Ten Cents a Dance (13 page)

If only I could be at Lily's! Dancing to wild, stomping music, dancing so hard I couldn't think, so hard all I could feel was my feet flying and my heart banging and my partner's hand pulling on mine—swing in close, whirl out wide, shim sham shimmy, until I was so tired I didn't care anymore about anything.

By the end of the night, Tom hadn't shown his face and I was exhausted. In the Ladies', while everyone else hurried into their street clothes, I dawdled, leaving only after everyone else had gone. Under the glare of lights, the hall seemed like nothing more than a stale-smelling box with a low ceiling and a scuffed, dusty floor. No swirling colored dots, no dark romantic corners. No illusions.

I cashed in my tickets, ignoring the grumbling of the ticket man about dames who had no respect for folks who wanted to call it a night and go home. On the stairs, I found Peggy waiting.

"Will a cab ride do the trick?" she asked. "Or are we gonna need Bennie's?"

"I'm fine," I said, edging past her. I didn't want to talk to Peggy. As far as she knew, I'd paid Tom back two weeks ago. Telling Angie had been painful enough. Peggy would make sarcastic remarks and call me a ninny, and I'd end up feeling a hundred times worse than I already did. "I just have a headache, that's all."

"A headache, huh?" Dogging my steps all the way down. "What's his name, and what's he done?"

I pushed through the door onto the sidewalk. We both clapped our hands to our hats to keep them from being blown off. "Come on," Peggy said. "You spent all night looking like the Headless Horseman was after you. The grapevine says two customers complained to Del about you. Seems like a milkshake and apple pie might do you some good."

The wind stung my eyes, making them tear up. Angie hadn't been any help. Paulie was nowhere to be found. Tomorrow, or the night after or the one after that, Tom would be back.

"Do you promise not to call me a nincompoop?" I said.

"Do you promise to take my advice?" She cocked her head at me. Then looped her arm through mine. "I'll take my chances if you will. Come on, let's get that milkshake."

At Bennie's, as soon as we ordered, Peggy sat back and lit a cigarette. "Spill it," she said.

As it turned out, telling her was easier than telling Angie. First of all, nothing surprised her. "I
knew
it," she said when I told her Tom was married. Second, I didn't have to leave anything out. When I described how I'd spit in his face, she laughed so loud a couple of high school boys across the diner turned to look. "Hey, sister, what's the joke?" one of them called.

"Your hat size," Peggy called back. "Well, go on," she said to me. "Then what?"

I told her the rest. Tom saying we were coming back to finish things. Threatening to get me fired if I didn't go with him at the hotel. I expected her to laugh at my throwing the compact. But she'd gone suddenly broody, her hazel eyes squinty at the corners.

"So this creep said he'd go to Del?" Peggy said. "And tell him what, exactly?"

"That he saw you and me leaving with Manny and Alonso and . . . you know. He'll probably tell Del I do it with all the customers." I pushed my milkshake away, my stomach suddenly sour., "It's what he thinks," I said bitterly.

Peggy tapped her cigarette into the ashtray. "No he doesn't. He wants to think it, because then he can tell himself he's right." Delicately, she pinched a speck of tobacco off the tip of her tongue. "I suppose you can't pay him back."

"Not a chance." Then, with sudden hope, "Not unless . . ."

She laughed one of her short, dry laughs. "Believe me, kid, if I had the cash I'd donate. But I've never been able to keep that much in one place in my life. I hate to say it"—she shook her head—"but you got yourself good and caught."

I'd had another spoonful of milkshake; at that, I put down the spoon, not caring it was sticky. "What do you mean, 'caught'?"

"I mean either you get canned, or you go through with it."

"Go through with
what?"

"Didn't we just have this conversation? Or did your elevator skip a floor on the way up?" She leaned forward, tapping her temple with a forefinger. "Tom, remember? The hotel?"

I stared at her. "Are you crazy? You're supposed to tell me how to get out of this!"

"I did tell you how to get out of it. Or have you forgotten that already, too?"

