Half of Paradise (23 page)

April came out of the bath in her robe. She was drying the back of her neck with a towel. Her hair was damp from the shower. She looked at him without speaking and took a cigarette from a nickel-plated case on the table and lighted it.

“What did you want to tell me?” he said. She had told him earlier on the truck to come to her room after they came back from the Negro section of town.

She threw the towel on the bed and sat in the stuffed chair across from him. She smoked the cigarette and looked at him.

“It can wait. Did you call Elgin?” she said.

“He said he’d come around tomorrow. He wants some money.”

“Give it to him.”

“The bastard is worse than cancer.”

“He’s better than some,” she said.

“Why ain’t they taken his license away?”

“They did a long time ago. How many bags do you have till tomorrow?”

He took a small folded square of paper from his coat and held it between two fingers.

“This is it, and I’m fixing to take it right now,” he said. He unfolded one end and lifted it to his mouth and let the white powder slide off under his tongue. He walked to the desk and put the paper in the ashtray. He lighted a match to one corner and watched it burn.

April went to the dresser and took a shoe box out of the bottom drawer. She went into the bathroom and remained there a few minutes, and then came back out with the shoe box and replaced it in the drawer. The sleeve of her robe was rolled up over her elbow. She pulled it down to her wrist.

She turned off the light at the wall switch. She took off her robe and lay on the bed. J.P. got up from the chair and walked to the window. He had swallowed some of the cocaine before it dissolved in his mouth, and there was a feeling of nausea in his stomach. She turned her head on the pillow and looked at him. The pupils of her eyes had contracted to small points. The light from the street lamp cast J.P.’s shadow on the ceiling. April laughed.

“You’re upside down,” she said. “You are. Look at yourself. The white candy horse is galloping and you ride him upside down.”

He sat on the bed. He was high, but he felt that he might get sick and then the shaking would start and he would sweat and have chills at the same time.

“When are you going to mainline?” she said. “Little boys can’t eat candy all their life.” She laughed steadily now. “Little boys get sick when they eat too much candy. Does J.P. feel sick? Poor J.P. always feels sick. Poor poor poor poor J.P. Nice little boy with too much sweet in his mouth.”

She reached around him and touched him.

“Let April be your nurse. We’ll have some nice medicine.”

He got up to undress. He stood in his shorts, and then the room shifted under him and something went yellow in his head and crimson and then black, and he felt his mind slip out of time and something rush away inside him to darkness. He fell on the edge of the bed and rolled off on the floor
in the woman smell of her robe satin soft against my face the reek of yesterday’s love and she laughing get up J.P. too much
sugar in little boy’s mouth come let April make it right she leans over the side of the bed and looks at me smiling her hair wet and sticks to her neck her hand comes down and touches me not even the whores behind the railroad depot come on J.P. not on the floor we can’t have fun on the floor she laughing louder if I could move and slip again in time and her hand touching me warm like the woman smell in her robe like the sweat and sour milk and soap smell of her breasts that time in Lafayette when she put them in my hand and I no I was high I wouldn’t have done it if I wasn’t high can’t stop now her hand like warm water and I rushing to meet her in the final burst of white corn cast upon the ground
.

He woke in the morning with a pain in the back of his head. He was stiff from sleeping on the floor. He walked across the room in his shorts and became dizzy and had to sit down. April was still asleep. Her head was turned towards him on the pillow. Her mouth was open, and the wrinkles around her face and neck showed clearly in the morning light. J.P. didn’t remember what had happened the night before, and then it came back to him. He looked down at himself and felt disgusted. He picked up his clothes from the chair and went into the bath to shower. He wrapped the soiled underwear in a towel and put it in the clothes bag hanging on the door. He dressed and went into the room. April was awake.

“Give me my robe,” she said.

He picked it up off the floor and threw it to her.

“That’s a nice way to hand it to me,” she said.

“You look like hell.”

“What’s that for?”

“Goddamn it, what do you think?”

