Girls' Dormitory (7 page)

"Three or one or a dozen—twenty-five percent baby." Without arguing with him more she took fifteen dollars from her pocketbook and gave it to him.

"Thanks," he said.

"Don't mention it."

He walked to the door.

"It's a good arrangement," he said. "The more you make the more I make. What could be sweeter?"

She watched the door close behind him, listened to his footsteps retreating along the hall. Wearily, Helen sat down on the edge of the bed. Leaning forward, her hands over her face, she began to cry. She hated him, hated him. She hated all men. Ah men. None of them were any good.

The bar was small, a little place off Kennedy Street on Drake. The room smelled of stale beer and sweating bodies and it was filled with the heavy laughter of men and the shriller laughter of women.

Helen sat near the end of the bar, drinking rye and ginger and feeling sorry for herself. That Frank was a bastard, he really was. And that Jerry was, too. All men were bastards. The only men who were any good were the men who paid.

She lifted her glass and tasted her drink.

Someday a man would really pay.

Someday some man would pay with everything he had.

"Hello, honey."

She glanced at the man standing next to her and then looked away. He was big, smelled of the river front, and was drinking beer. On the other side of him a woman with rumpled brown hair attempted to light a cigarette.

"Damn!" the woman said.

The man struck a match and held it.

"You're drunk, Belle," he said. "Whyn't you take off?"

The woman's eyes hardened.

"You'd like that, wouldn't you, you woman-chasing bastard," she said and pushed the match aside. "You think she'll pay any attention to you?" She nodded toward Helen.

"Shut up."

"I won't shut up."

"You'll shut up or I'll slap you silly."

The man on Helen's right finished his drink and slid away from the bar. She started to move down to the next stool but she wasn't quite quick enough. A young man in a gray topcoat, smelling of pipe smoke, sat down beside her.

"Hello," he said.

She recognized him from the college but she couldn't remember his name. In one of her classes, he sat far back in the room and never said very much. "Hello," she said.

He grinned, seeming pleased that she had spoken to him.

"You come in here much?" he wanted to know. The man on her left was pushing up against her. She sighed and moved away from him. "Not often," she said.

The young man surveyed the interior of the bar.

"It's a dump," he observed.

"Yes."

"They say you can find anything in here."

"I guess you could."

The bartender came over and the young man ordered a beer. He asked Helen if she wanted a drink but she shook her head, smiling, and said she would accept a rain check.

"Good idea," the young man said. "I'm just about broke anyway."

They drank in silence. The woman down the bar was still trying to get her cigarette lighted and the man was now calling her names.

"I'm Harry."

Helen remembered. Harry Martin. She had heard that he was considered brilliant by most of the college instructors and that he worked part time for a mortician.

"I'm Helen."

"I know."

"Miserable storm."

"Worse than that," Harry said.

"I think it cost me my job."

"How is that?"

Harry ordered another beer, neglected to ask her if she wanted a drink—which she would have accepted this time —and put his elbows on the bar.

"Funny how things work out," he said. "I work for this undertaker, Snelling, and we went down to New York to pick up a body today. Usually I don't go out of town with him but with the weather so bad he wanted somebody to drive. So we picked up the body and on the way back we stopped at this gas station for gas. I didn't get out, he did, and I didn't know that some guy was there hitching a ride. Afterward I found out that Snelling had told the guy he could ride in back with the body—there's only two seats in front of the hearse—but he didn't mention anything to me. Well, we left the gas station and started up the road and pretty soon this guy in back knocks on the glass and wants to know if he can smoke. It was silly, I guess, but I didn't know what to think. As far as I knew there was just a body back there, nobody alive. It sure shook me up. It shook me up so good that I drove the hearse right off the road, into a drift, and jumped the hell out. It took an hour for us to get out of the snow and Snelling wouldn't talk to me all the way back. I—well, what's so funny?"

Helen was laughing so hard she could hardly stop.

