9

GINNY COULDN’T GET Mike out of her head. His flowers stood in a pitcher by the bedside, a riot of hope with the hint of curling, brown edges. Their afternoon together had somehow changed everything. She knew it shouldn’t be so. No few hours in any day should be so full of promise and yet also dread.

She tried to remember the last time she’d felt things shift in her life. Not even the day her family had cast her out could be counted that way. There hadn’t been the sense then that things had changed in some fundamental way, as though the moon no longer rose at night. In truth she had left her family before they left her, had already made her choices in every way but her address. The cutting of that cord had been hard, but not unexpected, not unplanned.

The opening of a door, the extended hand when they’d descended from their cab, the chair held out for her at Luchow’s, these were things unexpected. They had a meaning far beyond what they might for an ordinary girl. Mike had seen her not for who she was, but for who she wanted to be. After all the men who’d seen only her sex, she’d begun to lose her faith. That a man might see her as she saw herself was a wonder indeed. He’d treated her like a lady, a woman of grace and refinement, a woman worthy of respect and even love. She knew she had no right to those things, not by society’s rules. She had forfeited those rights when she’d chosen her life. But she had not forfeited her dreams.

Mike had given her more than any man had before, a thing that had nothing to do with sex. It had been years since she’d had that kind of gift. She’d known that she couldn’t expect it. It had to be given freely, like the fairy-tale kiss that woke Sleeping Beauty. She almost felt that way, as if the day before had woken a part of her that had long been sleeping and tucked away, insulated from pain. But in the waking there was much to fear. The note with his flowers had read only, “Warmly, Mike.”

These thoughts ran through Ginny’s head, blocking out most everything else. She had a hard time acting out her role, playing wanton when Mike was the only man on her mind. She tried to imagine that it was Mike she was with, when instead she was with a man who called himself Johnny Suds. He was a beer salesman, or at least that’s what he’d told everyone. She’d seen him before and did not cherish the memory. Suds behaved like a gentleman with Miss Gertie and Kevin, but he had a very different reputation with the girls. He was rough and drunk.

Still, she did her best, moaning things that seemed like a bad jokes to her ears, but Suds didn’t seem to notice. Speeding up, he tore at her already tender spots. She moaned again, but this time from pain. She did her best to get it over, using all the tricks she knew, but Suds was oblivious. His breath forced her to turn her face away. He kept hammering harder still, telling her she was a whore, a dirty little whore. He said other things too, things that Ginny had heard before, but never listened to. She tried to block them out and think of Mike, but she found she couldn’t now. Her mind cried out for him to rescue her, but there was no rescue to be had. She began to listen then to the vile words growled in her ear and began to think again that those words were true.

She was crying when Suds collapsed on her, carelessly crushing the air from her lungs. She cried for herself and for what she had once again become. She was no lady, no girlfriend, nobody! She had no right to a man like Mike. She was dreaming if she imagined he could really want, much less love, a whore like her. How could she ever be with him again after an animal like Johnny Suds? Mike would always be beyond her if she stayed where she was, gasping beneath a stinking drunk.

She pushed Johnny’s flaccid bulk off her, rolling him to one side, sobbing with the effort. Johnny stirred. “Like that, huh?” he mumbled. He sat up and grinned at her. “One o’ them cryin’ types, huh? Give you somethin’ ta cry about, bitch.” Suds pulled his hand back, an ugly glare flashing across his face.

Stamping feet echoed from the hall and Suds’s eyes flickered toward the door. When he looked back, the heavy pitcher, filled with Mike’s flowers, had found its way into Ginny’s hand. It crashed against his head in a shower of jagged shards, old water, and happy colors. Kevin and Miss Gertie burst in, followed by a friend of Suds’s that Ginny had seen downstairs. They arrived to see Suds as he hit the floor.

Ginny didn’t feel much of anything. She should have been happy to have cracked Suds’s head, but she couldn’t stop sobbing. She wasn’t even certain why she was. There didn’t seem to be any emotion behind her cries, just a release, like steam from a kettle. Not even the blood that smeared her hands when she tried to cover herself from Kevin’s eyes could bring forth a true emotion. The blood didn’t seem to really be hers, though it stained the bed under her. The pain was hers, and the ache in her face where Suds hit her. She was sure of that, but it was somehow disconnected. She wondered at that as the shouting in her room boiled up. Suds was there, holding his bleeding head and pointing a finger at her. Kevin was there, one hand on Suds’s chest, pushing him back, and Miss Gertie and Rachel and Eunice, too. They’d heard her cries and knew things had not been right and had fetched Kevin and Miss Gertie. They crowded around her bed, covering her, fetching sponges and towels. Ginny observed them all with a curious detachment.

