“We’d better hurry, Madame Serpentina. The butane won’t last long.”
“I have told you I do not need light.”
Stubb muttered, “Well, we do.”
The door of the witch’s room was locked. She took her key from her purse and opened it to reveal one wall half dissolved in space and streetlights.
“I’m surprised the kids didn’t break in,” Barnes said.
“They were in fear, my Ozzie. They did not venture to the top of the stair, I think.”
“Tracks?”
“I do not need to look at tracks.”
Stubb said, “Somebody came up here. Big feet. Probably the wrecking crew.”
“No one has entered my room. That is all I care about. Ozzie, my bags are beneath that bed. Will you get them for me?”
One was an old suitcase, the other a bag in actual fact, a sack of hairy goatskin as big as a laundry bag. Its knotted thongs were sealed with a lump of wax that looked black in the faint light.
“‘Now I am done.’ So speaks the poet. If you will carry these for me, gentlemen? Mr. Stubb, it would perhaps be better if you were to take the suitcase. Ozzie, you may have the honor of the other. That is somewhat heavier, I think.”
Stubb was already maneuvering the suitcase through the narrow doorway. After a final, lingering glance around the room, the witch followed him, leaving Barnes to bring up the rear.
“What a day has this been, and what a time in my life! You say, Mr. Stubb, that it is not far to this hotel?”
A voice out of the darkness asked, “Did somebody say hotel?” There was a flicker of light on the opposite side of the stairwell.
“Candy, is that you?”
“Jim?” The fat girl’s face appeared as the moon appears with the passing of a cloud. She struck a match and held it up.
“Candy, what the hell are you doing here?”
“Getting some stuff. Celebrating.” She smiled, and despite its unfocused quality, the smile made her pretty. “This is where it was, right? I thought,” (she belched softly) “that maybe before they tore down the stadium I’d go stand on the mound again.”
“Yeah,” Stubb said. “You had them going.”
The witch added, “And we should be going.”
“To a hotel, you said.” The fat girl still wore her white plastic raincoat, but her lost white plastic boots had been replaced by enormous black ones. She carried a flight bag and brought the malty odor of beer with her. “I met this guy I know, and he said sorry I’d like to but I don’t have the bread, right? And I said tonight he didn’t need it—just let me sleep over. So we went up to his place, and then he said come on, I know where there’s a party tonight.”
The witch pushed past Stubb as he stood listening; Barnes followed her.
“So we got in his beater and drove way the hell out. Shadylawn. Sounds like a graveyard, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Stubb said.
“And then he said give me a cigarette, and I said I didn’t have any. I’d been smoking his on the way out. So we went by a drugstore, and he stopped and dug out a buck and said here go in and get us a pack.” A tear splashed on Stubb’s hand.
“And he split while you were inside.”
“Buh huh.”
“Jesus Christ. No wonder you feel down. How’d you get back?”
“Hitched.”
“Jesus Christ,” Stubb said again.
“It wasn’t so bad, except I was afraid I was going to get picked up by the smokies.” The fat girl swallowed and snuffled. “Jim, we’d better go. We’ll lose them.”
“Sure we will. I got her suitcase here. Can you make it down the steps okay?”
“I made it up. You don’t have a drink on you?”
“I got two cigarettes, and that’s it.”
“Up at Harry’s, I knocked down six or eight beers, and now I can feel them dying in me. You know what I mean?”
“Sure.”
She was going down the stairs beside him. There was just enough room for the two of them with the suitcase between them. At the bottom, she asked, “Let me have one of those cigarettes?”
“Sure,” Stubb said. Barnes and the witch were already some distance down the street. Stubb put down the suitcase, took out his last two Camels, and crumpled the pack and tossed it into the gutter. He lit their cigarettes from a paper match, as he had before.
“This lady picked me up. She was about forty, I guess. Her husband was out of town and she was going downtown to have dinner with another lady she’d gone to college with. Hey, let me carry part of that—see, I can just hook a couple fingers in the handle.”
“All right.”
“Now we kind of walk in step. I told her I was on a date and he wanted me to come across, and when I wouldn’t, he shoved me out of the car.”
“Happens a lot, I guess.”
“Not to me. Anyway, she bought it. At first, you know, I thought she was just pretending to make it easier for both of us, but she really did buy it. I was kind of messed up.”
“Like now,” Stubb said.
“I guess. I didn’t give her any big act. Just what I told you. I asked her about this college she and the other lady went to. It sounded great. When I got out, she said how far, and I said oh, ’bout eight blocks, but you wouldn’t want to go down there, and she gave me a couple of bucks for a cab.”
“You can’t hardly open the door of a cab for two bucks.”
“I don’t think she gets downtown much.”
“Tell me about coming back to Free’s.”
The fat girl belched again, letting out the air with a puff of smoke. “Jim, am I walking all right?”
“Good enough.”
“She knew I was a little—you know. Tippy.”
“Tipsy.”
“I didn’t laugh or do anything crazy, but she must have smelled it on me. I think I cried a little.”
“She’d expect you to.”
“Uh huh. Do we want to catch up with them?”
“No. Let’s just keep them in sight.”
“Then we ought to slow down a little. This thing’s heavy anyhow.”
“Sure.”
“I was all messed up, see? I’d spent the whole damn evening, and all I had was three bucks to show for it. I didn’t have anywhere to stay.”
“Yeah.”
“And I remembered—you know? Once in my life I had come over everybody. You remember when they came in and I was sitting there all slicked down with Johnson & Johnson’s? They just about went bananas. You remember, Jim?”
“Sure I remember.”
“One time eight of them tried to pick me up and they couldn’t do it. Then that captain, that smart fucker, said to put me in the rug. And the rug tore.”
The fat girl began to giggle, and for a time it seemed she might never stop. Her chins jiggled as if each knew some joke of its own, and her belly, to which she pressed the flight bag and a hand like a plump, pink starfish, jerked up and down uncontrollably.
“They finally got me out—did you see it? They handcuffed my hands and feet so they could stick their arms through without them slipping out. It hurt like hell. How many were there?
“Carrying you? Six.”
“And that captain threw the rug over me. It was a good thing he did. The benches in those paddywagons are metal, and I put the rug down and sat on it.”
“They must have brought your clothes,” Stubb said.
“Uh huh. Except my boots, because I lost them last night.”
“You didn’t have them when you got back to Free’s.”
“I don’t remember seeing you, Jim. I don’t even remember going home.” Her merriment faded.
“I heard you on the steps. I went out to see if you had cigarettes.”
“Did I?”
“Yeah, you gave me one.”
“How was I?”
“Okay. Pretty tight, sure, but okay except for not having shoes.” Stubb tried to shrug. “Hey, how about changing sides with this thing? My arm’s giving out.”
They set down the witch’s suitcase, walked solemnly around it, and picked it up again. Barnes turned to look back at them, waved, and hurried on.