Sweet Thursday

7 Tinder Is as Tinder Does

Joseph and Mary Rivas liked Fauna, even admired her. But he did feel that it was a little indecent for a woman to own the Bear Flag, a paying institution with a steady income. Operate it, yes, but not own it. The proprieties told Joseph and Mary there should be a man in the background to drain off the profits. It was his observation that when women had access to money they got nervous. To his mind, a healthy woman was a broke woman. A dame with money was a kind of a half-assed man. She stopped working at being a woman, and, as everybody knows, the finest thing about a woman is that she is a woman.

Joseph and Mary had given some thought to relieving Fauna of the responsibility of the profits: if he owned the Bear Flag and Fauna ran it, there would be a natural and practical balance. Fauna had so far figured her way out from under his philanthropy, but Joseph and Mary did not give up, particularly when it was no trouble not to.

A good stock manipulator reads the financial page and looks for the stock he has, but he also notices other quotations too, just in case. Joseph and Mary kept that kind of eye on the Bear Flag. He felt that someday Fauna might look away from the dealer for a moment. Now that his own affairs ran smoothly, he was able to cast a benevolently rapacious eye about him. He knew about Suzy before she had even got her clothes washed, and he felt that Fauna was slipping.

“You got a quail there,” he told Fauna. “That’s Mary trouble if I ever seen it.”

“I guess so,” said Fauna.

“Why’d you take her on?”

“I let myself make a mistake once in a while,” said Fauna. “She ain’t a good hustler, but when I get through with her she might make somebody a damn fine wife.”

“She’s making a patsy of you,” said the Patrón.

“People got to be a patsy now and then,” said Fauna. “You never feel real good if you never been a sucker. Once I went missionary down in South America.”

“Why?” asked the Patrón.

“Can’t remember right off.”

“What did you do?”

“Taught them to love one another.”

“What did they do?”

“Taught me to shrink heads.”

“Savages!” said the Patrón.

“No they wasn’t. Them headhunters was pretty nice people—honest too. When they sell you a head they give good value. But there’s always a wise guy. Like this Athatoolagooloo—a natural-born head-hustler. He’d worked out a way to push monkey heads. Gave them a close shave, didn’t have to shrink them much. There’s people will buy anything.”

“I know,” said the Patrón.

“Well, the Bishop come through,” said Fauna, “and he give me holy hell for buying up them monkey heads.”

“You mean to say you bought them?” said the Patrón.

“Sure I bought them. I got a box of them in the woodshed. Everybody said I was a fool, but it paid off.”

“How’d it pay off?”

“Well, look,” said Fauna. “My bunch was honest and they shrunk honest heads. S’pose a shipment goes out and this joker Athatoolagooloo slips in a couple of his monkey heads—pretty soon nobody don’t trust nobody. Why, people would get to looking asspants at a real nice head. I bought them up to keep them off the market. I had my reputation to think of.”

“Yeah, but this joker—” the Patrón began.

“I know what you’re going to say—and he done it too. He had me. He charged me more for them monkey heads than I paid for the real article. He knew he had me.”

“That’s what I thought. Anybody would,” said the Patrón.

“Oh, it all worked out,” said Fauna. “If you ever buy a Chungla head you’ll know you got the best.”

“Yeah, but how about the joker?” said the Patrón.

Fauna opened up her desk drawer and took out a beautiful little item, black as polished ebony and no bigger than a lemon. “He made up real nice, didn’t he?” said Fauna.

The Patrón looked nervously away. “I got to get back,” he said. “I left my nephew in the store.”

“Don’t he play trumpet?”

“Drives me crazy,” said Joseph and Mary. “Got a new trumpet. Can’t get away from it. Made him go practice down on the beach. Figured the waves and the sea lions would kind of drown him out. The other night he give a passing signal to a Navy tug, and they’re still looking for what passed them. But last night was the worst. He was practicing down on the beach and he aimed his damn trumpet into the sewer pipe. Got resonance, he said. I don’t know if it’s true, but I heard that every toilet in the whole neighborhood give off with ‘Stormy Weather.’[41] Old lady Somers was taking an enema. I don’t believe what they said happened. I got to get back. That kid can break glass with a high note.”

“Come over and visit again,” said Fauna.

“You mind what I said about Suzy.”

“I will,” said Fauna.

It’s a funny thing, but you never like to trade at your own place. The store across the street has always got fresher cigarettes than you have. The girls at the Bear Flag never got cigarettes from the slot machine at the Bear Flag. When they wanted Luckies or a 7 Up they went to the Patrón’s. For that matter, nearly everyone in Cannery Row went nearly every place in Cannery Row nearly every day.

Joseph and Mary had hardly got back to the grocery before Suzy came in. You wouldn’t recommend Joseph and Mary as a celebrator of God’s loveliest creation, but if you wanted a quick assay on a babe you couldn’t ask for better than Joseph and Mary’s. If he was not involved in an emotional way he was good. Between the time Suzy got change and the time she pushed the Lucky Strike button on his cigarette machine, each had gone over the other and registered the result.

Suzy’s note: “Greaseball, smart and mean. Look out if he gives you something. A percentage boy. Smiles with his mouth. Eyes like a snake. May trip himself someday by being too smart.”

