“No. Jealous — what the hell are you talking about? What difference does it make to me what he does, once I’m out of it? But it makes me nervous. I–I wish he was somewhere else. I wish we were all somewhere else.”
She lay there for a long time, up on one elbow, looking down at me. Then she kissed me and went over to her own bed. It was daylight before I got to sleep.
Next day he was in and out half a dozen times, and the day after that, and that day after that. I began missing cues, the first sign you get that you’re not right. The voice was in shape, and I was getting across, but the prompter began throwing the finger at me. It was the first time in my life that that had ever happened.
In about a week came the invitation to the housewarming. I tried to beg out of it, said I had to sing that night, but she smiled and said gracias, we would go, and he put his arm around her and you would have thought they were pals, but I knew them both like a book, and could tell there was something back of it, on both sides. After he left I got peevish and wanted to know why the hell she was shoving me into it all the time. “Hoaney, with this man, it do you no good to run away. He see you no care, then maybe he estop. He know you have afraid, he never estop. We go. We laugh, have fine time, no care ... You care?”
“For God’s sake, no.”
“I think yes, little bit. I think we have — how you say — the goat.”
“He’s got my goat all right, but not for that reason. I just don’t want any more to do with him.”
“Then you care. Maybe not so, how he want. But you have afraid. When you no care at all, he estop. Now — we no run away. We go, you sing, be fine fallow, no give a damn. And you watch, will be all right.”
“If I have to, I have to, but Christ, I hate it.”
So we went. I was singing Faust, and I was so lousy I almost did get stuck in the duel scene. But I was washed up by ten thirty, and we came home and dressed. It wasn’t any white dress with flowers on it this time. She put on a bottle-green evening dress, and over that the bullfighter’s cape, and that embroidered crimson and yellow silk, sliding over the green taffeta, made a rustle you could hear coming, I’m here to tell you, and all those colors, over the light copper of her skin, was a picture you could look at. I put on a white tie, but no overcoat or anything, and about a quarter after eleven we stepped out and walked down the hall.
When we got in there, the worst drag was going on you ever saw in your life. A whole mob of them was in there, girls in men’s evening clothes tailored for them, with shingle haircuts and blue make-up in their eyes, dancing with other girls dressed the same way, young guys with lipstick on, and mascara eyelashes, dancing with each other too, and at least three girls in full evening dress, that you had to look at twice to make sure they weren’t girls at all. Pudinsky was at the piano, but he wasn’t playing Brahms. He was playing jazz. The whole thing made me sick to my stomach as soon as I looked at it, but I swallowed hard and tried to act like I was glad to be there.
Winston had on a purple velvet dinner coat with a silk sash knotted around it, and he brought us in like it was all for us. He introduced us, and got us drinks, and Pudinsky slammed into the Pagliacci Prologue, and I stepped up and sang it, and clowned it with as good a grin as I could get on my face. While they were still clapping, Winston turned around and began to throw the show to Juana. She still hadn’t taken off the cape, and he lifted it off her shoulders, and began going into a spasm about it. They all crowded up to look, and when he found out it was a real bullfighter’s cape, nothing would suit him but that she had to tell them all about the fine points of bullfighting. I sat down, and got this feeling it wasn’t on the up-and-up, that something was coming. I thought of Chadwick, and wondered if this was another play to show her up. But that wasn’t it. Except that Winston would put his arm around Pudinsky every time he saw me looking at him, he didn’t pull anything. He put her in the spot, and made her explain the whole routine of bullfighting, and she took the cape to show them, and she was pretty funny, and so was he. Nobody could make a woman look good better than Winston, when he wanted to. Pretty soon somebody yelled out: “How the hell does a man study to be a bullfighter, that’s what I want to know.”
Winston went down on his knees in front of Juana.
“Yes, will you tell us that? Just what are the practice exercises for a bullfighter?”
“Oh, I explain you.”
They all sat down, and Winston squatted at her feet.
“First, the little boy, he wants to be a bullfighter, yes? All little boy want to be bullfighter.”
“I always did. I do still.”
“So, I tell you how you do. You find nice burro, you know what is burro?”
“A little jackass, something like that?”
“Yes. You get little jackass, you cut two big maguey leaf, you know maguey, yes? Have big leaf, much thick, much sharp—?”
“Century plant?”
“Yes. Tie leaf on head of little jackass, make big horn, like bull— ”
“Wait a minute.”
Some woman dug up a ribbon, and Winston broke off fronds from a fern, and with the ribbon and the fern leaves, he stuck the horns on his head. Then he got down on his hands and knees in front of Juana. “Go on.”
“Yes, just so. You look much like little jackass.”
That got a shout. Winston looked up, kicked his heels, and let out a jackass bellow. It was a little funnier than it sounds.
“Then you get little stick, for espada, and little red rag, for muleta, and practice with little jackass.” Somebody dug up a silver-headed cane, and she took it, and the cape, and the two of them began doing a bullfight act in the middle of the floor. The rest of them were screeching and yelling by that time, and I was sitting there, wondering what the hell was up. The buzzer sounded. Somebody went to the door, came back, and touched me on the arm. “Telegram for you, Mr. Sharp.”
I went out in the hall.
Harry, one of the bellboys, was out there, and shoved a telegram at me. I opened it. It was nothing but a blank form shoved in an envelope. “Is the messenger still there? He’s given you nothing but a blank.”
Harry closed the door to the apartment. You could still hear them in there, screeching over the bullfight. “Let me talk quick, Mr. Sharp, so you can get back in there before anybody thinks anything. I had to have a telegram in my hand, so it would look right... There’s a man down there, waiting for you. I told him you were out. He went up to your apartment, then he came down again, and he’s down there now.”
“In the lobby?”
“Yes sir.”
“What does he want?”
“... Mr. Sharp, Tony put through three calls today for this new party, Mr. Hawes. They were all to the immigration service. Tony remembered the number from a year ago, when his brother came from Italy. Tony thinks this man is a federal, come to take Miss Montes away.”
“Is Tony on?”
“We’re both on. Get back in there, Mr. Sharp, before this Hawes gets tipped off. Get her out of there, and have her press the elevator button twice. Either me or Tony will get her out through the basement, and then you can stall this guy till she gets under cover. Tony thinks his people will take her in. They’re fans of yours.”
I had a wad of money in my pocket. I took it out and peeled off a ten. “Split that with Tony. There’ll be more tomorrow. She’ll be right down.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And thanks. More thanks than I know how to say.”
I stepped back in. I took care to be stuffing the telegram in my pocket as I came. Winston jumped up from where he was still galumphing around the floor, and came over. “What is it, Jack?”