Street of No Return (9 page)

At any rate, there'd be no show tomorrow night. No second chance to visit this house and take a look through the kitchen window and get a glimpse of her.

His brain came back to current events. This man here was just a Skid Row bum named Whitey, just a punching bag for the slugger named Kid Fate. So what the hell, he thought, it's easier to take the slugging than to wait and think about it.

He told himself to start walking and find his way back to the station house.

He let his hands slide off the fence. He started to turn away and took one step going away and came to a rigid halt.

The kitchen window was lighted again.

He looked. He saw her.

He saw a woman in her late twenties. She was about fivefour and very slim, almost skinny except for the sinuous lines that twisted and coiled, flowing warm-thin-sirupy under gray-green velvet that matched the color of her eyes. Her hair was a shade lighter than bronze and she had it brushed straight back, covering her ears. Her features were thin and her skin was pale and she was certainly not pretty. But it was an exciting face. It was terribly exciting because it radiated something that a man couldn't see with his eyes but could definitely feel in his bloodstream.

Hello, he said without sound. Hello, Celia.

He stood there sinking into yesterday, going down deeper and deeper and finally arriving 'way down there at the very beginning....

The beginning was the orphanage, the day he'd won first prize in the singing contest. Someone told someone about how this kid could sing. Then that someone told him. Eventually some papers were signed and his legal guardian was a third-rate orchestra leader who paid him thirty-five a week. He was seventeen at the time and had the idea he was a very lucky boy, getting all that money for merely doing what he enjoyed doing most of all. No matter what songs they gave him to sing, he sang with gladness and fervor and a certain rapture that really melted them. It finally melted the orchestra leader, who told him he was too good for this league and belonged up there in the big time. The orchestra leader gave up the orchestra and became the personal manager of Gene Lindell.

When Gene Lindell was twenty-three, he was making around four hundred a week.

A few years later Gene Lindell was making close to a thousand a week and they were saying he'd soon hit the gold mine, the dazzling bonanza of naming his own price. Of course, the big thing was his voice, but his looks had a lot to do with it, the females really went for his looks. They went for his small lean frame, which was somehow more of a nerve-tingler than the muscle-bound chunks of aggressive male, the dime-a-dozen baritones with too much oil in their hair and in their smiles. There was no oil in Gene's pale-gold hair, and his smile was as pure and natural as a sunny morning. It was the kind of smile that told them he was the genuine material, everything coming from the heart. So they couldn't just say he was "cute" or "nifty" or "keen." They really couldn't say anything; all they could do was sigh and want to touch him and tenderly take his head to their bosoms, to mother him. There were thousands upon thousands of them wanting to do that, and some of them put it in writing in their fan letters. There were some who took it further than sending a fan letter, and managed to make physical contact, and these included certain ladies from the Broadway stage, from café society and horsey-set society, from the model agencies and small-town beauty contests. And there were a few who were really expert in their line, veteran professionals from high-priced call houses, the hundred-dollar-a-session ladies who never gave it for free, but when Gene pulled out his wallet they wouldn't hear of such a thing. You wonderful boy, they said, and walked out very happy, as though he'd just given them a gift they'd never forget.

But with all of these ladies it was only once, it was never more than a night of having fun. He didn't need to fluff them off next morning when they asked for another date; they seemed to realize he wasn't in the market for anything serious. Or if he was, they couldn't provide it, because this was no ordinary male and it would take something very special to really reach him in there deep.

When it finally reached him it went in very deep and took hold of him and spun him around and made him dizzy. And it was very odd, the way it happened, it was almost silly. At first he couldn't believe it. He tried to tell himself it was impossible. But the only thing impossible was getting away from it. There was no way to get away from it.

He'd been invited to a stag party given by a big name in the entertainment field. He didn't like these smokers because he didn't go in for filth and he told his manager he wasn't going. His manager said it was important that he attend, you can't brush off these big shots, in this game it's all a matter of getting in solid with the right people. So finally he gave in and went to the smoker and it was a lavish affair with the best of food and drink and the comedians knocking themselves out. Gradually the evening became dirty and they showed certain motion pictures imported from France. It was weird stuff and it became very weird and presently it was the kind of cinema that made Gene somewhat sick in the stomach. But he couldn't walk out. It would be more embarrassing to walk out than to sit there and watch it.

They finished the movies and the stage was lit up and the girls came on. The man sitting next to him said, "Now you're gonna see something." He tried not to see it, tried to look down at his coffee cup and finally managed to focus on the cup and keep his eyes aimed there, away from the ugliness taking place on the stage. The all-male audience shrieked encouragement to the all-female cast that came out in pairs, then in trios, finally in quartets performing stunts that made the onlookers shriek louder. But all at once there was no shrieking, no sound at all, not even from the musicians up front. He wondered what was happening, and he looked up.

He saw her walking across the stage. That was all she was doing. Just walking.

She wore a gray-green long-sleeved high-necked dress of velvet. He saw the gray-green eyes and the bronze hair, saw them very clearly because he had a special-guest seat at the front-row table.

He heard the master of ceremonies announcing from the wing, "This--is--Celia."

Then the music started, and she began to dance. The music was very soft, on the languid side, and the dance was a slow mixture of something from Burma and something from Arabia and something far away from any place on earth.

It wasn't a strip tease. All her clothes stayed on, and there was nothing vulgar or even suggestive in the motions of her body. It went high above that, far beyond that, it was a performance that had no connection with matters of the flesh.

The audience didn't make a sound.

