“You’re a godsend, Rudy. Thanks for helping me out. I won’t forget it.”
“I’m the one doesn’t forget.”
“I know, I know. You didn’t have to do this.”
Rudy turned around and entered Lake Shore Liquors. His partners in the store, Earl LaDuke, who was Rudy’s uncle, and Dick Mooney, were waiting for him. Moe Herman, to whom Rudy had just handed a double sawbuck, went on his way. Rudy never loaned money to anyone; either he gave someone what he or she needed or refused without providing an explanation. All anyone in dire straits wants to hear is yes or no. If he was paid back, so much the better, but there never was a reason to count on it.
Earl and Dick were seated at a card table in the basement. Rudy’s uncle was smoking a cigar with his eyes closed, and Dick was scrutinizing the previous day’s results at Sportsman’s Park. Rudy sat down and poured himself a finger of Jameson’s from a bottle on the table.
“Good afternoon, Rudy. How’s Kitty?”
“Fine, Earl.”
“You’ll tell her I asked.”
Dick put down the paper and took off his glasses.
“Nothing yet,” he said.
“If it’s not here by tonight, I’ll call. Not before then.”
Earl LaDuke opened his eyes and stood up. He was a big, ungainly man. Rudy wondered how he could have outrun the hussars in the old country when his name was Sackgasse.
“I’ll be home. Your Aunt Sofia would like it if you and Kitty came for dinner.”
“We will, Uncle Earl. Not tonight, but soon. Kiss her for me.”
“I can still kiss her for myself, I want to. I can still do that.”
Earl walked slowly up the stairs.
“You’re not worried?” Dick asked.
“The roads are icy.”
“Emily wants to leave Chicago. Her sister’s in Atlanta.”
“Earl and I can cover your share.”
Dick was thirty-two, ten years younger than Rudy and twenty-seven years younger than Earl LaDuke. He had bought into Lake Shore five years before and his third was worth twice as much now.
“I could be your man down there.”
“Atlanta belongs to Lozano.”
There were footsteps on the stairs. The two men looked up and saw Lola Wilson, a dancer from the Club Alabam next door, coming down. She was wearing a fur coat over her rehearsal costume. When the front of the coat swung to either side, they could see her legs. Lola descended cautiously, placing her high heels delicately on each of the rickety wooden steps. She came over and stood behind the chair on which Rudy’s uncle had been sitting.
Dick got up, said, “Hello, Lola. See you later, Rudy,” and started up the stairs.
Lola sat down, took out a crumpled pack of Camels and a book of matches from a pocket of her coat, then changed her mind and replaced them in the pocket.
“You don’t like it that I smoke. Sometimes I forget. Kitty doesn’t smoke, does she?”
“No, she doesn’t.”
“I saw Roy down here with her the other day. He’s getting big. He must be about ten now.”
“Eight. What can I do for you, Lola?”
Lola had a sharply upturned nose, rose-colored full lips, dark brown swampy eyes and blonde hair translucent at the ends. Her face fascinated most men and women, especially women, very few of whom were gifted with such dramatically contrasting features that so exquisitely combined. Lola’s teeth were crooked and tobacco-stained; they embarrassed her so when she smiled she determinedly pressed her lips together. Before he married Kitty, when Lola was eighteen, fresh off the bus from West Virginia, Rudy had offered to pay to have her teeth straightened but she had demurred, and then it was too late.
“You’ll hate me,” she said.
“What is it?”
“I picked up a dose. Can you give me a shot?”
Rudy got up, walked to the rear of the room, opened the door of a small refrigerator and took out a little round bottle. He opened a drawer in a cabinet next to the refrigerator and removed a hypodermic syringe and a thin packet containing needles, one of which he shook out and fitted to the syringe, then drew fluid from the bottle before replacing it in the refrigerator. Rudy picked up a brown bottle, took a cotton ball from a box and walked back to the table.
Lola stood, turned her back to Rudy and held one side of the fur coat away from her body. Rudy sat down, daubed the exposed part of her left buttock with the piece of cotton he’d soaked in alcohol from the brown bottle, then inserted the needle into the sanitized spot and injected the penicillin, after which he again brushed the spot with the cotton ball before standing up and walking back to a sink next to the cabinet and placing the items he had employed into it.
“How long were you in medical school, Rudy?”
“A year and a half. I’ve told you this. When they rolled the cadaver in, they rolled me out. After that I transferred to pharmacy school.”
“Do I need a band-aid?”
“You’ll be all right.”
Lola sat down again, as did Rudy. She balanced herself carefully on her right buttock.
“Really, I don’t know what I’d do if you weren’t in my life.”
“I thought you were going to marry Manny Shore.”
“I can’t go on dancing forever. I figured at least it would get me off my feet, but no. I realized it wasn’t going to work. I haven’t seen him in months. Weeks, anyway. Rudy, do you think I’m a trollop?”
“Where did you learn that word?”
“Monique said somebody called her one and I asked her what it meant. She didn’t know exactly, so I looked it up. Did you think I was a trollop when we met?”
“You’re not Monique. You have to take better care of yourself.”
Lola stood up.
“I have to get back to rehearsal.”
She leaned down and kissed Rudy behind his right ear.
“Am I still pretty? Not as pretty as your wife, I know, but tell me.”
Rudy stood and looked into her murky eyes.
“Yes,” he said, “you are.”
Lola turned and walked up the stairs. When she reached the top step she paused and said, loud enough for him to hear, “I’m twenty-nine.”