"I
tried
to pay him back, he wouldn't—"

"All right, all right, keep your voice down. It doesn't matter now anyway. That skunk could make up any kind of story to Del, and you'd be out like that." She snapped her fingers. "And not just the Starlight, either. Don't you know if a girl gets fired for being loose with the customers, she's done? Not a dance hall in this city will hire her." She tamped out her cigarette, the brooding look heavy again around her eyes. "And I'll tell you what else. If that weasel gets real creative, he'll make up stories about me, too. I don't know about you, but I'm not going back to the goddamn box factory for a goddamn eleven bucks a week."

"I could quit," I said.

"Yeah. You could." Blunt as a baseball bat.

Quit or get fired. I knew what lay down those paths, and I didn't like it. But to go through with it . . . looking down that road was like peering into gray fog. Six weeks ago I'd been a girl in pink dotted swiss. Now I was a different one, in silk and sequins. After the hotel with Tom, who would I be?

I didn't know who. I knew what, though. The skinny blonde on the sidewalk in front of Lily's. The woman bumping into me at the hotel. Their faces hard and painted as wood.

"My mother—," I began. And then I stopped because I'd begun to cry.
How many times have I told you, you have to be careful!

"Hey." Peggy reached across the table and took my hand. "Hey, it's not so bad. Really."

I yanked my hand away. "Yvonne has all those fish buying everything for her and paying her rent and nobody's running to Del about her! Nora, either, or Gabby or you or any of them! How come I'm the one who gets caught, huh? How come?"

"I'll thank you not to lump me in with those piranhas. And if you want to know why not, it's because their fish get something for their money and what they get is plenty more than a fox-trot. Your problem is, you tried having it both ways. It won't wash."

"But you—"

"I pay my own rent. I pick my fish careful, and I'm careful what I take. This business is a slippery sidewalk, kid. Too easy to slide right into the gutter, and too many people happy to give you the first shove."

She searched through her pocketbook, came out with a handkerchief. I wiped my eyes, my cheeks. A ghost of rouge came away on the white linen. I'd have to wash my face again at home. Illusion, Del said. Lies.

"This isn't how I expected it to be," I whispered.

Peggy sighed. "Look, I know it's not the white dress and veil. But I'll let you in on a secret." She leaned forward, matched my whisper with her own. "It's never how anyone thinks it'll be. Not even the girls who save it for the ring and the little house in Archer Heights. Maybe especially not them." She patted my hand and sat back. "Finish drying your eyes and let's go, huh? Like the lady said, tomorrow's another day."

In the cab, before she got out, she said, "You know, some girls are kind of glad to
get
it over with. Saves them having to worry about it. If you decide . . . well, anyway, I'll take you out for a drink, after. If you want."

Thank you
hardly seemed like the right thing to say. So I kept my mouth shut.

I lay awake a second night. I knew the score, but . . . maybe Paulie would come tap on the window. Say,
Hey, Ruby. I heard you were looking for me.
I waited for him, listening, thinking, maybe Peggy's right. Maybe it's not so bad. Then I'd remember that fleabag of a hotel, and Tom touching me, and I felt sick to my bones, and I knew she was as wrong as she could be.

If only it had been Paulie, not Tom . . . Of course I'd still say no. Wouldn't I? But I wouldn't feel like his hands were spiders crawling on me. I wouldn't feel like jumping out the window to get away from him.

Every five minutes, I made up my mind to quit the Starlight. Every five minutes and thirty seconds, I changed my mind back.

It shouldn't have been so hard. St. Lucia had let her eyes be gouged out rather than be forced into sin. St. Agatha had let her breasts be sliced off. Both of them walking around afterward with their cut parts on golden plates. What was bean soup, compared to that?

I prayed to Lucia and Agatha for strength. It didn't help. Maybe I was too bad of a girl already.

Paulie never came.

ELEVEN

A
s soon as Ma and Betty and I came out of Mass, I saw him. Across the street from Sacred Heart Church, leaning against a telephone pole. The wind bitter cold, but he wasn't wearing a hat. Dark blond hair, jug ears. Just standing there, one knee raised with the foot flat against the pole, reading a paper.

Betty saw him, too. I could tell from the sudden stiffness in her walk, the way she pushed her shoulders back.

After we'd walked another half block, I said, "Ma, I need to run to the candy store."

"I'll go with you!" Betty said.

