Ten Cents a Dance (12 page)

She was right, and for a while I was sorry. I'd do better, I'd be sweet to the customers. Then the band swung into the Trot for the umpteenth time, and I wished they would all go home.

The weather got colder. We got a dusting of snow. In the Yards, it lasted just long enough to turn into blackish-gray lumps before it melted. We never had white snow for long, not with the soot from the trains and packinghouse incinerators. Betty took to rolling herself inside one of the blankets, like a cocoon, so that when I got into bed my chilly skin wouldn't touch hers.

The night after Thanksgiving, Tom came to the Starlight. He didn't dance with me at all. Just sat, smoking one cigarette after another. Which was strange all by itself; I'd never seen him smoke more than one cigarette, and usually not even that.

After hours, he was outside waiting for me just as usual. He seemed different, though. I could feel it, like static on a phone line. A hum of tension. At the steakhouse he hardly touched his food. And then there was the way he looked at me. I didn't mind him staring, at least not much. He always stared. But tonight, he stared everywhere but at me. His gaze darting at me from time to time, like a snake's tongue flicking. Every time I looked away, I felt it.

Well, whatever mood he was in, I hoped it wouldn't stop him from loaning me a little more money. I had a dry cleaning bill to pay. I should've had enough, but somehow it had all gotten spent. I decided to wait to ask until we were in the cab, going back to the Starlight. Tom got sentimental then. He'd talk about how much it hurt him, seeing a kid like me trying to make it all alone in the world. How he hated to leave me at the end of the night. He'd beg me to let him see me home. I always refused. Peggy had taught me that. Don't ever let a fish know where you live, she said. You never know when one will take it into his head to pay you a visit. I guessed that if a fish paid your rent—like Yvonne's did—it might be a different story. Peggy had laughed. "That," she'd said, "is a whole different book."

I still had half a steak on my plate when Tom reached over and took my hand.

"Let's get out of here," he said.

His fingers were rough and tight on mine. I smiled at him and tried to loose my arm. He wouldn't let go. "I need to go powder my nose," I said.

"You're fine. Come on." He got up, still holding my hand.

In the cab, Tom gave the driver an address I didn't recognize. "Where's that?" I asked.

"No place," Tom said. "A club."

I frowned. The cabbies knew every night spot in Chicago, so unless a club was new, like Lily's, a man just told the cabbie its name. Tom slipped his arm around me. "Don't worry," he said. "You'll like it."

Outside, the tires whooshed over the wet streets. Here, inside, it was warm and dark. Tom bent his head and kissed me.

He didn't kiss as well as Manny, not a tenth as well as Paulie. But I never kissed anyone I didn't like, and I supposed I liked Tom well enough. He was even handsome, in a deep-eyed, long-jawed sort of way.

The kiss ended. I sighed and laid my head on his shoulder.

"How's your mother?" he asked.

Surprised, I twisted my neck to look at him. He'd never asked about Ma before. But this would make it even easier than usual. "She's okay, I guess," I said. "Really, it's nothing." That slick weasel Artie had taught me, and I never forgot. Nobody likes a sob story. I'd never told Tom anything more than the fact that I had to work to support my family. He didn't even know what Ma was sick with.

"Ruby," he said. "Tell the truth now."

I sighed again. "It's the landlord," I said. I kept my tone low and flat, as if I was sick of having to think about such a horrible person. "He's raised the rent." I'd thought of it during dinner. December first was Monday, the timing was perfect. Plus I might be able to play this out. Rent day came every month, after all.

Tom's mouth pushed out as if he was thinking. "How much?" he said.

"Five dollars," I said.

"All right," Tom said. But he didn't reach for his wallet.

"Tom, really, I couldn't . . ."

"You can." Now his voice was the flat one. The cab pulled over; Tom got out, paid the cabbie, and came around to my door. "Come on," he said. I took his hand and stepped out onto the curb. Ahead of us, on the corner, was a rundown brick building. I looked up; a neon sign running down its side said, in vertical letters, HOTEL. No name. Just HOTEL.

