The Neon Jungle (14 page)

Jana stepped down out of the window and straightened the display she had moved aside. The day was done. The long evening was ahead of her, a long tunnel with a promise of restless sleep at the far end of it.

At seven-thirty they were finished and they left the store, leaving the night light on. The big table was set in the kitchen. With Dover taking Teena’s place, there was the same number as before, seven. Gus and Jana, Walter and Doris, Vern, Rick, and Jimmy. Anna never ate with them. She ate after the others had finished, and while they ate she would plod from stove to table, clinking the cupboard dishes, serving slowly, expressionlessly. The food was plain and heavy. Jana looked along the table. Vern had just come downstairs. He did not eat with them as consistently as Rick Stussen, and when he did eat with them he was usually late coming to the table, as he spent quite a bit of time dressing for the evening. Tonight he was still in work clothes, though he had changed to a fresh T shirt.

Doris said, acid-sweet, “What happened to the fashion plate? Losing your touch, Vern?”

“Going to rearrange some stock to make more room to make up the orders. How about coming out after, and seeing what you think of the idea?”

“Sure,” Jana said.

Gus had eaten with his usual galloping haste. He stood up, still chewing, dropped his balled napkin on his plate, mumbled something almost inaudible, and left the kitchen to go to the living room and spend his usual three hours staring blindly at the television screen.

Doris said, “What makes
him
so gay tonight?”

“Lay off, will you?” Walter said.

“Oh, certainly. Lay off. The precious little darling of his had to go take a cure, and who around here gives a damn about how I feel? Does anybody ever worry about me? You’d never know around here I was going to give him a grandchild.”

Walter put his fork down and said evenly, “Shut up.”

“You don’t give a damn, do you?” She banged her coffee cup down. “You know what I want from you, Mr. Nasty? I want you to take me to a movie, much as it hurts you. And I want you wearing a necktie and a coat. I’m not going with you again with you looking like a slob.”

Walter sighed and picked up his fork. “O.K., O.K. A movie. Anything.”

“The show at the Central looks good,” Bonny said. They all looked at her. They had learned to accept her silences, and it was a faint shock to have her volunteer information.

Walter said tentatively, “You want to come, maybe?”

“If you don’t mind, either of you.”

“That would be swell, Bonny,” Doris said, with more warmth than the situation called for, and then immediately blushed. Stussen walked in to sit and look at the television.

“Maybe Jimmy would like to come along too?” Bonny said.

The boy blushed. “Sure. I’d like to.”

Vern finished his pie, lit a cigarette, and said, “Want to go to work now, Jana?”

“Sure.”

She walked ahead of him down the steps from the kitchen, and along the narrow shed passageway to the one door of the store that was left unlocked because it could be reached only through the kitchen. The market was dark except for the red neon ring around the wall clock. The long self-service counters were shadowy.

They went into the storeroom. Vern kicked a box out of the way and turned on the single bulb. The light was harsh.

He said, “See how it’s cramped in here? Now those cases of number-ten cans of juice don’t move fast. And they aren’t stacked high enough. I figure if we stack them high along that wall, it’ll give us more room to work in, and I won’t have such a hell of a job sorting the orders and loading them right. What do you think?”

“I guess it’s all right, Vern.”

“O.K. I’ll do it. Stick around and see what you think.”

“Let me help.”

“You don’t have to, Jana.”

“I don’t mind lifting.”

She helped him stack the cases. She could not reach the highest row, so she stood aside and watched him swing them easily up and shove them in place. They sorted by brand, so there would be no need to pull out a case in the middle of one of the stacks. She leaned against the wall by the light and watched the play of his back muscles under the T shirt, watched the cording of his arms. She felt as though, in spite of the length of time he had lived there, she had never known him. There was a funny remoteness about him. Sort of like Bonny, and yet not remote in the same way. But Bonny was acting different lately.

“There!” he said, dusting his hands together.

“It makes a lot more room.” Near the corner was a long low row of other cases. She said, “How about those?”

“They can stay as they are for now, hey?”

He turned off the light and she turned toward the doorway and ran into his arm. For a moment she didn’t realize that what he had done was brace his right hand against the wall. It confused her to be blocked in that way.

“What are you doing?” she asked, speaking low because of the darkness. She tried to duck under his arm, but he lowered it. She turned the other way and found she was trapped there, between his arms. It scared her that he didn’t speak.

She knocked his right arm out of the way and plunged toward the dark doorway. Just as she reached the doorway, his hands came around her from behind, pulling her back against him, holding her there. She knew she should fight him, should struggle and call out. But his hands on her started a trembling that seemed to come up from her knees, a weak trembling that held her there, head bowed, pulled back hard against him as he dropped his lips to the side of her neck, nuzzling her neck, breathing into her hair. He pulled her slowly back into the dark storeroom, moving her, turning her slowly. The edge of the low stack of cartons cut the backs of her calves and she went down slowly, taking great shuddering breaths, feeling as if, under her warm skin, all her flesh and bone and muscle had turned to a warm helpless fluid. He was harsh with her, and it was over quickly.

