A Girl Called Honey

Four

It was well after midnight, and the bus, mumbling to itself, rolled steadily northward, toward Cleveland, leaving Cincinnati far to the south behind it. Ohio is built something like a grandfather clock. At the top is Cleveland, the clock-face, and at the bottom is Cincinnati, the pendulum-weight, and in between there isn’t very much of anything. In the middle of the night, there’s even less.

Most of the people on the bus were asleep. Honour Mercy was asleep, her head, in a mute declaration of alliance, resting comfortably against Richie Parsons’ shoulder. Only three people in the whole bus were awake. One of them, fortunately, was the driver, up front there. The second was a soft guitar-player, sitting way in back and singing quietly to himself: “You will eat, you will eat, by and by; In that glorious land in the sky, way up high; Work and pray, live on hay; You’ll get pie in the sky when you die. That’s a lie.”

It was a soothingly quiet guitar, and a soothingly quiet voice, and it helped, with the vibration of the bus, in putting everybody asleep. But it didn’t soothe Richie Parsons. He was wide awake, and the song sounded ominous to him. At that point, any song would have sounded ominous to him.

He was thinking of the fiasco he had made of buying the ticket. The thing was, he didn’t plan. He just stumbled ahead, willy-nilly, hoping for the best, and every once in a while a chasm opened up in front of him.

A chasm had opened at the ticket window in Newport. The thing was, Richie just wasn’t a world traveler. His entire traveling history had been similar to the traveling of a yo-yo. He traveled from home to someplace else, or from someplace else to home.

Besides which, he hadn’t thought about a destination. He had thought only about leaving Newport, not at all about going somewhere else.

So when he stood in front of the ticket window at the bus depot, he said it automatically, without stopping to think about it at all. “Two tickets to Albany,” he said, and the chasm opened up as big as life and twice as deep.

He couldn’t go to Albany! That was where he lived, for the love of Pete, he couldn’t go there!

But he’d already said it, and he was now too petrified to say anything else, to change the already announced destination. To be a draft-age young man on the way to Albany was suspicious enough. To be a draft-age young man who changed his mind and decided not to go to Albany after all wasn’t suspicious, it was an absolute admission of identity.

While teetering on the brink of the chasm, he heard the calm (not suspicious!) voice of the ticket agent say, “One way or round trip?”

With the impulsive cunning of a treed raccoon, he said, “Round trip.” There, that would allay the ticket agent’s suspicions.

Two round-trip tickets to Albany cost him a hundred dollars and change. It was a pretty expensive way to allay suspicions, all things considered, depleting their finances by one-quarter.

He was too embarrassed and ashamed to tell Honour Mercy what he’d done. Happily, she didn’t ask him where they were going, and the public address system, in announcing their bus, mentioned so many other cities (Cleveland, Pittsburg, Harrisburg, Philadelphia) that his blunder was lost in the crowd.

So here he was on the bus, well after midnight, surrounded by gently snoring (innocent, untroubled) passengers, being serenaded with songs about death, and hurtling toward doom and destruction and Albany.

What to do? He considered leaving the bus at one of the cities before Albany, and rejected it. The driver, who kept a head-count, would notice that two passengers were missing, and would delay the bus for them, for a few minutes, thereby calling attention to their absence. The Authorities would somehow get into the act, and Richie could visualize the scene in which the driver described the runaways to these Authorities, who wouldn’t take long to realize that the absent male was none other than the deserter from Scott Air Force Base, Richie Parsons.

He couldn’t stay on the bus all the way to Albany, and he couldn’t leave it beforehand. The problem was too much for him. He stared gloomily at the night-shrouded empty flatness outside the window, and the guitarist in the back seat switched to a new song: “Hang down your head, Tom Dooley; Hang down your head and cry; Hang down your head, Tom Dooley; Poor boy, you’re bound to die.”

It was a long night.

They had breakfast in Cleveland, where Richie was too nervous to operate the silverware, and Honour Mercy finally asked him what was wrong. It was obvious he hadn’t slept all night.