"It's a scream," she said. "You driving a hearse and thinking that a body had come back to life."

"Wasn't much else to think. Oh, it's silly now, when I think about it, but at the time—say, you've got hazel eyes."

"Have I?"

"Never saw a redhead have hazel eyes before. It's a good combination."

"Thank you."

"Have a drink now?"

"All right."

"What are you drinking?"

"Beer is okay."

"Thinking about my wallet, huh?"

"All of us have to think about money, don't we?"

"I sure should now. Snelling's going to let me go. I can feel it."

They had a drink, talked about school, made general chitchat, and she found herself moving closer to him, away from the man on her left. When she felt their legs touch, she became determined that she wouldn't move closer.

"How come you're down here?" he wanted to know.

"I was visiting somebody."

"Oh. Well, I'm glad. I've seen you in school, lots of times, but I've never had a chance to talk to you before." He put his beer down and looked at her. "You're nice," he said. "I've wanted to tell you that."

Helen felt funny sitting there beside him. She felt more strange than she had ever felt with a man before. There was something about him—the smell of the pipe, the way he looked at her?—that pushed inside and made her feel warm and decent. Yes, decent. Not because he changed anything that she felt for Peggy, anything that they shared together, but decent because he wasn't buying her. He wasn't like Jerry, he was totally different and somehow clean.

"Thank you," she said quietly.

"Running into you was a break."

"Was it?"

"I'd like to see you again."

She said nothing.

"Could I?"

"Well—"

The man on the left gave her a shove and she landed hard up against Harry.

"You'd drink with him," the man said, his breath hot on her neck. "But you wouldn't drink with me. What's the big idea, you little snip?"

She stumbled, grabbed Harry, and almost fell down.

"Leave her alone," the brown haired woman said. "She ain't your kind, Tad."

"Shut up."

Harry, whose beer had been knocked over by Helen's arm, moved away from the bar.

"What's going on?" he demanded.

"None of your business," the big man on Helen's left said sourly. "Why don't you take a course in college about how to keep your nose out of things that ain't none of your business?"

"Look out, Helen," Harry said, pushing Helen aside. "This fellow burns me."

"I'll burn you," the big man said, swinging away from the bar. "I'll burn you good."

The fight didn't amount to much. It was bloody and terrible while it lasted but Harry was no match for the big river man. Blood came from a cut over Harry's eye and from his mouth. He tried to hit back but the assault had been so violent and sudden that his blows had no effect.

"Kill him!" the brown-haired woman was screaming. Kill the bastard!"

Others in the bar were yelling the same thing.

"Kill him!"

"Pound him into the floor, Tad!"

"Smash him, Tad! Smash him!"

And Tad smashed Harry. He drove him along the bar, up against the wall and then he kneed Harry in the stomach. Harry fell forward, his eyes glassy, retching.

The brown haired woman laughed gleefully.

Still hearing the laughter of the woman and the shouts of the men in the bar Helen turned and, half-crying, fled to the door. There was nothing that she could do, nothing. And somehow she had caused it all. Outside, she walked through the storm, crying harder now and bitterly. Harry was a nice young man, a good, sweet kid. And he had gotten himself badly beaten because of someone like her.

When she entered the rooming house on Kennedy Street a few minutes later, the tears had stopped. Her face was set in dull, hard lines, and her eyes were dry and cold.

Somebody was waiting for her near her room.

It was Thelma Reid.

"I hoped you wouldn't be much longer," Mrs. Reid said. "It's as cold as the devil in this hall."

Helen unlocked her door without saying a word. "Come in," she finally said. Her voice was toneless. Mrs. Reid came into the room.

"You know what I want, Helen?" Mrs. Reid inquired softly.

"Yes," Helen murmured.

And she did.

Everybody was talking about parents' night. It was an important event at college, one of those things that came once a year and lasted all weekend.

"We're all one happy family," the dean said. "Let's get to know everybody better and in that way get to understand everybody better."

"Bull," one of the girls said.

