Desert of the Heart: A Novel (3 page)

She wanted a cigarette. She had none. Lovely. She would have to go out to buy some. It was only eight o’clock, still early enough to explore the immediate neighborhood.

Out on the street, because it was a pleasant evening and because the streets she had driven through were unpleasant, Evelyn turned east to walk farther into what must be a residential area. At first she was able to walk slowly, naming trees and flowers, feeling against her face and arms the fine drifts of spray from lawn sprinklers, a wavering pulse of sound everywhere, like evening crickets. She found a store before she wanted to, but, afraid on a Sunday evening that it might not stay open long, she went in. Waited on at once by a silent, tired woman, Evelyn bought several packs of cigarettes and a bottle of sherry. As she came out onto the street again, she was reluctant to turn back. Beyond the next intersection, the street she had been walking narrowed and steepened to block her view. Curious, she went on. At the top of the short hill, Evelyn stopped, oddly out of breath. The street fingered out from the main crossroad for just three short blocks of faded brick bungalows and no trees. At the end was the desert, sudden, flat, dull miles of it until it heaved itself upward and became the mountains. An irrational fear, as alien to Evelyn’s nature as heat lightning seems to a summer sky, struck through her body. For a moment she could not move. Then she turned quietly, refusing in herself the desire to run, and walked back to the house.

Frances Packer was in the hall, but Evelyn refused the cup of tea she offered.

“Would you like to take the paper up with you?” Frances suggested. “We’ve all finished with it.”

“Thank you, but …”

“Do,” Frances encouraged.

It was little enough to accept; so Evelyn carried the unwanted paper up the stairs to her room. She glanced at the travel clock by her bed, picked it up and listened to it. She had not forgotten to wind it. It clicked at her ear with precise regularity. How could she have been gone only twenty minutes? She put the clock down impatiently and began to undress.

Bathed and ready for bed, Evelyn stood by the window, looking out through the densely leaved tree to the sky, still transparent with the last, lasting light of evening. Safe now, the day like a door arbitrarily closed behind her, Evelyn could smile at herself. She could not remember a night in recent years when she had been in bed before midnight. Now, at not quite nine o’clock, like a summer child she struggled to keep sleep off until the darkness arrived. Why? She had every right to be tired. It had been a long day, this last day of the long sixteen years that had brought her here. Surely now she could sleep. There was no harm in it.

2

A
NN LEFT WALTER WITH
the car and walked up the alley to the employees’ entrance. Inside, the stale heat of the day smelled of brass ash trays and sweat and shoes. But the night shift employees, crowded around the board, lined up at the punch clock, sitting in the cracked leather chairs, were fresh from a day’s sleep, newly shaved or powdered, in clean shirts, pressed trousers, and polished boots. Noisy with stories of the night before, because it had been Saturday, easy about the night to come, because it was Sunday, they relaxed together, the change aprons, the key men, the cashiers, the dealers, and the floor bosses.

“We’re in the Corral again, darling,” Silver Kay called from across the room by the Coke machine.

“Out of the dollar machines, thank God,” Ann said, joining Silver and taking a sip of the Coke she offered.

“All very well for you. You’re on the ramp again. I’m on the goddamned floor.”

“You like it,” Ann said.

“I like it. I like it. You’ve never been on the floor.”

“I’m not tall enough,” Ann said.

“You’ll do. You’re noticeable enough, love.”

“Thanks,” Ann said, looking up at Silver, who was over six feet tall in her heeled boots, hipless and brazen bosomed, her hair bleached almost as white as the ten-gallon hat that rode on her shoulders like a rising moon, “but I’m not in your class.”

“Why don’t you enroll?” Silver suggested. “It’s reduced rates tonight.”

“Is it?”

“Umhum.”

“Joe out of town?”

“And I’ve got a bottle of your favorite Scotch,” Silver said, smiling.

“I might be tired,” Ann said, but she felt Silver’s eyes trace a teasing and relieving suggestion from her throat to her thighs. “I didn’t sleep much last night.”

“Sleep with me.”

“You going down to the locker room?”

“I’ve been.”

“I’ll see you later then,” Ann said.

In the basement Ann found Janet Hearle already there, the locker they shared open.

“I’ve just been up to supplies and got you a better apron,” Janet said. “Here.”

“Thanks. How’s everything?”

“We’ve got a date for the operation. A week from tomorrow.

“That’s good news,” Ann said. “Have you got time off?”

“Do you think I ought to ask, Ann? They might just say I needn’t come back.”

