Nightmare Alley (6 page)

In her own headlights, when the procession stopped at a crossing, Zeena could see Bruno’s chunky form in a slicker swing from the cab and plod around to the back to look at the gear and make sure the weights were fast. Then he came over and stepped on the running board. Zeena cranked down the window on her side. “Hi, Dutchy—wet enough for you?”

“Joost about,” he said softly. “How is things back here? How is Pete?”

“Right in back of us here having a snooze on the drapes. You reckon we’ll try putting up in this weather?”

Bruno shook his head. His attention crept past Zeena and Stan, and for a moment his eyes lingered sadly on Molly, who had not turned her head.

“I joost want to make sure everything is okay.” He turned back into the rain, crossing the streaming beam of the headlights and vanishing in the dark. The truck ahead began to move; Zeena shifted gears.

“He’s a fine boy,” she said at last. “Molly, you ought to give Bruno a chance.”

Molly said, “No, thanks. I’m doing okay. No, thanks.”

“Go on—you’re a big girl now. Time you was having some fun in this world. Bruno could treat you right, by the looks of him. When I was a kid I had a beau that was a lumberjack—he was built along the lines of Bruno. And oh, boy!”

As if suddenly aware that her thigh was pressed close to Stan’s, Molly squeezed farther into the corner. “No, thanks. I’m having fun now.”

Zeena sighed gustily. “Take your time, kid. Maybe you just ain’t met the right fella. And Stan here ought to be ashamed of himself. Why, me and Pete was married when I was seventeen. Pete wasn’t much older’n Stan. How old are you, Stan?”

“Twenty-one,” Stan said, keeping his voice low.

Approaching a curve, Zeena braced herself. Stan could feel the muscles of her thigh tighten as she worked the wheel. “Them was the days. Pete was working a crystal act in vaudeville. God, he was handsome. In a soup and fish he looked about two feet taller than in his street clothes. He wore a little black beard and a turban. I was working in the hotel when he checked in and I was that green I asked him when I brought in the towels if he’d tell my fortune. I’d never had my fortune told. He looked in my hand and told me something very exciting was going to happen to me involving a tall, dark man. I got the giggles. It was only because he was so good-looking. I wasn’t bashful around men. Never was. I couldn’t have kept that hotel job a minute if I had been. But the best I’d been hoping for was to hook some gambler or race-track man—hoping he would help me get on the stage.”

Suddenly Molly spoke. “My dad was a race-track man. He knew a lot about horses. He didn’t die broke.”

“Well, now,” Zeena said, taking her eyes from the point of ruby light ahead long enough to send Molly a warm look in the darkness. “What d’you know. Oh, the gamblers was the great sheiks in my day. Any gal who could knock herself off a gambling man was doing something. We started when we were fourteen or fifteen. Lordy, that was fifteen years ago! Seems like yesterday some ways and like a million years in others. But the gamblers were the heartbreakers. Say, honey—I’ll bet your dad was handsome, eh? Girls generally take after their fathers.”

“You bet he was handsome. Daddy was the best-looking man I ever saw. I always said I’d never get married until I found a man as good-looking as Daddy—and as sweet. He was grand.”

“Umm. Tall, dark, and handsome. Guess that lets you out, Stan. I don’t mean about being tall. You’re tall enough. But Molly likes ’em dark.”

“I could get some hair dye,” Stan said.

“Nope. Nope, never do. That might fool the public, Goldy Locks, but it would never fool a wife. Less’n you wanted to dye all over.” She threw back her head and laughed. Stan found himself laughing too, and even Molly joined in.

“Nope,” Zeena went on, “Pete was a real brunette all over; and, boy, could he love. We got married second season I traveled with him. He had me doing the back-of-the-house steal with the envelopes at first, in an usherette’s uniform. Then we worked out a two-person act. He worked the stage, with his crystal, and I worked the audience. We used a word code at first and he used to ring in that part of the act as a stall while another girl was copying out the questions backstage. I’d go out and have people give me articles and Pete would look into his crystal and describe them. When we started we only used about ten different things and it was simple, but half the time I would get mixed up and then Pete would do some tall ad-libbing. But I learned. You should of seen our act when we were working the Keith time. By God, we could practically send a telegram word by word, and nobody could tumble, it was that natural, what we said.”

