Virgin With Butterflies (3 page)

“Yes,” he says.

“By myself,” I says to the four tall ones that made him look so little.

“Go alone,” he says. “You will not see them.” And so I went to the elevator, and them, too, leaving him standing there in the door with the two boys peeking out
over his shoulders. And when the elevator come we got in. And when it got to the lobby floor I got out. And there was Jeff, standing inside the turn-around door, looking halfway between scared and mad and smoking a cigarette, and was I never more glad to see anybody.

A
S
I
WALKED THROUGH
the people in the lobby, I was thinking, “I'm glad the four men in the overcoats didn't get out when I did.”

“Christ,” says Jeff, “let's get out of here.” And we did. As the door turned around with me in it, I heard him say, “I didn't like to call the cops,” but just then the door spanked me and I was out in the cold. And then out come Jeff, still talking. “Couldn't do a goddamned thing—what was I to do?”

I didn't say anything, so he kept on talking.

“Here's the cab down here. We'll have to use it. I don't know where to get a circus wagon for your troupe, or I would get one.”

As we swung into Michigan he looked back and says “Jesus.” And there came the black car with the chauffeur and the four men in it.

“Are you all right?” he says, and “What happened, for Chrissake?”

I could see he was more scared than anybody ever got about me, except Pop, and just pretty nearly like Pop when he had been scared about me.

Like the first time they come for Willie and took him
away. It was long after Uncle Ulrich and Aunt Helga had took us in to live with them after our house got burnt up, and me not daring to tell why I didn't want us to live there in the same house with them.

And Willie being so strange and him and Uncle Ulrich acting as if they knew something, and me hearing sounds in the house at night, like Willie maybe bringing in those girls he was always hanging around the drugstore talking to. And Aunt Helga's mouth getting tighter and tighter, and then that first time them coming to get Willie. One at the front door and one at the back door. And I went along to follow 'em down to the police place and had to sit there almost until morning before I could get 'em to let him go.

Pop was sure cussing and mad then, just like Jeff was now, trying to shake off that black car that never seemed to get stopped by a red light, till finally it did, and we finally lost 'em; or anyway we thought we lost 'em.

Now here I was, and I couldn't say a word because I knew Jeff would never understand, and anyway what could I say? I knew if I told him that I was going to try to find the ring and take it back to the Drake to the gentleman without those other four seeing me, I knew Jeff would try to stop me. He was right to be scared. I should have been pretty scared, too, because I didn't know, see, who these four were or who the gentleman was. But more than that I didn't know what they was to each other.

They had looked so sore when they had caught up with him and me, there in the lobby. And why were they following me now? I could see from their faces that they hadn't understood one word he had said all the time he
was talking to me in that upstairs parlour, and he hadn't explained anything. Or were they mind readers, maybe—they sure looked like they might be.

So how could I tell Jeff what I didn't even know, and him already so worried about what I had got into. Though why he should be, us being nothing to each other except saying hi-ya as I come to work at midnight, or sometimes a cup of coffee at the Greek's after I got through work. But he was real worried, I could see, and somehow I didn't seem to mind.

“Take me back to the café, Jeff,” I says.

“What for?” he says.

“I work there, dummy,” I says, “and I don't want to get fired. I can tell 'em I hurt my knee and you took me to a doctor.”

“Didja?” he says, looking around.

“Nothing to bother,” I says, “just knelt on some broken glass,” I says.

“Is that blood on your dress, where you knelt on it?” he says.

“It ain't rosebuds painted on it,” I says. And then he cussed some more and wanted to take me to a doctor sure enough. But I made him stop just before we got to Butch's place. And while he was getting out of his side I got out of mine and he couldn't catch me till just at the door he caught me and held me tight, for a minute.

And suddenly I felt weak as water, because I knew, see, that Jeff wanted me not to go ahead with what I was getting into. Looking back, I wonder, suppose I had quit, right there, I would have been spared what I went through that night and how many days and nights after.
But it's sure funny what makes us do things. Pop always said I was a bullhead.