“You mean that! Oh God, you were funny. You should have seen yourself. I laughed until somebody next door started hitting on the wall. You lying on the rug with that expression on your face. I’d give anything for a picture of it.”

“Stop laughing.”

“I can’t help it. You were so funny. Your face looked like a child’s when he’s sucking on his first piece of candy.”

“You ain’t got no more decency than a whore.”

“You shouldn’t say things about the girl you’re going to marry,” she said.

“You’re still hopped.”

“I’m pregnant.”

“What?”

“I waited to make sure before I told you.”

“Why didn’t you take care of yourself?”

“I did. It happened anyway.”

“Can’t you do something to get rid of it?”

“You want me to drink gasoline or have my stomach cut open?”

“Why the hell did you let it happen?”

“It’s here and you’re stuck with it, so think about getting a marriage license,” she said.

“How do I know it’s mine?”

“It would take you to say something like that.”

“Seth says you and Doc Elgin got something going on.”

“You and me are going to stand up before a justice of the peace. You don’t have any way out of it.”

“There ain’t no shotgun laws in this state. You can’t force me into it. All I got to do is support the child.”

“But wait till your Baptist-Methodist audience finds out about it.”

“Are you going to put signboards on the highway?”

“I’ll have a blood test made and take it into court. Then all the hicks can read about it in the paper. Lathrop and Hunnicut will give you bus fare back to your tenant farm.”

“I got half a mind to take that bus ride.”

“How are you going to pay for your habit?”

“I can still kick it. It ain’t too late,” he said.

“You’re a fool.”

“I ain’t stuck it in my arm.”

“You will.”

“Everyone don’t have to end in the junkie ward.”

“I don’t feel like hearing about your cures this morning.”

“You and that bastard Elgin got me on it,” he said.

“Go cry to somebody else about it.”

“Don’t it bother you none fixing up Elgin with customers?”

“A girl looks out for herself.”

“You let yourself get knocked up on purpose.”

“I don’t want a child. I never liked children,” she said.

“Why in the hell weren’t you careful?”

“The courthouse closes at five o’clock. We’ll apply for the license this afternoon and three days from now we’ll be married. Isn’t that nice?”

“I got to think it over.”

“I’ll meet you in the lobby at one.”

“I can’t do it today. Elgin is coming by with a delivery.”

“There’s some in the drawer. Get it and take it with you.”

“I got to pay Elgin anyway.”

“He’ll be back tomorrow.”

“Look, we can put it off a while. It don’t hurt to wait.”

“Stop being an ass.”

“We wouldn’t be no good married together.”

“I’m not getting caught with your brat and no husband.”

Two hours later he was downstairs in the lobby waiting for her. He had coffee in the café and went outside to the cigar stand for a shoeshine. The stand was under the brick colonnade of the hotel. A large oak tree grew through an opening in the sidewalk. The day was not hot yet, and there was a slight breeze that carried the watermelon smell of summer from the country and the odor of old brick. J.P. gave the porter a half dollar and went inside to the bar for a drink. He left word at the desk for April.

He sat on one of the tall bar stools and drank a draught beer. April came in and sat next to him. She wore a dark blue skirt and a white blouse and black high heels.

“You want a beer?” he said.

“No. Let’s go to the courthouse.”

“Bring me another draught,” he said to the bartender.

“We have to go,” she said.

“I feel like drinking some beer.”

“You can drink later.”

The bartender drew the beer from the tap and put the filled mug on the bar. J.P. paid him and drank half of it without putting the mug down. He wiped the foam off the corners of his mouth.

“You ought to have a drink,” he said.

“I don’t feel like it.”

“Are you still shaky from last night?”

“Finish your beer and let’s go,” she said.

“I ain’t in no hurry.”

He swallowed down the rest of the beer and motioned to the bartender for another.

“Can’t you do anything without getting high first?” she said.

“I feel like getting blind.”

“After we come back you can pass out in the lobby if you want to.”

“You’ll be a sweet wife.”

The beer came. He watched her over the top of the mug as he drank.

“Pay for it and let’s go,” she said.

