Wives and Lovers (21 page)

Gordon glanced briefly at the picture and passed it on.

“They don't like to have their pictures took,” Joe ex­plained. “Maybe scared of the camera.”

“G'wan,” said the waitress. “You probably beat them. G'wan, admit it.”

“You're a great kidder,” Joe said.

The waitress brought Ruby and Gordon some scram­bled eggs. She had a good-natured, careless attitude that reminded Gordon of Hazel. He hadn't, until that mo­ment, thought of trying to get some money through Hazel. Hazel wouldn't have any herself, not enough anyway, but if he gave her a check she might be able to cash it through George Anderson.

Without tasting his eggs, he went to the phone booth and dialed Hazel's number.

12

George didn't get up till noon on Sundays, and when the phone started ringing before eight he struggled out of bed, cursing.

“George? It's Hazel. Are you all right?”

“Why shouldn't I be?”

“Oh, I don't know. Sometimes you take things like last night kind of hard and I wanted to make sure you were feeling all right because I've got something important to ask you.”

“Ask ahead.”

“I need some money for a friend of mine. Today. Right now.”

“How much?”

“Five hundred dollars.”

“You give me a pain,” George said.

“Listen to the deal first before you blow a fuse.”

“I'm listening.”

“Well, this friend of mine is going on a holiday. He intended to leave tomorrow but he's got this chance to leave today and he needs five hundred dollars. He's giving me a check and I'd like you to lend me the money so I can give it to him, and then tomorrow morning I'll cash the check at the bank and pay you back. See?”

“It sounds damned peculiar. I can scare up the money, maybe, but why the complications?”

“Because. Will you do it, George?”

“No.”

“For heaven's sake, why not?”

“If your friend wants five hundred dollars bring him over here. Then if he has an honest face and a reasonable balance in his bank book, I'll cash a check for him.”

“No. It's better the way I suggested.”

“Why?”

“Well, he has a joint account with his wife, see, and his wife doesn't know yet that he's going away. If the check's made out to me I can be at the bank sharp at ten when the doors open, and if I see her there I can just push ahead of her.”

“Holy catfish.”

“That's what he told me,” Hazel said, stubbornly. “If his wife suspects that he's going away she might try and draw out all the money before this check can be cashed. Now do you understand?”

“It sounds like a perfect set-up for you to keep your nose out of.”

“Wait a minute, I want to close the dining-room door. I think Josephine and Harold are getting up.” There was a pause. “It's all right now. They can't hear.”

“What difference would it make if they did?”

“This friend of mine doesn't want everybody to know his business.”

“He's running out on his wife, is that it?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“My gosh, George, do you have to know everything?”

“Five hundred bucks,” George said, “is five hundred bucks.”

“He's got his reasons.”

“I hope you know what you're doing, aiding and abet­ting whatever you're aiding and abetting.”

“I know, all right.” She thought how surprised he would be if he knew too. She felt a little sorry for George that he should have to finance Ruby's and Gordon's trip, but it was, actually, for his own good. Eventually he'd be glad and realize that Ruby would never have married him any­way. “It's a matter of principle,” she said, her conscience leaping slightly. “Will you get the money, George?”

“I guess I can try.”

“You'll do it. You have hundreds of friends.”

“I can't think of a better way of losing them.”

“Everyone's going to be paid back. This friend of mine is a very respectable man. Just because he's leaving his wife doesn't mean he's a crook.”

“All right. I said I'd try.”

“Shall I pick it up at your apartment?”

“No.” He didn't want Hazel to see the apartment in its present condition. It hadn't been cleaned for a month. “How about meeting me at the Beachcomber?”

“When?”

“In an hour or so.”

“I'll be there.”

“I still hope you know what you're doing,” George said gloomily.

“You're always such a pessimist where money's con­cerned.”

“Five hundred bucks is—”

“Yes, I know, George. Anyway, this is very nice of you. I appreciate it. I'll do something for you someday.”