“No,” I says to Jeff. But I was saying no to something in me that wanted all of a sudden to let Jeff tell me what to do about everything. But “No,” I says and saying it to both of us gave me the strength to go ahead.

“What the hell will I do with this hundred dollar smacker?” Jeff says, to cover up that he had been holding me and that we both knew I had won.

“Well, keep it,” I says. “Have you got a pin?” So he gave me one. And I pinned a tuck in my dress where it was torn across the knees so the blood didn't show. And it looked right nice. Like a new style it looked. And I went in and left him.

Red was sitting at the table where Millie had been sitting before, and I knew she must of just gone to the Ladies', because there sat her seventh or eighth soda, half gone, and a beer for him. He never drank, Red didn't, not a swallow, but he bought one every half hour when he would come in to sit with Millie.

I guess I didn't tell about Red. He use to be Millie's feller, steady, and then this other one with the black curly hair had come in and cut him out. But not for long he didn't, see? Just till he got her that way, and then he didn't seem to come around any more.

Red, he didn't come around, not while Curly was around. Red's got delicate feelings that way. But when Curly went off somewhere, the very next night, there was Red again, right back where he had always sat watching her sell the cigarettes, buying one beer every half hour so Butch wouldn't get sore that he was hanging around, see?

Well, then, like I told you, Millie couldn't be the cigarette girl no more, so I got the job. So then she could sit there and let Red buy all of those sodas for her while she waited every night to see if maybe Curly wouldn't maybe drop in, just once. And that's how it was. And they'd argue and argue if maybe they couldn't go on, just like they use to; that's what Red wanted, see? But Millie was very moral and she said she couldn't go on like they use to go, steady, when she was carrying the child of another. It sounded funny, but she said it was poetry to say it that way.

And Red would say, “How the hell can you know it's the child of another?”

“A girl knows,” she said.

Well, there sat Red and there was the café, just as if nothing had happened. Butch likes it that way. He wants to always run a respectable family place, he says, and whenever there's a fight, he has taught Moe to switch off the lights. While it's dark Butch cleans up whatever's there. So then when the cops come, the lights are on again and everything is quiet.

There was Butch behind the bar, and there sat four of the toughies at their table with their heads all close together and not drunk no more. One of the toughies had a black eye, a real shiner, and the others looked mad. But the pimply one, he wasn't nowhere to be seen. All this I saw, in my quick look through the door, and I saw other things, too, all in a flash.

There sat the broom in the corner, not where it stays in the closet, but out in the café. It was leaning up in the corner and on the floor was a little pile of broken glass
and some damp, dirty sawdust to help sweep it, right there by the broom.

Your brains are a funny thing. I tried to remember, was it Moe or Butch that usually swept it? No, it wouldn't be Butch, he'd be busy pulling the toughies off of each other, looking for anybody that couldn't get up. Cops are funny; if nobody is lying on the floor, they look in and look around and maybe sneak a beer and stroll off.

So my brains knew that it had been Moe that had swept up the glass, and I was glad he hadn't thrown it out in the can because I sure didn't want to go out in that alley. Then, I thought, how could he sweep without thumbs? I imagined myself doing it without using my thumbs, and realized I could do it.

“Well, look who's here,” Millie says, coming back from the Ladies'. She wasn't walking too good, but as she passed me she says, “For Chrissake, where'd you get the evening coat?”

“Shut up,” I says, quietly. I took it off and Moe gave me the cigarette tray while I patted my hair. Then Butch saw me.

“Here's your money box,” he says. “Where you been?”

“Doctor,” I says, “to sew my kneecaps back on. Them Mexican bottles cuts deep.” By this time the toughies quit talking in their huddle and listened.

“What happened to the small guy?” Butch says. “Did you take him to the doctor, too?”

