The Neon Jungle

Chapter Sixteen

It was on Wednesday that Bonny knew she was becoming aware of those around her on some other basis than their relationship to her. She had spent long hours since the lunch with Paul Darmond, going over and over what he had said to her, trying in every way to discount the sharpness of the scalpel.

Preoccupation with self had been a comforting insulation. You could hide within self, and look out of a narrow place at the world, the way an animal might crouch and be aware only of those who passed by and showed any interest in the cave’s darkness.

Paul had roughly stripped away the insulation and left the nerve ends shrill. She needed the warmth and comfort of the cave, but he had made it impossible for her to return.

It was like learning to live again. Years had been spent in the dim cave. Now she had come out of the dark place, had, rather, been hauled out physically, and stood naked in a bright place peopled with those she had been aware of only one-dimensionally.

On Wednesday morning in the bath she stood with her foot on the edge of the tub, drying neatly between her toes, and she stopped and looked at the slim ivory of her foot, examining herself in new awareness. This was the body that, in all justice, should have recorded faithfully the crumbled years. Yet the body had no look of violent use, and there was neither justice nor fairness in that. The firm, almost virginal look of her was like a taunt. Like a gift given in contempt. Thus, in giving it again, it would be something she had neither saved nor nurtured. And thus a gift of little value to the giver. She had seen the familiar shifting unrest in his eyes, and she felt again the warmth of his hand as it cupped her face. She slipped into her robe and belted it closely around the body that suddenly felt flushed and aware of him.

Jana was alone at the big table in the kitchen when she arrived. Anna nodded to her and expressionlessly cracked two more eggs into the frying pan.

“Good morning,” Bonny said. “It’s a lovely day.”

Jana seemed to become only gradually aware that she was no longer alone. She looked blankly at Bonny and at last smiled, almost shyly. She seemed to come back from a far place that was not pleasant to her.

“Is anything wrong?” Bonny asked.

Jana surprisingly flushed. “No, there isn’t anything wrong,” she said too insistently. “Nothing at all.”

Anna set the juice glass and the breakfast plate down in front of Bonny. She set them down heavily. Jimmy Dover came quickly in and said, “I guess I’m sort of late.”

“Walter won’t open up for another ten minutes,” Bonny told him. She turned to Jana. “Are we the last?”

Jana blushed again. “Vern and Doris aren’t down yet.”

Her statement puzzled Bonny. There was no point in mentioning Doris. She never got up before ten. As she ate she examined Jana more carefully. Even in her preoccupation with herself, she had been remotely aware that Jana had acted restless and discontented for the last few months, while the old man had been lost in the cold remoteness of his grief for his son. Now the constant blushings gave Jana a look of rosiness, almost of soft contentment.

Vern came down with his automatic smile and his look of composure. And Bonny saw Jana blush again and conspicuously avoid looking at Vern. Bonny, with her new clarity and awareness, covertly studied Vern. A very cold and very handsome young man. And with, about him, a faint warning note of danger. A sleek young man, and a young woman of a husky ripeness, and an old man whom death had turned vague.

It was a situation so trite that it seemed almost implausible to her.

It’s none of my business, she told herself. Their dangerous little game is nothing that concerns me. Yet even as she told herself she should not be concerned, she seemed to feel the presence of Paul Darmond close behind her, see even a mocking accusation in his eyes. No man is an island unto himself. She could tell herself that in return for their taking her in, she had given them work. Service in return for warmth. Yet in return for warmth, perhaps warmth itself is the only acceptable currency.

She watched Jana get up and go around the table, taking her plate over to the counter. Bonny saw Jana turn and hesitate and then take the big coffee pot from the stove and carry it over and fill Vern’s cup. She saw the flick of Vern’s eyes up at her pink face. Vern was alone on the far side of the table. She saw his shoulder move a bit and saw the shudder that went through Jana. Saw the shudder and the stillness and the eyes go half closed as the black stream of the coffee slid beyond the cup rim to splash in the saucer. Jana took the pot back to the stove and Vern looked coolly across at Bonny, meeting her glance, raising one eyebrow in an expression both quizzical and triumphant.

It was a male look that she had seen many times before.

And she knew, seeing it, that she would talk to Jana — that the talk would be awkward, perhaps vicious, most probably ineffectual, but talk she would. For a thing like this could end in that ultimate violence. And this house had seen enough of violence.

