They heard giggling and music from a Victrola. Inside the wavy panes of glass, Sam saw Alice jumping up and down on the bed, a big suitcase nearby latched with a thick man’s belt. He knocked on the panes softly and then harder, and that got Alice down to the floor, where she removed a needle from the record. The music stopped.
She tilted her head and walked to the glass, a big smile on her lips, and opened up.
“It’s just me, honeybee,” she said.
“You girls come on,” Sam said. “And be quiet about it.”
“Zey’s not going.”
“Come again?” Sam said, whispering.
“She likes it here,” Alice said, leaning down, whispering, elbows laid across the threshold. “ ’Sides, she ain’t got a job since the Old Poodle Dog was busted. She’s got no dough and nowhere to stay. Did you have the fried chicken tonight?”
“Pork chops.”
“You shoulda had the chicken.”
“I’m coming in,” Sam said.
Phil laced his hands together and propped up a place for Sam to stand, lifting him through the cottage window. Sam fell with a thud to the floor and waited there for a moment, and, not hearing anything, then whispered to Alice about where he could find Zey.
She whispered back, “I’m telling you, it won’t do no good. She likes the treatments, too.”
Alice Blake closed the window and curtains behind him and walked to the bed. She lay back into the mattress, propped on her elbows, and crooked her finger at Sam. “We got time.”
Sam gritted his teeth and took a breath.
Alice started to unbutton the length of her dress and Sam watched her, unable to speak until the entire front of the dress was open. She wore a brassiere and bloomers, lots of lace and silk, tall laced boots, stockings, and garters. She ran her fingers across her stomach, stroking her white belly, the way a proud owner shows off a fine machine.
“I’m married.”
“I won’t tell.”
“I’ll know.”
“Poo.”
Alice smiled and parted her legs. She crooked her finger again. She reached down and unsnapped a single garter. Sam walked to her and reached for her hand, pulling the short girl to her feet. He put a hand to her shoulder and closed his eyes. Her eyes closed, too, and her mouth parted just as Sam snapped the garter back and began to work on the buttons up the line, stitching them closed.
“I thought you were fun,” she said.
“A damn dirty lie.”
Sam followed her into a long hallway, noting the front door to the porch was closed, and Alice rapped on a bedroom door twice. Zey appeared in a long Oriental robe, hand on her hip, and said, “About goddamn time. Where’s Phil? And where the hell are my goddamn records, Alice? Are you trying to take the Victrola, too?”
“Phil’s outside,” Sam said. “Waiting.”
“Outside? That doesn’t do us any good.”
“Come on,” Sam said. “Get packed.”
Zey made a pouty look and shook her head. The inside of her room smelled of lavender and candy-sweet perfume and glowed red from a silk handkerchief she’d placed over a lamp. Undergarments and stockings were strung across the room and over bedposts. An open armoire spilled out unfolded clothes. A bottle of unmarked wine sat on the bed stand with two teacups.
“Where’s the Victrola, Alice?” Zey asked.
“Take it.”
“And the records?”
“They’re yours. But I packed that new one though. ‘Dangerous Blues.’ ”
“I liked that one. You know I liked that one.”
“Ladies,” Sam said, holding up his hand, Zey still keeping herself wedged in the doorframe, hand on her hip. “All the way to Frisco.”
“Well, you tell Phil that if he didn’t have the class and decency to come in and say good-bye, then I don’t care if I ever see him again,” Zey said. “No, tell him I hope he gets hit by a bus. All of you can go straight to hell.”
She slammed the bedroom door.
The front porch creaked and the screen door opened. The copper knocked on the front door. “Hello?” the man called out, sounding more like a boy. Sam motioned to Alice with his head and she followed him back to her room.
The knocking grew frantic and the cop called out for them again. Zey poked her head out and held her teeth clenched and said, “Sorry.”
Sam ducked back into Alice’s room and slid open the back window, tossing the suitcase through the curtains and motioning for Alice to come on. The banging on the front door was tremendous and Phil was muttering, “Come on. Come on.”
Alice stood there paralyzed, hands against her mouth, with Zey now in the room saying, “I want that record.”
“Zey,” Sam said. “Answer the door.”
“Please, Zey,” Alice said.
“Really?”
“Really. I can’t breathe here. Ma Murphy with her corsets and hot-water bottles gives me the creeps. Tell her to take her corset and stick it.”
More banging. A click. The door opened. The copper called out.
Zey walked into the hall and told the cop there was no trouble, none at all, but the man wanted to check the rooms, make sure everything was on the square. And Zey said everything was just beautiful, peachy in fact, and asked him if he’d like a drink. The man asked again to see the rooms and Zey said she had something better to show him, saying it real sexy and slow.
Phil helped Alice out the window. Sam slid out himself and down to the ground. Phil stood there in the full moonlight holding the big suitcase and listening. He walked slowly to a side window, peeking in, and Sam touched his shoulder.
“Phil?”
“Do you see what she’s doing to him?”
“She’s saving us.”
“She’s naked.”
“No, she’s not,” Sam said, peeking in and then turning back to Phil.
“Guess she is.”
“She dropped that robe to the floor and started biting his ear. That was supposed to be my ear. She said she only did that for me.”
“Come on.”
“Goddamn women.”
Sam looked back inside and the man’s hands were on Zey’s naked white backside, squeezing her butt cheeks, while Zey crooked one of her legs around his legs. The cop turned his head to the window and Sam ducked down.
When Sam looked again, the man was headed back to Alice’s room.
Phil, Sam, and Alice found the path around the springs and heard someone yelling from the open window, curtains billowing about the cop’s head, the cop yelling, telling them to halt, the word halt seeming kinda comical coming from a boy. They ducked down behind some hedge as the cop, a young kid with freckles and jug ears, came barreling out yelling, and Zey followed moments later, back in her robe, and catching the young boy at the hot springs. The boy saying “goddamnit” at least fifteen times before she reached her arms around him and planted one right on his mouth.
He still had the 12-gauge out in his hand, over her shoulder, and was waving it around all crazy like he might start shooting at the bushes.
“Alice went for a walk,” Zey said.
“With her suitcase?” asked the boy.
“Not much you can do now,” Zey said. She grabbed the young boy between the legs and started to rub. The boy was saying, “Hold on, Miss Prevost, hold on,” but Zey kept working him like a piston and kissing his neck. Behind the shrubs, Alice had her hand over her mouth, snickering, but Phil turned his head in disgust. The cop was now begging for Zey to stop, please stop, but calling her “Miss Zey.” Zey just kept kissing and rubbing, the boy standing taller and more rigid and breathing hard until his body convulsed, the shotgun clattering to the rocks. The boy said, “See what you done? I was savin’ it.”
He kicked at his gun and walked back to the cottage, his head down.
Alice snickered so hard she about fell over. As the three followed the moon-lit path back to the gassed-up flivver, Phil said, “I thought she loved me.”
“Oh, go give yourself a good slap,” Alice Blake said as they piled in the car.