“I never seen him,” I lied. Lying to Butch was easy, but to Pop I never could. “I thought they'd killed him,” I says, “and you'd throwed him in the alley, out back, like last time.” I knew that would get him, and it did.

“Shut up,” he says, “and sell your spuds.” And then soft as he polished glass, he says, “Pimples busted one of his guys in the snoot and then took something off of him and beat it, and I guess they're electing a new pastor for their flock. Looks like trouble,” he says.

So I walked past their table, saying “Cigarettes, boys?” Nobody made a grab for me, so I knew Butch was right; there was trouble brewing.

When I got to Millie and Red, Millie wanted to know more about the coat, which she had already fingered, and might have tried on if she'd never met that Curly. But now she couldn't have even gotten her hand into the sleeve.

Well, Millie said the guy with the shiner had found something on the floor after the lights came up and pocketed it. Pimples had asked what was it and the other guy had said, “None of your goddamned business—finders keepers.” And the others said so, too. So Pimples knocked him right out, went over him and put it—whatever
it
was—in his pocket. So Pimples took it off of him and smacked one of the other guys, too, making his lip bleed and then Pimples says, “You punks can pay for my drinks,” and waddled out.

So I knew I wouldn't have to look in the damp sawdust and the broken glass by the broom or out in the can in the alley.

“What was it he found?” I says.

“Tencents store jewelry,” Millie says. “I seen it, close, for a minute. It was a ring,” she says, “with a glass set in it as big as your eye—bigger,” she says. “Too big it was,
this set, to be mistaken for anything cost anything. Anyway, what could it be but glass, being red?” she says.

“Them punks is nuts,” Red says. “They drink Mex liquor and they smoke marywanna,” he says, “and they fight over glass jewelry that wouldn't fool a blind cat,” he says. Red's a plumber and strictly labor union, see? Plays handball at the Y.M.C.A. twice a week and don't approve of the customers at Butch's Café but he seldom says anything because he ain't there to fight—unless Curly should come in.

So I tried to sell a pack to a girl that Butch knows that brings a man in now and then for drinks and sometimes a game of cards in the back room. And this one bought a pack of Camels and beefed because they was a quarter.

Finally I got to where Moe was wiping off a table. He showed me right away a chain out of his pocket that he had swept up with the other stuff and I had to give him five bucks for it. He tried to get more but I thought five bucks was enough to buy back what may have been the gentleman's mother's neck chain or even his grandmother's, who could tell? The links were flat oblongs with tiny foreign writing on 'em and gold.

“Don't you tell, or I'll kill you,” I said to Moe and he looked as if he thought I meant it but I wouldn't kill anybody, he ought to know that.

Well, I went back to the toughie's table, and “Gosh,” I says, “that stuff you was drinking is sure bad for the eyes,” I says. No answer.

“Where's teacher?” I says.

“Whose teacher?” one of 'em says.

“Yours,” I says. “Seems like somebody didn't raise
their hand before speaking,” I says, “and had their chewing gum took away from 'em,” I says.

“Chewing gum,” says Black Eye, “that's about what that jewelry came with,” he says. “That's a hell of a cheap trinket to go busting your gang in the puss for,” he says. “He's washed up as far as I'm concerned. That's the last I take from that so-and-so.”

“I know how you mean,” I says. “The thing he took off of you wasn't worth nothing,” I says, “but still it gets you sore to think of him having the satisfaction of feeling he made you give it up.”

They didn't say a word, or hardly even looked at me.

“Wouldn't it be funny,” I says, “if he was to lose it?” I says.

Still they took no interest. “I mean,” I says, “if he was tricked out of it to make him look a little small, not just to himself,” I says, “but in front of you four that took such pains to make look pretty small, right here, where people will likely hear about it.”

That got 'em all right.

“How do you mean?” one of 'em says.

“Well,” I says, “of course, I don't know where he's at now.”