think.”
Stubb was already maneuvering the suitcase through the narrow doorway. After a final, lingering glance around the room, the witch followed him, leaving Barnes to bring up the rear.
“What a day has this been, and what a time in my life! You say, Mr. Stubb, that it is not far to this hotel?”
A voice out of the darkness asked, “Did somebody say
“Candy, is that you?”
“Jim?” The fat girl’s face appeared as the moon appears with the passing of a cloud. She struck a match and held it up.
“Candy, what the hell are you doing here?”
“Getting some stuff. Celebrating.” She smiled, and despite its unfocused quality, the smile made her pretty. “This is where it was, right? I thought,” (she belched softly) “that maybe before they tore down the stadium I’d go stand on the mound again.”
“Yeah,” Stubb said. “You had them going.”
The witch added, “And we should be going.”
“To a hotel, you said.” The fat girl still wore her white plastic raincoat, but her lost white plastic boots had been replaced by enormous black ones. She carried a flight bag and brought the malty odor of beer with her. “I met this guy I know, and he said sorry I’d like to but I don’t have the bread, right? And I said tonight he didn’t need it— just let me sleep over. So we went up to his place, and then he said come on, I know where there’s a party tonight.”
The witch pushed past Stubb as he stood listening; Barnes followed her.
“So we got in his beater and drove way the hell out. Shadylawn. Sounds like a graveyard, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Stubb said.
“And then he said give me a cigarette, and I said I didn’t have any. I’d been smoking his on the way out. So we went by a drugstore, and he stopped and dug out a buck and said here go in and get us a pack.” A tear splashed on Stubb’s hand.
“And he split while you were inside.”
“Buh huh.”
“Jesus Christ. No wonder you feel down. How’d you get back?”
“Hitched.”
“Jesus Christ,” Stubb said again.
“It wasn’t so bad, except I was afraid I was going to get picked up by the smokies.” The fat girl swallowed and snuffled. “Jim, we’d better go. We’ll lose them.”
“Sure we will. I got her suitcase here. Can you make it down the steps okay?”
“I made it up. You don’t have a drink on you?”
“I got two cigarettes, and that’s it.”
“Up at Harry’s, I knocked down six or eight beers, and now I can feel them dying in me. You know what I mean?”
“Sure.”
She was going down the stairs beside him. There was just enough room for the two of them with the suitcase between them. At the bottom, she asked, “Let me have one of those cigarettes?”
“Sure,” Stubb said. Barnes and the witch were already some distance down the street. Stubb put down the suitcase, took out his last two Camels, and crumpled the pack and tossed it into the gutter. He lit their cigarettes from a paper match, as he had before.
“This lady picked me up. She was about forty, I guess. Her husband was out of town and she was going downtown to have dinner with another lady she’d gone to college with. Hey, let me carry part of that—see, I can just hook a couple fingers in the handle.”
“All right.”
“Now we kind of walk in step. I told her I was on a date and he wanted me to come across, and when I wouldn’t, he shoved me out of the car.”
“Happens a lot, I guess.”
“Not to me. Anyway, she bought it. At first, you know, I thought she was just pretending to make it easier for both of us, but she really did buy it. I was kind of messed up.”
“Like now,” Stubb said.
“I guess. I didn’t give her any big act. Just what I told you. I asked her about this college she and the other lady went to. It sounded great. When I got out, she said how far, and I said oh, ’bout eight blocks, but you wouldn’t want to go down there, and she gave me a couple of bucks for a cab.”
“You can’t hardly open the door of a cab for two bucks.”
“I don’t think she gets downtown much.”
“Tell me about coming back to Free’s.”
