U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [171]
Alabama, or up to Memphis or Little Rock, but every--398-body agreed that unless he wanted to ship as a seaman there wasn't a job to be had in the city. The days dragged along warm and slow and sunny and smel ing of molasses from the refineries. He spent a great deal of time reading in the public library or sprawled on the levee watching the niggers unload the ships. He had too much time to think and he worried about what he was going to do with himself. Nights he couldn't sleep wel because he hadn't done anything al day to tire him.
One night he heard guitarmusic coming out of a joint cal ed "The Original Tripoli," on Chartres Street. He went in and sat down at a table and ordered drinks. The waiter was a Chink. Couples were dancing in a kind of wrestling hug in the dark end of the room. Charley de-cided that if he could get a girl for less than five seeds he'd take one on. Before long he found himself setting up a girl who said her name was Liz to drinks and a feed. She said she hadn't had anything to eat al day. He asked her about Mardi Gras and she said it was a bum time because the cops closed everything up tight. "They rounded up al the waterfront hustlers last night, sent every last one of them up the river.""What they do with 'em?""Take 'em up to Memphis and turn 'em loose . . . ain't a jail in the state would hold al the floosies in this town." They laughed and had another drink and then they danced. Charley held her tight. She was a skinny girl with little pointed breasts and big hips.
"Jez, baby, you've got some action," he said after they'd been dancing a little while. "Ain't it ma business to give the boys a good time?" He liked the way she looked at him. "Say, baby, how much do you get?""Five bucks."
"Jez, I ain't no mil ionaire . . . and didn't I set you up to some eats?""Awright, sugarpopper; make it three." They had another drink. Charley noticed that she took some kind of lemonade each time. "Don't you ever drinkanything, Liz?"
-399-anything, Liz?" "You can't drink in this game, dearie; first thing you know I'd be givin'
it away."
There was a big drunken guy in a dirty undershirt
looked like a ship's stoker reeling round the room. He got hold of Liz's hand and made her dance with him. His big arms tattooed blue and red folded right round her. Charley could see he was mauling and pul ing at her dress as he danced with her. "Quit that, you son of a bitch," she was yel ing. That made Charley sore and he went up and pul ed the big guy away from her. The big guy turned and swung on him. Charley ducked and hopped into the center of the floor with his dukes up. The big guy was blind drunk, as he let fly another hay-maker Charley put his foot out and the big guy tripped and fel on his face upsetting a table and a little dark man with a black mustache with it. In a second the dark man was on his feet and had whipped out a machete. The Chinks ran round mewing like a lot of damn gul s. The proprietor, a fat Spaniard in an apron, had come out from behind the bar and was yel in', "Git out, every last one of you." The man with the machete made a run at Charley. Liz gave him a yank one side and before Charley knew what had happened she was pul ing him through
the stinking latrines into a passage that led to a back door out into the street. "Don't you know no better'n to git in a fight over a goddam whore?" she was saying in his ear. Once out in the street Charley wanted to go back to get his hat and coat. Liz wouldn't let him. "I'l get it for you in the mornin'," she said. They walked along the street together.
"You're a damn good girl; I like you," said Charley."Can't you raise ten dol ars and make it al night?""Jez, kid, I'm broke.""Wel , I'l have to throw you out and do some more hustlin', I guess . . . There's only one fel er in this world gets it for nothin' and you ain't him."
-400-They had a good time together. They sat on the edge of the bed talking. She looked flushed and pretty in a fragile sort of way in her pink shimmy shirt. She showed him a snapshot