She knew that there would be no chance until evening. She took over the cash register as the store opened, taking the currency and change from the brown canvas sack and counting it into the drawer. Gus Varaki did the day’s tasks like a sleepwalker. Rick Stussen cut meat deftly, thin blade flashing as he sharpened it, cleaver chunking the block, scraps plopping wetly into the box by the block. Walter worked in a morose silence. During midmorning Doris paid one of her rare visits to the store to get a pack of cigarettes. Her manner was that of a princess forced to visit the kitchens to complain about the service. Bonny was startled by the look Walter gave her. Walter looked at his wife with a fury that made his mouth tremble.

Bonny began to watch him more closely. It was odd to come out of a selfish trance and see, so clearly, the forces of violence surrounding her. Teena first, and now Jana, and soon, perhaps, Walter.

One of the wholesale houses made the usual cash delivery at two o’clock. The delivery man was stooped and gaunt, with a collapsed-looking mouth.

“Can you give me my thirty-two bucks, Red? Or we gotta whistle for Walter?”

Walter came from across the store. He took the bill and studied it, went behind the cash register, and rang up $32.12 paid out and morosely counted out the money. “You eaten yet, Bonny?”

“I haven’t had a chance yet.”

“I’ll get Jana off those phone orders. Go on in and eat.”

Bonny was back on the job at two-thirty. During a lull at three o’clock she checked her totals, found an additional fifty dollars run up as paid out. That checked roughly with the dwindled size of the cash stacks. She thought no more about it until a customer paid with a rare two-dollar bill. As she did not want to leave it in the regular cash section of the drawer, where it might be paid out in error as a five or a ten, she put it in the compartment with the receipted bills. Something about that compartment left her with a distant creeping of suspicion. As soon as she had a chance she looked again. There was no longer a receipted bill for $32.12. There was a receipted bill for $82.12. The penciled three had been turned deftly into an eight, and a five written in front of an item of less than ten dollars. The alteration would stand a casual glance, but when she looked at it closely she could see the alteration had been made with a softer pencil than the one used to make out the original bill. She stared at it closely and then turned, with the altered receipted bill in her hand, and looked across the store. Walter was standing beyond one of the racks, looking directly at her, standing without movement and looking into her eyes. There was a stub of red pencil in his teeth. She put the bill back in the compartment and made herself turn away slowly, casually. The register would balance. The fifty paid out would match the amount the bill had been increased.

It gave her an instantaneous reevaluation of Walter Varaki. She had thought of him as a wife-soured man, working dutifully at a job he did not care for, in order to help his father. A meek, submissive, hag-ridden man whose life was colorless.

Yet it must have been he who had stolen. It could not have been anyone else. Certainly not Jana. And not Gus, stealing from himself. Rick Stussen never touched the cash register. It could, of course, have been the new boy, but that was improbable. He would not have been in the store alone. He would not, as yet, know the routines well enough. Vern was still out on delivery.

It had to be Walter, and this could not be the first time.

She saw the ramifications of the act. Discovery of shortages would point invariably at her, at Vern, and at Jimmy Dover. Of the three of them, she was the logical choice. It frightened her. There was one person to turn to, and quickly. Paul Darmond would know what she should do, and yet... She began to think of the old man. One son dead. One son a thief. His daughter a drug addict. His wife faithless. Could a man stand that? And she realized anew that she was thinking now of someone else, thinking of the effect of circumstance upon another, rather than upon herself. And it gave her a strange warm pride to think she was now capable of this — a pride in herself and a feeling of gratitude to Paul Darmond.

The day ended and the store closed and the meal was eaten by all the people with their closed faces and their inward-looking eyes. An old house, and a high-ceilinged kitchen, and in the air a stale smell of regret and fear and lust.

She caught Jana on the stairs. “Could you come on up to my room for a minute?”

Jana looked at her curiously. “What do you want? I got to change my shoes. These are hurting me.”

“There’s something I want to ask you, in private.”

“Sure. I’ll come on up in a minute.”

Bonny went up to her room, took off her slacks and hung them up, and changed to a wool skirt. She decided against putting a record on. She sat on the edge of the bed and turned the pages of a magazine. Jana tapped on the door and came in and closed it behind her. She went over to the bedside chair and sat, her feet in wide broken slippers.

“What did you want to ask me about?”

Bonny had thought of the dozens of ways she could say it. But none of them seemed any good.

“The cigarettes are beside you there.”

“Thanks, not right now.”

“Jana, are you...”

“Am I what? What’s the matter with you, anyway?”

“Are you sleeping with Vern Lockter?”

