Carny kill

9

A fog-mist rolled in from the sea that night. It was damp but not cold. It felt good on your skin, tingly and clean. It looked nice on the young girls' hair and on their outthrust sweaters. It put a spectacular halo around the high arc lights and made them a bluewhite. It was ghostly. It seemed to make the voices of the children more shrill. People moved through it like stalking specters desperately trying to seek entertainment, excitement, escape.

It was a good night for it. A good night, in fact, for a couple of ideas I had in mind.

The Viking horn went hooo like a dismal foghorn and I gave away my last three orchids to three sad spinster looking females who had librarian or schoolteacher stamped on their tragically plain faces. They were very embarrassed and delighted and childlike about it. Then I felt sad.

I wondered why everybody couldn't be beautiful. If everybody was beautiful, then we would all be so busy making love to one another we wouldn't have time to be frustrated. Then we wouldn't jack-roll or riot or declare war. Maybe we wouldn't even drink ourselves to death.

Nut, I told myself. I closed up my stand and went over to have a smoke with Gabby. He said, "Hop in and have a drink."

I climbed over the counter and helped him close up. A single, naked 200-watt bulb made the place look like an interrogation room. The little white rabbits at the far end appeared to be frozen in their tracks with terror.

At least there were no effigies of Mao or Castro to shoot at. It used to bore me to hell to have to shoot at Hitler and Mussolini and Hirohito all the time when I was a kid and would go to a shooting gallery during the war.

Gabby drew a pint from under the counter and passed it to me. It was Scotch and it was good. I passed it back and said, "Coincidence. I was just wondering if beautiful people ever drink themselves to death, and now you tempt me."

"Don't sweat it. You ain't beautiful."

"My mother thought so."

"Mothers are nuts. There ain't any beautiful people."

I think he had something there, as far as the outer flesh goes. Usually the people the world considers as beautiful are sin ugly inside. Like May. But I don't know; I've seen some nuns who looked beautiful and I have an idea they were the same inside. Maybe not. Maybe they were frustrated like any spinster.

"Jesus," I said.

"What?"

"People," I said. "Life. Crazy. All crazy."

"Bet your ass."

"Well," I said, "it doesn't really matter."

Gabby took a good one and wiped his mouth and looked at me.

"Got any ideas?" he asked.

"Um-hm. I'm gonna go look her up in a minute."

"I mean about Rob Cochrane."

"Why should I have ideas about that?"

"Because I understand The Man has started to switch his sights from Mrs. Big to you."

I looked at him. He passed the bottle but I didn't take one.

"Where'd you hear that?"

Gabby shrugged. "Word gets-"

"Yeah, yeah. It gets around. I know. But who gave it to you?"

"Duff. Said it was from the horse's mouth."

I didn't much like the idea that other people besides Ferris were starting to look at me askance, or that Bill Duff was going around saying so.

"I just might decide to send Bill to the dentist again," I said.

"Somebody did that a couple of months ago."

"Yeah? Who?"

"Mike Ransome. They were over at the gambling room and Duff was on the sauce and he started to tell the boys an off-color story about him and May Cochrane. Nobody wanted to hear it because they all liked Rob, but Duff wouldn't knock it off. So Ransome put a fist in his big mouth."

"Huh. Ransome doesn't look like he could whip a Girl Scout."

"You ain't seen him in action. He's fast. Duff has the muscle and meanness but he had no more chance of landing one on Mike than I have of crawling in bed with Sophia Loren."

I said huh again. Then I switched the subject.

"Where is the gambling den? I'd like to look in some night."

"In the basement of Dracula's Castle. But they won't let you within ten foot of a cardtable. Not with your educated mitts."

"I know it. I just like to watch."

A legerdemain artist can never play cards with his friends. Not if he wants to go on having friends. Even if he plays square, the doubt is always there. Did he stack the deck? Did he deal from the bottom? Is he using sleight of hand? It makes everyone too damn uncomfortable.

