Hot Night in the City

pick you up and carry you off to well-lit dens, where they ply you with stimulants... like caffeine.'

She laughed. 'Well, you're right, anyway. I did go to a June Allyson movie. She's my favorite.'

'No kidding?'

'It was Woman's World. Have you seen it?'

'Afraid not.'

'Well, there's these three men who are after this swell job, but only one of them can have it. And their wives are trying to help them get it, and...'

'...and June Allyson is the nicest of the wives? A small-town girl?'

'That's right, and she— Wait a minute! You said you haven't seen it.'

'Another lucky guess.' Then back into the Lugosi voice. 'Or was it? You must never trust bad boys, my dear. They may smile and seem harmless, but underneath...? Churning cauldrons of passion!'

She waved his nonsense away with a flapping motion of her hand: an old-fashioned, small-town, June Allyson gesture. 'Why do you call yourself a bad boy?'

'I never said that,' he said, suddenly severe.

'Sure, you did. You said it twice.'

He stared at her for a moment... then smiled. 'Did I really? Well, I guess that makes us a team. I'm the bad one, and you're the odd one. Riffraff, that's what we are. Tell you what: you be riff, and I'll be raff, okay?' Then Amos of Amos 'n' Andy said, 'So elucidate me, Missus Riff. What am yo' daily occupational work like?'

She described her work at a JC Penney's where Weaver Overhead Cash Carriers zinged on wires, bringing money and sales slips up to a central nest suspended from the ceiling, and the change came zinging back down to clerks whom the company didn't trust to handle money. She worked up in the cashier's cage, making change and zinging it back down. '...but most of the stores have modernized and gotten rid of their cash carriers.'

'And what if your store modernizes and gives up Mr Weaver's thingamajig—'

'Overhead Cash Carrier.'

'...Overhead Cash Carrier. What happens to your job then?'

'Oh, by then I'll be a qualified secretary. I'm taking shorthand two nights a week. The Gregg Method? And I'm going to take a typing course as soon as I save up enough money. You know what they say: If you can type and take shorthand, you'll never be out of a job.'

'Yeah, they just keep on saying that and saying that. Sometimes I get tired of hearing it. So, I suppose that what with your job and your shorthand classes and all, you don't get out much.'

'No, not much. I don't know all that many people. ...No one, really.'

'You must miss your folks.'

'No.'

'Not at all?'

'They're religious and awful strict. With them, everything is sin, sin, sin.'

He smiled, 'they do a lot of sinning, do they?'

'No, they never sin. Never. But they... I don't know how to describe it. They're always thinking about sin. Always cleansing themselves of it, or strengthening themselves to resist it. I guess you could say they spend all their time not sinning. Sort of like... well, you remember when we were walking here and I bumped into you and we touched shoulders, then we walked on, making sure not to touch again but thinking about it every step of the way? Well, with them it's sort of like that with sinning, if you know what I mean.'

'I know exactly what you mean.'

She suddenly had the feeling that he hadn't even noticed the moment when their shoulders touched, but he didn't want to admit it.

They fell silent for a time; then she emerged from her reverie with a quick breath and said, 'What about you?'

'How do I feel about sin?'

'No, I mean, tell me about yourself and your job and all.'

'Well... let's see. First off, I have to confess that I don't work in a JC Penney's, and I've never taken a shorthand course in my life. I haven't the time. I'm too busy lurking around movie houses and following girls on buses.'

'No, come on! How come you talk with an English accent if you're not English?'

'It's not an English accent. It's what they call 'mid-Atlantic'. And it's totally phony. When I was a drama major in college, I—'

'You've been to college?'

'Only a couple of years. Then the Korean Police Action came along and I—' He shrugged all that away. 'No, I'm not English. I just decided to change my voice because I hated it. It was so... New York. Flat, metallic, adenoidal, too little resonance, too much urgency. I wanted to sound like the actors I admired. Welles, Olivier, Maurice Evans. So I took courses in theater speech and I practiced hours and hours in my room, listening to records and imitating them. But it turned out to be a waste of time.'

'No it wasn't! I like the way you talk. It's so... cultured. Sort of like Claude Rains or James Mason.'

'Oh yes, my dear,' he said as Claude Rains, 'the phony speech eventually became habitual.' He shifted to James Mason, a slightly lower note with a touch of huskiness. It was wonderful how he could sound like any actor he wanted to! 'But even with a new voice, I was still the person I was trying not to be. Damned nuisance!' Then he returned to his everyday voice. 'For all my correctly placed vowels and sounded terminal consonants, I was still a bad boy running away from... whatever it is we're all supposed to be running away from.'

'So you left college to join the army?'

'That's right. But later they... well, they decided to let me out early.'

'Why?'

He shrugged. 'I guess I'm just not the soldier type. Not aggressive enough. Are you cold?' She had been sitting with her arms crossed over her breasts, holding her upper arms in her hands... the way she sometimes did when she was thinking about how small her breasts were. He reached across the table and touched her arm above the elbow. 'You are cold.'

'It's this air-conditioning. I don't know why they turn it up so high.'

The refugees had been steadily thinning out, and now the family in the booth behind them left, the mother with the wet-mouthed baby in her arms, the father carrying one child and pulling a sleep-dazed little girl along by the hand, her untied shoes clopping on the floor. Soon the place would be empty, except for the night people.

She looked up at the clock above the counter. 'Gee, it's after two. I've got work tomorrow.' But she didn't rise to leave. He drew a deep sigh and stretched, and his foot touched hers beneath the table. He said, 'Excuse me,' and she said, 'That's all right,' and they both looked out the window at the empty street. She watched his eyes refocus to her reflection on the surface of the glass, and he smiled at her.

'What about you?' she asked. 'Don't you have to be at work early?'

'No. I don't have what you'd call a steady job. I just drift from city to city. When I need money, I go to the public market before dawn and stand around with the rest of the drifters and winos. Job brokers come in trucks and pick out the youngest and strongest for a day's stoop labor. I almost always get picked, even though I'm not all that hefty. I give the foremen one of my boyish smiles, and they always pick me.'

'It's true, you do have a boyish smile.'

'And when the boyish smile doesn't work, I fall back on my 'look of intense sincerity'. That's a sure winner. Stoop labor only pays a buck or a buck ten an hour. But still, one thirteen- or fourteen-hour day gives me enough for a couple of days of freedom.'

'But there's no future in that.'

'What? No future? I've been tricked! They assured me that stoop labor was a sure path to riches, fame, success with the women, and a closer relationship with my personal savior. Gosh, maybe I'd better give it up and take a course in shorthand. The Gregg Method.'

He meant to be amusing, but he evoked only a faint, fugitive smile. She didn't like being teased. She'd had a lot of teasing in her life.