"The club's in there?" I asked. Some hotels had them, sure. But the only ones I'd ever heard of were the ritzy places, where the swells went. Not a broken-down flytrap like this. And where were the people? At the clubs I'd been to, folks were constantly coming and going, the streets outside bustling with cabs. Here, just a few people drifted up the sidewalk. All men, every one by himself.

"Come on," Tom said again. He took my arm and steered me into the hotel lobby. It was tiny and smelled sour, like laundry that hadn't been washed. On one side was a booth, almost exactly like the ticket booth at the dance hall. Directly ahead was a flight of stairs. Tom tapped the bell sitting on the booth's counter. A sallow, tired-looking boy about my age appeared.

"For how long?" the boy asked in a bored tone.

Behind us, the door opened, and another couple crowded inside. I pressed against the wall to make room. As they pushed past, the woman bumped into me. " 'Scuse me," she said. For an instant, our eyes met. The light was bad, but I could still see the heavy rouge on her cheeks. Like a painted doll's. The man shoved ahead of Tom and slapped a dollar bill onto the counter. The boy scooped it up. "Half an hour," the man told him. The woman nudged her fellow and jerked her head at me. I edged closer behind Tom.

"Someone's cherry's gonna get popped," the woman said. The two of them whooped with laughter and staggered up the stairs, the man goosing her from behind.

"Wait outside a second, Ruby, will you?" Tom said.

I was already going. If he'd hoped to keep me from figuring out what kind of place this was, he was thirty seconds too late. I was already halfway across the street when I heard him panting behind me. "Ruby! Ruby, wait!" he called. I started to run, but he caught up to me and clapped one of his big mitts on my shoulder, spinning me half around. I slipped on the slick pavement and grabbed his coat sleeve to keep from falling.

"What the hell's the matter with you? Where are you going?" he said.

"Where do you think?" I tried to shove him, but he wrapped an arm around me, squeezing me close to his side. I squirmed, and he squeezed tighter.

"Listen to me," he said. "Listen! It's nicer upstairs. I promise."

Nicer upstairs?
Did he think it was the goddamned
drapes
I was mad about? I kicked at him and missed. Tom started back toward the hotel, dragging me with him.

"Can the act, Ruby," he said. "Time to pay the piper. Now come on."

"What act? What piper? What the hell are you talking about?" HOTEL flickered in front of me, in bright red neon. Had he gone crazy? Was this how crazy people behaved? Frantic, I swiveled my head, searching up and down the street. No cops. The few men in sight had turned to stare, but none of them came our way.

Tom hauled me up the sidewalk and pushed me back against the building. The roughness of the brick scraped my coat like sandpaper. I could feel his breath riffling my hair.

"Fool me once, shame on you," he said. "You ever hear that saying, Ruby?"

At the coldness in his voice, my anger leaked away. Leaving me hollow and shaking. I didn't know what he meant, except that he meant to make me go upstairs with him. But why? He'd always called me a sweet kid. Sweet Ruby. Not like those other girls. "I don't understand," I said. Sobs crowded my chest like bubbles, aching tight. I fought them down. Don't you dare cry, don't you dare let him see you're scared . . .

"Fool me twice, shame on me." He leaned his arm against the wall, bending down so that his face was only an inch from mine. So close, my skin felt the warmth of his. "Your rent got raised. You needed another dress. How much, Ruby?"

The money. He wasn't crazy, he was upset about the money. I almost gasped with relief.
He'll make sure you pay, one way or another.
Peggy, in the shadows of a cab, weeks ago. But I'd tried! I fumbled for my pocketbook, crumpled under my arm. "Here, Tom, look . . . I have six dollars from tonight, take it. I'll get the rest as soon as you say, I'll—"

"I work hard. Twelve hours a day. Five days a week. My wife and my kids, they deserve that money."

I blinked. The back of my throat ached from cold, and I realized my mouth had fallen open. Wife and kids? Tom was
married?

"I met you," Tom was saying, "and I thought, Here's a poor dumb kid who needs some help. So I helped you. Didn't I? And all this time, I didn't ask nothing from you."

