Stranger On Lesbos (15 page)

She nudged Bake. "Please don't take any more."

"It's all right, I won't pass out on you this time." She said to Mickey, laughing, "About the second time we were together I got plastered and went to sleep before I hit the pillow. She's never forgiven me."

Frances blushed. "Please, Bake."

"Dance?"

She turned. A tall, thin woman of her own age stood beside her, dangling a cigarette from her veined hand. Frances said uncertainly, "I don't think so. thanks."

"She doesn't want to dance with you," Bake said.

"That's up to her. Do you want to dance or not, honey?"

"Look," Bake said, "I told you she doesn't want to dance."

She stood up. So did Frances. "Listen, Bake, let's go home now. I'm tired."

The thin woman looked Bake up and down, her eyebrows raised. "Are you married to the girl or something? I only asked her to dance."

Bake said between her teeth, "Will you go away?" She moved closer to the woman, who took an uncertain step backward and stood swaying a little on high heels. Oh God, Frances thought, she's loaded too.

Mickey said, "Break it up, kids. Let's be friends."

"Friends, hell," Bake said. "Get out of here, you bitch."

She laid her hand against the woman's flat chest and pushed. The other customer, caught off balance, went down gradually, like someone in a slow-motion film. There was
a
sickening thud as her head struck the edge of the bar.

A couple of girls near the door, the worse for drink, turned and took in the situation. The smaller of them began to babble. Her friends gripped her by the shoulders, pushed her through the entrance door and disappeared after her. Mickey grabbed the telephone from its little shelf under the bar and began to dial.

"Have the riot squad in here if we don't watch out," she said to nobody in particular. "Better let the boys on the beat bust it up."

Bake said, "Oh, God," and looked around wildly. Someone emptied a half-filled glass of water on the victim's face. She lay absolutely motionless.

"Out cold," Mickey said.

The whole thing had taken perhaps
a
minute, certainly not more than two. Half a dozen people at nearby tables had seen it, and sat staring. A buzz of talk rose and swelled. Frances looked at Bake, unbelieving. She opened her mouth but no sound came out. It was like a bad dream. Everything seemed suspended for a moment.

The jukebox clicked, changing records, and the oompah-oompah of a polka filled the room.

Someone screamed. A high-school girl in the rear of the room burst into loud hysterical sobs.

A group of customers got to their feet and headed for the door. Others, released by their movement, began milling around, trying to see what had happened.

Mickey began to pick up used glasses, keeping her eyes on the door.

Two uniformed policemen suddenly filled the doorway. Mickey said in a whisper, "Oh, those bitches." The few customers who were still dancing, unaware of what had happened, jerked to a standstill. Two girls in the far corner, who had been standing locked in each other's arms for the last five minutes, froze into immobility.

Frances' first reaction was one of pure unbelief. The men were so husky and ruddy, so masculine, that her eyes wouldn't accept them in this place. Then she realized, with a shock of awakening, that the two cops had already gone into action, as if this situation were routine. (Which of course it is, she reminded herself.) They were lining up the customers and herding them out of the door, single file. Ignoring complaints, feminine screams and muffled curses, they worked efficiently from table to table. As the taller of the men turned his back she saw that he wore a cartridge belt and a service revolver, an ugly snubnosed thing
standard equipment for the city police, even traffic cops had them, but it had never occurred to her before that a policeman might actually shoot someone. Anyone. Her.

Her mouth was parched and tinny tasting. She retched dryly, then stiffened as the shorter officer stopped beside her.

"This the one who started it?"

She looked into his small eyes, uncomprehending. Mickey shook her head. "No, she's all right."

"I'm sorry, you'll have to come too. You," he said to Mickey, "stay till the ambulance gets here, will you? I can't move the victim, she might be hurt bad." He gave Frances a hard look. "Come on, come on, what are you waiting for?"

Bake, of course. She realized, in stupid surprise, that Bake was nowhere in sight. She said, "Me?"

"Yeah, you."

She followed him on rubbery legs, numb and unbelieving.

The paddy wagon was backed up to the curb. A dozen spectators had already gathered on the sidewalk. "It's a raid." "Sure, a lot of queers." "Somebody prob'ly pulled a knife, some of those babies are tough." A young girl, pregnant, clinging to her young husband's arm, looked at Frances with curiosity and pity. Frances gave the look back, cold and hard.

The two cops herded them in quietly and quickly, like farmers loading livestock. Frances, almost the last in, found standing room between a small girl in her late teens and a sulky butch in denim pants and one gold hoop earring. Some of the women were stolid, some crying. One was giggling hysterically against her friend's shoulder.

She twisted to look, hungry for a glimpse of Bake's face, feeling that she could bear anything if Bake would only look at her and smile. But Bake was not there.

