“Not with him,” I said. “He even got his name out a book. I don’t remember what book right now, but it was a better book than the one he got his war out of.”
“All right, all right,” she said. “Why in hell did you tell him where you were staying? Come to think of it, why are you staying there?”
“Staying where?” I said.
“At the Y.M.C.A. I have some little squirts in here now and then that ought to be at the Y.M.C.A. whether they are or not. But I never had one of them bragging about it before.”
“I’m at the Teaberry,” I said. “I belonged to the Y.M.C.A. in the war.”
“The Y.M.C.A.? In the war? They don’t fight. Are you trying to kid me too?”
“I know they don’t,” I said. “That’s why I was in it. That’s right. That’s where I was. Gavin Stevens, a lawyer down in Jefferson, can tell you. The next time he’s in here ask him.”
Minnie appeared in the door with a tray with two glasses of gin on it. She didn’t say anything: she just stood in the door there where Reba could see her. She still wore the hat.
“All right,” Reba said. “But no more. He never paid for that beer yet. But Miss Thelma’s new in Memphis and we want to make her feel at home.” Minnie went away. “So you’re not going to unbutton your pocket tonight.”
“I came to ask you a favour,” I said. But she wasn’t even listening.
“You never did spend much. Oh, you were free enough buying beer and drinks around. But you never done any jazzing. Not with any of my girls, anyway.” She was looking at me. “Me neither. I’ve done outgrowed that too. We could get along.” She was looking at me. “I heard about that little business of yours down there in the country. A lot of folks in business here don’t like it. They figure you are cutting into trade un — un — What’s that word? Lawyers and doctors are always throwing it at you.”
“Unethical,” I said. “It means dry.”
“Dry?” she said.
“That’s right. You might call my branch of your business the arid or waterproof branch. The desert-outpost branch.”
“Yes, sure, I see what you mean. That’s it exactly. That’s what I would tell them: that just looking at pictures might do all right for a while down there in the country where there wasn’t no other available handy outlet but that sooner or later somebody was going to run up enough temperature to where he would have to run to the nearest well for a bucket of real water, and maybe it would be mine.” She was looking at me. “Sell it out and come on up here.”
“Is this a proposition?” I said.
“All right. Come on up here and be the landlord. The beer and drinks is already on the house and you wouldn’t need much but cigarettes and clothes and a little jack to rattle in your pocket and I can afford that and I wouldn’t have to be always watching you about the girls, just like Mr Binford because I could always trust him too, always—” She was looking at me. There was something in her eyes or somewhere I never had seen before or expected either for that matter.
“I nee — A man can do what a woman can’t. You know: paying off protection, handling drunks, checking up on the son-a-bitching beer and whiskey peddlers that mark up prices and miscount bottles if you ain’t watching day and night like a god-damn hawk.” Sitting there looking at me, one fat hand with that diamond the size of a piece of gravel holding the beer glass. “I need . . . I . . . not jazzing; I done outgrowed that too long a time ago. It’s — it’s . . . Three years ago he died, yet even now I still can’t quite believe it.
” It shouldn’t have been there: the fat raddled face and body that had worn themselves out with the simple hard physical work of being a whore and making a living at it like an old prize fighter or football player or maybe an old horse until they didn’t look like a man’s or a woman’s either in spite of the cheap rouge and too much of it and the big diamonds that were real enough even if you just did not believe that colour, and the eyes with something in or behind them that shouldn’t have been there; that, as they say, shouldn’t happen to a dog. Minnie passed the door going back down the hall. The tray was empty now.
“For fourteen years we was like two doves.” She looked at me. Yes, not even to a dog. “Like two doves,” she roared and lifted the glass of beer then banged it down hard and shouted at the door: “Minnie!” Minnie came back to the door. “Bring the gin,” Reba said.
“Now, Miss Reba, you don’t want to start that,” Minnie said. “Don’t you remember, last time you started grieving about Mr Binford we had po-lice in here until four o’clock in the morning. Drink your beer and forget about gin.”
“Yes,” Reba said. She even drank some of the beer. Then she set the glass down. “You said something about a favour. It can’t be money — I ain’t talking about your nerve: I mean your good sense. So it might be interesting—”
“Expect it is money,” I said. I took out the fifty dollars and separated ten from it and pushed the ten across to her. “I’m going away for a couple of years. That’s for you to remember me by.” She didn’t touch it. She wasn’t even looking at it, though Minnie was. She just looked at me. “Maybe Minnie can help too,” I said. “I want to make a present of forty dollars to the poorest son of a bitch I can find. Who is the poorest son of a bitch anywhere at this second that you and Minnie know?”
They were both looking at me, Minnie too from under the hat. “How do you mean, poor?” Reba said.
“That’s in trouble or jail or somewhere that maybe wasn’t his fault.”
“Minnie’s husband is a son of a bitch and he’s in jail all right,” Reba said. “But I wouldn’t call him poor. Would you, Minnie?”
“Nome,” Minnie said.
“But at least he’s out of woman trouble for a while,” Reba told Minnie. “That ought to make you feel a little better.”
“You don’t know Ludus,” Minnie said. “I like to see any place, chain gang or not, where Ludus can’t find some fool woman to believe him.”
“What did he do?” I said.
“He quit his job last winter and laid around here ever since, eating out of my kitchen and robbing Minnie’s pocketbook every night after she went to sleep, until she caught him actually giving the money to the other woman, and when she tried to ask him to stop he snatched the flatiron out of her hand and damn near tore her ear off with it. That’s why she has to wear a hat all the time even in the house. So I’d say if any — if anybody deserved them forty dollars it would be Minnie—”
A woman began screaming at the top of the stairs in the upper hall. Minnie and Reba ran out. I picked up the money and followed. The woman screaming the curses was the new girl, Thelma, standing at the head of the stairs in a flimsy kimono, or more or less of it. Captain Strutterbuck was halfway down the stairs, wearing his hat and carrying his coat in one hand and trying to button his fly with the other. Minnie was at the foot of the stairs. She didn’t outshout Thelma nor even shout her silent: Minnie just had more volume, maybe more practice:
“Course he never had no money. He ain’t never had more than two dollars at one time since he been coming here. Why you ever let him get on the bed without the money in your hand first, I don’t know. I bet he never even took his britches off. A man won’t take his britches off, don’t never have no truck with him a-tall; he done already shook his foot, no matter what his mouth still saying.”
“All right,” Reba told Minnie. “That’ll do.” Minnie stepped back; even Thelma hushed; she saw me or something and even pulled the kimono back together in front. Strutterbuck came on down the stairs, still fumbling at the front of his pants; maybe the last thing he did want was for both his eyes to look at the same thing at the same time. But I don’t know; according to Minnie he had no more reason to be alarmed and surprised now at where he was than a man walking a tightrope. Concerned of course and damned careful, but not really alarmed and last of all surprised. He reached the downstairs floor. But he was not done yet. There were still eight or ten feet to the front door.
But Reba was a lady. She just held her hand out until he quit fumbling at his fly and took the folded money order out of whatever pocket it was in and handed it to her. A lady. She never raised her hand at him. She never even cursed him. She just went to the front door and took hold of the knob and turned and said, “Button yourself up. Ain’t no man going to walk out of my house