All these weeks, boo-hooing how he couldn't get a girl to care for him. Making me feel sorry for him, while all the time he had a
wife . . .

"Tell the truth, Ruby." Leaning closer. His lips brushing my cheek. "How much of my money—my
family's
money, my
children's
money—did you spend on your nigger boyfriends?"

The cold went all through me then. All the way down in my belly, a block of ice. I started to babble. "We have to, Del makes us, we'll lose our jobs—"

Tom grabbed my shoulder. He jerked me forward, then shoved me against: the brick, banging my head hard. I gasped. Tears stung my eyes.

"Liar," Tom said. "I saw you. Two days ago. I saw you leave with those two flips, you and that brunette friend of yours." His eyes, just a few inches from mine, as narrow and cold as his voice. "Jack warned me. He told me you were nothing but a little tease. But I said, No, not Ruby. Ruby's just a kid." He laughed, short and bitter. "You sure pulled the wool over my eyes."

"You don't understand. Those men, they're not . . . We dance, that's
all.
I've never . . ."

He yanked me away from the wall. "Can it, Ruby. You've played that hand out. I'm not asking for nothing you haven't already done. Nothing I haven't paid for already, a dozen times over. I'm through talking. Let's go."

The woman in the hotel. The blonde on the sidewalk in front of Lily's. Tom thought I was like them. He'd make me go upstairs with him, and after that—I would be like them. Ma . . .

"No, I
won'tl"
I shouted. I twisted away, but he grabbed both my hands. I spit in his face. I'd never spit at anything before, and a lot ended up on my chin, but I must have got him because he jerked back with a disgusted
<(Aargh!"
I wrenched my arms loose and ran.

"Ruby!" he yelled. "Ruby, come back here!"

Fat chance. I glanced behind and saw him stumbling after me, scrubbing at one eye with his sleeve. Good. I hoped I'd blinded him. As I turned back around, I ran into one of the men drifting on the street. He grinned at me, slimy as the man in the hotel, and grabbed at my arm. I yelped and dodged away. Behind me, Tom hollered, "Hey! Leave her alone!"

I skittered out into the street. A cab was coming, its light off. I waved anyway, both arms over my head. It stopped and I scrambled inside, slamming the door just as Tom caught up. He pounded on the window.

"Ruby! We're coming back here, we're finishing this thing!"

"Go to hell!" I yelled through the glass. What was wrong with the cabbie, why weren't we moving? I leaned forward and drummed my fingers on the cabbie's shoulder. "Go, please!"

"Where to?" he said.

"Just
go!"
I shouted, at the same time Tom yelled, "You bitch, I'm gonna get what I paid for!" The cab started rolling. More pounding on the window. "Fifty-three dollars, Ruby! You hear me? Fifty-three dollars' worth, flat on your back!"

That louse, that no-good rotten jerk . . . I grabbed the first thing in my pocketbook I could find and rolled the window down, fast jerks. Tom was already a few feet behind, standing in the middle of the street. "You better see this thing through," he shouted, "or I'll tell that boss of yours what a whore you are, and he'll kick your ass out on the street! What'll happen to your poor sick mother then, huh?"

I leaned out the window and threw the thing in my hand. It flew a yard wide of his head but he ducked anyway, hands in front of his face. The last thing I saw was the compact shattering on the pavement, powder exploding in a pale cloud. Then the cabbie hit the gas and I fell back inside. Freezing wind roared over me. The sobs I'd stuffed down broke free, wracking me in two.

TEN

T
he next morning I slipped out of the flat without Ma or Betty seeing me. I couldn't face them. Not with Tom's words still careening through my head.
Liar. Tease. Whore.
Just remembering made me feel fouler than the packinghouse ever had.

My heels rang on the frozen sidewalks. Up and down Honore Street, lights glowed behind window curtains. Neighbors clumping down their front stoops waved or tipped their hats to me. I hurried past. Ashamed to look at them, as if Tom's words were branded on my skin.