“But you have to be with the baby,” Ann protested. “Ask Bill. He’ll understand. He can work it for you.”

“I was late twice last week.”

“So you were late.”

“I can’t lose this job, Ann. I’ve got to have the money. And Ken can get off. He’s already checked with his boss. He can have ten days.”

“Ten days isn’t enough, is it?”

“No, but by then we’ll know. If he’s going to live, he’ll live.”

“He’ll live,” Ann said.

“Your name’s crooked.” Janet undid the plastic nameplate: F
RANK’S
C
LUB
I
NTRODUCES
(a picture of a covered wagon) A
NN
. She repinned it neatly over Ann’s left shirt pocket. “There.”

“You see Bill tonight. It won’t hurt to ask.”

Janet nodded, uncertain. She closed the locker door. “Well, here we go again.”

Ann would have spoken to Bill herself if Janet’s uncertainty had been a simple matter of time off, but ten days away from work meant a loss of about a hundred dollars. She and Ken had not finished paying for last year’s operation. They were buying their child’s life on the installment plan without so much as a thirty-day guarantee. Well, Frances was right. Ann did not like gambling, but the sort people indulged in at Frank’s Club, even when they lost more than they could afford to lose, was innocent enough. And at least, here, they knew the odds. Great signs in the lavatories announced, “Remember, if you play long enough you’ll lose.” And pamphlets handed out to customers carefully explained the varying disadvantages of each game. It was all a public relations stunt, of course, a way the Establishment denied that it was the House of Mammon in the City of Dis. But it was honest advertising. No university published the odds against learning, no hospital the odds against surviving, no church the odds against salvation. Here, anyway, people weren’t being fooled. They were told that no one was intelligent enough or strong enough or blessed enough to be saved. Still, they played.

As Ann and Janet reached the top of the stairs, their way was blocked by a small crowd of employees, watching Silver give instructions to a new girl.

“Look, kid, out on the floor it’s hell. Ask anybody. Isn’t that right, anybody?” Several nodded, amused. “For instance, it gets so crowded one woman passed out and had to ride two floors on the escalator before she had room to fall down. I’m not kidding. Am I kidding?” The others shook their heads. “One Saturday night some very cooperative customers helped us carry out ten drunks. We didn’t find out for an hour that those ten drunks were slot machines with coats and hats on. Tricky, eh? But what you’ve really got to watch out for is pickpockets. Now, do you know how to walk to keep off pickpockets?”

The youngster shook her head. Watching Silver, she tried to cover her fear with a mild scepticism.

“You hook your thumbs like this, see?” Silver demonstrated, her thumbs in her pockets, her hands cupped over her hip bones. “And use your elbows to keep them clear.” She walked half a dozen steps. “Now go ahead. Try it yourself.” The girl hesitated. “Go ahead, I said. You have to learn.”

“She’s right,” Ann said. “You couldn’t learn from anybody better. Silver was a pickpocket before she came here.”

“Only as a hobby,” Silver shouted above the laughter. “Only as a hobby.”

“And she’s proud of her amateur standing, because next year she goes to the winter Olympics.”

“Ann?”

Ann turned to find Bill standing behind her. “Yes, Bill.”

“I want you to take the new girl tonight.”

“I like that!” Silver said. “Here I am, volunteering my long experience … but you’re in good hands, honey. Ann’ll take care of you fine.”

“This is Joyce, Ann,” Bill said. “She’s got all her things. Her card’s in. Ann will show you just what to do, Joyce. And I’ll come by later and see how you are.”

Joyce, rescued from Silver’s towering burlesque, turned to Bill’s protective, male height with gratefulness and relief. And, because she obviously did not want him to leave her, he walked across the alley with Ann and Joyce.

“You mustn’t let Silver scare you to death,” he was saying. “It won’t be hard. Ann will show you….”

He did not consciously intend his speaking of Ann’s name to be the repeated public announcement of his private feelings, but he could not help it. Ann moved away a little to be out of range of his tenderness. Because she could not accept it from him any longer, it touched her like a minor fear or pain. As they reached the door, he stopped and turned back to Ann.

“I’ve left my ledger,” he said. “I’ll see you later.”

“Is he married?” Joyce asked.

“No,” Ann said.

She put her weight against the door, pushing into the cold, conditioned air, the wrench and grind of the slot machines, the magnified voices of the dealers, the muted crowds. She took hold of Joyce’s arm and guided her through the maze of machines and gaming tables to the escalator, where they rode, half a dozen people apart, to the second floor. It was not as crowded there, but the noise was still beyond measuring.

