Butterflies in Heat (27 page)

Leonora intercepted. Those were her cigarettes, and Joan was giving them out as if she were the host. She claimed the box. "He doesn't smoke. Gave it up years ago. Doesn't drink, doesn't like girls, doesn't like boys—and he's not an addict. So you can't do anything for him. Do we understand each other?"

Joan bit her lip. "Perfectly clear."

Leonora felt needlessly immersed in details.
If
only there were somebody she could trust. "I want last night's earnings. Numie and I will wait." Leonora sucked in the smoke from her cigarette.

The parlor was dark except for the hall light streaming in. The red-velvet draperies were closed to the early morning sun, their cords limp and dirty. At first the furnishings were impressive, though upon closer inspection they were tacky and frayed. Leonora was sitting on a three-piece mission oak sofa covered in electric green satin. Along one wall was a curious row of mismatched straight chairs. Some well-thumbed girlie magazines lay on a console table under a stained-glass lamp.

The stale air nauseated Numie. "Unless I'm way off base here, this is a cathouse. And you're the madam."

Leonora felt her face redden and her muscles tighten. "Right about the first part," she said. "As for the second part, you're crude and insulting. I should fire you for that. I'm the landlady—nothing else. Another piece of real estate I own with the commodore."

The idea of Leonora owning a cathouse amused him. "But it is a cathouse?"

"If
you want to call it that," Leonora said, bristling at his remark. "I prefer to call it JOAN'S.
That
one has found her true calling here."

Numie wondered for a moment if he should ask what was on his mind, then decided to come right out with it. "You were married to her?"

Leonora touched her finger gently against her right earring.
She feared Numie was questioning her taste—with good reason. "I lived with her, regrettably. More accurately, she lived with me. Lived
off
me I should say."

At this point Joan entered the room. "Now don't go telling him that," she said petulantly. "When I met you, I was a talented actress. I gave up a promising career for you."

Leonora sighed at hearing once more this ridiculous statement. She turned to Numie, dangling her marijuana cigarette in the air. Then she looked over at Joan. "A bit player in Hollywood with large breasts giving head to every producer who put it on his desk."

Numie was shocked at Leonora's earthy statement. Although she was usually such a lady, he was aware she could abandon that pretense in a second if the mood dictated.

At first Joan didn't say anything, looking hurt. "That's a damn lie—and you know it. I had many parts in films."

Leonora smiled, knowing she was in complete control of the situation. "Yes, the type shown at smokers."

"Legitimate films," Joan protested.

"Forgive me," Leonora said to Numie. "Joan did appear in some legitimate films. She was seen in 'We're No Ladies', as one of the drunken whores in a barroom scene. Central casting certainly knew what it was doing."

"I was a star," Joan said. "I don't care what you say.
If
everybody in Hollywood hadn't been a fag, I would have been even bigger. I weighed ninety-eight pounds."

"Now it's one-hundred and seventy-five," Leonora said with loathing in her voice. Obesity horrified her, yet she was surrounded by it. Both Tangerine and Joan.

"It's the work you force me to do. She likes to humiliate me, Numie, by making me hold down a job here."

Numie instinctively backed away, not wanting to get caught in this quarrel.

"Even putting my name up in lights," Joan said.

"Darling," Leonora countered, "you always wanted your name up in lights. Now your dream has come true."

"But at this disgusting place. All I ever wanted to do was settle down to a normal, healthy relationship with you."

"The only time you were ready to settle down with me was when no one else wanted you," Leonora accused.

"That's a lie!"

Abruptly, Leonora rose from the sofa. In some way this confrontation with Joan had excited her. "Is Maria ready?"

"Yes," Joan said meekly, a defeated look crossing her face.

"Have the money when I come down," Leonora said. Quickly she left the room, disappearing behind the beaded curtains.

In her sensible shoes, British tan oxfords, Joan went straight for the liquor cabinet. Hands quivering, she poured herself a stiff drink of Scotch. "Have one with me?" she asked. "I hate mornings, and this makes it easier."

"No thanks," he said. "I hate mornings, too, but I've got to get through the day. That won't help."

Nervously she was staring at him with her large, brown eyes. She was a colorless woman, blanched out by time. Her face was too full, too beefy, but there was a vague semblance there of some faded beauty. She was wiping perspiration from her high forehead, peaking under a receding hairline.

"You're in charge here?" he asked.

"You might say that—completely against my wishes, let me tell you. Leonora knows how I hate men, and night after night I have to deal with the crudest slobs. Drunken sailors and smelly shrimpers."

"Lot of hate around here," he said, hoping she wasn't directing more at him. "Leonora hates little boys. You hate men." He peered at her closely.

"I didn't always," she said. Her voice seemed drained of any tone of character.

A long silence fell over the room.
It
was the kind of silence you could hear.

Finally, Joan spoke. "I'm just another Tangerine, another caddy. Leonora always picks up the outcasts and makes them totally dependent on her. Are you her latest acquisition?"

Resentment flared. "You might call it that," he said sourly. "Nobody's offered to put me in the movies, take me away with them on their yacht, or install me in a castle."

"Well, that explains why you're driving Leonora around and taking her shit," she said, weaving slightly. "Does that broad know how to dish it out!"

"Now, now, you're talking about your former husband."

He was deliberately being provocative. "Leonora demands to be treated with more respect."

"I think I know a little more about Leonora's demands than you do." Arrogance surged through her body.