Fifty-three dollars! Was he lying? He must be lying. I'd lain awake the rest of the night, trying to tally how much money he'd given me, where it had gone. Every time I thought I'd accounted for it all, I remembered something else. Like the dress I'd bought this week: a moss green wool crepe de chine with a matching leather belt. Not from Reinhard's, either—I'd bought it full price, from Goldblatt's, the neighborhood department store, because I'd seen it in the window and it looked cute. And the shoes I was wearing this minute, brown leather oxfords, with darling wide Cuban heels. I'd taken the money to pay for them out of my new change purse. My old one had been fine, but this was embroidered all over in white and blue beads, with a blue silk lining, and when I saw it, I couldn't resist. Hair ornaments and nylons and earrings . . . I pictured my locker at the Starlight, stuffed with things I couldn't bring home because I'd never be able to explain where I got the money, and guilt wrung my stomach like poison.

I'd meant to get us out of the Yards. Fifty-three dollars could have been a month's rent in a nice flat, in a nice neighborhood with trees and clean air. Fifty-three dollars could have been doctors' visits and medicines for Ma, or half a year's tuition at a good parish school for Betty. Fifty-three dollars should be filling the pillowcase under the bed. Instead, I had barely enough to fill the pay envelope tomorrow.

We're coming back here,
Tom had said.
We're finishing this thing.

"Well, look what the cat dragged in," Angie said when her mother called her to the door. Angie was still in her flowered housecoat, her hair wrapped up in pin curls and tied under a net. It made her cheeks look wider, her face more kittenish. Commotion poured out of the kitchen behind her, kids' voices swooping and diving.

"We're eating breakfast, Ruby, would you like some?" Mrs. Wachowski asked. She was short, like Angie, but where Angie was delicate, Mrs. Wachowski was solid as a kielbasa, her face almost as red.

Angie swept toward me and pushed me back out the door. "Go finish eating, Ma. This'll only take a minute." She closed the door behind us. We stood on the stair landing that led down to the street, Angie facing me, her arms wrapped tight against the cold.

"What'd you come here for?" she said. "To say you're sorry again?"

"No," I said.

Angie's face tightened. She spun around and put her hand on the doorknob.

"Wait!" I said. "Angie, I'm in trouble. I need to talk to you."

She hesitated. Turned her head just a sliver. "What kind of trouble?"

I didn't answer. She glanced at me over her shoulder, biting the inside of her cheek, the way she always did when she wasn't sure.

"Please," I said. "You're the only one I can tell."

For another breath, she didn't say anything. Then she nodded.

Angie shared a room with three younger sisters. Her little brothers slept on the sofa in the parlor. Seven kids in all, including Clara. Angie envied me having only one sister, but I loved the Wachowskis' hullabaloo. Always something going on, jokes or fights or secrets. Never boring, never quiet. All my life I wished I was one of four, six, eight kids, like every other family I knew.

Angie's sister Reena was in their room. Angie kicked her out, slammed the door on her complaining and hollering, then snapped on the radio so Reena couldn't hear us talking. "Woodchopper's Ball" jumped into the air, good and loud. Angie swiped a pile of clothes off the nearest bed. Sitting down, she eyed my brown oxfords. "Those are kind of cute," she said.

"Thanks. I like your necklace."

That made her smile. She lifted the silver cross from her chest, tucking her chin to look down at it. "Isn't it pretty? Stan Dudek gave it to me yesterday. We're going together. Almost two weeks now." She looked up at me. "I didn't think you'd care. You never seemed to be interested in him one bit, and he's been so sweet to me . . ."

"No, I think it's wonderful," 1 said. "Really.'' Angie and Stan Dudek! When just three weeks ago she'd been crazy for Steve Bajovinas, from Holy Cross parish. What else had changed I didn't know about?

"I know it's awfully fast, but we're thinking about getting married." Angie let the cross fall, stroked it against her skin. "Stan's pop can get him a good place on the beef kill. Skinner would be best, but they'd probably make him start lower, you know, a shack ler or a driver . . ."

Tossing around the words like she knew what they meant. Angie'd never been in a packinghouse in her life. I dropped my coat and pocketbook on the pile of clothes and wandered to the window.

"So what happened?" Angie asked. 'Your ma find out about the dance hall?"