So he admitted his mistake, shame-facedly, and out-lined the horns of the dilemma. And Honour Mercy, the practical one, immediately gave him the solution. “We change buses in New York,” she said. “We just won’t change, that’s all. People do it all the time. Get later buses and things.”

Richie smiled with sudden relief. “Sure,” he said. “Sure!” And when they got back on the bus, he fell immediately to sleep.

He woke up to discover that the bus was inside a building, with a lot of other buses, and the confining walls and roof made the sound of all those engines a tremendous racket.

He didn’t know where he was, or where in the world he possibly could be, and the panic that always rode just beneath his surface popped out again, and he stared around in absolute terror.

Fortunately for Richie Parsons, Honour Mercy Bane was a girl loaded to the gunwales with maternal instinct. She now put a soothing hand on his arm, and told him, quietly, that they were in New York City and this was the bus depot. “I didn’t know whether I should wake you up to see everything when we came into the city or not,” she added. “But you looked so peaceful, sleeping there, I thought I should let you alone.”

“You can just disappear in New York,” Richie told her. “It’s so big.” He’d read that someplace, and firmly believed it.

People were getting off the bus. Richie blocked the aisle for a minute, getting the two suitcases down from the overhead rack, and then he and Honour Mercy followed the other passengers into the brightly-lit main waiting room of the Port Authority bus terminal. Honour Mercy, this last part of the trip, had been thinking again about finances. Four hundred dollars — now three hundred dollars — seemed like an awful lot when your chief expenses were magazines and paperback books and other items from the drugstore, and meals. But three hundred dollars seemed like an awfully small drop an awfully big bucket when it was all you had to live on in New York City. Somebody had told her that living New York was more expensive than anyplace else in the world, and she believed that as firmly as Richie believed that it was possible to just disappear in New York.

They had an awful lot of money tied up in two tickets from Albany to Newport, two cities neither of them expected to be going to for some time. It seemed wasteful, and Honour Mercy, if she retained nothing else from Abraham and Prudence Bane, her begetters, retained a rock-like sense of thrift.

In the middle of the waiting room, she made her decision. “Give me the return tickets, Richie,” she said. “I’ll go see if I can turn them in.”

Richie considered for a second. The Air Police weren’t looking for a girl. “Okay,” he said. He handed her the tickets, and she went off to find the right window.

That wasn’t too easy. She’d never known so many bus companies were in existence, and every window was for another group of them. But she finally found the right one, and turned the tickets in, explaining that she wasn’t going back to Newport after all. The man at the window had her fill out a slip of paper, to which she affixed a false name, and ungrumblingly gave her almost forty dollars.

She returned to Richie to find him quaking in his boots. Two young men in uniform, one an Air Policeman and the other an Army Military Policeman, were strolling slowly around the waiting room, like casual friends on a promenade.

Honour Mercy took Richie’s trembling arm. “Act natural,” she whispered, which only made him look more terrified than ever, and she led him past the Authorities and out the door to New York’s Eighth Avenue.

It was five p.m. and the rush hour. They stood on the sidewalk on Eighth Avenue, between 40^th and 41^st Streets, and watched the mobs of people rushing by in both directions, bumping into one another and rushing on with neither apology nor annoyance. It was obvious a Martian in a flying saucer could disappear in a crowd like that. Certainly Richie Parsons, who was practically invisible to begin with, could disappear in that multidirectional stream with no trouble at all.

They turned left, because the choice was between left and right and one was just as good as another, and joined the herd. They crossed 42^nd Street, and kept on going northward, purposeless at the moment, following the momentum of the crowd and waiting for something to happen.

The crowd thinned out above 42^nd Street, and they could walk more easily, without a lot of shoulder-bumping and dodging around. Honour Mercy was keeping an eye out for a hotel, which was their first concern, and saw a huge block-square hotel between 44^th and 45^th Streets, with a uniformed doorman and a curb lined with late-model cars. That wasn’t exactly the kind of hotel she had in mind. They kept on walking.