"She at least found a job for you." He stopped and faced her. "None of my former johns ever did that. Strictly one-night stands."

"You're a hustler?" Her face was cold and expressionless. "I should have known."

"So are you, baby." His voice was larded with resentment. "Forget the labels."

"Only difference is," she said, "I know I'm washed up." She made herself smile. "You're so sure of yourself I don't think you've got the message yet." She quickly left the room before he could reply.

Her charge left him fuming. He hardly needed a brokendown whore to tell him he was washed up. The more he tried to forget her remark, the more he thought about it. She had known where to strike. He settled back to think about it.

In some ways, he was lucky to have lasted as long as he did as a hustler. At least, that was one way of looking at it. Staring at fifteen, he was now thirty-two. A good seventeen years lodged on the job. Obviously time was running out. He had to get into some other line of work. He could just see himself now, filling out a job application. Under previous experience, he could list seventeen years of having his cock gobbled.

Here he sat in a room where God only knows how many whores had met their johns for the evening. Where did it get anybody? After seventeen years of hustling, he found himself right back where he started. Nothing to show for anything, except the wear and tear on his body. The bloom was off the flower, that was for certain. Still, he was in demand—even if it were by a black drag queen. But Ralph had found him attractive as well. How long could his appeal last? Each year counted.

Actually he had more of a chance in Tortuga than he did in New York. The competition there was rough. Why, kids played hookey from school and came to town from as far away as small cities in New Jersey "to work the queers."

At first, his hustling had been different. He'd felt he was hot shit when people paid money for his body. After a boyhood of being told he was worth nothing, it was good to see cash on the line.

With no education and an undefined ambition, he could have found some kind of work, couldn't he? Was washing dishes any more demeaning than having people too old or too repulsive to attract lovers make love to your body? A thousand mouths before he was eighteen. Maybe five hundred asses. Each and every one wanting to be stuffed.

It was a vicious circle, hard to drop out. You kept running the damn rat race until you were kicked out. But what use did society have for aging hustlers? Numie couldn't think of one. Not one.

One cold January day in a New York bar on Forty-Sixth street, he'd been drinking with two other hustlers. Usually he didn't hang out with hustlers, but he'd been lonely and depressed that day. Christ, you had to talk to someone sometime. The two men had been drinking heavily, fantasizing mightily about the big break. Both were past their prime. Both had never even gotten near that big break, and certainly were farther from it now than ever.

"Cut the shit, man," Numie finally said to one of them. "Your best days are behind you. It's going to get tougher, not better." The hustler punched him in the mouth. Numie didn't strike back. He'd deserved it, he figured.

Out on the street, he realized what he'd done. He'd attacked the one thing that hustlers had to hold on to. Dreaming about that big break kept the guy going.

Numie also realized what he was attacking. A future vision of himself. Would he end up as pathetic as that hustler, waiting for something to happen, yet knowing it never would?

Ghosts were filling up this parlor too quickly. Maybe he did need that drink. Better yet, one of those lavender-wrapped marijuana cigarettes. No, blue. Leonora said blue was his color.

Just then, Leonora herself entered.

"May I have one of your cigarettes?" he asked nervously, like a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

"Yes, if you
must."
Her expression was savage.

"Not
if
you feel that way." His face drained, he closed the lid on the wooden box.

"No, no," she said impatiently. "Take the damn thing—and give me one, too." Eyes blind with the strain of people, she added, "Let's not talk about something trivial all morning."

Blue smoke drifted up from the dark room. The light coming in through the door revealed the vague outline of Leonora's too white face.

"Well .. " he sighed, inhaling deeply. A dog barked outside. "Don't ever say 'well'." She adjusted her dress. "It's not dramatic."

"I'm too tired to be dramatic." A fly buzzed the room.

"If
you have something to say, say it with all the force and power of your body. No matter how foolish it may sound. Foolish statements said with authority sound less so." The sun was high in the sky, and she was growing increasingly warm, fearing she was overdressed for the occasion.

He blended his fingers together, then cracked his knuckles. "Please, don't do that," she ordered.
"It
annoys me." She knew she was being a bitch, but the scene with Maria upstairs had upset her so much she had to take it out on someone.

"I'm sorry," he said, fearing he would one day drown under the weight of his endless apologies to Leonora.

"You're always sorry about something," she said. "I'm even getting tired of your being sorry." The whole room had a musty stoginess, and it was making her
ill.

"Dammit," he said. "I don't know how to please you." His voice was harsh and choking.

"You're all alike—monsters." She moved slightly into the terrific silence following the accusation. The house itself seemed to have fallen asleep.

"I am not." Why was she doing this to him?

"Yes, you are. Ralph and Anne, Joan—all monsters." From the hallway came the sound of rushing feet, light like a young girl's.

"If
we're such monsters, why do you put up with us?" He mopped his face on his sleeve.

"Darling,
if
we kicked the monsters out of our lives, we'd have no friends." Her hand gingerly smoothed down her dress. Was Maria running down the steps?

Joan was back in the room, money in hand.

"I can only trust this to be an honest accounting," Leonora said. The birds screeched over the house again in a way that was menacing to her.

"I told you, no one's cheating you." Joan's face turned to putty. "Here
it
is."

Leonora rose. "Leave it on the table for Numie. Never give me another manila envelope. I want the money in scented envelopes ... envelopes scented of lavender." She turned slowly in the middle of the floor, then faced forward, and marched out.

"You must be kidding," Joan said.