Hundred Dollar Baby

29

The first thing April did was cry. We were sitting in her front parlor when I told her what Lionel Farnsworth had told me. I was halfway through when she began to cry. It was controlled at first, as if it were a ploy. But then it got away from her, and by the time I was through with Lionel's story, she was into a sobbing, shaking, nose-running, chest-heaving, gasping-for-breath, flat-out-crying fit.

"I gather I've touched a nerve," I said.

She sobbed. Her eyes were swollen. Her makeup was eroding. Except for the paroxysms of her crying, she was inert in her chair.

"Is Lionel telling me the truth?" I said.

She kept crying. She was hugging herself. Each sob made her body shudder as if it hurt. I waited. She cried. I was pretty sure I could wait longer than she could cry.

I was right.

After a time the crying slowed to heavy breathing. She sat silently for a time, then stood suddenly and walked out of the room. I waited some more. Dust motes danced in the oblique morning light. After maybe fifteen minutes, April came back into the room. She had probably washed her face in cold water and put on new makeup. Her eyes looked better.

She sat back down in the same chair and folded her hands in her lap and looked at me.

"In my whole life," she said softly, "I have never met a man that didn't betray me."

I wanted to claim an exclusion. But she seemed to be musing. And I thought it wise to let her muse.

"My father," she said. "Mr. Poitras. Rambeaux. Now it's Farnsworth."

I nodded.

"I guess I am not good at picking men."

"Maybe it's not a skill," I said.

"What do you mean."

"Maybe you do what you need to do."

"Oh, God," she said. "Just what I need right now, an amateur shrink."

"I know a professional one," I said.

"Fuck you," April said.

"Oh," I said. "Good point."

"I don't need some whacked-out therapist to tell me my life has sucked."

This wasn't an argument I was going to win today. I let it slide.

"So how much of Lionel's story should I believe?" I said.

She shrugged and didn't answer.

"Can I take that to mean all of it."

"No."

"How much?" I said.

"I don't want to talk about it," she said.

I nodded.

We were quiet.

After a while I said, "Is there anything you want me to do before I leave?"

"Leave?"

"Yeah."

"You mean for good?"

"For a while," I said.

"You too," she said.

"Me too what?"

"You bastard," she started to cry again. "You fucking bastard."

"April," I said.

"Bastard, bastard, bastard."

I went back to the waiting game. She cried a little more, but not like before. This time she didn't have to leave the room. She stopped in maybe five minutes. Her eyes were red again. But her makeup was still okay. She sat in her chair and looked at nothing.

"So how much of Lionel's story should I believe?" I said.

She was hunched forward now, looking at the floor, with her clenched hands between her knees.

"We had a relationship," she said. "We met when he bought a night with me, and we liked each other, and he kept requesting me. Mrs. Utley was good that way. And after a while I started to see him on my own and not charge him. That was against the rules, but Mrs. Utley never knew. I saw him on my own time."

Her voice as she spoke was soft and flat. She seemed to be reciting a story she'd learned by rote about someone else. "When Mrs. Utley sent me up here, he would come up to see me and spend the night. We talked about things. We'd lie in bed at night after and talk about going out on our own. We'd need a nest egg, he said, and he showed me how to skim some money on Mrs. Utley each day and she wouldn't know."

"So you could open a place of your own."

"Start a chain," she said.

"How long did you figure it would take you to embezzle enough to do that?"

"Not long. It was only for the down payment. Earnest money, he said. He said he was lining up investors."

"So what went wrong," I said.

She stared silently down.

"He cheated on me," she said.

"Anyone you know?"

"Yes. Here. One of the girls. In this house."

I nodded.

"He didn't pay her," April said.

"You sleep with an occasional customer," I said.

"He knows that and he knows it's business. It's not about us."

There was nothing for me down that road.

"So you broke up?" I said.

She nodded.

"How'd he take it."

"He acted like nothing had happened," she said.

"Denied everything?"

"Just pretended like I hadn't thrown him out or anything. Just said he knew I was upset."

"And left."

"Yes. He tried to kiss me good-bye," April said.

"You hear from him again?"

"A week later," April said. "He sent me a bill for what he called his share of the business."

"Ah, Lionel," I said.

"I sent it back to him," April said, "with fuck you written across it."

"And soon thereafter Ollie's people showed up," I said.

"Yes."

"And you came to me," I said, "hoping somehow I'd take them off your back without finding out what had happened."

"I was cheating Mrs. Utley. I had fallen for another loser and gotten in trouble. I didn't know what to do. I was too mortified to tell you the truth."

"And you thought I wouldn't find that out," I said.

"I don't know. I was alone, and scared, and ashamed, and you were the only person in my life who had ever actually helped me."

"Except Mrs. Utley," I said.

"I couldn't go to her. I was stealing from her."

I nodded.

"Hell," April said. "Maybe I wanted you to find out."

"Maybe," I said.