At 47^th Street, they saw a hotel sign down to their left, toward Ninth Avenue. This was the kind of hotel she had in mind. It was made up of three tenement buildings, five stories high, combined into one building, with the same ancient coat of gray paint on the faces of all three. The entrances of the flanking buildings had been removed, replaced by windows indicating that additional rooms had been set up where the entranceways had been, leaving the front door of the middle building as the only remaining entrance to the hotel. A square sign, white on black, stuck out over the street, saying simply, “HOTEL,” not even gracing the place with a name.

“Down this way,” she told Richie, and gently steered him around the corner. He saw the hotel sign then, and homed on it gratefully, anxious to have once more the sanctuary of four peeling walls around him.

The hotel didn’t have a lobby, all it had was a first-floor hall, with stairs leading upward, a few dim light bulbs ineffectually battling the interior darkness, and frayed maroon carpeting on the floor and staircase. Just to the right of the entrance was a door to what had probably been the front apartment, when this building had been a separate entity and not yet a hotel. There was only the bottom half of a door there now, with a board about ten inches wide across the top of this half-door, and a grizzled, grimy old man leaning on the board, his elbows between the registry book and the telephone.

Honour Mercy, knowing Richie would be unable to effectively go through the process of renting a room, did the talking. The old man didn’t bother to ask if they were married, and didn’t bother to look at the false names Honour Mercy wrote in his registry book. He asked for fourteen dollars for a week’s rent, gave Honour Mercy a receipt and two keys, told her room 26 was on the third floor, off to the right, and that was that.

They climbed the creaking stairs to the third floor, and turned right. The hall, narrow and dim-lit, passed through an amateurishly breached wall into the next building over, and at the end of it, left side, was room 26. Honour Mercy unlocked the door, and they walked into their new home.

It was a step down from the Casterbridge Hotel, back in Newport. The walls were almost precisely the same color, which didn’t help, and the one window looked out on the back of a building on the next block. The dresser was ancient and scarred and sagging, the closet had no door on it, and the ceiling was peeling, as though it had a gray-white sunburn. There was a double-bed in the room, which would perhaps be a bit more comfortable than the single bed they’d shared at the Casterbridge, but that was the only good thing in sight.

They unpacked, trying to get some of their own individuality into the room just as rapidly as possible, and a couple of brown bugs dashed away down the wall when Honour Mercy opened the dresser drawers. Before she could get at them with a shoe heel, they’d disappeared under the molding. The Casterbridge Hotel hadn’t had bugs, and no one had prepared her for the fact that New York City was infested from top to bottom with cockroaches, nasty little brown bugs with lots of legs and hard shell-like backs, who took one generation to build up immunity to virtually any poison used against them, which made their extermination more wishful thinking than practical reality.

The sight of the bugs made Honour Mercy want to get out of there for a while. They could come back when it was dark. She had a childish faith in the power of electric light to keep bugs from venturing out of their crannies in the walls.

Richie was torn between the desire to just sit down in the middle of the room and breathe easily for a day or two and a hunger that had been building since Cleveland. The hunger, aided by Honour Mercy’s prodding, won out, and they left the hotel to find a place to eat.

They had dinner at a luncheonette on the corner of 46^th and Eighth, and then went back to the hotel. It was dark now, and Honour Mercy hopefully turned on the bare bulb in a ceiling fixture which was their only light source. The bulb, in an economy move on the part of the management, was forty watts, and gave a smoky light not quite good enough to read by.

They sat around on the bed, digesting and talking lazily together about their successful flight from Newport. After a while, Honour Mercy spread their money out on the blanket and counted it, finding they still had a little over three hundred dollars. At fourteen dollars a week for the hotel room, and the cost of food, and movies or whatever to fill their time, it wouldn’t take long for that three hundred dollars to be all gone.