I brushed aside the window curtain, although I knew the view outside as well as my own: the narrow alley, the gray two-flat next door. Now that 1 was here, I didn't know how to start. We'd shared all our secrets in this room. But never anything like this.

"I've got this customer . . . ," I began.

" 'Customer'?" Angie interrupted. "That doesn't sound very romantic."

You have no idea.
"Sometimes the cus— . . . the men, you know, they take us out. After the hall closes."

"Really?" Sharp with sudden interest. "Where? Have you been to the Aragon?"

The Aragon wasn't even open at two in the morning, didn't she know that? "No, just clubs. And restaurants. So I was out with this man, and he . . . well, he propositioned me."

"Are you in love with him?"

"No!"

"Is he in love with you?"

I hesitated. Tom, in love with me? The way he watched me all the time, the way he got jealous . . . I didn't know what to call it, but I didn't think it was love. If it was, it sure wasn't any kind I wanted.

Angie had flopped onto her stomach and was digging through a stack of magazines by the side of her bed. She sat up with a copy
of Love Fiction Monthly
in her hand.

"Where is that . . . oh. Here." She sat up straight, one leg tucked under her, and began to read.
"In these modern days, any girl who spends time with a fellow is sure to be asked a certain question
—
but not the one she hopes for! The answer to this particular question, of course, is No
. . ."

"Angie, that's not . . ."

"No, wait, listen:
Pretending not to understand what he means often does the trick
. . ."

Not understand what he meant? After a prostitute laughed at me in the hotel, after Tom yelled those horrible words at me? "Angie—"

" . . .
especially when accompanied by a show of innocent confusion.
"

Not to mention a compact hurled out the window of a taxicab. I remembered the way he'd ducked—like I'd fired a gun at him, for Pete's sake!—and my mouth twitched up at the corners. I felt a twinge of satisfaction, like a tiny flame licking across dank coal.

"Just because a girl gets a proposition now doesn't mean she won't get a proposal later
—
maybe from the very same fellow, if she plays her cards right!"

Angie dropped the magazine to her lap, her expression triumphant.

"Oh, for goodness' sake, Angie. He's married!"

"Married?"

The song on the radio ended, and in the fade of music the word
married
rang out like a church bell. Angie leaped up and switched stations. A commercial for Lux soap boomed.

"You didn't say he was
married,"
she hissed at me.

"Yeah, well, you didn't let me finish. But listen, it's not just that." I sank down next to her and covered my face with my hands. Then dropped them to my lap. Hiding wouldn't help. "He says . . . he says I have to. He says I owe him. Because I borrowed money from him and spent it and now I can't pay him back." It sounded even worse, out loud.

Angie didn't say anything. I was afraid to look at her. Then: "How much money?"

"Fifty-three . . . Mother Mary on a shingle, Ruby, how could you?"

"I had to! You don't understand, you don't have to worry about . . . about coal. Or food." I pushed away the thought of my locker at the Starlight. "Anyway, compared to some of these other girls . . . " I told her about Yvonne's fish paying her rent. About Nora's bump and tickle. Angie listened, not saying a word, her eyes wide. When I described the scams Yvonne and some of the other girls pulled, promising to do things for money, then scramming with the dough before the chumps wised up, she raised her hands like a wall.

"Stop," she said. "Don't tell me any more." She stood up and crossed to the mirror and began undoing her pin curls.

"But see, borrowing money from a fi—a customer— that's practically nothing." I hadn't mentioned Manny, or the black and tans. She didn't need to hear about that. "I mean, I know I shouldn't have. But I did, and he's being awful about it, and now what am I supposed to do?"

"Don't you think you should've thought of that?" She yanked a pin out of her hair and turned around. Loosened curls corkscrewed over her cheek. "You knew those other girls were bad. A married man goes to a place like that and you borrow fifty-three dollars from him, why wouldn't he expect what he expects?"

"You don't understand! I tried to pay him back before, but he—"

She threw her hands in the air. " 'You don't understand, you don't understand!' If I don't understand, then how come you're telling me all this?"

