Sheba, page 10
Monica also kicked at him but she missed.
“You shut your damned mouth,” she said savagely. “You’ve had too much to say all night.”
Toby got to his feet.
“I’m taking off,” he said to Roger. “You can fool around here if you want to but it isn’t for me. We wasted two bottles of gin and an evening. Hell, the girls in school would give you more than you can get from these two dames.”
“I guess you’re right,” Roger said.
“Right? I know I’m right. If the babe on the swing with you hasn’t been playing with the landlady I miss my guess.”
Monica was suddenly furious.
“You’re bastards,” she said. “Both of you. You get what I’m saying? Bastards!”
“You’re drunk,” Roger said.
“Not as drunk as you’d like to have me, am I?”
He didn’t know what to say to that.
“You cheap bum,” Monica told him. “I meet you in a bar and you think you’ve bought the night. Grow up, sonny. Life is passing you by. It takes more than two bottles of gin to make this girl come around.”
“What does it take?”
“Fifty bucks and you haven’t got it.”
“Fifty bucks!”
“Fifty bucks or you don’t get past the infield.”
Toby started to kick the bottle over and then decided against it.
“Nuts to her,” he said. “Let’s catch the bars while they’re still open.”
“Chippie!” Roger flung at Monica. “You cheap little tramp! You show your legs, pick a guy up and let him think that he’s got a chance.”
“It was your idea and not mine,” she told him. “I was just having a drink and you made the pass. What do you expect for two bottles of gin — a woman’s honor?”
“Oh, man, that’s a laugh,” Roger said. “That’s the biggest laugh of them all.”
“Let’s get out of here,” Toby said. “We’ve wasted our gin and our time. Why waste anything more?”
Roger nodded and for a moment Sheba thought he was going to slap Monica.
“Teaser!” he said and walked away.
After the two had gone the night became quiet.
“What was that about?” Sheba asked.
“Two guys on the make.”
“But I thought you went steady.”
“Steady — hell. I go with the guy when he’s got a buck and when he doesn’t I stop. Now he’s laid off.”
“How did you meet those two?”
“I met Roger in a bar and he brought the other one along. He wanted a girl and I thought there would be somebody around but there wasn’t — at least, not any girls who didn’t already have fellows. Candy — that’s Mrs. Reeves — was sitting here on the porch and I asked her up to the room for a drink. We had a few drinks up there and she did a strip. She used to work in night clubs. Did you know that?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Have another gin.”
“Well — okay.”
“Sure, she was a stripper until she burned one of her legs and it left a scar. She met this fellow Reeves and she married him. Nobody knows where he is now. He came home one night and found her in bed with some woman and that cooked him. He left her the house and pulled out. Once he wrote for some money but she didn’t send it to him and I don’t think he’s ever written again.”
After the rye the gin had a funny taste to it but there was something cool and smooth about it, too. Sheba had never drunk gin before and the first had gone through her blood, touching the nerve ends and bringing her alive.
“Sit down,” Monica said.
Sheba sat down on the swing and Monica poured herself another drink, adding a cube of ice to the glass.
“Those fellows got fooled,” she said.
“I guess they did.”
“That’s the trouble with men — they buy you a few drinks and they think they’ve bought your body. It doesn’t go with me. For a few drinks a man gets a kiss or two, that’s all. If it goes beyond that he pays.”
Sheba was shocked.
“You wouldn’t!”
Monica laughed and stretched out her legs. She had long legs and they were bare and white.
“Oh, wouldn’t I? You don’t know this girl. I learned a long time ago that you either give it away or you sell it. And I don’t give it away. I hate men just enough to make them pay.”
“I thought it was the girl who paid,” Sheba said.
“Not in dollars and cents.”
“I couldn’t ever do that.”
“You could if you had to.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Or you would if you had been brought up the way I was brought up. My mother married a man a lot younger than she was — twenty-two — and I was sixteen. My mother worked in a factory and he stayed around the house, drinking beer. At first he only drank in the afternoon, but then he began drinking in the mornings, too. I was going to school at the time and I used to get home about an hour and a half before my mother did. One day I came home and took a shower — I couldn’t lock the door because the lock was broken — and he came into the bathroom, very drunk, and made me submit to him. I was afraid to tell my mother, scared about what I had let him do, and every day when I came home from school he made me do the same thing. I was going with a nice boy at the time but I was so ashamed of myself that I broke off with him and I never saw him again. All this time my stepfather was after me and it got so that at night, after my mother was asleep, he would get up and come into my room and stay until almost daylight. One night my mother woke up, sick, and she found out what we were doing. She didn’t blame him. She blamed me. She said I was a rotten little slut and kicked me out. I never did finish school, but by that time I had taken shorthand and typing and I was able to get jobs in offices. Every job I had somebody tried to make me and I got so sick of men I didn’t know what to do. I lost one job after another because I wouldn’t and then, suddenly, I didn’t have any work at all or any references to help me get a job. I started hanging around bars and picking up men. I made them pay. I don’t feel bad about it. If it hadn’t been me it would have been somebody else. You can take things just so long but after a while you have to try and beat the world down to your size.”
