Beside her a very young man was drinking beer and staring cynically at the sign behind the bar: “It is illegal to sell alcoholic beverages to a minor. A minor is a person under twenty-one years of age.” Three women, half-submerged in parcels and paper bags, drank Manhattans and discussed clothes. At the end of the bar a group of sailors stood watching everyone in the place with a speculative air, as if they might be looking for a fight or a pick-up.
They spied Martha, measured Steve, and finally one of them gave a very soft wolf-whistle.
Steve stopped dead.
“Go and sit down,” he told Martha. “I’ll be with you in a minute.”
She didn’t understand. “What?”
“I said, go and sit down.”
“But what about you?”
The sailors had their ears pricked up. Steve stood with his body bent forward a little, like a boxer balancing on the balls of his feet.
The sailor whistled again, twice, much louder this time. He paused a moment, and then, using the same two notes to start, he began “The Cuckoo Waltz.” His friends joined in. One of them picked up an empty beer bottle and used it as a baton. Or as a threat.
Steve turned and took Martha’s arm. “Come on.”
They found a table near the door.
“You look quite fierce,” she said, puzzled.
“I’m not fierce enough to take on five,” he said. “Not in a joint that serves beer in bottles.”
She frowned. “Well, why shouldn’t they serve beer in bottles?”
“If you’d ever been hit over the head with one, you’d know.”
“Have you?”
“Once.”
“Honestly?”
She was impressed, there was no doubt of it. He felt amazement and a little anger. He had done so much to impress her and most of the time he had failed. Yet here she was, wide-eyed because he’d once been hit on the head with a beer bottle.
“Did you have to have stitches?” she asked.
“Yeah.” If she liked it that much, she might as well have it good, so he added, “Eighteen stitches. I lost three quarts of blood, seventy-proof. It wasn’t wasted, though. The doctor thought it’d be a shame to waste blood with that much alcohol in it, so he passed it on to a couple of drunken werewolves.”
He hoped she’d laugh, but she didn’t. He felt tired of trying to amuse her and never succeeding. He wondered if perhaps she was just as tired of his trying to be funny.
He asked her if she was.
“Not exactly,” she replied.
“Not exactly. Thank you, my dear, thank you for the clever evasion.”
“You don’t like me today, do you? You keep picking on me.”
“Oh, yes, I like you. I love you, I even respect you. But, it just struck me we have very little in common. We share nothing but a bed.”
“Oh?” She sat up, stiffly. “Then perhaps it’s just as well I didn’t ask Charles for a divorce, isn’t it?”
The waiter came up.
“Three double Scotches,” Steve said. He added to the empty seat across the table, “You will have a drink with us, won’t you, Charley, old boy?” He turned back to the waiter who was eyeing the empty seat cautiously. “Charley says he doesn’t mind if he does.”
“Y-yes, sir.”
Steve shook his finger at him. “And don’t stare at him. It embarrasses him. He likes to be treated like an ordinary person. Don’t you, Charley?”
Martha was smiling painfully at the waiter. “He always talks like this. He’s being funny.”
“He’s a card, all right,” the waiter said and departed.
“I wish you wouldn’t,” Martha said in a miserable voice. “People will think you’re drunk.”
“People are going to be right.”
The waiter came back with the drinks. He put one in front of Martha and one in front of Steve. He couldn’t decide what to do with the last one, so he stood holding it uncertainly in his hand.
“I must say you’re behaving badly,” Steve said. “My friend Charley doesn’t care to be slighted in this unseemly fashion. Put it down. No, on second thought, give it to me. Sometimes I taste Charley’s drinks because he has such a delicate constitution.”
“A dollar ninety-five,” said the waiter.
Steve sipped the Scotch. “Charley, old boy, I’m afraid I have bad news. It’s too strong for you.” He tossed the drink off and reached for his wallet. “Two more.”
The waiter was grinning. “I bet you hurt his feelings.”
“Charley knows I act only in his best interests,” Steve said piously. He was already pretty bored with the Charley game but he kept it up for a while to annoy Martha. She was horribly embarrassed. She kept looking around to see if anyone was watching them, and she didn’t say a word to him, as if, by maintaining silence, she might convince people she wasn’t with him, that he’d sat down beside her by accident.
By the time he’d finished the four drinks, he felt better. He didn’t want to annoy Martha anymore, and he didn’t want to fight with sailors, not even one sailor. They were a good bunch of boys. If they felt like whistling, let them whistle. He, too, could whistle. He could whistle even after eating soda crackers, just watch him.
The waiter was sorry, they were fresh out of soda crackers.
Fresh out of soda crackers even for a man who could whistle through his teeth like this? Well, that was a fine thing. He wouldn’t be seen dead in a joint with no soda crackers. Come on, Martha, let us not demean ourselves. Good-bye, Charley.
The bars were strung along the street like bright beads. The Zanzibar, The Top Hat, The Roscoe, Chez Henri.
Saturday night? People crawled from bead to bead. A whole conga line of people passed from the Zebra Room to the Casino Latino to the Bar Nine, in shunts and staggers. You met the same ones all the time because the string was limited, there were just so many beads, and all alike except for their names and the lavatories. Some had clean lavatories, some had not.
The real difference, he explained, is lavatories.
The Kit-Kat.
The same people. It was extraordinary how other people remained the same while you changed, from bar to bar, minute to minute. Under the rosy lights of the Kit-Kat, you looked pretty good. Not handsome, no, but fresh and appealing. The other jerks looked worn out and tired, and their women were bags.
Martha was eating pretzels. She looked like a little girl. That was fine, because he himself looked fresh and appealing.
Just a couple of kids, sexually precocious.
The Monkey House.
A mistake to come here. Bad lights, too yellow and garish. They seemed to coax your liver bile right up into your face. They peered into each pore of your skin and glared at your sweating forehead.
The waiter was too obsequious and there were too many single girls hanging around the bar. They were all young and dressed with a smartness that was too extreme. Whores feel a kinship with movie actresses and they copy their clothes, zipper for zipper when they can.
“Really?” said Martha.
Yes, really.
She had switched to peanuts, and while she ate she watched the girls at the bar while they watched each other. Two of them had given up the chase for the night. They sat with their arms entwined, talking softly.
They are lovers.
Lovers?
And the headwaiter is a pimp.
A pimp?
She was very excited, she had never seen a pimp or prostitute lovers before. She beamed approval at him, imagine being so clever, knowing these things.
Her eyes wide and avid, she stared at the performing animals through the iron bars of the cage.
I am ill, it’s too hot in here, I wonder if I’m getting jaundice?
You need some food, Martha said. You need some real food.