Chapter 30 #3
“Thank you for coming, Joan,” Charlie said and offered her a glass of water from the pitcher, which she kindly refused. “Please, tell us a little about yourself.” Charlie sounded professional and forthright. We all had a lot riding on today.
“Start with the age,” Flossy said, looking the woman over.
“Well, I’m forty-one. You’ll see I have my own car.” Joan glanced over at the road.
“You got experience?” Flossy asked. “And working the hosiery counter at Kress don’t count.”
“Oh yes, I’ve been doing this kind of work for twenty years now. I’m married—”
“I mean experience doing it for mon-nee,” Flossy said, pointing at the woman’s gold wedding ring. “Not for free.”
The woman frowned. “Why would anyone do this for free?”
“Exactly. Charlie, you may continue.”
“Here’s how it works,” Charlie said. “It’s five dollars for the upfront—half now, half after the first night. The house takes 50 percent. Rooms and meals run three dollars a week—”
The woman held her hand up and out, almost as far as a crossing guard would. “I don’t need a place to live, just a place to work.”
Charlie nodded. “There’ll be no needles, no tar, no dope, no getting drunk. Anybody caught rolling a customer is out.”
“And the house is gonna get you tested for syph and the clap.” Flossy winked at her. “Not all the houses do that, ya know.”
“This is only short-term,” Charlie added. “We’ll be open and closed in a month.”
The woman looked at Charlie, then Flossy, then me, her creamy white face expressionless.
“Now tell me about this getup you got on,” Flossy said. “That the secretary look you going for?”
The woman frowned and puckered her lips, deepening the creases around her mouth. “Yes.” She tapped her finger twice on the square of newspaper she’d set on the table, which Charlie looked at, but I couldn’t read from here—
Charlie stood up abruptly. “I beg your pardon, Joan,” she said, “I think there’s been a misunderstanding.”
The woman stared at us and stood up, and I leaned forward to see the newspaper ad. It was folded around a posting that said Secretary for Hire, just above our ad that said Cat Call.
“I believe … you’re looking for 150 North Lamar,” Charlie said, “the offices of Stevens and Billups.”
The secretary squinted at the advertisement and picked it up. She backed away from us, warily. I didn’t think she knew what this was, only that something was very wrong with her being here. “Thank you for your time,” she said and hurried off the porch, to her old black Ford parked out front.
Good God, what a way to start.
“It’s alright, it was just a mixup,” Charlie whispered.
Flossy gave us both the told ya look and called, “Next.”
She had a slight mustache. Short and heavy hipped, she had a very large chest that was stuffed into a red dress with a sweetheart neckline, cinched tight at the waist by a black belt.
Her auburn hair corkscrewed out from under her cloche hat, also red, which she wore pulled down low just above her eyes.
She had a hand on her hip and was not smiling.
“Big damn house y’all got out here,” she said, strolling around the porch in clopping red heels, going up to the front windows and peering inside. Already, I did not like this woman, but I couldn’t even say why yet.
“Please, sit down and tell us about yourself,” Charlie said.
“I’ll sit when I’m ready,” she said, keeping a good ten feet between us. Charlie looked over at Flossy like she wasn’t sure what to make of this one.
“You want a job, siddown and take off the hat,” Flossy told her.
The woman glared at Flossy. Then she did come forward and took the hat off, releasing a wild plume of curls, red but paid for. Her hazel eyes were small and mean with thin brows drawn on high with a pencil. I’d say she was not yet twenty-five. And despite it all, strangely not that bad looking.
“Crimey, I knew it,” Flossy said. “NEXT!”
“You shut your manhole, Flossy Stolivsky, or I’ll be removin’ whatever teeth you got left.”
“Try it and I’ll punch you in those big titties, Ruby Slipper. Why you here anyways? Ain’t you still doin’ dirty work for your old Granny Nan?”
“No. Ain’t you still begging for knee work up at Priscilla’s?”
“I quit Priscilla. I got choices now.”
Charlie and I had both leaned back, I guess sensing we ought to stay out of this. Flossy and this woman were like two feral cats, eyes locked on each other. Nobody’d been brave enough to offer her water.
“Choices? I never even heard a this crib,” this Ruby said, looking around her. “What is it, a retirement home? Somebody finally put your wrinkled ass out to pasture?”
“You ain’t heard a it yet ’cause it’s new, a hot commodity. And it’s a good one too,” Flossy said. “And as it just so happens, I’m on the choosin’ committee, which means you ain’t getting choosed. So beat it, Ruby Slipper.”
“How good,” she asked.
“Five up front halfsies, three a week, and a 50 percent split, that’s how good. Not even your stinky Granny Nan gives you a split like that.”