She continued to talk, every word carrying her hatred for men, and Sheba felt sorry for her. Men, men, men. The female universe spun around men and the things they did. Men, even supposedly good men, saw a trim pair of legs and a thrusting bosom and right away they believed that the girl should belong to them. They were the masters and the women were the slaves. Or was it the other way around? Weren’t most men slaves to a woman’s flesh? Wouldn’t most men do anything to take what they wanted? Gregg had gotten her drunk, forced her, and her experience with Fred had been even worse. And just this night, a man had tried again, It was easy for her to feel hate for what had happened to her, easy for her to understand what Monica was saying. Men ruled powerfully and terribly — but in the end they were weaklings. Woman’s body was the castle of love, the pinnacle of physical pleasure. No man could ever offer so much. No man could ever give so much.
“I despise them,” Monica said.
“So do I.”
“Animals.”
A car went past the house and a boy and girl sat very close on the front seat. They were probably headed for the mountain where the boy would try to take from the girl that which pleased him.
“It’s hot,” Monica said, interrupting Sheba’s train of thought.
“Very.”
It was hot and close, and the darkness of the night was filled with the heat of the day.
“Let’s have another gin,” Monica said.
“All right.”
“They say gin is a hot weather drink but I’m damned if I can tell.”
“Nor me.”
They filled their glasses with ice and gin and drank silently.
“I can’t stand this any longer,” Monica said after a while. “I’m going to take off my blouse.”
“Out here?”
“Sure. What’s the difference if it’s a bra or a halter?”
“None, I guess.”
“Sometimes when I sit here at night, trying to get cool, I even take off my bra.”
“You don’t!”
“I do. No one can see from the street, and if anybody ever comes out of the house I can always cover up.”
Monica slid out of the blouse and placed it on the swing beside her.
“To hell with it,” she said, reaching behind her.
“That’s better,” she said in a moment. “That’s a hell of a lot better.” She laughed. “If those fellows could only see me now.”
“They’d get their money’s worth.”
“Would they?”
“You know they would. You’ve got a nice shape.”
“Not as good as yours.”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
“I would. In that red dress you’re out of this world. I’ll wager there isn’t a guy who sees you who doesn’t want to take you.”
“Oh, come now!”
“Have another drink.”
“All right.”
“It’s still hot.”
“Yes, it is but there isn’t much more you can do about it.”
“I could take off my skirt.”
“That would leave you almost naked.”
“What if it did?”
“It would be as bad as me taking off my dress.”
“Why don’t you and be comfortable?”
“I wouldn’t dare do that out here.”
“We could go up to my room. I’ve got a fan up there.”
“Have you?”
“One of those fans that doesn’t make any noise and that turns around. I put it near the window and let it blow on my bed.”
“That’s the life.”
“I sleep in the raw and it feels good on my skin.”
Sheba nodded and stared at the bottle. First the bottle seemed to be one place and then it seemed to be another. She blinked her eyes but it didn’t help. She was getting tight, tighter than she had ever been before, and she knew it. But she didn’t care. She didn’t have to worry about any men and it was nice on the porch. And Monica was nice.
“We’d better finish up the gin,” Monica said.
“I shouldn’t have any more.”
“Feeling it?”
“Plenty.”
“Give me your glass.”
“Well — ”
One more wouldn’t hurt, one more wouldn’t matter. She would be herself by morning and if she was late getting to work nothing would be said to her. She no longer worked in the office and she didn’t have to punch a clock.
“Here’s to it,” Monica said.
“Here’s to luck.”
“And to me getting that job.”
“And to you getting that job. But I don’t think you have to worry.”
“I always worry.”
“What about?”
“Things.”
“Who doesn’t?”
“The gin is all gone,” Monica said, lifting the bottle. “Not a drop left.”
“It’s just as well.”
“I guess it is.”
Monica rolled the bottle over against the railing and pulled her skirt way up over her knees.
“You heard what that Toby called me?” Monica asked.
“Yes.”
“Did you believe him?”
“I didn’t think anything about it.”
The skirt went higher and higher and Sheba could see the pale white thighs, soft and smooth. For some reason she wanted to reach out and touch the softness, to feel the smoothness. Never before had she felt this way, never. She closed her eyes briefly, picturing the muscles in a man’s legs, and she felt repelled. Here was ripeness, the full blooming of womanhood. She opened her eyes and tried not to stare. But those legs were so long, so straight, so perfectly formed. Again her hands yearned to reach out and touch and again she fought the impulse down. It would be wrong, wrong, and from such behavior could come nothing but suffering.
“You like?” Monica inquired softly.
“Don’t!”