"One thing," the butch with the earring said matter-of-factly, "they don't generally search you on a morals charge." She patted her shirt pocket. "Any of you fellows got any reefers, you better get rid of them on the way in, just the same. Some of those goddam matrons got itchy fingers."

"In where?" her high-school friend asked.

"Jail, stupid. The pokey. Did you think the mayor was having a reception for us, or something?"

I've been arrested, Frances told herself. The words had no meaning. She braced herself against the jolt as the vehicle started.

CHAPTER 12

Frances’ mental picture of prisons had been culled from the movies. Grim gray fortresses surrounded by high walls, on which armed guards were mounted with machine guns; circling searchlights; a concrete yard where uniformed convicts marched silently under guard. Sing Sing, Alcatraz, Joliet.

The wagon jolted to a stop in front of a red brick structure no bigger than a supermarket or a firehouse, indistinguishable from the other buildings on the block except for small barred windows set high in the walls. The butch with the gold earring caught Frances' look as she stepped down, a little stiffly because her legs were still cramped with fright.

"Precinct station, a hick dump. I'll be out of here before you can say scat."

"Wait till I get in touch with my lawyer!" The plump middle-aged woman beside Frances pulled her fur scarf closer around her throat, looking disdainfully at her fellow prisoners. "They can't do this to me."

"The hell they can't," the butch said.

"Quiet, please. No talking. Line up by two's."

The smell hit you as you went in, before you got a clear view of the room. Like the county courthouse back home: tobacco, sweat, plumbing, lysol. Frances followed the others into a large almost-bare room and stood waiting patiently for further instructions.

The taller cop slammed the door shut and lounged against it, looking bored. The girl with the earring said, "Might as well be comfortable. They take their good old easy time in this dump," and sat down, her feet apart.

There were wooden benches along the walls, some old-fashioned kitchen chairs, a few folding chairs. That was all. The walls were painted light green up to about eight feet and cream above, both colors dingy, the green defaced at shoulder level by pencil scrawls and streaks of lipstick. The floor was littered with cigarette butts. In one corner a semi-partition hid the sight but not the smell of a lid-less toilet and a small round washbasin, both badly in need of scouring. A metal wastebasket overflowed with crumpled paper towels, but the dispenser above the basket was empty.

"Crummy dump. You'd think they'd clean the can, anyhow."

"These dumb cops aren't used to anything better. Prob'ly live like this at home."

"The dumb matrons are the worst."

The woman unlocking the door looked angry. She also looked stupid. Middle-aged, thick-hipped; if she had worn a blue apron dress instead of the uniform of a police matron, Frances would have taken her for one of the women who come out after dark to clean office buildings. Her thick face was framed in a frizzy permanent. "I'll take your cigarettes and liquor. Any of you ladies got a switchblade on you?" Nobody answered. She ran her hands over the jacket pockets of a girl who might have been a secretary or a saleswoman.

"Get your dirty hands off me before I hit you."

"That's no way to talk." But she stepped back.

The taller policeman, standing inside the door, said, "I thought you girls liked to smooch each other."

"Anyhow, I've never been low enough to go out with a cop."

"Hush, Barby, or they'll never let you go."

"So what?"

"Names and addresses, please."

"I want to call my lawyer!"

"Later. Give your correct names and addresses, please."

"What book do you suppose she memorized that out of?" The butch with the gold earring said, "I knew a cop that was mentally normal, once."

"What happened to him?"

"He got fired."

But most of the women were silent, from fear or caution. The ones with regular jobs in the straight world, Frances guessed
the ones who had the most to lose.

Bake's desertion stung like iodine on an open cut. I ought to be glad she isn't involved, Frances thought. The words had no meaning. All that mattered was that Bake was not there.

"Where's your girl friend?"

"I was alone." The lie was automatic. She gave the name of a girl she had disliked in high school, and a made-up address. The matron wrote it down, without comment.

When she had gone out again, locking the door behind her, the girl with the gold earring moved over beside Frances. She didn't look sulky now but spunky, as if she had found something to fight for or, at least, somebody to fight with.

She said, "You were with the one that started it, weren't you?"

"Yes."

"What prob'ly happened, she got out through the washroom and down the alley."

"What happens now?"

"They call the families. Some of them will come around and bail the girls out. Might be twenty bucks, might be fifty, might be a hundred. Depends on a lot of things. The rest come to trial in a week or so."

"On what charge?"

Her new friend smiled ironically. "Oh
disturbing the peace or something. Legally they can't fine you till you're charged with something. But a trial's too much bother for the cops that made the pickup, they have to appear in court and all. So they let everybody out on bail." She looked around at her fellow prisoners. "Most of these babes will be out by tonight. They figure it's better to pay than get their names in the paper and maybe lose their jobs."

"But a citizen has rights."

"Not if she's one of the girls. Don't you know how straight people feel about us? They got it fixed so you can't fight back."