He wasn't conscious of the soundless audience. He wasn't conscious of anything except a certain feeling he'd never had before, a feeling he couldn't begin to analyze because his brain was unable to function. He was dizzy and getting dizzier.

She finished the dance and walked off the stage. He heard some applause, a vague sound that didn't mean anything because they didn't understand what they were applauding. Certainly it wasn't the kind of applause that called for an encore. They wouldn't be able to take an encore. She'd done enough to them already. They hadn't come here to be immobilized, to be made to feel like worms crawling at the feet of something they didn't dare to touch or think of touching. They stirred restlessly, anxious to forget what they had seen, impatient for the next number, wanting it to be very raw and smutty and ugly to get them back to earth again.

Two girls came onto the stage. One of them wore masculine attire and the other was entirely naked. Gene didn't see them. He was up from the table and going somewhere and not knowing where but knowing he had to get there. He was in a corridor, then another corridor, then seeing Celia walking out of a dressing room and toward the stage door. He said hello and she stopped and looked at him.

He smiled and said, "I hope you don't mind."

She frowned slightly. "Mind what?"

So then he came closer and said, "I wanted to see you again. Just had to get another look at you."

She let go of the frown and smiled dimly. "Well, that's all right," she said. "That happens sometimes." She leaned her head to the side and said, "Aren't you Gene Lindell?" He nodded, and wondered what to say next, and heard her saying, "It won't be easy, Gene. You better not start."

It was a fair warning aimed at herself as well as at him. It was a warning they both ignored. There was really nothing they could do about it. They went out through the stage door and minutes later they were in a cab and the driver was saying, "Where to?"

Gene was looking at her and saying, "Just drive."

The cab moved slowly through downtown traffic. Gene went on looking at her. The cab got past the heavy traffic and headed toward the big municipal park. Gene tried to speak and he couldn't speak and he heard her saying, "We shouldn't have started. Now I think it's too late." The cab was moving along the wide avenue of the parkway, going deeper into the black quiet of the park, and she was saying, "It's like this. There's a man. He's crazy jealous."

"I bet," he said.

"Look," she said. "What're we gonna do?"

"I don't know."

"Oh, God," she said. "Good God."

"Is it that bad?"

She looked at him. "You know how bad it is."

"Yeah," he said. "I know."

She gazed past him, out through the cab window, at the black lacework of trees and shrubs sliding backward, going very fast. "Tell you what," she said. "Better take me home. Let's forget it, huh?"

"No," he said. "I can't."

"I'll tell the driver," she said. She leaned forward to give the driver her home address. Her mouth opened and nothing came out of her mouth. She fell back in the seat and shook her head slowly and mumbled to herself, "It's no use."

The cab was moving very slowly on a narrow road that bordered a winding creek.

"It's getting worse," she said. "I can feel it getting worse."

"I'm sorry," he said.

"You are? Then do something about it." Her voice was low and quivering. "For heaven's sake, do something."

"I don't know what to do."

"You're just gonna sit there? Not even gonna touch me?"

"If I touch you," he said, "I'll really go nuts."

"You're nuts already. We're both nuts." She took a deep straining breath, as though fighting for air. "I've heard them tell about things like this, the way it happens so fast, but I never believed it."

"Me neither," he said.

'All right, Gene." Her voice changed, rising an octave to a medium pitch, level and cool and trying to stay that way as she said, "Let's get it over with. We'll find a room somewhere."

"No."

"We gotta do it that way. This way it's miserable, it's grief."

'And that way?"

"Well, that's fun, that's having a good time."

"I'm not looking for a good time."

"I wish you were," she said, and her voice dropped again. "I wish that's all it amounted to. Maybe if we went to a room and got it over with--"

"Celia," he said.

"Yes."

"Listen, Celia--"

"Yes? Yes?"

"I--" He saw the driver glancing backward and he said sharply, "Watch the road, will you? You wanna put us in the creek?"

Celia gave a little laugh. "The creek," she said. "We're in the creek already. Up the creek."

"No," he said. "It'll be all right. It's got to be all right. We'll think of something."

"Will we? I got my doubts. I got very serious doubts about that. The way I see it, mister, we're miles and miles up the creek and it's gonna be rough getting back."

"I don't want to get back. I want it to be like this."

"You see?" She laughed again, brokenly, almost despairingly. "That's what I mean. You can't stop it and I can't stop it and it's really awful now."

"Yes," he admitted. "It sure is."

She took another deep breath, braced herself for an effort, then leaned forward again and managed to give the driver an address. Twenty minutes later they arrived at the address, a row house in a somewhat shabby neighborhood. He opened the door and she got out. He started to follow her and she shook her head. He sat there in the cab looking at her and she looked past him, past the walls of the houses on the other side of the street as she told him her telephone number.

On the following day he phoned and a man answered. He pretended he'd called a wrong number: A few hours later he called again. This time it was Celia and he knew the man was there because she said it was the wrong number. Late in the afternoon he tried again and she was there alone. She gave him the address of a taproom downtown and said she'd be there around midnight.

It was a sad-looking place on the fringe of Skid Row, mostly ten-cent-beer customers. He arrived at eleven-fifty and took a booth and ordered ginger ale. It had to be ginger ale because he never used alcohol. He sat there drinking the ginger ale but not tasting it, waiting for her to show. Twenty minutes passed, and forty minutes. He had the glass to his lips when he saw her coming in and the ginger ale in his mouth was liquid fire going down. The sight of her was really combustible.