“Hit me with that goddamn pitcher,” Suds yelled. “Look at ’er. She still got the handle in her fuckin’ hand.”

“I am lookin’ at her,” Kevin shouted back, his slungshot ready in one hand. “I see blood.”

“That ain’t nothin’. She was lovin’ it; all cryin’ an’ moaney,” Suds spat. “I’ll have the cops in here if you don’t do what’s right.”

The balding, mustachioed man in the doorway buttoned up his trousers. He interrupted and said, “There’ll be no cops, Miss Gertie, but there’ll be other troubles if things don’t go right. Johnny may not be a gentleman, but that’s no cause to have pitchers broken on his skull.”

Turning to Miss Gertie he said, “I know people. She’s a whore for chrissake, she’s gotta expect a little rough play. No real harm in it.” With a gesture, the man herded Miss Gertie and Kevin into the hallway.

“Who…?” Ginny asked. “He’s got no right to.”

Rachel shushed her. “He’s got pull, Gin. He runs with Paul Kelly.”

Ginny shivered. She knew that name and what it meant. She glanced at Suds, holding a towel to his head as he craned to see what was happening in the hall. Suds must be more than he appeared, she realized, and a part of her shriveled at the thought of what he might be capable of. They could hear the other man’s voice from the hall, but not the words. His baritone vibrated the walls in tones that left no room for argument.

Kevin and Miss Gertie came back in a moment later. “You go now, Mister Suds,” Gertie said as if it was in her power to make that happen. Kevin, who’d gathered up Suds’s clothes, pushed them at his chest and moved him toward the door.

“What the—” Sud began to protest.

“Ich—” Miss Gertie caught herself. German always slipped out when she got angry. “I am doing right, sir. You get out now, please.” She would have been pleased to set Kevin loose and watch him beat Johnny Suds to a pulp. There was no percentage in that though, no matter how glad she might be to see it. He’d hurt Ginny, an asset, a solid earner, and a favorite with many customers. But on the other hand, Ginny could be replaced. Any girl could be replaced. “Mister Suds, you vill please not come back. You are no longer velcome in this house.”

The other man’s voice rumbled from the hall, “It’s settled, Johnny. Be a good sport and let it go.”

Suds deflated visibly, but managed to rally as he left, grunting, “Fuckin’ ain’t heard the last o’ this.” Suds shoved his way past Kevin, who caressed his slungshot with longing. Miss Gertie put up a hand and shook her head. When Suds was out in the hallway, she whispered a few words in Kevin’s ear. He nodded quickly and walked Johnny Suds out of the building.

*   *   *

It was perhaps two hours later that Ginny found herself standing in front of the house, looking left and right, trying to decide which way to go. She stood a long time, shifting from one foot to the other as if blown by a strong wind. A small carpetbag was in one hand. It held everything worth taking, which wasn’t all that much. She had a splitting headache, which had made any kind of decision a painful process; her clothes and shoes the most painful of all. Most of her flashy things she’d given to the other girls, not caring how much they’d cost. They were worthless to her now. She’d even left her diary, a thing too much filled with her old life, and its sorry memories; although her recent entries about Mike had made her hesitate to put it aside. She had been cast into the street like a defrocked nun. The notion brought a faint smile to her lips. Despite her pain, her pounding head, her hatred of Johnny Suds, her indignation, Ginny Caldwell was happy.

Miss Gertie had told her she’d have to go. No hint of violence, at least on her girls’ part, had ever been permitted to exist within her walls and could not be tolerated now. She didn’t give a snap for Johnny Suds or his cracked head, but she couldn’t be seen to let the matter slide. It wouldn’t be good for the other girls, she explained, who might get ideas, and above all her business depended upon a clean reputation. Houses like hers were becoming a rarity now. Hers was no panel house, with thieves hiding behind the walls. Her customers paid handsomely for privacy, discretion, and security. They paid more than they had to so as to take their pleasures without fear.

Ginny didn’t care, not about Miss Gertie’s reasons, not about the proper behavior of whores, the reputation of the house, not even about the growing bruise on her face. She knew that it had been as much the work of Kelly’s man as anything else. She was leaving, a thing that she’d learned was not easily done without Miss Gertie’s consent, or the fear of being dragged back by Kevin. Ginny was leaving and the price of her ticket had been paid in full.