"No, you won't. Tike Ma's arm. I'll be right home!"

Paulie was gone. 1 stood on the corner, peering up and clown the street.

"I heard you were looking for me," he said behind me. I spun around, my heart leaping like a clog for a biscuit.

He wore a heavy red plaid wool coat, a blue muffler. His paper tucked under one elbow. In the daylight his eyebrows seemed even paler, like ghosts of eyebrows. He had a way of looking out from under them, without raising his head. I smiled at him. He didn't smile back.

Last night, when I'd hoped he'd appear under my window, I'd pictured him grinning up at me. I'd rehearsed a dozen things to say. But his gray eyes glanced past my shoulder, like he was already thinking ahead to whatever came after me, and my breath skimmed high in my throat from nerves. I couldn't remember anything.

"So, what'd you want?" he said.

"Just . . . to see you," I answered.

"Yeah, well, you're seeing me," he said. "You and everyone in your parish. Come on, let's get out of here." He led me into an alley that ran between two rows of flats. "Scram," he told a nest of boys playing craps. They did, disappearing behind the fences and sheds of the back lots. One kid lingered by a fence post, watching us. Paulie feinted at him, and the kid vanished.

"Thank you for the dress," I blurted out.

The boys had grabbed up their money before they ran, but a penny glinted on the pavement. Paulie picked it up, flipped it high, and caught it. "That why you decided to make me a laughingstock in every poolroom in the Yards? To say thanks?" He shot a look at me sideways. "That's all I been hearing since yesterday. Some little girl running around yelling my name. You know how dumb that makes me look?"

Little girl? Was that a little girl's gown he'd given me? I opened my mouth to ask, but before I got a word out, he said, "Don't come running after me like that. That's all I got to say." He slipped the penny into his trouser pocket and walked away.

He was leaving. While I stood here like an idiot.

"You didn't come here just to tell me that!" I yelled after him. Part of me—
squirt, baby
—expected him to keep walking. But he
had
given me that gown, not just any gown but one that made the men at the Starlight head for me like bees to a flower, and a bigger part of me knew he'd seen the dark, smoky blue and imagined me in it, and that's why he'd come here when he heard I was looking for him.

He kept walking, two more steps. Another and he'd be on the street.

He turned around.

I felt a blaze of triumph, as scorching and quick as a blush. But I didn't grin. I didn't smirk. He was coming back now, his head turned a little so that he was looking at me from the narrow corners of his eyes, and I tipped my chin up and watched him and I didn't say anything.

He stopped a few feet from me. "All right, since you know so much," he said, "why
did I
come here?"

"Because you like me," I said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

His pale eyebrows lifted. "Oh, that's so, huh? And what makes you think that?"

I didn't say anything. He took two more steps. One more and we'd practically be touching.

"The dress is beautiful," I said.

His gaze fell down the length of me. He nodded. "Yeah," he said, "I thought it would look good on you."

I let myself smile then. He did, too, slowly, like a fanned ember warming to life. His eyes roaming over my face. The flecks of color, deep in the gray, just the same as I remembered.

He took the last step.

Both arms around me. I let him pull me close. His gaze flicked from my mouth to the top of my head and back again. He pushed a curl of my hair behind my shoulder, and then he kissed me. Longer and deeper than the first time, the night we'd met. His hands moved slow, hard, across my back. I wound my arms behind his neck, ran my fingers up through his hair. Against the dark of my closed eyes, yellow lights danced.

A sudden hooting made my eyes fly open. A few feet away, on the sidewalk, the boys he'd chased away leaped around, scratching their sides like monkeys. Paulie bent down and grabbed a stone and the boys took off running. He winged the stone at them. One of them yelped.

"Punks," Paulie muttered. He turned me so my back was against a rough wood fence. I felt a moment's panic; it felt too much like Tom, the other night. Trapped. But Paulie bent down and kissed me again and when I tasted him, cigarettes and earth, 1 forgot Tom. Paulie unbuttoned the top buttons of my coat.

"I do like you," he murmured. "You like me?"

I smiled again. "When you're nice 1 do." 1 felt dizzy with how beautiful he was. His hand slipped inside my coat, drifted over my left breast, cupped underneath. I should be mad. I should tell him to stop. Only I didn't want him to.