“Why didn’t you stay in vaudeville?” Stan asked intently. Suddenly he knew he had said the wrong thing; but there was no way to recall it, so he kept quiet.

Zeena paid close attention to her driving for a moment and then she rallied. “Pete’s nerve began to go back on him.” She turned and looked back into the rear of the van at the curled, sleeping figure, covered with a raincoat. Then she went on, dropping her voice. “He began muffing the code and he always needed a few shots before going on. Booze and mentalism don’t mix. But we do as well in the carny, figuring up the net at the end of the year. And we don’t have to cut no dash—living in swell hotels and all that. Horoscopes are easy to pitch and cost you about twenty-five a thousand. And we can take it easy in the winter. Pete don’t drink much then. We got a shack down in Florida and he likes it down there. I do a little tea-leaf reading and one winter I worked a mitt camp in Miami. Palmistry always goes good in a town like Miami.”

“I like Miami,” Molly said softly. “Dad and I used to go there for the races at Hialeah and Tropical Park. It’s a grand place.”

“Any place is grand, long as you got the old do-re-mi in the grouch bag,” Zeena said. “Say, this must be it. They’re turning. I can tell you I ain’t going to sleep in the truck tonight. Little Zeena’s going to get her a room with a bathtub if they got any in this town. What say, kid?”

“Anything suits me,” Molly said. “I’d love to have a hot bath.”

Stan had a vision of what Molly would look like in the bathtub. Her body would be milk-white and long-limbed there in the water and a black triangle of shadow and her breasts with rosy tips. He would stand looking down at her and then bend over and she would reach soapy arms up but she would have to be someone else and he would have to be someone else, he thought savagely, because he had never managed to do it yet and always something held him back or the girl seemed to freeze up or suddenly he didn’t want her any more once it was within reach and besides there was never the time or the place was wrong and besides it took a lot of dough and a car and all kinds of stuff and then they would expect you to marry them right away and they would probably get a kid the first thing.…

“Here we are, chillun,” Zeena said.

The rain had slackened to a drizzle. In the lights of headlamps the roughnecks were busy tearing canvas from the trucks. Stan threw his slicker over his shoulders, went around to open the rear doors of the truck. He crawled in and gently shook Pete by the ankle. “Pete, wake up. We’re here. We’ve got to put up.”

“Oh, lemme sleep five minutes more.”

“Come on, Pete. Zeena says to give us a hand putting up.”

He suddenly threw off the raincoat which covered him and sat up shivering. “Just a minute, kid. Be right with you.” He crawled stiffly from the truck and stood shaking, tall and stooped, in the cool night air. From one pocket he drew a bottle, offering it to Stan, who shook his head. Pete took a pull, then another, and corked the bottle. Then he drew the cork out, finished it, and heaved it into the night. “Dead soldier.”

The floodlights were up and the carny boss had laid out the midway with his marking stakes. Stan shouldered planks that fitted together to make Zeena’s stage and drew one bundle of them from the van.

The top of the Ten-in-One was going up. Stan gave a hand on the hoist, while watery dawn showed over the trees and in houses on the edge of the fair grounds lights began to snap on in bedrooms, then in kitchens.

In the growing lavender of daybreak the carny took shape. Booths sprang up, the cookhouse sent the perfume of coffee along the dripping air. Stan paused, his shirt stuck to him with sweat, a comfortable glow in the muscles of his arms and back. And his old man had wanted him to go into real estate!

Inside the Ten-in-One tent Stan and Pete set up the stage for the mental act. They got the curtains hung, moved the bridge table and a chair under the stage, and stowed away the cartons of horoscopes.

Zeena returned. In the watery gold light of morning lines showed around her eyes, but she held herself as straight as a tent pole. “Got me a whole damn bridal suite—two rooms and bawth. C’mon over, both of you, and have a good soak.”

Pete needed a shave, and his gaunt, angular face seemed stretched tighter over his bones. “I’d like to, sugar. Only I got to do a few little chores first in town. I’ll see you later on.”