There was only one sensible thing to do. She should go back to work right now, while they still had some money ahead, rather than wait until they were broke. The idea of having money ahead, in case of emergencies of one sort or another, appealed to Honour Mercy both as a child of thrifty parents and a girl in a risky line of work.

A little after ten, she gave Richie two dollars and told him to go to a movie for a while. They’d seen a whole line of movie marquees on 42^nd Street, on their way to the hotel, and Honour Mercy was sure she’d heard or read somewhere that 42^nd Street movies in New York City were open all night long. And if she were going to go back to work, she would need a room with a bed in it. She was pretty sure this was the kind of hotel where she could carry on her trade unquestioned.

Richie was reluctant to leave the room. In the first place, the outside world was heavily patrolled by police-men of all kinds; city police, state troopers, Air Police, FBI agents, Shore Patrol, Military Police, and the Lord knew what else. In the second place, the idea of Honour Mercy bringing work home served only to force the nature of her work — which was supporting him — right out into the open, where he had to look at it. Back in Newport, Honour Mercy was “away at work” eight or nine hours a day, and he could more or less ignore the facts of the work. Here, he was going to have to be away, while Honour Mercy worked here, right on this bed. It made a difference.

“Don’t be silly,” she told him. “You certainly can’t get a job, at least not yet, not until you’ve been gone long enough for everybody to have forgotten all about you. And there’s only one way I can earn enough money for both of us to live on. And besides that, I really don’t mind it. It isn’t the same as with us, you know that, it’s just what I do, that’s all.”

It took her half an hour to soothe his newly-risen male pride and hurt self-respect, but finally he admitted that she was the practical one and he would follow her lead, and he went off to the movies, skulking along next to walls.

Honour Mercy’s next problem was one of location. Back in Newport, there’d been no problem about where to go to find work. One just went downtown, that was all. But New York was a different matter. To the new arrival, New York seemed to be one giant downtown, extending for miles in all directions. Now where, in all of that, was the section where Honour Mercy’s trade was plied?

Honour Mercy didn’t know it yet, but she was lucky as to location. Eighth Avenue, in the Forties, is one of New York’s centers of ambulatory whoredom. Just a block away, on 46^th Street, there were a couple of bars, interspersed with legitimate taverns and restaurants, which specialized in receiving telephone calls for predominantly feminine clientele. The building in back which she could look at from her window was jam-packed with whores, most of whom were at the moment making exactly the same preparations Honour Mercy was making in the communal bathroom down the hall from room 26.

So Honour Mercy wasn’t going to have to walk very far.

She left the hotel a little after eleven, and started retracing her steps toward 42^nd Street, which had looked more downtowny than anything else she’d seen so far in New York, and which therefore seemed like the best place from which to start her search for Whore Row.

She found it sooner than that. The corner of 46^th and Eighth was a poor man’s Hollywood and Vine. Girls were going by in all directions, singly and in pairs, and their faces and clothing told Honour Mercy immediately that she had found the right place.

That was nice, she thought. It was handy to the hotel.

She walked around a bit, looking at things. It was still pretty early, and the middle of the week besides, and there wasn’t much doing just yet. So she just looked at everything, wanting to familiarize herself with the local and local methods just as soon as possible.

Then a woman holding up a wall on 46^th Street called to her, and motioned her to come over for a talk. Honour Mercy, wondering what this was all about, complied.

The woman, without preamble, said, “You just get into town?” She looked to be in her late twenties, with frizzy black hair that stuck out in wire-like waves from her head, and much too much makeup on her eyes.

Honour Mercy nodded.

“Who you working with?” asked the woman.

“Nobody,” admitted Honour Mercy. “I just got here.” Remembering that Newport hadn’t liked the girl who hustled on her own, without the blessing of one of the established houses, and assuming that New York would probably be much the same, she added, “I’ve been looking around for somebody to show me what to do. I just go here today, and I don’t know New York at all.”

