Chapter 29 #2
“What about Zelda’s?”
Flossy made a slice across her neck. “Kaput. I’m telling ya, there ain’t so many cribs left anymore, the Anti-Fun League’s shut most of ’em down.
Girls is having to hang around street corners now.
Boy, that’s a sad living. And they ain’t run by madams neither, it’s getting to be men.
Call themselves pimps. Jesus, I hear Chicago’s sheer crawling with pimps.
” All this was said with the unlit cigarette stuck between her lips.
It took a beat for it to register what she’d said. “When you say the Anti-Fun League, do you mean the Anti-Vice?”
“That’s the one,” Flossy said.
I looked at Charlie. She knew Garnett was running for president of the Anti-Vice League because it’d been in that newspaper article she’d shaken in my face. “Is Flossy saying they’re the ones who shut down places like—” I nearly said ours. “This?”
“That’s why we’re going to all the trouble for a good front,” Charlie said and frowned at me for bringing this up.
With Garnett’s name contaminating my head, this whole thing felt doomed. “You’re really only planning on keeping this thing open for—”
“Less than a month, I hope,” Charlie said. “Well before the mortgage is due.”
Flossy didn’t look surprised by this. They must’ve discussed it over the last few days. “Which rooms do you think you’ll be … using?” I asked.
“Keys, rooms is called. Keys,” Flossy said.
“All of them,” Charlie said.
“Mrs. Tartt’s room too?” I whined. “Could you try to keep hers out of it?”
“I’ll try, but I can’t promise.”
I added another cup of flour to the sifter. This was going to be a gigantic pie crust.
“What about a doctor?” Flossy asked. “You said you’re gonna get us tested, ain’tcha?”
“I did. And I will,” Charlie said.
“The house paying, or you gonna charge us a kidney for it?”
“The house,” Charlie said and sighed. “Who’d Priscilla use?”
“Kleinkamp, the old Jew doc. He’s blind as a fence post and practically mistook my ear for my twat but he’s the only one who’ll even sniff in our direction,” Flossy said. “Gotta test, though. One case a syph and fft. Doors closed.”
Syph. I shuddered, picturing one of the old posters from the World War that said, You, with Uncle Sam pointing his finger under that snaky word, syphilis. I knew I’d said I’d stay out of this, but, “What happens if you catch it?”
“Mm, occasionally nothing,” Flossy said. “Sometimes it’s just a cold. And sometimes it eats your face off.”
I looked at Charlie, asking her with my eyes, Can I catch that?
“I’ll get all the girls checked before we open and then some,” Charlie said, “but first we’ve got to hire. What about New Orleans? Who do you know?”
“Nobody’s leaving the Big Easy to work in this dinky town, Charles. Most houses put out a cat call, but it’ll take a minute.”
“We don’t have a minute.”
“With all these poor suckers outta work, too bad you can’t just print it in the situations,” Flossy said, motioning to a newspaper on the table.
She slid her hand through the air like a headline.
“‘Extra! Extra! Cat Call in the Fancy House District. No Furniture but All the Pickles and Eggs You Can Eat.’ ”
“Why can’t we? Only a hooker would know what it meant,” Charlie said.
“Excuse you, don’t call me a hooker. I do not hook,” Flossy said. “I am a prostitute, thank you very muchly.”
Charlie leaned forward to Flossy. “But could we? Just put an ad in the paper?”
“No.” Flossy said what I was thinking.
Charlie took a different newspaper off the stack by the hearth and, licking her thumb, leafed through it to the page she was looking for.
“One cent a word, choose newspapers in three counties, Quitman, Lafayette, Yalobusha, Tate …” She looked up.
“We could put it in all of them except Lafayette County so it wouldn’t be so risky. What do you think?”
“I think you’re the worst madam I ever met,” Flossy said.
“If we got it in Monday morning,” Charlie said, “and ran it for two days, girls could make it here by Thursday to interview and we could open by Saturday night.” She opened the ledger and I watched her write in a back page: CAT CALL. 11:00 A.M. EXPERIENCE RQD. The rest I couldn’t see.
