She wanted a hamburger and a Coke. I told Carl and he put down the bottle and went to work. Then, because Cinderella Sims had set fire to a fuse which had lain dormant all too long, I went back and leered across the counter at her. She leered right back at me. She seemed even more interested in the leering process than I was, which was saying a lot. My tongue may well have been hanging out. This should give you the general idea.
“You’re cute,” she said.
“So are you.”
“That’s not all,” she said. “I’m more than cute, I’m good at it.”
“At what?”
“At what you’re thinking about.”
I tried to look innocent. I’m sorry to say that it didn’t come off.
“What’s your name?”
“Ted.”
“Mine’s Rosie.”
“Hi, Rosie.”
“Hi, Ted.”
Our dialogue wasn’t the best since Tarzan and Jane. Me, I’ll take Harpo Marx any time.
“What you looking at me like that for, Ted?”
“I like the way you’re put together.”
“Yeah?”
I nodded solemnly.
“It’s all me.”
“Honest?”
“Don’t you believe me?”
I shrugged.
“So grab a feel. I won’t miss it.”
I reached over the counter and took hold of one of her big breasts. The whole thing was coarse and crude and vulgar but the breast in my hand was the first I’d had hold of in months. Too many months.
And it worked for both of us. I got more excited over the whole thing than I care to admit and she was evidently the type of gal with a short fuse. She was ready to go then and there. Her eyes seemed to be swimming in heat and her mouth was open, her upper lip glistened with sweat.
“Ted—”
I let go of her breast. It wasn’t something I felt like letting go of too easily.
Carl broke the spell. He rang a little bell and I went back to pick up the burger and draw a glass of Coke for her. He was waiting for me at the window, his eyes wary.
“Teddy boy,” he said, “that one you should watch out for. Give her a wide berth. She’s poison.”
“You know her?”
“Don’t have to,” he told me. “I know her type. She’ll turn you inside out and holler for more. She’ll draw you and drain you until your knees won’t work anymore. She’ll have you so tired you won’t be able to work for the next month and a half. Watch out, boy.”
I grinned at him. “Maybe I need some of that, Carl. It’s been a long time.”
He sighed. “How long? Ten years? Twenty years? Me, I could go twenty years before I’d want to tangle with one like her. She’ll eat you alive, Ted. She’ll drink your blood and use your skin for a snot rag. You young fellows, you don’t know anything but get on and ride. Me, I’d give her a wide berth.”
Young fellows. When I hit thirty I thought people would stop thinking of me as a young fellow. They didn’t, somehow.
“I’ll see what happens,” I told him. “Like I say, it’s been a long time.”
I brought her her food and traded wisecracks with her for a while. Every look at her and every look from her made me a little more anxious to get next to her, but at the same time Carl’s words had had a mildly sobering effect. I wanted to make it with her, but I didn’t want to talk about it.
Eddie saved me.
Eddie’s a cop who looks as though he couldn’t be anything else without looking out of place. He’s a heavyset flatfoot who generally stops by for coffee-an’ about that time of night. When he came in I had an excuse to leave Rosie alone and make like a counterman. The excuse seemed to satisfy her. Obviously I couldn’t play with her breasts with a cop in the room. It made good sense.
Eddie and I had never had a hell of a lot to say to each other in the past, but this time we did it up brown. I was very clever about the whole thing if I say so myself. I made it seem as though Eddie was leading me and I couldn’t cut the conversation short without being obnoxious about it. Actually I was doing the leading, but happily neither Eddie nor my freckle-face tumbled to that end of it.
She left before Eddie did and I was vaguely relieved to see her go. I wanted her — any man would have — but I suppose you could say I was a little bit afraid of her. Carl’s message had hit home. She looked like the kind of girl who needed an army, and although that can be a man’s dream when he’s sort of hard up, I’d met up with a girl like that before. She couldn’t get enough, and no matter how much I gave her she was still itching for more. In its own way this can be one hell of a frustrating experience.
When Eddie left I went back and picked up Rosie’s tab. It came to forty-five cents and there was a quarter and two dimes on the counter beside it. No tip, and I don’t suppose I really had one coming.
Then, when I was carrying the check to the register to ring it up, I saw the penciled scrawl on the back:
Your tip’s waiting for you at 114 West 69th Street. Apt. 3-C. Ring Twice.
There it was — straight and not at all subtle, right on the line. I rang up the sale, spilled the forty-five cents into the register and spiked the tab. And visions of red hair on a white pillowslip flooded my brain.
And there it was. What could be simpler? All I had to do was hotfoot it over to 114 West 69th as soon as my shift limped to a halt, ring her bell twice, race upstairs and try my luck with the redoubtable Rosie. A half-year’s accumulation of sexual inactivity ought to last me a long time, even with an insatiable maiden like Rosie.
The funny thing is, I was resisting the whole notion not because of a fear of what Rosie could do to me, or anything like that, but for an entirely different reason. It was, I realized, out of some perverse loyalty to a girl I had never met, a girl with the improbable name of Cinderella Sims.
Which was ridiculous.
Totally ridiculous.
I closed my eyes and tried to focus the face of Cinderella Sims on my brain. It didn’t work. I had seen her once, and for no more than a matter of minutes. I couldn’t even picture her face, although of course I would recognize her at once, anytime, anywhere.
All that I could remember was that she was the most beautiful girl in the world.
For all I knew she was as gay as the pair of lesbians Carl had described in such unglowing terms. Or she could be married, or frigid, or deaf, or her teeth could be bad and her speech all impedimented and—
Hell. I didn’t believe a thought of it. She was perfection, damn it. How often in life do you run up against perfection? How often do you find something that couldn’t be improved, not one whit, not one speck, not at all?
Not very often.
So here she was, and here I was, and here Rosie was. Miss Cinderella Sims was temporarily unobtainable but this alone was no call for me to throw myself away on a most imperfect specimen who offered nothing but temporary sexual relief. What the hell — I’d been living in silly celibacy for half a year.
There was no point to throwing it all away on a sexbomb who’d probably given it away to half the male population of the island of Manhattan.
So it’s easy to see what I did next. I finished up, you see, and then I went straight home. Straight home to my own little room, where I got undressed, got in bed, pulled up the sheet, blew a kiss to my somnolent beloved and went off to sleep.
And that, of course, is what I did.
Right?
Wrong.
I finished up, all right. Grace took over at eight on the button — she was another idiot who didn’t mind a sixteen-hour day — and a monkey named Leon relieved Carl, who took his jug of wine and went home. I hung up my apron, had a wakeup cup of joe and went out into the morning rush hour air, which was horrible.