“Cut the violins,” George said and hung up.

He got dressed and made his breakfast. This was the part of living alone that he hated most, getting up to an empty apartment and having to make his own breakfast. When they were married Hazel had always cooked very elaborate breakfasts. She told everyone that George had a large frame to fill, and she filled it, in the mornings, with hot cakes and sausages and fried potatoes and blueberry muffins.

The kitchen was a mess and the refrigerator smelled sour, jammed with odds and ends of stale food. He man­aged to find three eggs, one of them cracked. He fried them while the coffee percolated. Some day he'd have to clean out the refrigerator but he didn't know how to go about it. It seemed kind of drastic to take everything out, and he wondered if women had some special easy system for cleaning out refrigerators, and what they did about the smell.

While he was drinking his coffee he counted the money in his wallet. Forty-seven dollars. That meant shopping around for the difference, four hundred and fifty-three dollars. There was some cash in the safe at the Beach­comber but he had made it a rule not to touch any of it and not to borrow any money from the till even for twenty-four hours. It was the kind of thing that, once started, was hard to stop, and he was afraid his partners wouldn't like it if they found out.

He thought of two men who would be likely to have quite a bit of cash over a Sunday. One was a small-time gambler who played poker every Saturday night in the back of a Chinese herb shop. The gambler lived with his sister who didn't approve of gambling. She took his winnings, when she could find them, and gave them to the church and to relatives. She had become so skillful at finding his hiding places that the gambler was occasionally compelled to leave his money with George over the week­end.

The other man was a fisherman called Mix. He was the co-owner of a small Monterey fishing boat that went out to the islands for two or three days at a time. He'd been bringing in eleven or twelve hundred pounds of lobsters from every trip. George had seen him yesterday morning on the way to Vasco's fish market to settle up his ac­counts for the past two weeks. He figured that Mix, after deducting expenses, should have around five hundred dollars as his share. Like a lot of other fishermen Mix hated to put his money in the bank right away. He liked to keep it around and look at it, though sometimes, if he was afraid he was going out to get stewed, he gave George some of his money to keep for him. The rest he went out and spent. As soon as he had two or three drinks, Mix suffered an acute attack of generosity. He bought presents for all his relatives back in Missouri, and shipped them off, live turtles, chocolates, clothes, toys, souvenirs of Channel City. He picked up all kinds of people in bars and bought them drinks and promised them free lobsters. Once he bought up all the papers a newsboy was selling and sent the boy home. The newspapers were heavy to carry, so Mix gave them away to various people. He'd brought a gift to George once, a second-hand set of the Harvard Classics. They were the only books George owned.

When Mix was stone broke he returned to his boat to sleep, and the next morning he would get the rest of his money from George and put it in the bank. George didn't like to throw anything away, so he had a whole drawerful of receipts that Mix had returned to him when George handed back the money.
Received from Mix Jorgen, to be held in trust until Monday, the sum of Two Hundred Dollars, signed, George Anderson. Mix Jorgen gave me $175.50 to keep for him, signed, George Anderson.

George put the forty-seven dollars back in his wallet. He felt suddenly very annoyed with Hazel, not because she'd asked him to do her a favor, but because she shared his own weakness. She was always getting involved with people. He didn't like the sound of the five hundred dol­lar deal. He and Hazel could easily be left holding the bag.

He got the car out of the garage and drove down to the wharf to find Mix.

George left his car in the small parking lot beside the Beachcomber. He didn't like to take it beyond this point, because further on some of the holes in the planking had had been covered up by thick pieces of board nailed to the planking. When one of the fish trucks hit these boards it bounced in the air, making the whole dock shudder. George preferred to walk.

The wharf was fairly quiet. The amateur fishermen were already lined up at the edge, beside the signs: “No Fishing.” “Absolutely No Fishing.” “No Fishing Be­yond This Point.” As George walked on, the fish odors became stronger. A pile of empty abalone shells lay stink­ing in the sun. The conveyor machines, silvered with scales, smelled of dried fish blood. A young Mexican girl, all dressed up in a tight flowered crepe dress, was tying on some bait which she kept in an abalone shell. The bait was gray and black and it smelled worse than anything George had ever smelled. A small lobster boat was tied up alongside, waiting to unload. The lobsters trailed along behind the boat in crates made of laths.