“Prostitutes ain’t really reading the situations, Charles,” Flossy said. “You’re gonna get some real strange types coming around …”
“Everyone’s reading the situations,” Charlie said. “And I’d bet money there’s a desperate woman somewhere who’ll see our ad and think, This”—she tapped the paper—“is just what I’ve been praying for.”
“Well, we’re gonna need about a half dozen a those,” Flossy said.
“One of us needs to run this up to the paper tomorrow morning,” Charlie said.
“Not you,” I said, since we both knew who might see her.
Flossy caught the look between us. “You afraid a seeing somebody in town, Charles?” She looked worried.
If Flossy was gonna stay here, and do this, she needed to know the name. “Garnett Pittman. She’s running for Anti-Vice League president.” I saw a faint tic in Charlie’s jaw, and I could tell, she hadn’t wanted me bringing this up the first time and definitely not again.
“Who is this broad? What’s she want with you?”
“Nothing. She doesn’t even know I’m here,” Charlie said.
But Flossy looked at me to see if there was something Charlie wasn’t telling her. “You got something to say about this?”
How to put it? “She’s somebody who takes whatever she wants and nobody has the guts to stop her,” I said.
“Who knows, maybe we’ll be the first,” Flossy said and took the piece of paper from Charlie.
The next morning, after milking the cow and feeding the chickens, I was frowning down at the watery excuse for a cup of coffee I’d made.
I was rationing it so we wouldn’t run out, when of all luxuries, a telephone showed up at the house.
I watched the man from Southern Bell wire it up in the hallway and then he explained that two short rings and a long meant the call was for us, and any other ring meant it was for somebody else.
“Careful what you say on a party line,” he said with a wink.
What this meant was that a bored neighbor could pick it up and listen in on calls as pedestrian as a grocery store order or as noteworthy as, for example, the Tartts taking appointments for their new brothel.
Still, I tried to see it as a sign that things were looking up.
When Flossy’d gone to town to place the advertisement and Charlie was outside hanging wash on the line, I went in the hall and picked up the receiver.
“Silva, can you please connect me to a Mr. Thomas Heidelberg III in Byhalia?” The letter I’d sent a week ago had merely asked if we could start a correspondence to monitor Meg’s welfare.
But after my conversation with Garnett at the post office, I needed to know what, if anything, she had said to them about Meg’s return and I didn’t want Charlie to hear.
“Welcome back to Southern Bell and Tel,” Silva said. “Lemme see here … I got two Thomas Heidelbergs listed in Byhalia … but it doesn’t list one as the third or otherwise.”
“Well. Try either,” I said. “They must be related.”
After a windstorm of static and waiting, I heard a ring and a woman answered, “Heidelberg res-a-dence.”
I cleared my throat. “Hello, this is Birdie Calhoun speaking, with the Lafayette County Orphan Asylum, and I’m calling to inquire about a little girl, Meg, who was adopted by the Heidelberg family?”
“Meg? Yes ma’am, we know li’l Meg.” Her voice was friendly; I thought I even heard affection in it. “Was you wanting to speak to Mister Tom and Miss Lucille?”
Instead of asking right away to speak to Meg’s new parents, I said, “Yes, but … I wrote the Heidelbergs last week, it was just a standard welfare inquiry. Do you happen to know if anyone else here in Oxford has contacted the Heidelbergs about Meg or anything of the sort?” It was a long shot, but according to Mrs. Tartt, the help always knows, more than the best friend, the minister, or even the husband.
She paused. “You say you calling from a orphanage in Oxford? About Meg?”
“Yes, has anyone from the Lafayette County Orphan Asylum been in touch about Meg?” I knew I must sound fishy. “We’re just a little, uh, disorganized down here,” I added with a laugh.
She was quiet and then she said, “I reckon you better speak to one a the Heidelbergs about that, ma’am, I don’t know … I better have ’em call you back.”
I was afraid I’d made her suspicious so I didn’t push. “I understand. If you could please have Mrs. Heidelberg call me, Birdie Calhoun, at my home, number 43, Oxford. There’s no telephone at the orphanage, so she should call me here at home, soon, please.”
“Yes ma’am, I give her the message.”