Chapter 25 #2
“Come in the kitchen,” Charlie said, “we can talk there. Birdie, you can go back to bed now.” She pulled Flossy by the arm.
“Watch it, you gotta pay to pull on me,” Flossy said, wriggling out of Charlie’s grasp.
“Are the other girls coming?” Charlie asked.
“The who?” Flossy said.
“The rest of the girls,” Charlie said.
“Oh, they ain’t coming. Said it’s too risky, got job security to think about and all. Good thing you’re busy, though, ’cause I’m just about broke. How many girlfriends you got working this crib?”
“Not … many,” Charlie said.
“How many customers you expecting tonight?”
“We’re not actually open for business—yet,” Charlie said. She glanced at me again, I guess to gauge how disturbed I was by this woman in her tight, tawdry dress. “I’ll tell you everything in the kitchen.”
Flossy’s mouth had fallen open, and her top teeth slipped down slightly. She pushed them back up with her left thumb. “But you said in the telegram to get here in a jiffy. You said the place was—it was hopping.”
“We’ll be busy, very soon.”
Flossy looked back at the front door and seemed afraid of what was out there. “But I quit Priscilla for this. And I got the payments, Charlie.” And then quieter, almost shyly, “On the teeth.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll get the word out that we’re hiring. We’ll do it first thing,” Charlie said, nodding like she had all the answers, like she had with Mrs. Tartt. I wondered, again, why she’d lied in her telegram to this woman.
“And what if none come, Charlie? It ain’t easy as all that these days.
” Flossy walked past us and peered into the front sitting room, then back out into the hall.
“Look at this place. Why ain’t there no furnitures?
” She truly sounded afraid now. She stared at the little empty telephone table under the stairs, like she knew what was supposed to be there. “Where’s the telephone?”
It took Charlie a second to answer. “We don’t have one yet, but we will, and we’ll make the place nice just as soon as the girls get here and pay their upfronts.”
Flossy came over and snatched her brown suitcase by its handle and swung open the front door.
“We’ll be open in just a few days, Flossy,” Charlie called, going after her, but Flossy was clomping out on the front porch.
“Ain’t even got a telephone to call a taxi … What am I s’posed to do, walk the street?”
Charlie went after her. “Flossy, wait—will you just listen? It’ll be a fair house. I’m telling you, the cut’s 50 percent, not a penny more, three dollars a week for board, five for the upfront, and no upcharges.”
Flossy kept trudging up the walk, head bent forward. I could count the knobs on her upper spine. I felt awful for this woman; she’d quit her job.
Going down the porch steps, Charlie yelled, “You really want to go back to Priscilla’s and get cheated and screwed and scammed every week?”
“Of course I don’t,” Flossy yelled back, but she kept on trudging. “I don’t even know if she’ll take me back.”
“Then stay, Flossy. It’ll be a good house, I promise, this close to the college we’ll bring in a hell of a lot more business than Priscilla ever will.”
I stood watching them from the doorway with no idea what any of this meant, screwed and scams and upfronts and good houses while Charlie begged her stay.
“It’ll be like the old days!” Charlie yelled going down the walk. “Fair and even. It’ll be like it used to be, Flossy. Like a goddamn family.”
Flossy stopped halfway down the brick walk and turned back to Charlie.
The pink pocketbook strap slipped off her shoulder and down her thin arm.
Bluish circles pulled low under her eyes, and she looked very, very tired, like she hadn’t had good sleep going on around ten years now.
She brushed at a clump of yellow hair. Maybe she was actually closer to forty-five.
“I can refuse a john if I don’t like his looks?” she called.
“You can refuse anybody you damn want,” Charlie called back.
“How many keys?”
“Five keys, seven girls,” Charlie said. “No more.” I had no idea what that meant either.
“And you ain’t working? I don’t take to the boss eating into my business.” Charlie shook her head. “And I want my own room. That Daisy snored like the Illinois Central.”
“You get first pick,” Charlie said.
Flossy stared at her and slowly trudged back up the walk.
When she reached the porch steps, I heard her mumble, “Sonofasacagawea.” She walked past us again, and I shut the door.
She looked so deeply exhausted now, she appeared hollow.
She smacked what looked like six dollars on top of the newel post at the bottom of the stairs.