He found Mix sitting against the wall of the warehouse, smoking a pipe and reading a magazine. He was a man about forty, a Middle Westerner who hadn't seen the ocean until the war. Although he'd been a fisherman now for two years, he was still self-conscious about it. When he was not on his boat he spent hours hanging around the wharf, trying to get over the feeling that he was an im­postor. He wore rubber boots, a cowboy hat, a corduroy shirt and dirty army pants.

“Improving your mind?” George said.

Mix threw down the magazine and yawned. “Habit. I started reading in the army and I can't get over it. It's a disease, like.”

“How's business?”

“Hell, fishing's no business, it's a bum's game. For the little guys like me, anyhow. Look.” He held out his hands. They were covered with scars and scabs and cuts. One of the cuts looked infected. “Fish poisoning. Listen, George, you take a good look at these hands and figger you're lucky to be in a white-collar racket. Sweet Jesus, the way I work! And for what? Thirty-five cents a pound for lobster from Vasco when I could be getting forty-five at San Pedro. People like you, George, you think fishing is just sitting around sailing over the ocean blue. Sweet Jesus, if I was a sensible guy I'd go back in the army so I could do my reading by electric lights again and my pay'd come in regular instead of in fits and starts, and I wouldn't have nothing to do with octopuses. Those things, Jesus, they get me. They get in the pots, see, and I have to gaff them. The other day one of them got me on the arm with one of his suckers. I nearly died,” he said solemnly. “I wouldn't tell this to everybody, but when that thing got onto my arm I nearly died.”

He tapped the ashes out of his pipe for emphasis. “Eels too, I don't like. Lobsters, now there's something pretty about lobsters. You take a big fifteen-pound bull and watch him flopping around, he looks kinda noble. No sneaking suckers on him, by God.”

“What was the take yesterday?” George said.

“Not so good. I figure this way, somebody's been rob­bing our pots, and it ain't just starfish and eels and octo­puses, it's human. So help me Jesus, if I ever catch them I'll use the gaff on them. Last time we only brought in eight hundred pounds.”

“Did you settle up with Vasco yesterday?”

“Sure.”

“How much?”

“Jesus, I don't ask you how much you—”

“I need some cash until tomorrow.”

“We may be going out tomorrow.”

“Don't kid me,” George said. “You wouldn't go out without putting the money in the bank and by the time the bank's open you'll have your money back, Boy Scout's honor.”

“I used to be a Boy Scout,” Mix said reminiscently. “Back in St. Louis. The pride of Troop Twenty-Two, and look at me now. I haven't had a bath in a month. I wash, sure, but washing's not like having a hot bath. Maybe some day I'll get me a nice little apartment in town with a bathroom and a kitchen with a refrigerator, cook myself some decent meals for a change. Like this morning, you know what Pete and I had for breakfast? We figured on bacon and eggs, see, with toast. We bring out the bacon and it's moldy. No butter, no lard. The bread don't look so good and the eggs are getting kinda old. So Pete cooks them any­way, scrambles them in Dago red to hide the flavor. Sweet Jesus, it's a wonder my stomach ain't rotting away.”

“How do you know it's not?” George said.

“I'm feeling pretty good. I feel pretty good all over except my hand is sore.” He pulled up his shirt and un­fastened the money belt he wore around his middle. “How much do you want?”

“Four hundred and fifty-three dollars.”

“I'll see if I got that much.”

He counted his money, while George watched him, amused. Mix knew down to a cent how much money he had in the belt. When he wasn't drinking he was inclined to be careful of money, and George knew that Mix, like a lot of other fishermen around the dock who looked like bums, had a very pretty bank balance.