"Well," I said, "thanks for the Scotch. I gotta get."

"Thax." Gabby stopped me before I could get out the side door. "You ain't kidding me, you know."

I looked back at him.

"What do you mean, I ain't kidding you?"

"You've got something going in brainsvile, and I don't mean just laying Billie. I used to work for Madame Esmerelda. She made with the madball. I read you like newspaper headline."

"Don't give me that crystal gazing crap," I told him. "We both know it's as phony as a queer bill."

"Uh-huh, but there's tricks to it. You either learn how to read people or you fold up your stand. All I'm saying is, if you get in too deep, gimme the highsign. Maybe I can help you out." He paused and when he spoke again I barely caught it.

"Maybe you'll even need a gun."

I started to say my God why would I need a gun, but I didn't. I nodded and said, "Thanks, Gabby. See you."

Maybe he was right. Maybe I would.

I went around to the rear of the nautch show. My friend Jerry was there. He was walking a quarter up and down the knuckles of his right hand and he was talking to one of the nautch girls-a peroxided, overbuilt piece with a mean eye.

It wasn't any of my business. The luckboy was old enough to look out for himself. He had probably played with fire before and wore the scars to prove it. He winked at me.

"Show Bev how a real pro works, Thax. Let's see you take her bra."

"Is she wearing one?"

"I vouch for it," he said with a lazy smile. "I just felt."

"You dirty bastard," the sexpot said. She smiled at both of us-a real earthy we-know-what-god-put-it-there-for-don't-we-boys smile. She was about as tasty as they come.

Moving up next to them, I leaned myself against the board-siding on my left arm. At the same time I took her left earring with my right hand. She gave a little shriek of delight when I showed it to her, and when I handed it back I straightened up and took Jerry's belt.

They both laughed when I said, "Don't be too surprised when you let down your pants tonight, Jerry. I just lifted your shorts."

But he fell for it-his own game. I saw him feel his thigh, automatically, to be certain they were still on him.

"Ain't he the nuts?" he said to the peroxide bitch.

"Yeah," she said in a breathy voice and her mascara-blued eyes burned deep voracious holes in me.

Then I realized Billie was standing in the doorway just behind me. She was catty mad.

"Should Jerry and I go share a bag of popcorn somewhere, sugar?" she asked Bev.

Jerry made a quick smooth pass which spun Bev around and linked their arms.

"Time to stroll, doll," he said to her. He shot a last look at me over his shoulder, raising his eyebrows.

I smiled at Billie. She said, "Stupid whore," and I said, "Take it easy. My mind is still virginal." Then she started to smile and she said, "You damn fool."

"Where'll we go?" I asked her.

"I don't care. What do you want to do?"

"W-e-ll-"

"Oh honestly, Thax. Now seriously. I want to talk to you first."

I saw great hope and promise in that magical word First. I could afford to be generous with my time. I said:

"All right, whatever you say. Just as long as we don't end up in some kind of montage, like those actors used to do in the movies of the 'Thirties and 'Forties."

"Montage? What's that mean?"

"Well-you remember how an everyday slicker like Tyrone Power, say, would meet a poor little rich girl like Loretta Young, and how in one night he would show her the real and the entire soul and spirit of America, which was always exemplified by Coney Island?

"First we would see a brief shot of Ty and Loretta on the ferris wheel, which would blend into a brief shot of Ty and Loretta on the merry-go-round, which blended into a shot of Ty and Loretta eating floss candy, and so on. That's a montage. The art of arranging in one composition pictorial scenes borrowed from different sources which blend into a whole to create a single image."

Billie was watching me with a fixed look.

"Thax-how did you ever end up in a sideshow?"

"Kismet."

"No, seriously. You have brains. More than that, you have a sort of intangible understanding about people and- well-things. You shouldn't be pushing little walnut shells around."