The question made a great stillness in the air of the small room. Jana’s eyes went wide and she put one hand to her throat. Then she turned and reached for the cigarettes, jiggled one out of the package, and lit it tremblingly.

“What gave you that kind of a crazy idea?”

“The way you looked at each other at breakfast. The way you kept blushing. The way he touched you when he thought nobody could see him. The way you spilled the coffee. The way you look. The way you’re acting right now. You can’t kid me, Jana. I know too damn much about it and you know too damn little. If you knew anything, Lockter is the last one you’d pick.”

Jana’s eyes turned bright and angry. “What is it to you?”

“I live here. I’m Gus’s daughter-in-law.”

“It isn’t anything to you. It isn’t anything at all to you. What do you think it’s like, an old man like that, beside you and never touching you, worn out, no good? What do you think it’s like? My God!”

Bonny leaned forward. “You’re being a damn fool.”

“I don’t care. I don’t care. He’s young and I love the way he walks and looks... so strong and slim.”

“He’s a poisonous type, Jana. And it’s dangerous. Right here, under your husband’s roof, with a man he took in when that man was in trouble.”

“It’s my business what I do.”

“It’s mine too.”

“I can’t see that. You’re sticking your nose in where it isn’t wanted. What do you know about it?”

“Right from wrong. And so do you.”

“A hell of a lot you know about right and wrong. We all know about you. Who are you to tell me what I ought to do? I like your damn nerve. Maybe you want him for yourself.”

“I wouldn’t touch that particular young man with eleven-foot poles, Jana.”

“Maybe you think you’re too good for him.”

“Maybe I do.”

“A tramp like you! Who’s kidding who?”

Bonny looked down at her own fisted hand, resting on the wool of the skirt. She did not speak. She heard Jana make a choked sound and she looked over and saw that Jana had bent forward from the waist, forehead against her close-pressed knees, rolling her head helplessly from side to side. Bonny went over and knelt beside the chair and put her arm across Jana’s shoulders.

Jana said, “I didn’t mean to say that.”

“It’s all right. That isn’t the important thing right now. The important thing is this business with Vern. Has it been going on long?”

“No.”

“How long?”

“Just... since yesterday. After supper. Out in the storeroom. Just that once.”

“His idea?”

“I can’t look at you and tell you. He just... took hold of me. I didn’t know he was going to. And I... couldn’t fight or anything. I wanted him to, as soon as he grabbed me. I know it’s terrible, but I can’t do anything. Any time he wants to do it again, it will be the same way. I can’t stop thinking about him. It’s like by doing it that way, he sort of owns me. Do you know what I mean?”

“Yes, my dear. I know what you mean.”

Jana lifted her stained face. “I can’t stop him. So I got to make out like it’s all right, haven’t I? It happened once. What difference does it make if it keeps on happening?”

“Did he say that?”

“Yes. He said that to me, afterward.”

“You mustn’t let it happen again.”

“I know I shouldn’t. But I want it to happen again. He... isn’t kind. It’s like he hates me. But even that’s better than nothing.”

“Do you want help?”

“I guess I do, Bonny.”

“We’ve got to get him away from here, Jana. I think I know how it can be done. I think I know who can handle it.”

“I... don’t want him to go away.”

“But you know that’s best, don’t you?”

“I guess so.”

“If your husband found out, Jana, something very terrible might happen.”

“He’d kill both of us.”

“And Vern can certainly understand that. He knows Gus well enough to understand that. I can’t understand why Vern is willing to take such a crazy chance. He isn’t a hot-blooded type. This is part of some plan, Jana. See if you can be strong enough not to let him have you again if he tries before I can... make arrangements.”

“I’ll try, but—”

“I know. I know how sometimes you’re... vulnerable. Does Paul Darmond live far from here?”

“Are you going to tell him?”

“Don’t be worried.”

“I didn’t want anybody to know. It makes me feel so ashamed.”

“When it’s right, Jana, you never feel ashamed. You want the world to know. The things you want to hide are always bad.”

“I guess I can’t stop you.”

“No. You can’t.”

“You act so different, Bonny. So... different.”

“I feel different. That’s a long story. I’ll tell you someday.”

Jana told her how to find Paul’s apartment. It was only six blocks away. She walked Jana slowly to the door of the room and, on impulse, kissed her cheek quickly.

“Feel better, Jana?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Try not to go near him. That will make it easier.”

Jana didn’t answer. She hurried toward the stairs, her shoulders a bit hunched, her head down, moving heavily, as though a lot of the warm life had gone out of the sturdy peasant body.