“Have you read any of those?” Ann asked, nodding to the mimeographed sheets and the book Joyce held in her hand. “I don’t mean
How To Win Friends and Influence People.
The only thing important about that book is that old Hiram O. Dicks thinks he looks like Dale Carnegie. So, if you ever run into him—he really looks like one of the janitors—tell him how much you enjoyed his book and how helpful it’s been to you in your work. But that other stuff is important.”

“I haven’t had time,” Joyce admitted. “I just started this one.”

Ann looked down at the first paragraph:

Hello! Welcome to
FRANK’S CLUB
. You may feel a little uneasy right now as you look around and realize that you are a member of this famous family of
FRANK’S CLUB
employees. Yes, you are a Green Horn in The Corral, and you aren’t sure what is expected of you. Don’t be nervous. Take it easy. All around you are other members of your family, ready to break you in. And every one of them was once a Green Horn himself. Remember, they also lived through their first day. …

“Well,” Ann said, “when you get past the crap, there are things in that one you should know. Look, you go on up to the next floor. Have a cup of coffee. Read some of this stuff. Come down in half an hour. I’ll be right over there. Then I’ll check you in.”

“Where?”

“Right over there by the wagons. If you get lost, just ask anybody for the Corral.”

At the cashier’s desk, Ann claimed the key for her floor locker where she could put her purse away. The key pinned to her shirt just below her name plaque, her green change apron strapped high around her rib cage, the change dispenser hooked in place, she went back to the cashier’s desk to check out her money. Janet was already there.

“Five hundred tonight,” the cashier said, shoving a setup, an IOU, and a free pack of cigarettes to each of them. “How’s the kid?”

“He’s going to the hospital in a week,” Janet said, counting the money carefully before she loaded her apron.

“San Francisco?”

“Yes.”

“Well, he’s getting the best a kid could have. Hear you had a fight with my ma last night, Ann.”

“That’s right,” Ann said. “I didn’t think she’d tell on herself.”

“She thought it was funny. She always says, ‘If I’m tanked, I just stay near Ann. She’s unlucky as hell, but she keeps me out of trouble.’”

Ann smiled. She had finished counting her money and was signing her IOU. “I’ll be back in about half an hour to check a new kid in. Okay?”

Sure.

Silver stepped up to the counter just as Ann and Janet were ready to go on the floor.

“Well, you’ll have an easy time of it tonight,” she said to Ann.

“I don’t need her. I wish Bill had given her to you.”

“But she needs you, darling. Just relax and enjoy her.” Silver reached for the key the cashier was handing her. “You give me the bottom locker and I’ll …”

Ann moved Janet away from what was to be one of Silver’s graphic threats.

“Really,” Janet said, “I don’t wonder they took her off the tables. She should be fired.”

“Oh, Silver’s all right.”

“She’s vulgar.”

“Sure.”

“Ann, why do you let her make all those remarks?”

“What remarks?”

“She’s always at you … suggesting things.”

“This isn’t a church sewing circle, Janet. It’s a gambling casino.”

“Well, there are a few decent people around. You, for instance.”

“Because I have a limited anal vocabulary? Shit,” Ann said softly and grinned. “I like Silver.”

Janet smiled reluctantly and shook her head. “All right. I’m a prude. I know it. I don’t like her. I don’t like her at all.”

Of course not. Janet was a faculty wife at a small, isolated college across the border in California. Nowhere was decency more honored and protected than at these little cultural outposts built on the ruins of old mining towns in the crude, uncultivated mountains. The only way Janet could hear the degradation of her job was to suffer not only the ninety mile drive over the empty desert, the fifty pound weight she packed across her belly for eight hours each night, the lack of sleep, but also to suffer the world of the Club in all its corruption with martyred indignation. Ann was her only friend, and even with Ann she suffered, not allowing herself Ann’s company for so much as a glass of tomato juice at the bar. Of course she hated Silver, who used to run a house in Virginia City. “I got sick of administration,” Silver would say. “I’d lost touch with the people.” But Silver was as sensitive to Janet’s disapproval as Janet was to Silver’s vulgarity. Yet Silver admired Janet, perhaps even loved her in the gross sentimentality she had for suffering. Everything Silver thought or felt or did was gross, and she knew it. Her attitude toward herself was one of helpless indulgence. And Ann’s attitude toward her was modeled on Silver’s own.