“Did you ever have a boilermaker? This seems like a good day to have one.” He called the bartender over and had him put a double shot of whiskey in the glass. He drank it down in two long swallows and put a dollar on the bar.

They took a taxi to the courthouse. They went into the clerk of court’s office to fill out the applications. He paid the license fee to the clerk and left April in the office. He walked down the marble corridor towards the front entrance. He heard her high heels clacking on the floor behind him.

“Where are you going?” she said.

“There ain’t nothing else, is there?”

“Why did you walk off and leave me alone in there?”

“I’m going somewhere, and I don’t reckon you want to come along,” he said.

He walked out the front door and down the wide concrete walk to the street. The sun was very hot now, and the glare from the cement hurt his eyes. He heard the high heels clacking behind him again. He didn’t look back. He signaled a taxi and got in and slammed the door before she reached the street. He saw her face go by the window as the taxi pulled away from the curb.

“What are you laughing at, mister?” the driver said, looking at him in the rear-view mirror.

“It’s so goddamn funny you wouldn’t believe it.”

“Are you all right?”

“I’d tell you about it, but you wouldn’t believe it.”

“Where did you say you wanted to go?”

“Jerry’s Bar, back of the depot.”

The driver looked at him once more in the mirror and drove down a side street through the old part of town and across the railroad tracks. They slowed down behind the station and stopped in front of a bar across from the freight yards. The bar was a two-story board building with dirty front windows and a shorted-out neon sign that buzzed loudly and lighted up only half of its letters.

J.P. went inside. It smelled of flat beer and the sawdust that was spread on the floor. The mirror behind the bar was yellowed, and the rough-grained floor was stained with tobacco spittle. Some of the chairs were turned over on the tables, and two railroad workers were drinking at the other end of the bar. A middle-aged man in a dirty apron was drying glasses behind the bar. His hair was combed over the bald spot in the middle of his head.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Winfield,” he said.

“Give me a whiskey and water, Jerry,” J.P. said.

“Yes, sir.”

He mopped the area in front of J.P. with a rag and set down the drink.

“We ain’t seen you in a while. You must be busy in politics.”

“When are you going to stop cutting your whiskey?” J.P. said.

“We don’t do that here, Mr. Winfield. I can give you another shot if it’s too weak.” He filled the jigger and poured it in J.P.’s glass.

“I want a room upstairs for the afternoon.”

“It’s a little early. I don’t know if any of the girls are in.”

J.P. took out his billfold and put five ten-dollar bills on the bar.

“Let me ask my wife,” the bartender said. “Emma, come over here a minute.”

The woman who had been sweeping propped her broom against a table and came behind the bar. She was stout and had big arms like a man. There was a large wart on her chin. She didn’t look at J.P.

“Mr. Winfield wants to go upstairs. I told him it was a little early for the girls,” the bartender said.

She took the money off the bar and rang the cash register and put it in the drawer.

“Come with me,” she said.

J.P. followed her off into a narrow hallway at the back. She opened the door to a stairway and climbed the steps with J.P. behind her. The upstairs was divided by a hallway with a series of doors on each side. The floor was covered with a tattered maroon carpet. The hall ended in a single large room that served as the kitchen. There was a curtain pulled across the doorway. The woman left J.P. standing at the top of the staircase and went down the hall opening doors and looking into rooms. She came back and went past him to the kitchen, not looking at him.

“They keep their rooms worse than niggers,” she said.

He watched her pull aside the curtain and look into the kitchen. Four women were sitting around the table eating. She held the curtain and stepped back for him to look in.

“You want one in particular?” she said.

“Is Margaret still here?”

“She got sick.”

“It don’t matter, then.”

“There’s a customer, Honey,” the woman said.

“Yes, ma’am,” a girl at the table said, and wiped her mouth with a napkin and got up from her chair. She came out into the hall. Her hair was long and honey-colored. She wore a pink flowered house robe. She was a little overweight and the pink polish on her fingernails was chipped away.

“Honey is one of our best girls. We never had complaints about her,” the woman said.