Monica laughed. “You do like. I can see it in your eyes, the way your mouth sort of pouts.” She moved closer, slowly, steadily. “You want me to put my mouth to your lips and kiss you.”
“No, no!”
“Yes, you do.”
“No!”
“Don’t lie. Don’t fight it. It can be glorious.”
Anxious hands pawed at her body and frantic lips sought to claim the passion of her mouth.
“Please,” Monica was saying. “Oh, please!”
With a strangled cry Sheba broke away and jumped up. Her whole head ached, throbbed, and inside her body the pit of fire had turned to one of ice.
“Please?”
She ran from the swing, across the porch and into the house.
When she reached her room she flung herself on the bed and cried bitterly.
She understood now that it wasn’t only the men in the world she had to fear.
Part Three
10
THE sale of the five cabs to Lew the next day had an immediate effect upon Sheba’s future with Wise Motors.
“It’s amazing,” Mr. Wise said when she entered his office. “In just a few days you have moved more cars than Gregg has moved in two weeks.”
“Luck,” she said modestly.
He shook his head. “Luck — and guts. It takes guts to sell cars, raw guts. And sense. Plenty of that. And you’ve got it all.”
Lew had come into the showroom that morning, ashamed of how he had acted the night before. He blamed his behavior on the liquor but she didn’t believe him. She just went ahead and sold him the cars, took his check and filled out the loan forms for the bank. Frankly, she didn’t care whether she ever saw him again or not.
“It’s better money than working in the office,” she told Mr. Wise.
“About twenty times better for you this week.” He reached for a scratch pad, figured her commissions and then wrote out a check. “Close to a thousand,” he said.
She took the check.
“Thank you,” she murmured.
“Don’t ever thank an employer for what you’ve earned,” he said. “Remember that. You do a good job and you get what’s coming to you.”
“I still appreciate it.”
He fumbled with some papers and pushed them aside.
“Think the redhead will work out all right in your place?”
“I think so.”
“She’s rather attractive.”
“Yes, she is.”
“And that sweater she wears!” Mr. Wise winked. “Gregg won’t be able to see the front door open with her around.”
“Oh, I don’t know.”
“You don’t know Gregg. Since you’ve been wearing that red sheath his eyeballs have been hanging out of their sockets.”
She felt her face flame. Now that she had considerable money she would get other dresses and they would be more conservative. A few suits, she thought; suits would be just right.
“Mine have, too,” Mr. Wise continued. “You walk across that showroom floor and I can’t tell right from left.”
She laughed. Mr. Wise wasn’t a bad sort and she wasn’t afraid of him. She was much more afraid of Monica. The night before had been mixed up and terrible and she had experienced sensations which she had never realized existed before. Long after she had gone to bed she had wanted those soft lips over her mouth, and she had yearned to have that glorious body close to her, warm and soft and alive. It was wrong, all wrong. A woman who was any woman at all wanted a man and not another woman. She had read about girls who were lovers and it had always disgusted her to know there were such creatures in the world.
“I’ll wear something different,” she heard herself saying.
“No, don’t do that. I saw Lew out there and he couldn’t take his eyes off you. That’s what we want. If it takes sex to sell cars then that’s what it takes.” He paused, considering what he had said. “Can I speak honestly with you?”
“Of course.”
“I don’t mean all the way.”
“I know you don’t.”
“You’re too nice a girl for that.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re too beautiful and lovely and to throw yourself away like that would be foolish.”
“No.”
“You’re sweet, Sheba, and stay that way.”
“I intend to.”
“Sweet and smart.”
He was staring at her and she was getting nervous. The red sheath was too tight and she was getting more and more uncomfortable.
“Is that all?” she asked.
“Not quite.”
“No?”
“No. I’m not at all satisfied with the job Gregg has been doing. I’m paying him an over-ride on your sales and you’re doing all the work.”
“I don’t mind.”
“It ought to be the other way around,” Mr. Wise said.
“What other way around?” she wanted to know.
“He should be the salesman and you should be the sales manager.”
She was elated but at the same time she was shocked.
“Gregg wouldn’t like that,” she said.
“What if he didn’t? What would he do? Quit? And what if he did quit? Car salesmen are a dime a dozen.”
This was something new to her and she didn’t know how to handle it.
“I’m satisfied with the way things are, Mr. Wise.”
He stood up and the swivel chair squeaked.
“Maybe you are but I’m not. This is my business, not yours, and I have to make it pay. If it wasn’t for the repair shop out back I’d have been in the red a long time ago. When Gregg started with me he was sharp and on the ball but he’s slipped a lot lately. If somebody comes in through the door that’s okay and if no one does that’s okay, too. When he took over we advertised on the radio and in the papers but I never see a bill from either of them any more. The company pays for most of the advertising and we have the advantage of it. Why shouldn’t we use everything we’ve got?”
“I think he’s going into them again,” Sheba said.
“You think?”
“I do.”
Mr. Wise waved the whole suggestion aside.