Patrón’s note: “Lousy risk for a house. A character. Won’t play the rules. Might reverse the field. Too friendly. If she likes a guy she might toss in her roll.”

The Patrón would have kicked her out of the Bear Flag. He knew that the only person you can trust is an absolutely selfish person. He always runs true to form. You know everything he’ll do. But you take somebody with an underlying kindness, and he might fool you. The only satisfactory sucker is the one who is entirely selfish. You never have any trouble with that kind. Fauna was laying herself wide open.

Joseph and Mary tabulated Suzy the way he might have bought a used car. Pretty good figure, good ankles and legs, too light in the butt and too heavy in the chest. That’s a bad sign: a good hustler is flat-chested. Face kind of pretty if she felt like it. Face reflected how she felt. Good-looking if she felt good. A good hustler has a mask, looks the same to everybody, pretty, but you don’t remember what she looked like the next morning. Suzy you wouldn’t forget. A real bad risk. Suzy liked people or she didn’t like them. That in itself was bad.

Cacahuete, the Patrón’s nephew, was dusting shelves, and he flashed a gold smile at Suzy.

Suzy lighted up. She didn’t smile—she grinned. Her lips were full and mouth wide, and when she grinned her eyes crinkled and something warm and scary came out of her. That’s a bad risk. On top of this was toughness, but not dependable dull toughness. Suzy might take a poke at Jack Dempsey.[42] She wasn’t smart. All in all, Joseph and Mary would’ve dumped Suzy in a minute. She’d be the kind of dumb dame who’d fall for some guy without finding out his bank balance. She was the kind, he thought, who’d give one guy a helluva lot of trouble but who’d be lousy playing the field. She had something of the same quality Doc had. The Patrón decided to warn Fauna again. This kid could be pure murder in a hookshop. Such was the Patrón’s reasoned opinion, and the Patrón was a professional. If you’d take a doctor’s advice about a disease, you’d surely take the Patrón’s about a hustler. Both could be wrong, of course.

The appraisals and judgments were almost instantaneous, so that by the time Suzy had opened her cigarettes, put one in her mouth, and lighted it, the judgment was complete.

“How are you?” Joseph and Mary asked.

“Okay,” said Suzy. “Fauna wants some yellow pads and a couple of pencils—soft pencils.”

The Patrón laid them out. “She does a lot of writing,” he said. “She’s used six pads in about a month.”

“She’s doing astrology.”

“You believe that stuff?”

“No, but it don’t do no harm.”

“I knew a guy made a good living with it,” said the Patrón.

“Oh, she don’t charge nothing,” said Suzy.

“I know,” said the Patrón. “I can’t figure why not. Fauna ain’t dumb.”

“She sure ain’t,” said Suzy.

Doc came in with two empty beer bottles. “Get a couple of cold ones back on the ice, will you?” he asked.

Suzy glanced at him, took him in, and looked away. His beard shocked her a little. She didn’t stare at him the way you don’t stare at a cripple.

The Patrón said, “Why don’t you put in an icebox? Then you can take a case at a time.”

“It’s easier to let you keep the ice,” said Doc.

“You know Suzy here? She’s new at the Bear Flag.”

“How do you do?” said Doc.

“How do you do?” said Suzy. She would have said “Hi” to anyone else.

When Doc had gone the Patrón said, “That’s a funny guy.”

“It takes all kinds,” said Suzy.

“He knows stuff I ain’t even heard of.” The Patrón was defending Doc the way everyone did.

“Kind of hoity-toity?” asked Suzy.

“Hell no! That’s the way he always talks. He don’t know no other way.”

“Well, I guess it takes all kinds,” said Suzy.

“He gets bugs and stuff out of the ocean and sells them.”

“Who to?”

“Why, there’s people’ll buy anything,” said the Patrón.

“I guess so. Why don’t other people do it?”

“Too much work, and you got to know what to get.”

“Say, why does he wear that beard? I used to know a wrestler wore one.”

“I don’t know why,” said the Patrón. “Why’d the wrestler?”

“Thought it made him look tough.”

“Well, maybe Doc the same—but no, he don’t want to be tough.” The Patrón went on, “In the Army they made a guy with a beard shave it off. Said a guy with a beard wanted to be different, and the best way to not get along in the barracks is to be different.”

“Maybe that’s it,” said Suzy. “I don’t mind a different guy if he ain’t too different.”

“Dames can take it,” said the Patrón. “They don’t like it but they can take it. What the hell am I doing all this talking for? I got work to do!”

Suzy asked, “You Mexican?”

“American. My old man was Mexican.”

“Can you talk that spick[43] talk?”

“Sure.”

“Polly-voo?”

“That ain’t the same kind,” said the Patrón.

“Be seeing you,” said Suzy, and she went out and let the screen door slam.

She ain’t a bad kid, the Patrón thought, but I’d sure kick her the hell out of the Bear Flag.

Doc looked out the window of Western Biological. He watched Suzy walk past the vacant lot and up to the front porch of the Bear Flag. Just as she was about to climb the steps she turned and looked around. She thought someone was looking at her. She didn’t see Doc.