“You found me,” said the woman. She left the wall, which didn’t topple over, and took Honour Mercy’s arm. “And it’s a good thing you did,” she said, leading Honour Mercy down 46^th Street, away from Eighth Avenue. “The cops would’ve picked you up in no time. They got to make some arrests, you know, so they’re always on the lookout for strays.”

“I didn’t know,” said Honour Mercy humbly, showing her willingness to learn and to adapt.

The woman took her into the building Honour Mercy could see from her hotel window, and up the stairs to room on the second floor. The room was severely functional. It contained a bed and a kitchen chair, and that was all.

“My name’s Marie,” said the woman, sitting down on the bed.

“Honey,” said Honour Mercy.

“Glad to know you. I’ll introduce you to a couple people after a while. They’ll explain the set-up to you. Good-looking girl like you, they’ll probably put you on the phone.”

“Thanks,” said Honour Mercy.

“Of course,” said Marie, grinning a little, “I can’t just recommend you out of hand. You know what I mean: I got to be sure you’re okay. I tell you what, you take off your clothes. Let’s see what you got to offer.”

Honour Mercy’s reaction to that was complex, and it would be impossible to give the succession of her thoughts as rapidly as she thought them. Within a second, her thoughts passed from recognition through memory to decision, and with hardly a pause at all, she acted on the decision.

Here were the thoughts: Recognition. Marie was a Lesbian. Honour Mercy knew it as surely as she knew anything in the world. The unnecessarily tight grip on her arm as they came up the stairs together. The unnecessary demand that she take off her clothes. Marie was a Lesbian, and the price of her introducing Honour Mercy to the people who could give the unofficial blessing to her working in her occupation here in New York was that Honour Mercy be Lesbian with her for a few minutes.

Memory. The girls in Newport had talked about Lesbians more than once. It was a problem girls in their trade had to think about. In the first place, a surprisingly large percentage of prostitutes became Lesbian, at one point or another. Since they got from men only sex without love, they tried to get sex with love from other women. In the second place, Madge had been one hundred percent opposed to hiring Lesbians, on the grounds that dykes couldn’t give a man as good a time as a normal woman could.

Decision. Sex was Honour Mercy’s stock in trade. It was the way she made her living. With the help of Richie Parsons, she had successfully severed sex from love, without severing love from sex. She gave her body to men so she could have money to support herself and Richie. It wasn’t really such a large step farther to give her body to a woman so she could have the right to work.

She took off her clothes. The woman kept grinning at her, and said, “You know what I have in mind, Honey?”

“Sure,” said Honour Mercy. She said it as casually as possible, not wanting this Marie to get the idea that Honour Mercy thought the whole thing repugnant. That might spoil everything.

Marie’s grin now turned into an honest smile, and she joined Honour Mercy in the disrobing. They lay down together on the bed, and out of the corner of her eye Honour Mercy saw one of the brown bugs run out of a crack in the wall and diagonally down to the molding, where he disappeared again. She closed her eyes, struggling to keep her face expressionless, and Marie leaned over to kiss her on the mouth.

Having sex with a woman, Honour Mercy decided later, wasn’t having sex at all. It was just having a lot of preliminaries, all jumbled up together, and then stopping just when things were getting interesting.

Marie got a lot more excited than Honour Mercy did. She squirmed and writhed around, and somehow she managed to build herself up to a climax. Honour Mercy, thinking it was expected of her, made believe she had one, too; and then Marie, as satisfied as any of Honour Mercy’s satisfied customers, crawled off and started to dress.

Honour Mercy wanted to wash, very badly, but she thought it would give the wrong impression to mention it, so she didn’t say anything. She just dressed again, and waited for Marie to tell her what was next.

“That was fun, huh, Honey?” said Marie, and she patted Honour Mercy on the behind. Her hand lingered, and Honour Mercy unobtrusively moved out of reach.

“We’ll have to see each other some more,” said Marie. She came closer and took Honour Mercy’s arm, again with the unnecessary tightness, and said, “Now let’s go see a man about a whore.”