The Wicked City - Beatriz Williams

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his safe, warm neck and say all right, whatever you like, sweetie pie. Take me away.

      And he does.

       13

      A WORD ABOUT the few square feet of bedroom I call home.

      I’m sure you’ve heard about those nice, respectable, wallpapered boardinghouses for professional young ladies. The ones uptown, where anxious matrons keep watch over fragile female reputations, and gentleman callers are to be kept strictly downstairs.

      This isn’t one of those boardinghouses, I’m afraid. Although the landlady does her best, she really does! Mealtimes regular and nourishing, visiting hours established if not enforced. Sheets changed once a week, and possibly even washed during that interval, though certainly not ironed. But the hard truth is you can’t attract the same kind of boarder on Christopher Street as you can on, say, East Sixty-Ninth Street, and a boardinghouse is only as respectable as the boarders it contains, wouldn’t you say? I suppose the speakeasy next door doesn’t exactly elevate the tone, either. Anyway, to preserve appearances, Billy always climbs up the fire escape and enters through a window I keep unlatched (nothing to steal, after all), and he tips Mrs. Washington a dollar a visit because he’s a gentleman. I believe he enjoys the adventure.

      He certainly doesn’t enjoy the furniture. Have you ever tried to entertain a lover on a single bed? Fosters intimacy, I’ll say that.

       14

      I MENTION ALL this because I don’t want you to misunderstand when I describe how, upon waking later that morning, I find myself enjoined in a lovers’ knot of baroque configuration: pinned to the sheets by Billy Marshall’s heavy right thigh across the two of mine, my mouth encompassed by his shoulder, our limbs snarled together. His damp lips dangle along my ear, and his hair shadows my eyes in a kind of brilliantine curtain. The tempo of his respiration suggests utmost satisfaction. (As well it should.) The tempo of mine suggests—well, otherwise.

      I heave Billy’s body aside and sit straight up, gasping for air, gasping for freedom. The air’s dark but not black, and the illumination behind the thin calico curtain warns of a snow-streaked dawn. Next to my hip, Billy continues in exquisite slumber, embracing my shingle of a pillow. The familiar dimensions settle around me: walls, window, chair, washstand, bureau. Not much space between them. I reach for my kimono from the hook on the wall and slither over Billy’s corpse to stand on the cold floor. It’s bare. I have a horror of dirt.

      We did not take long to express our physical longing, Billy and I, in the pit of a New York winter’s night. Short and brisk and effective. My nerves still course from the aftermath, and when I peer at my watch, laid out on the bureau in a perfect vertical line next to Billy’s silk top hat, I discover there’s a good reason for that: I have slept only two hours. Dear Miss Atkins at Sterling Bates will expect me at my typewriter at nine o’clock, mind sharp and fingers swift. I cast another gaze at Billy. White skin glowing in the gray sunrise. Mouth parted and smiling at the corner.

      I wrap myself in the kimono and lift the extra blanket from the foot of the bed. If I’m lucky, I’ll wake again before Billy does, so he doesn’t catch me in the old paisley armchair, all by myself.

       15

      BUT WHEN my eyes open again, the bed contains no Billy. No strewn clothes, no shining silk top hat perched on the bureau, no handmade leather shoes tumbled on the floor. No sign of life whatsoever.

       16

      HE’S LEFT a note. He’s a gentleman, after all. I won’t quote it here; it’s too intimate. To summarize: he had hoped, after such a night between us, after such a declaration on his part, after such kisses and so on and so forth. You get the general idea. And I have disappointed him. I have kept my soul to myself, while taking all of his. He is going back to New Jersey, and wishes my future happiness with all his heart. Billy likes to feel things, you see. He likes to feel them deeply, to experience life at its absolute rippingest, to italicize every thought and emotion that rises inside him. After some consideration—that is to say, gnashing of teeth and rending of hair and scribbling of yet more midnight letters—he’ll be back for more. And I’ll snatch him in my arms and whisper my thanks to the Lord. In the meantime, I’m due at the corner of Wall and Broad in twenty minutes.

      I expect you’re disappointed. A typing pool. You figured I was employed in some more extravagant capacity, didn’t you? Something glamorous and immoral. And it’s true, I do have a small but picturesque sideline in the immoral. Immorality pays so much better. (About which, more later.) But my mama’s example rusts before me as a cautionary tale, and since Sterling Bates had the goodness to hire me two years ago, as a pink-coated college dropout with eight nimble fingers and a pair of opposable thumbs, I find I can’t quite let poor Miss Atkins down. So many girls let her down. Anyway, who can resist the allure of a regular paycheck?

      My room contains no closet, properly speaking. I keep my dresses and suits on the hooks on the wall, neatly pressed, and my shirts folded in order in the second drawer of the bureau. Stockings and girdles and brassieres up top. I wash myself with the water from the pitcher and apply my navy suit, my white shirt, my dark stockings and sensible shoes. My small, neat hat over my shining hair. No cosmetics, not even a smear of lip rouge. Company orders. Banks. They’ve awfully conservative.

      Downstairs, Mrs. Washington has laid out breakfast. Some of the other girls are there, Betty and Jane and Betty the Second, drinking coffee and spooning porridge. Nobody speaks. The newspaper hasn’t been touched. The room contains its usual atmosphere of java and drugstore perfume. I pour myself a cup of coffee and spread a layer of jam over a slice of cold toasted bread. Pick up the paper and take in the headlines. Izzy and Moe led a raid the other night, fancy joint up on Fifty-Second Street. Eighty-six arrested, including forty-one ladies. (The paper drops the term ladies with conspicuous irony.) No mention of doings on Christopher Street, but I suppose Special Agent Anson charged in and ordered his milk well after deadline for the early morning edition. Anyway, I haven’t got time to read past page one. I stuff the crust in my mouth, gulp the last of the coffee, blow a good-bye kiss in the direction of my sisters (I’m getting the silent treatment these days because of Billy, and I can’t say I blame them), and as I whirl around the corner, thrusting arms in coat sleeves, fingers in mittens, I run smack into Mrs. Washington herself, wiping her hands on an apron.

      “Oh! Miss Kelly. There you are at last.”

      “Mrs. Washington. Can’t stop. Late for work!”

      “But, Miss Kelly—”

      “I’ll be back at six!”

      “—telegram?”

      Halt. Hand on doorknob. Skin prickling beneath muffler. Mouth going dry. I think, That door surely does want painting, doesn’t it?

      “Telegram?” I repeat.

      “Arrived last night. Put it under your door. Didn’t you see? Western Union.”

      “When?”

      “Oh, about eight o’clock or so. I hope it’s not bad—”

      Well, I brush right past Mrs. Washington’s hopes and on up the stairs, first flight second flight third flight, panting, fumbling for latchkey in pocket, there it is, jiggle jiggle, door squeaks open.

      Floor’s bare. Of course. I would have noticed a damned yellow Western Union envelope on my nice clean floor, wouldn’t I? Even enrobed by loveydovey. So Billy must

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