“That’s my upfront and board but you still owe me two from what you borrowed back in ’26.
All I got, anyways.” She stomped up the curving staircase.
I had many, many questions. Charlie went up the stairs after her but then she leaned over the rail. “Birdie, please, can you please take that money to town and beg them to bring the telephone back? Whatever it takes? We need it.”
I sighed. “Alright.”
Upstairs, Flossy hollered, “I pick the pink one.”
“She can’t pick the pink one, Charlie,” I called. “That’s Frances’s room—”
“Oh, she’s definitely picking the pink one,” Flossy yelled back.
“Charlie—”
“I know, I know,” she called. “We’ll talk when you get back, I promise.”
I’d managed, with some negotiating, to get Southern Bell to agree to come hook the telephone back up.
After paying them Flossy’s six dollars and five of our own precious money, we still owed them twelve dollars and fifty cents, so I’d had to settle for a party line instead of a private one.
That meant while you were on a call, your neighbors could pick up and listen in.
“They’ll be here early next week to set it up. ”
Charlie shook her head. She’d met me at the front door when I’d walked in. “A party line’s not going to work, Birdie.”
“I’m not giving up any more of Mrs. Tartt’s money for a private telephone, Charlie. We’re down to twenty-four dollars. Who cares if someone overhears us, we’re not running a confession booth, we’re running a dancing club.”
Charlie’d started rubbing her wrist again. “Look, I need to talk to you about this business. There’re some things you need to know about this business.”
“Please do. So far I don’t know anything except it’s a 50 percent split and something about keys and upfronts. And Flossy is our first employee.”
“I know, I know she’s not exactly what you expected.
” She looked to be having some kind of internal argument, starting to speak, then stopping.
“She’s an old friend, and it’s been a while since I’ve seen her.
” Charlie looked me in the face. “Birdie, before I give you details, I just—I want you to know how much I appreciate everything you’ve done for me already.
No one’s shown me as much kindness as you have in a very long time. ”
“I want to help you, Charlie, and I want to help Meg,” I said. “And I’m sorry. I don’t know when exactly in life I started expecting the worst, but it’s a problem I inherited, evidently.”
At this, she winced again.
“Charlie, what’s going on? What’s so hard to tell me?”
“The three of us will go over everything together, when Flossy wakes up this afternoon.”
“I can’t, I’m meeting Jack in town.” I smiled at that, I couldn’t help it. God, I was like a schoolgirl.
“Okay, we’ll talk when you’re back tonight.”
I wasn’t going to push. I had to fix my hair myself, and besides, what difference would another few hours make? She followed me to the kitchen. “Do you think it’s a bad idea to date a divorced man?” I asked, holding the swinging door open.
“As opposed to a married one?” she asked. Charlie and I had the same barbed-wire humor, but then I thought about her affair with Welty. “Don’t ask me,” she said. “I think a woman’s better off not dating at all.”
I slowed my walk when I saw Jack standing in front of the bank up ahead; I wanted to watch him a minute.
I’d found at the Foote that you could learn things about people when they didn’t know you were watching them.
A sneer behind someone’s back, the temptation to swipe something they couldn’t afford.
Jack had on the tan suit today with the coat folded over his arm.
He stood solid, patient, towering over everyone else.
He was probably six foot four. Another thing I’d learned from watching people: Most big men wore their size like a threat, came in arms swinging, legs splayed at the counter, though there were also a few who wore it like an apology, stooping their necks, tucking their fingers up inside their palms. Jack wore his size like a responsibility.
Catching the door with a long arm to hold it open for a secretary, leaning down lower than could be comfortable to listen to an old man say something.
I was wearing Frances’s olive-green dress.
It hit just below my knee, even though mid-calf was the style, but it looked all right.
The wave I’d spent so much time pressing into my hair was definitely falling flat.
The constant flutter in my stomach had got me wondering, was this supposed to be enjoyable or exciting?
Because right now it felt like I had the flu.
Jack looked over, spotted me and simply gazed back. I blushed all over my body, from my forehead to my ankles.
When I got to him, he said, “I was thinking we could go over to the Mecca and talk. Sometimes they have a combo playing, but it shouldn’t be too crowded since most the college students don’t get here for at least another week.”