His voice murmured on, buzzing in my ear. "You let all the nice fellows do this?"

I shoved him hard, making him stagger back half a step. Then I stormed past him, wrapping my coat tight. Jerk, what'd he have to go and ruin it for? In that second all of it had come pouring back, Tom, the hotel, the whole stupid mess. "Hey!" he yelled. He dodged in front of me, blocked my way. "What are you getting mad for? I ain't some dumb joe, I know what racket you're in."

"At least I'm not a low-down thief!"

"Didn't stop you from wearing that dress, did it?"

"I take it back. I don't like you. I hate you. If I'm in a racket, it's your fault, and it's your fault the trouble I'm in!" I tried ducking past him, but Paulie caught me around the waist.

"Wait a minute. Hold on. What trouble?"

"Forget it. Let me go!" I hauled my fist back, but he grabbed it.

"You hit me again," he said, "you'll wish you hadn't. I didn't think you'd chased me all around the Yards just to say thanks for some lousy dress. What is it?"

I told him. When I was done, he reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. Three twenties, counted, folded, and on top of them a matchbook he dug out of his coat. He held the money and the matchbook out to me. I didn't take them.

"I ain't one of your fish," he said. "You think I have to pay girls to like me?"

I stared at the money. Shook my head.

"Look, it's a gift. Like the dress. You took that, right?"

He had a point. But still . . . "Why?" I asked.

"You just told me, didn't you? I guess I like you." He smiled his rumpled smile. "No strings," he said. "I swear."

I took the money. His fingers were warm, just like they had been the first time we'd met.
Ed's Garage,
the matchbook said on the cover, in plain black letters, and underneath, a phone number. "You need me again," he said, "don't go shouting my name all over. Call there and leave a message. They'll make sure I get it."

. . .

Tom didn't come to the Starlight that night, either. Having Sunday dinner with his wife and kiddies, no doubt. Monday was my night off. When he didn't show up Tuesday, I thought maybe I was home free. But I figured I'd give it another week. If he hadn't come by then, I'd return Paulie's sixty dollars. I was through spending money that didn't belong to me, on things it wasn't intended to buy. Peggy told me I was being commendable.

When we stepped out of the Starlight Tuesday night, though, there Tom was, waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs.

"I've got a cab waiting." He looked at Peggy, half a step behind me. "Tell your friend to get lost."

"Why, hello, Tom," I said. "I'm doing swell, how nice of you to ask."

That shamed him a little. He shifted his feet and licked his lips. "Yeah, well," he said. He jerked his head toward the street. "Let's go."

When you offer to give something to someone, they don't think fast enough to refuse. I held out my hand and Tom, frowning, reached out his. I slapped Paulie's money into his open palm. He blinked, his mouth hanging open, like I'd just forked over a horse turd.

"What the hell is this?" he said.

"What does it look like?"

He fanned the bills in his fingers. "This doesn't get you off the hook. What about all those dinners I bought you? What about all that cab fare? You gonna pay all that back, too?"

"She doesn't owe you for that and you know it," Peggy said. She'd stuck behind me like a barnacle on a boat; that was our plan. "You loaned her cash and she paid you back. So scram."

"I don't take marching orders from whores," Tom said.

"Good thing we're not, then," I said.

"You'll take them from O'Malley," Peggy chimed in. Shoulder to shoulder with me, cool as butter out of the icebox. "O'Malley doesn't like customers who bother the girls."

Tom licked his lips again. "I'll go to your boss," he said. Less sure, but not ready to give up yet. "I'll tell him you're both whores. I'll tell him the hotel was your idea. I'll tell him I've seen you there with dirty flips."

"You go to my boss," I said, "I'll go to your wife."

That surprised him. Then he smirked. "As if you—"

"Mrs. Thomas Eames," I said. "STEwart-3358."

It was hard to tell, under the streetlight, but I thought he went pale. "You bitch," he said. His tone a mix of mad and uncertain. He settled on mad. "You stinking
bitch"
He took a step toward us, and Peggy and I scuttled backward to the door. I opened it, hollered, "O'Malley!" Tom stopped.