"They meet my old man and that'll be the end of me," another girl decided. "He hasn't been sober in the last fifteen years and he wouldn't lay off just to make a decent impression."

Nobody except the dean and some of the instructors wanted parents' night. For the students it would be a dull, depressing series of cocktail parties without liquor, dry lectures, and a speech by the dean about the objectives and lofty ideals of Cooper Community College.

"I'll have to get a new girdle," Evelyn Carter said. "If my mother and father get an idea that I'm pregnant they'll cut off my money."

"I'd think anybody would know," Cathy Barnes said. "You bulge."

"Not much."

"I think you do and I've heard other people say so, too."

"What other people?"

"Marie Thatcher, for one."

Evelyn snorted. "She'd better be careful or she'll be next."

"Oh, she's careful. She knows what time of the month it's all right and everything. She's got books that she reads all the time."

"About sex?"

"Not her homework. She wouldn't be getting 'D's' in everything if she worked half as hard on her studies."

" 'D's'? She doesn't get a 'D' in English."

"No, not English. English she works out with Mr. Walton in bed."

A lot of the girls got good marks in English. Walton, who was in his forties, was hell on the sheets and any girl who couldn't pass one way could pass another.

"He's a slob," Helen said. "He just drools."

Peggy had noticed Walton's glances, too. One day he had kept her after class and the entire time he talked to her he had been staring down inside of her dress. But he wasn't the only one who stared; a lot of the boys did. They stared, liked what they saw, and asked her for dates. But she refused them, refused all of them. She was too happy living with Helen to care about boys. The more she heard boys discussed around the house the less she thought of them. They were all alike, all after one thing. The only one who seemed different was that Harry Martin, the fellow who was chasing after Helen, and even he was probably like the others.

"Your folks coming in for parents' night?" Helen asked.

"My mother is dead."

"Oh, that's right. But what about your father?"

Peggy had thought about it. Her father would arrive in the Caddy, spend money like a fool, maybe make a pass at some of the girls, and turn everything into a mess.

"No," Peggy said. "I didn't let him know."

"You don't have to. The school does that."

"They do?"

"Sure. They send out cards from the office. They have some kind of a machine that just runs them off like crazy."

"Oh, no!"

"Why, what's the matter? Don't you want your father to come?"

"No."

"Well, it's too late. They've already sent the cards out." Helen laughed. "You should be like me. Neither I nor anybody else knows where my mother is."

"You don't?"

"No. She's a stripper in a carnival."

"You never told me that."

"Not this time of the year, of course. This time of the year the carnivals come off the road and stay in winter quarters. Winter quarters! That's a joke. Winter quarters for my mother means that she works out in some cellar club for a few bucks and what she can make on pushing drinks between dances."

"Honestly?"

"Honestly. Don't be ashamed for knowing me. It isn't my fault, and denying it won't change anything. Besides, I don't think there's anything dirty about her shows. I have an idea she keeps things clean."

"Clean?"

"You know what I mean. No skin show, not in the cellars or the night clubs where she works. In the carney it's different. In the carney every girl has to strip all the way down to nothing."

Peggy couldn't imagine any girl or woman doing such a thing.

"That's horrible," she said. "How can she do such a thing?"

"How can she do it? Well, to begin with, she was brought up in it. She was showing them her fanny when she was still in her teens and she's been doing it ever since. I used to blame her, too, but I don't any more. It's all she's ever known."

"And your father?"

"He was a magician. He made himself disappear."

"How do you manage to stay in school?"

"I work summers."

"Where?"

"In the Catskills."

"Waiting on tables?"

"Sort of."

"You must make out pretty well," Peggy said. "Guess you have to work hard and save every penny you get your hands on."

"I do."

Peggy suddenly felt sorry for Helen. She had so much, so very much, and Helen had so very little. Helen had her love, all of her love, but that wasn't enough. A girl had to have money, money for clothes and tuition and just plain living.

"There's something I ought to tell you," Peggy said.