It was a sort of lefthanded compliment. It didn't really make me feel any too good. You come right down to it, it made me feel kind of ashamed. Anyhow, I didn't want to talk about me.

"Well, it doesn't really matter, does it? Come on, now. Let's find a pint somewhere and go have our-uh, talk."

"We don't need a pint," she said. "You smell like a moonshine still as it is:, She gave me a mocking coy look.

"You don't have to ply me with liquor, you know. I'm an agreeable girl."

That sounded promising too. I grinned and took her arm.

"Where'll we go?"

"Come on," she said. "I'll show you."

The last of the marks were filing out of the lot. Their happy, or semi-happy, voices sounded thin and lonely as they trudged off into the drifting mist. Everything was closing up. Lights were going out.

One of Jerry's luckboys came by us with a mute glance, as if we were strangers. What Billie and I did was our business. He had his own problems.

Billie led me across the smoky drawbridge to Dracula's Castle, and to a side door which was like so many other doors in Neverland. It said Private. She took my hand and we went up an inky corkscrew staircase. Around and around in blackness.

I didn't make any mention of the fact that I frequently suffered from a touch of claustrophobia. Because more frequently I suffered from a compulsion of lust.

I like bed. I like the female form. I damn well like the lust of female flesh-in bed, out of bed, anywhere. I was ready to run up those stupid breakneck steps blind.

Billie opened a door. It was so goddam dark I couldn't see if it said Private or not. We stepped into a little room and it was like stepping into a page of Ivanhoe.

The floor was flagstone. There was a large Gothiclike archer-cross window in the outer wall and there was a canopy bed with high bedboards in one corner. I looked at the bed in the misty night light.

"Mr. Cochrane planned to make some kind of vampire roost out of this room," Billie said in a subdued voice. "The public isn't allowed up here yet. There aren't any lights."

Lights I didn't need. But I wondered how many of Neverland's employees had used this room for assignations. I also wondered if Billie had ever used it before. Funny how perverse the human mind can be.

"A fool there was and he made his prayer-even as you and I," I muttered.

Billie's face was a pale blur in the misty dark and her body was very close to mine.

"What's that all about?" she asked.

"An association of ideas. It's a line from Kipling's poem The Vampire." I didn't tell her what the rest of the poem was about. A rag, a bone, a hank of hair.

Even as you and I, buster. We're all saps when it comes to a woman. I reached for her.

"Not yet, Thax. Talk first." She led me over to the canopy bed and we sat down in the dark. It squeaked.

"Talk about what, for godsake?"

Billie lay back on the bed and I looked at her in that weird smoky quarter light and the last thing I wanted to do right then was talk.

"Thax, how would you like to get away from all this?"

That sounded like a line too, from one of those unrealistic boy-meets-girl plays that flourished in the late 'Twenties. But I knew what she meant. The tinsel and phony glamour and the buck-grubbing and the unadmitted fear of the atomic age.

I leaned over her. "How?"

"Let's run," she said softly. "Let's run away and not stop till we find a place so remote, so divorced from worldly problems that we'll think we're in Wonderland."

"The Wonderland Ride has a steep price tag."

"I've got the price of admission, Thax. Enough for both of us."

"You? How?"

"Savings. I'm a thrifty girl, and I know how to invest. I'm not as young as I may look. I've been coining the dollars for years."

"Still-it can't be so much that it would last us for more than a couple of years?"

"You'd be surprised," she said."Besides, two smart people like you and I can always make out. " She started to sit up.

"Thax-we could go to the Mediterranean. I've always wanted to see the Mediterranean Sea."

I pushed her down.

"Billie? Let's talk about it later? Billie-"

"Thax?" Her voice was a whisper, breathy, warm, wanton. "I've already told them-oh, honey, wait-told them I was leaving in two weeks. Are you-_oooh God_, baby, don't-are you coming with me?"

"Yeah. Yeah. Anywhere," I muttered. "Anywhere."