"You keep quiet, we keep quiet," I said. "You make up a bunch of lies about us . . . " I paused—let him stew, just for a second. ". . . then we tell the truth about you."

I sounded tough. Inside, I was shaking. We were bluffing about O'Malley; it was his night off. We'd had Underwood, a string bean of a retired cop who'd skedaddled as soon as the band stopped playing. If Tom decided to get rough . . .

He shoved the money in his pocket. That was when I knew it was over.

"Goddamn whores," he said. He spit on the sidewalk in front of our feet. When he stalked away, I yelled after him, "STEwart-3358! Hear that, Tom? Don't ever come back!" When he got in his cab and slammed the door, I felt like I could Lindy Hop across Lake Michigan. I felt like I could grab the moon right down out of the sky. Paulie may have given me the money, but I'd put in the fix, and I'd won.

"Now that we got you out of this jam," Peggy said, "try to keep your nose clean, huh?"

I whooped and gave her a lip-smack on the cheek so loud she jumped and rubbed the spot, laughing. "You got it, sister," I said.

With Tom went all my worries. We had coal, we had meat, and now that the back rent was paid off—our last debt—we were even getting milk delivered again, for Betty to pour over her Rice Krispies and all of us to stir into our coffee. The lines in Ma's face didn't go away, but they eased some. I was spending a lot more time with Ma now than Betty. Between her school and my work, practically the only time I saw my little sister was when she was asleep. I missed her, and worse, I felt guilty. I paraded in satin and silk every night, going to clubs, while she was stuck in worn wool skirts and cotton blouses, working math problems in the circle of light on the kitchen table. I couldn't buy her a new wardrobe—but I did buy her first pair of nylons. When she saw them, she squealed so loud Ma almost came in our room, afraid one of us had hurt ourselves. I had to run out and tell her Betty had only seen a spider. "I better go kill it," I said, then went back to show Betty how to unroll the seams nice and straight up the backs of her legs.

Best of all, though: the trouble with Tom threw me straight into Paulie's arms.

He called for me at Hirsch's candy store. Didn't leave his name, just said to call Ed's Garage. When I got him on the phone, he said, "Hey, squirt. Want to go to the movies?"

The next day, and every day for the rest of that week, we met at Peoples Theater. Peoples was the fanciest movie house in the neighborhood, as fancy as any uptown in the Loop. Me and my friends never went there much— the Olympia was smaller and closer—but as a place to meet Paulie it was perfect: so enormous and so crowded, even during the day, I doubted anyone I knew would spot me. Three afternoons in a row, I waited for him under the huge scalloped awning. Inside, Paulie bought us Hershey's bars or Old Nicks and sodas. Then, our hands full, we fumbled past people's knees to empty seats in the last few rows, far from the housewives and the little kids. We always arrived in the middle of
Tarzan's Secret Treasure. It
didn't matter. We didn't watch. All through the movie we kissed like fiends, Paulie's hands sliding under my blouse, Johnny Weissmuller and Maureen O'Sullivan ten feet high on the screen, the screeching of Cheetah the chimp a beautiful nonsense noise in my ears. After the credits rolled, we sat back and ate and watched the cartoon and the newsreel. We left before the second feature started, so that I could get home and help Ma make dinner before I left for work.

I loved Paulie. I knew because when I kissed him, the world disappeared. All that was left was him. His warm hard hands and his lips and his tongue. I wanted to climb inside him. Every time he left and I watched him go I felt raw, as if part of me had been cut away and the rest of me left open. I'd never felt that with anyone before, not Tom or Manny, not any of the boys I'd kissed in school. The way he looked at me sometimes, I thought I made him feel the same way: staring like he was trying to memorize every bit of me, the light from the movie flickering over his face, staring like he would devour me if he could.

Surely only love could do that.

Before Paulie, I'd liked spending time with Ma every day, just the two of us, talking while we worked, gossiping about the neighbors, sipping coffee at the kitchen table when the chores were done. She told stories I'd never heard before, about when we were little, before Pop died. Or from even further before, how they met and fell in love. The scandal of a boy with a Polish name marrying a girl with an Irish name. The uproar in the families, the tears and threats from all my grandparents.