Sweet Thursday

20 Sweet Thursday (2)

Fauna always drew the shades of her bedroom tight down. Because of the late hours of business, she had to sleep until noon to get her proper rest. On the morning of Sweet Thursday the sun played a trick on her. The windowshade had a hole in it no bigger than the point of a pin. The playful sun picked up the doings of Cannery Row, pushed them through the pinhole, turned them upside down, and projected them in full color on the wall of Fauna’s bedroom. Wide Ida waddled across the wall upside down, wearing a print dress sewn with red poppies and on her head a black beret. The Pacific Gas & Electric truck rolled across her wall upside down, its wheels in the air. Mack strode toward the grocery store head down. And a little later, Doc, weary, feet over his head, walked along the wallpaper carrying a quart of beer that would have spilled if it had not been an illusion. At first Fauna tried to go back to sleep, but she was afraid she might miss something. It was the little colored ghost of upside-down Doc that drew her from her couch.

It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it. And this had happened to Fauna. She was glad when she raised the shade and saw how beautiful was the day. The roof of the Hediondo Cannery[83] where seagulls had perched glowed like a pearl.

Fauna brushed her hair severely back and put on a close-fitting hat of black sequins. She wore her dark-gray knitted suit and carried gloves. In the kitchen she put six bottles of beer in a paper bag, and then, as an afterthought, she rooted out one of the shrunken monkey heads as a present. When she climbed the stairs of Western Biological and stood at the top, puffing a little, you might have thought she was soliciting for the Red Cross instead of for the Bear Flag.

Doc was frying sausages, sprinkling a little chocolate over them. It gave them an odd and Oriental flavor, he thought.

“You’re up early,” he greeted Fauna.

“I figured one quart of beer wouldn’t last long.”

“It didn’t,” said Doc. “Have a couple of sausages?”

“Don’t mind if I do,” said Fauna. For she knew that he who gives to you is in debt to you. “This here’s a monkey head that I picked up in my travels.”

“Interesting,” said Doc.

“You know, there’s some folks think they’re people’s heads,” said Fauna.

“Don’t see how they could. See the shape of the eyes and ears? Look at the nose.”

“Oh, some folks don’t look at people very close,” said Fauna. “I’ll have a bottle of beer with you.”

The taste of the chocolate sausages intrigued her. “I never tasted nothing like it,” she observed. “Did you ever eat grasshoppers, Doc?”

“Yes,” said Doc. “In Mexico. They’re kind of peppery.”

Fauna was not one to beat around bushes. “You must get sick of everybody wanting something from you,” she said.

Doc smiled. “I’d be sicker if they didn’t,” he said. “What can I do for you? Say, thanks for the cake and the beer last night!”

Fauna asked, “What did you think of the kid?”

“Strange,” said Doc. “Somehow I can’t see her working at the Bear Flag.”

“Neither can I,” said Fauna. “She ain’t no good at it but it looks like I’m stuck with her. Trouble with Suzy is, she’s got a streak of lady in her and I don’t know how to root it out.”

Doc munched his sausages and sipped his beer thoughtfully. “I never thought of it, but that could be a drawback,” he said.

“She’s a nice kid,” said Fauna. “I like her fine. But she’s a liability in a business way.”

“Why don’t you kick her out?”

“Oh, I can’t,” said Fauna. “She’s had a tough time. I never had no gift for kicking people out. What I’d like is if she’d pick up and go. She got no future as a floozy.”

“She threw the book at me,” said Doc.

“You see?” said Fauna. “She’s a character. That ain’t no good in a house.”

“She slapped me in the face with a few basic truths,” said Doc. “That’s a quick eye she’s got.”

“And a quicker tongue,” said Fauna. “Would you do me a favor?”

“Why, of course,” said Doc. “Anything I can.”

“I can’t go to nobody else,” Fauna went on, “they wouldn’t understand.”

“What is it?”

“Doc,” said Fauna, “I knocked around and I seen all kinds. I tell you, if you got a streak of lady in you it spoils you for anything else. Now you never come over to the Bear Flag. You play the field. I personally think that costs you more but I ain’t one to mess in the way people want to live.”

“I don’t think I’m following you,” said Doc.

“Okay, I’ll lay out the deck. When you’re making a play for one of them babes, them amateurs, you got to do quite a lot of talking before you make the sack—ain’t that right?”

Doc smiled ruefully. “Right,” he said.

“Well, do you always mean every word of it?”

Doc pinched his lower lip. “Why—why—I guess right at the moment I do.”

“But afterward?”

“Afterward, if I were to think about it—”

“That’s what I mean,” said Fauna. “So if you happen to tell a little teensy-beensy bit of baloney you don’t blow your brains out.”

“You’d do well in the analysis business,” said Doc. “What do you want me to do?”

“This kid Suzy’s lousy with new roses. She ain’t a good hustler because of that streak of lady. I don’t know if she’d make a good lady or not. I want her off my neck. Doc, would it do you any harm to make a play for her? I mean, like you do with them dames that come in here.”

“What good could that possibly do?” he asked.

“Well, maybe I’m wrong, but the way I figure it, you can use new roses if you want to. If you made a pitch for the kid, like she was a lady, why, she might turn lady on you.”

“I still can’t see what good it would do,” said Doc.

“It would get her the hell out of the Bear Flag,” said Fauna. “She wouldn’t want to congregate with no more floozies.”

“How about me?” said Doc.

“You don’t marry them others, do you?”

“No, but—”

“Take a whang at her, will you, Doc?” Fauna begged. “Can’t do you no harm. Why, hell, she might scram out of here and take up typewriting or telephone operating. Will you do that for me, Doc?”

He said, “It doesn’t seem honest.”

Fauna changed her tack. “I was talking to her last night and she said she couldn’t remember when a guy had treated her like a girl. What harm would that do?”

“Might make her miserable.”

“Might make her fly the coop.”

“Maybe she likes it the way it is.”

“She don’t. I tell you she’s a blowed-in-the-glass lady. Look, Doc, you take her out to dinner and I’ll buy the dinner. You don’t have to make no pass. Just be nice to her.”

“I’ll have to think about it.”

“Think you might do it?”

“I might.”

“That’s a good kid if you treat her right. You’d be doing me a big favor.”

“Suppose she won’t go?”

“She will. I won’t give her no choice.”

Doc looked out the window and a warmth crept through him, and suddenly he felt better than he could remember feeling.

“I’ll think about it,” he said.

“I’ll throw in three bottles of champagne whenever you say the word,” said Fauna.

After lunch Joe Elegant read Fauna his latest chapter. He explained the myth and the symbol. “You see,” he said, “the grandmother stands for guilt.”

“Ain’t she dead and buried?”

“Yes.”

“That’s a kind of a messy guilt.”

“It’s the reality below reality,” said Joe Elegant.

“Balls!” said Fauna. “Listen, Joe, whyn’t you write a story about something real?”

“Maybe you can tell me about the art of writing?” he said.

“I sure as hell can,” said Fauna. “There’s this guy, and he makes love to this dame.”

“Very original,” said Joe.

“When a man says words he believes them, even if he thinks he’s lying.”

“For goodness’ sake! What are you talking about?”

“I bet I get rid of a certain person and put up a new gold star. You want to take that bet?”

“How did Doc like the cake?” Joe Elegant asked.

“He loved it,” said Fauna.

And this was the second event of that Sweet Thursday.