“It’s 28 Locust Lane. You got enough dough?”

“You might let me have a couple of dollars from the treasury.”

“Okay, honey. But get some coffee into you first. Promise Zeena you’ll have breakfast.”

Pete took the money and put it carefully away in a billfold. “I shall probably have a small glass of iced orange juice, two three-minute eggs, melba toast and coffee,” he said, his voice suddenly vibrant. Then he seemed to fade. He took out the billfold and looked in it. “Must make sure I got my money safe,” he said in an off-key, strangely childish tone. He started off across the lot toward a shack at the edge of the village. Zeena watched him go.

“I’ll bet that joint is a blind pig,” she said to Stan. “Pete’s sure a real clairvoyant when it comes to locating hidden treasure— long as it gurgles when you shake it. Well, you coming back and clean up? Look at you! Your shirt’s sticking to you with sweat!”

As they walked, Stan breathed in the morning. Mist hung over the hills beyond the town, and from a slope rising from the other side of the road came the gentle tonk of a cowbell. Stan stopped and stretched his arms.

Zeena stopped too. “Never get nothing like this working the two-a-day. Honest, you know, Stan, I’d get homesick just to hear a cow moo.”

The sun, breaking through, sparkled in wagon ruts still deep with rain. Stan took her arm to help her across the puddles. Under the warm, smooth rubber of the raincoat he pressed the soft bulge of her breast. He could feel the heat steaming up over his face where the cool wind struck it.

“You’re awful nice to have around, Stan. You know that?”

He stopped walking. They were out of sight of the carnival grounds. Zeena was smiling at something inside herself. Awkwardly his arm went around her and he kissed her. It was lots different from kissing high-school girls. The warm, intimate searching of her mouth left him weak and dizzy. They broke apart and Stan said, “Wow.”

Zeena let her hand stay for an instant pressed against his cheek; then she turned and they walked on, hand in hand.

“Where’s Molly?” he asked after a while.

“Pounding her ear. I talked the old gal that has the house into giving us the two rooms for the price of one. While I was waiting for her to put up her husband’s lunch I took a quick peek in the family Bible and got all their birth dates down pat. I told her right off that she was Aries—March 29th. Then I gave her a reading that just set her back on her heels. We got a real nice room. Always pays to keep your eyes open, I always say. The kid had her a good soak and hit the hay. She’ll be pounding her ear. She’s a fine kid, if she could only grow up some and stop yelping for her daddy every time she has a hangnail. But she’ll get over it, I reckon. Wait till you see the size of these rooms.”

The room reminded Stan of home. The old house on Linden Street and the big brass bedstead in his parents’ room, where it was all tumbled and smelling of perfume on Mother’s pillow and of hair restorer on his father’s side.

Zeena threw off her raincoat, rolled a newspaper into a tight bar, tied it with string in the middle and hung the coat up on a hook in the closet. She pulled off her shoes and stretched out on the bed, reaching her arms wide. Then she drew out her hairpins and the brassy hair which had been in a neat double roll around her head fell in pigtails. Swiftly she unbraided them and let the hair flow around her on the pillow.

Stan said, “I guess I’d better get that bath. I’ll see if there’s any hot water left. He hung his coat and vest on a chairback. When he looked up he saw that Zeena had her eyes on him. Her lids were partly closed. One arm was bent under her head and she was smiling, a sweet, possessive smile.

He came over to her and sat beside her on the edge of the bed. Zeena covered his hand with hers and suddenly he bent and kissed her. This time there was no need for them to stop and they didn’t. Her hand slid inside his shirt and felt the smooth warmth of his back tenderly.

“Wait, honey. Not yet. Kiss me some more.”

“What if Molly should wake up?”

“She won’t. She’s young. You couldn’t wake that kid up. Don’t worry about things, honey. Just take it easy and slow.”

All the things Stan had imagined himself saying and doing at such a time did not fit. It was thrilling and dangerous and his heart beat so hard he felt it would choke him.

“Take all your things off, honey, and hang ’em on the chair, neat.”