve you?'
I didn't answer.
'Men are such boors,' Alice commented acidly.
Stella took her cue and dropped it. The box was playing 'All For You' by the King Cole Trio, and I closed my eyes to listen. '… life would be a symphony, waiting all for you…' It went off into an instrumental trio and I opened my eyes again. For an instant my vision was out of focus and I knew I was getting drunk. I got up to fill my glass again.
'Who wants some more wine?' I asked, then began filling everybody's glass without waiting for an answer. I quoted:
' A Jug of Wine… and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness-
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow! '
Stella gave me a quick darting look and stood up. 'I've got a pint of Sunnybrook stashed if you want some,' she said, looking at Alice.
'Fine,' I said, starting to get up. She stepped past me and put her arm about Alice's waist and they went into the kitchen. I looked at Dimples and said, 'Wanna dance?' The box was blaring Erskine Hawkins' 'Don't Cry, Baby.'
'Not with you,' she said in a harsh, sullen voice, looking sidewise into the darkened kitchen.
Things began getting a little blurred. It was hot and sticky in the room and my eyes began to burn. Stella and Alice returned from the kitchen.
'It's hot in here,' Stella said. 'Why don't you take off your coat, Bob?'
I slipped out of my coat. Alice and Stella were sitting side by side on the davenport, whispering. Dimples sat on the arm of the davenport watching them, her face a mask of sullen envy.
I got slowly to my feet. The room began spinning and my stomach peeled into my mouth. I caught it a couple of times, my mouth ballooning, then Chuck jumped up and helped me into the kitchen and I let it go into the sink. I stood there and retched for what seemed like an hour.
I knew what was going on and I wasn't having any of it. I felt shocked, sickened. I went back into the room and said to Alice, 'You can't do this to me.'
She gave me a look of raw hatred. I'd slapped her before I knew it. She half fell, caught herself, and went over and lay on the davenport, burrowing her face in her hands, and began crying as if her heart would break.
My mind went into a stupor when I tried to figure out why she should be mad at me. When I came out of it I noticed that she was crying. I felt like a dog. I lurched toward the davenport and stood over her. 'I didn't mean to make you cry,' I began.
She raised her head and looked at me and all the frustration in the world was bottled up in her eyes. 'Don't think you made me cry,' she said in a cold, level voice, spacing the words apart. 'You can't make me cry. You never could make me cry. Every time I cry, I cry for many reasons.'
I stood there swaying drunkenly for a moment, trying to figure out what she meant, I gave it up.
Chuck stood up then and said, 'Take it easy, Jack.'
I looked at him a moment. I knew I had to hit something, so I drew back and hit him. He fell back against the wall, slumped to the floor.
Stella said, 'What'd you have to hit Chuck for?'
I picked up my coat, put it on without replying. I lifted my my hand and waved foolishly, then I went to the door and went out and got into my car. I remember turning around; I banged the curb hard with my front tyres and cursed.
CHAPTER IX
I dreamed I was lying in the middle of Main Street downtown in front of the Federal Building and two poor peckerwoods in overalls were standing over me beating me with lengths of rubber hose. I was sore and numb from the beating and felt like vomiting; I was sick in the stomach and the taste was in my mouth. I was trying to get up on my hands and knees but they were beating me across the back of my head at the base of the skull and every now and then one would hit me across the small of my back and I could feel it in my kidneys. Every time I got one knee up and tried to get the other one up I couldn't make it and would fall down again and I knew I couldn't last much longer. But when the peckerwoods started to stop, a hard cultured voice said peremptorily, 'Continue! I will tell you when to stop.' I turned my head and looked up to see who was talking and it was the president of the shipyard corporation dressed in the uniform of an Army general and he had a cigar in one side of his mouth and his eyes were calm and undisturbed. One of the peckerwoods said: 'The nigger can't take much more.' The president of the shipyard said, 'Niggers can take it as long as you give it to them.' Somebody laughed and I looked around and saw two policemen standing by a squad car to one side nudging each other and laughing. There was no one else on the street. The other peckerwood said, 'It ain't right to beat this nigger like that. What we beating this nigger for anyway?' The cops stopped laughing and looked at him and the president of the shipyard got hard and said,
