The Seal Wife - Kathryn Harrison [36]
Bigelow tries again. “Who is she? That’s all I want to know.”
“She ain’t anybody. She used to be the picture show singer, but she ain’t anymore.”
“But,” Bigelow says, following him out of the tent, running alongside the wheelbarrow, “I—I want to see her.”
“No you don’t,” the projectionist says. And he says it again. “You don’t.”
Bigelow follows the wheelbarrow up the middle of the street, pushing after it through the roiling summer throng, people with nothing to do now that the show has let out, nothing besides drinking or gambling, and these activities aren’t restricted to pool halls, not in the summer they aren’t. No one stays shut behind doors when the sun is up, they sit in the street and tip their flasks and make bets on anything: heads, tails, horseshoes, cockfights, dogfights, fistfights. Whether the next woman to walk by will have her mouth open or shut, her hair up, her boots blacked. Whether she’ll answer a catcall with a frown or a smile. Whether a woman will walk by at all, and how long it might take before one does.
In the midst of the sweaty crowd, Bigelow loses the projectionist. The bent man and the wheelbarrow disappear, as suddenly and mysteriously as the singer did after a show, leaving Bigelow looking around him, hands in his pockets, shaking what money he has, jingling the coins so that they make an impatient noise. Too bad he’s not much of a drinker—not without the incentive of dancing, anyway—because this is a night for it, mosquitoes bedeviling anything with blood to suck, and Bigelow with money to spend, a whole fistful of unseen movies.
“Advertising for pickpockets?” The voice is familiar, and not one Bigelow associates with pleasure. He turns and sees the man with the Stetson.
“Hello,” the man says. “No reason we can’t be friends. After you’ve slept in my—” Bigelow tries to walk away, but the man holds on to his coat sleeve. “Let’s take a walk,” he says. “Down to the line. Stand me some refreshments and we’ll call it a trade.”
“Here,” Bigelow says, and he holds out a handful of change. “Even?”
The man picks up the coins one by one from Bigelow’s palm, counting as he does so. “Dollar . . . dollar five . . . dollar ten . . . More than a month’s worth of picture shows.”
Bigelow shrugs and the man replaces the coins in his hand, all except one, a dime. He holds it up. “The price of a drink,” he says. “I’ll accept the price of one drink.”
Bigelow nods. He turns, heading back toward Front Street.
“You like picture shows,” the man calls after him, but he doesn’t answer. “She’s Getz’s daughter.” Bigelow stops walking.
“Who?” he says, knowing.
“You know.”
Bigelow stands for a moment, his back to the man. When he turns around to look at his face, he is gone. A hat like that—it sticks out in a crowd, but Bigelow can’t see it, not anywhere.
Perhaps he’s imagined the encounter, an effect of frustration, of longing. He feels in his pockets, just to see, is the money still there?
“I HAVE A THING you might like,” Violet says. She offers Bigelow what looks like a dish towel, a frayed rectangle of faded blue cloth. “I know you can’t stand my talking. So, here.” She holds the towel out and, when he won’t take it, pantomimes tying it over her mouth and around the back of her neck. “Here,” she says again, and she takes a step forward, toward him. “Go ahead. We’ll call it an extra. You can pay for the privilege.”
It’s a kind of standoff, Bigelow there in the little room, with his hands in his pockets, Violet within touching distance, one hand on her hip, the other pushing the towel at him. After a moment, he accepts it from her.
“How much?” he says, and the girl shrugs.
“I don’t know. A dollar?”
He nods.
“But you won’t say anything downstairs, all right? You’ll give the dollar to me and not mention it?”
“Yes,” Bigelow says. “All right.” He remains standing as she undresses. “Everything,” he says, when she stops at her chemise. Usually he lets her leave it on—even in the summer her damp room is cold—but the new agreement, the extra dollar, makes him greedy.