Konig sees a small note of pleading in the girl’s eyes and in the next moment he observes in those same eyes a set of blue-gray pupils that are unmistakably constricted.
As the maître d’ marches up to them, her voice rises. She laughs and chatters with a kind of desperate cheer. “So I told this silly little—”
“All right, get out,” the little Neapolitan with the large mustaches fumes down at her. “Go on. Get the hell out.”
The girl peers dismally down at the plate of cold cutlets.
“I’m awful sorry, sir.” He snatches the girl’s arm. “How many times I tell you I don’t want you here? This ain’t that kind of place. Now I’m gonna call a cop.” He starts to tug the girl to her feet. “Awful sorry, sir.”
There’s great confusion while the tugging goes on. Plates and silver clatter. The wineglass nearly topples. Konig makes a desperate lunge and catches it. “That’s all right.” He is painfully aware that everyone in the room has stopped eating and is watching them. “Perfectly all right. Let her stay.”
“Stay?” The Italian gapes at him. “You want her to stay?”
“Yes—it’s okay.” Mortified by the scene they’ve created, Konig hears his voice coming at him from great distances. The Italian’s expression bristles with disapproval. “It’s all right,” Konig goes on a little frantically. “She’s with me. I’ll have another glass of wine, please.” He makes a gesture, dismissing the man.
Baffled and muttering, the Italian moves off, and suddenly Konig and the girl are all alone. Sighing and flustered, he watches her cut and fork pieces of the cutlet into her mouth.
“Nothin’ wrong with this cutlet,” she says.
“Good. I hope you enjoy it.”
“Thanks,” the girl replies, staring dismally down at her plate.
“Forget it. Just finish up and go.”
There’s something famished, almost savage, about the way the girl screws her eyes downward to the plate and chews, her fork darting quickly between cutlet and salad. She chews quickly, too, swallowing large, unmasticated chunks of food, hunched over her plate protectively, like a hungry dog, fearing that she must get it all down fast before someone whisks it away.
Returning with Konig’s fresh glass of wine, the waiter scowls down at the girl. Unable to forgive her for cadging food, he mutters and goes off.
When she’s finished the cutlet and salad, she starts with the bread and butter.
“Want something to drink?” Konig growls. “Milk? Soda?”
“Nope.” The girl hiccoughs, wipes her butter-smeared mouth with a napkin, then pulls a half-smoked cigarette from the cuff of her jeans. She leans forward to the table candle, lighting the cigarette, her face glowing suddenly in the guttering flame.
“Sorry I don’t have one for you.” She inhales the smoke deeply.
“That’s all right. I don’t use them.”
She sits back now in her seat. Content. Hugely satisfied, she gazes around the room now at the young, effusively chatty couples, all involved in themselves. Then suddenly she’s looking at him again, first sideways, then directly, head-on, the eyes once more impudent and suggestive. No longer a trace there of that momentary desperation and pleading. She gazes boldly at him, but it is all rather bogus. Postures and attitudes learned from cheap television serials and trashy films.
“Aren’t you gonna eat?”
“No. I’m not hungry.”
“Sorry about all that fuss.” She glances at the waiter, still smoldering at her from a corner of the room. “He’s such a bastard anyway. Pardon the language.”
“That’s all right. Forget it.”
“Wanna buy some postcards?”
“No. Thank you.”
She pushes a stack of cards toward him. “Look at ’em.”
“No, I said I—”
“Go on—just look at ’em.”
“Oh, God.” He sighs and snatches up the cards, flicking idly through them. Views of the George Washington Bridge. Statue of Liberty. Empire State Building. Shea Stadium. Fulton Fish Market. Then suddenly a glossy, postcard-sized photograph of a girl naked on a bed, legs up and parted. Then another, same girl, on her stomach, buttocks up, thrust assertively outward.
Konig glances at the girl now smiling wickedly opposite him, two columns of smoke wafting from her nostrils. “If you like those you can have them for twenty dollars.”
“Oh?” Konig feels her leg brush his under the table. “I’m afraid not.” He flicks to views of the meat market and Times Square by night.
“If that’s too much I could maybe let you have it a little cheaper—like eighteen?”
“No, I really don’t think so.”
“Fifteen?”
“It’s not the price.” Konig laughs, feeling a little foolish. “I’m a little past that.”
“Oh, come on now, Daddy,” she taunts him softly. “You’ll do just fine. Leave it to me. Make you happy. Make you feel real good.”
In spite of efforts to be stern, Konig grows giddy. The thought of his weary old bones in bed with that child, feigning passion, struggling to be amorous, is laughable. “Betchya good.” The girl laughs. “Betchya real good.” Konig smiles in spite of himself. “You must be all of fifteen.”
“I’m nineteen.”
“Oh, come on.”
“I am. I’m nineteen.”
“You’re nineteen like I’m twenty-two. Where you from anyway? Texas? I’ll bet Texas, with that drawl.”
“Not Texas,” the girl sulks. “Close though.”
“Oklahoma,” Konig says, seeing something register in her eyes. “It is Oklahoma, isn’t it?”
“That’s my business.”
“I recognize that accent. Spent enough time in the Army down there. What’s the big secret anyway?”
“No big secret. I just don’t care to say.” The girl scowls, cross-armed and adamant. “Come on, Daddy. Let you have those cards for fifteen. Special to you. Three ways. Straight, French, and Greek.”
“That’s all I need,” Konig groans. “I’d probably expire.”
“Don’t talk that way. You’re not as old as all that.”
“I’m older. I could be your grandfather.”
“Bet you’re hell in bed. I can tell just by lookin’ at you. I like older men anyway. Used to know an old buck back in Tulsa—” Her voice breaks off abruptly as she sees triumph glow in Konig’s eye. “Aren’t you smart though. Stop lookin’ so smug. Ain’t been in Tulsa for years.”
“What’s your name?”
“Heather.”
“Heather?”
“Heather Harwell.”
Konig gives her a long, dubious gaze.
“Now what’s wrong with that?” the girl protests. Suddenly a huge belly laugh from Konig. Several people turn and stare at them. The peppery little Neapolitan glowers in their direction.
“Heather Harwell.” He chuckles more quietly. “Boy, you really can pick ’em.”
“What’s so funny?”
“Sounds like the name of a comic strip. The Adventures of Heather Harwell. Girl Postcard Hawker, Infant Hooker.”
“Shhh.” The girl stares anxiously around.
“What’s your real name?”
The girl sits stony and tight-lipped.
“Your family in Tulsa?”
“Boy, you ask a lot of questions.”
“Heather Harwell’s not your name. No one from Tulsa is named Heather Harwell. They all have names like Minnie Turl.”
“It’s my professional name.”
“Your professional name?” Konig hoots. “You mean the name you hustle under?”
“Shhh.” She tries to silence him again. “For pity sake, will you quit screaming that out? It’s the name I model under. I’m a model.”