“Granny Nan died.”
Flossy blinked. “No kidding? When’d it happen?”
“Two months ago.”
“Well I’ll be a monkey’s uncle … I thought it’d take Satan to kill that woman. How’d she go?”
“Drunk a bad pint. Foot and leg turned black. I nursed her, but …” Ruby shook her head, her thick red lips turned down. “She screamed a week till she gave up.”
Flossy rubbed her own stomach but stopped. “You poison her?”
Ruby slitted her tiny eyes at Flossy. “I oughta rip your face off.”
Flossy ran her tongue across her teeth. “It’s a valid question, Rube.”
While this went on, I elbowed Charlie and shook my head, hoping this frightening woman wouldn’t notice.
It wasn’t just her bad attitude; she had a line of raised scars up her arm that gave me a doomed feeling, something much worse than this place.
After a few minutes, Flossy whispered to Charlie, and I heard the words “pain in the ass” and “moneymaker” in the same sentence.
Charlie made a grumbling sound and seemed to be thinking it over.
“Alright, look,” Charlie said to Ruby. “If you want to work here, you have to follow my rules.”
“Name ’em,” Ruby said.
“This is a clean house, no exceptions. No drunks, no tar, no needles.”
“She knows I don’t do that shit,” Ruby said and, softer, “anymore.”
“Rent’s due Fridays. Pay is Sunday. No rolling customers, no fights. This is a quick turnaround; we’ll be open a month tops and then we’re shutting down.”
“And we’re testing you and everybody else to make sure you ain’t got cooties,” Flossy said.
“You trying to tell me a old whore like you ain’t got the clap?”
“Believe me, it’s a miracle I don’t,” Flossy said.
“And I’m only hiring hard workers,” Charlie said. “That is a requirement.”
“Lady, you ain’t seen anybody work on their back hard as me,” she said. I didn’t like her, but I did believe her.
After Charlie and Flossy conferred quietly, Charlie looked at me. We both knew it would take six girls plus Flossy for this thing to make enough in a month, and there were only four girls left under the tree.
“Can you dance?” I asked. “That is also a requirement.”
“You kiddin’ me? Ruby could dance Clara Bow under the table,” Flossy said, like she didn’t want to admit this but still admired it.
I shrugged at Charlie, and she said, “You’re hired.” Ruby tossed three bills on the table that seemed to’ve come from nowhere and said she’d be back later. Flossy hollered to bring a better attitude with her when she did.
By noon, the sneaky heat of September had started to set in.
I took the pitcher of water inside to refill it even though Flossy was already calling next.
While I was at the sink, Charlie came in, her face ashen, mouth drawn down.
“What is it?” I asked, but she just shook her head and filled a jelly jar with water when I was done.
I thought maybe she’d gotten overheated again.
I followed her out but eased to a stop in the doorway.
Flossy was standing up behind the card table. A woman was standing across from her in a dirty white dress, her cheeks so hollow they looked spooned out. She’d tried to brighten her skin with an orangey rouge. It gave the air of a decorated corpse. She looked old and she also looked thirty.
“I’ll let the customer do anything he wants, I ain’t real particular.”
“No. I’m sorry,” Flossy whispered.
“I’ll let him hit me if that’s what he wants,” the woman said.
“Some of ’em like that.” She stared at Flossy, waiting.
“And just think, I don’t even get no more menses so you wouldn’t have to sit me out a week.
” She grinned at this fact that did not feel so lucky to me.
A patch of dark hair was missing on the back of her head.
“I’m sorry. We can’t hire ya,” Flossy whispered to her again.
The woman nodded and set down the jelly jar on the table. Her palm was covered in a red prickly rash. She turned and walked slowly down the stairs and like a ghost, she was gone.
Charlie wiped her forehead with a napkin, looking sick herself. “Syph,” she said, in case it wasn’t already clear. We hadn’t even tried to help the woman. I felt like a coward.
“She’s too late for a dose a Salvarsan,” Flossy said. “She knows what she’s got and she’s still—” She shook her head. “It ain’t her fault.”
Charlie picked up the woman’s jelly jar with the napkin and took it down the front steps. I couldn’t say what she did with the glass.
After that, we were all rattled and ready to get this over with.
There were still three more girls wilting under the pecan tree.
Flossy didn’t wait for Charlie to get back, and when next came up the stairs—fortyish, dyed black hair, not bad looking, though missing a front tooth—the woman delivered such a wild-eyed speech about dote you know the damn doctor that give you the diseases in the first place, and then so fiercely denied having anything herself, Flossy decided she did and sent her packing, going as Charlie was coming.