I didn't know anymore. The radio blared "One O'Clock Jump." Funny how even Benny Goodman seemed tame after Lily's. But if I told Angie that, she wouldn't know what I was talking about. Even if I explained about the black and tans, how could she understand swing so new it didn't even have a name, if she'd never heard it?
Love Fiction Monthly
and
True Confessions
and Stan and the Yards—that was all Angie understood.

"Well, it's obvious what you have to do," Angie said. "You have to quit." Her fingers dancing quick and light, one pin after the next. She rolled every scrap of her hair up, and it always took her forever to get out all the pins. "You could go back to your old job. Or anywhere, so long as it's respectable."

Respectable. No more Lily's. Back to jitterbugging with neighborhood boys at Pulaski's drugstore. Back to twelve and a quarter a week, and our gloomy narrow flat, and any chance ever getting us out of the Yards gone straight down the toilet.

"I can't quit," I said.

"You'd rather cheat men out of money? Let them . . ." She jiggled her hands tits-high.

"I told you, I don't do things like that!"

"Lie down with dogs," she said, "get up with fleas."

I made Ma's aggravated noise, her exasperated, growling sigh.

"That place has changed you," Angie said. "Listen to me. You have to quit. Find some nice boy. Stan was just saying the other day you and Hank Majewski—no, listen! He's always been crazy about you, and he's an apprentice mason now. His mother's a dragon, but you could do worse, and—Say, whatever happened with you and Paulie Suelze?"

Paulie. He'd gotten me into this mess, the creep. I didn't even want to hear his name.

"Nothing," I said. "I have to go. Don't tell anyone about this, okay? Pinkie secret, right?"

"Sure, but—Ruby, wait! What are you going to do?"

I picked up my pocketbook and coat from where I'd dropped them on the pile of clothes.

"I don't know," I said.

. . .

It wasn't until I was almost home—dragging my feet, I still didn't see how I was going to face Ma—when it hit me.

Paulie'd gotten me into this mess. Paulie could damn well get me out of it. I wasn't sure how, but I didn't care. Paulie would know what to do about Tom, never mind the details.

But how to find him? I hadn't seen him since my first week at the Starlight, six weeks ago. All I'd heard since then were the rumors Betty passed along. Something about a poolroom—or was it a tavern?—on Fiftieth. Or Forty-ninth. I played it safe and searched both streets, every poolroom between Damen and Racine, a mile in either direction. He wasn't in any of them. Or in the taverns or the saloons or the barbershops. I dodged around women sweeping their sidewalks, little kids playing tag in the streets. Everywhere I went, I asked about him. Most people shrugged. One woman crossed herself. The young men in the poolrooms grinned at each other. "Popular guy, that Paulie," one of them said. The old men glanced at me and muttered things in Polish and went back to drinking their beer.

"If you see him," I said, over and over, "tell him Ruby Jacinski's looking for him."

Almost an entire day wasted, and I was no closer to figuring out what to do about Tom than I had been last night. I went home just long enough to eat dinner. Fought with Ma over sneaking out without telling her, then fought with Betty because she'd had to scrub the kitchen floor by herself, which made her miss the matinee
of Shadow of the Thin Man.
And then Ma jumped on Betty because, after all, where did the eleven cents for the movie come from? From her big sister, that was who, who was working herself half to death keeping this family afloat, and Betty better not forget it even for a second.

I thought the guilt: might reach right up my throat and choke me. I grabbed my coat and fled for the Starlight.

It wasn't any easier there. It was Saturday, the hall packed with hundreds of men. I quickstepped and waltzed and Peabody'd like a windup doll. The band could've played "Tiptoe Through the Tulips" a dozen times in a row and Ozzie could've done a back somersault off the bandstand and I wouldn't have noticed. Every half minute, I felt a spidery tickle up the back of my neck. But every time I drummed up the nerve to look around, Tom wasn't there. "I'm the one you're dancing with, over here," one customer complained, the third time I glanced over my shoulder. He didn't tip me. I laughed at something another man said— the tone of his voice sounded like the punch line of a joke— only to realize he'd been telling me about his mother's funeral. No tip there, either.