She lay in darkness and heard him move about the room. Her breathing was beginning to slow when the harsh light came on, shocking her into a dazed scrambling. She sat up. He stood by the light switch tapping a cigarette out of the pack. The overhead light gave him a black and white look, like a sharp photograph.

“Stop your damn sniffling,” he said quietly. And she realized that was the first he had spoken since turning off the light. It made the tears come faster, but she tried to stop the crying sound. He was looking at her as if he hated her. It was as if he had punished her, had wanted to hurt her.

“You… shouldn’t have.”

“Me?
I
shouldn’t have? Honey, you don’t want to start putting the blame off on me. It seemed to me like it was both of us, Jana.”

“If Gus ever finds out, he’ll—”

“I imagine he could be a rough old guy about something like this. Figuring on telling him?”

“No. Oh, no!” She felt dulled and sated. He seemed to be standing a long way off, at the far end of some enormous echoing room. It seemed to take vast effort to stand up. She smoothed the crumpled skirt with the palms of her hands, combed at her ruffled hair with her fingers. He tapped ashes from his cigarette on the storeroom floor.

“We can arrange this better next time,” he said.

“No. I don’t want to do it again, Vern.”

“You did once. What difference does it make now? One time or forty times. It adds up to the same thing, doesn’t it? You liked it. So we’ll arrange it better next time. I’ve got it figured out. I know the mornings the old guy leaves at four to go to the farmers’ market. He went this morning. He goes Thursday. He goes on Saturday. I’ll see you about four-thirty Thursday.”

“Not there. Not in our room.”

“Keep your voice down, damn it. You can’t come up on the third floor. I know how to walk like a cat, honey. How can we miss?”

“I won’t do it!”

“You will, Jana, because if you don’t, I’m going to do a little heavy-handed hinting about your rubbing up against me, and I don’t know how long I can hold out. And I won’t hint to the old man. I’ll hint to Doris and let her carry the ball.”

He dropped the cigarette and put his heel on it.

“You wouldn’t do that.”

“Yes, I would.”

“But you act like you… hate me or something. Why do you want to do that?”

“Why shouldn’t I want to come see you Thursday morning? My God, I’m normal. And you’re a very pleasant bundle, honey.”

She walked by him, not speaking. She heard him click off the storeroom light and follow her. He caught up with her, casually, in the shed passageway, put his arm around her, pinched the flesh of her waist hard between his fingers and the heel of his hand.

“Thursday, then?”

She made a faint sound of agreement. She felt shamed as though she could never look anyone squarely in the eyes again. Anna was sitting alone at the big table, eating. She gave them a stolid glance and shoveled another forkful between the slow-moving jaws.

Jana went in and sat in the living room. Three girls in shorts were tap-dancing in unison on the TV screen. Jana looked at Gus’s stone face. His hands, half curled, rested on his massive thighs. She watched for a time and then made herself go over and kiss Gus lightly on the lips before going up to bed. She took a bath as hot as she could bear it, lowering herself inch by inch into the steaming water, toweling herself harshly afterward until her skin tingled and glowed.

She went to bed, yawning in the darkness, lying loose-bodied in the darkness, trying not to think about it and trying not to think about Thursday morning when she would be alone in darkness, as she was now, and the door would open with stealth and she would hear him softly crossing the room toward her marriage bed. Yet just thinking about that spiraled an expectant excitement within her. And the expectancy heightened her sense of guilt and sense of shame, because she knew that she would welcome him. As he said, it was done. And if it were done again, it would make no difference. It had happened, and after all, it was Gus’s fault. What did he expect? For her to stop being a woman because he stopped being a man? It was his fault. All his fault. And Vern didn’t hate her. He had only acted that way because he was odd and shy and perhaps frightened. And he would never hint to Doris. That had just been a threat. When you looked at it squarely, it was Gus’s fault. They would be very careful. Nothing would happen. They would not be caught. Gus did not want her. Vern did. It would be all right. And she was not to blame, not for any of it.

She fought the guilt, feeling that she chased it back into a remote corner of her mind. It hid there, out of sight.

She felt the sleep coming. She felt it roll up against her, deep and black. A sleep like none she had felt in months. She felt as though, with each exhalation, she sank a bit deeper into the warm bed. There was no tension in her. She floated down and down into the soothing blackness.

AT ELEVEN O’CLOCK on Wednesday morning Paul Darmond looked up from the papers on his desk as Lieutenant Rowell came into his small office in the courthouse, walking with his bandy-legged strut. Rowell shoved a chair closer to the wall, sat in it, and tilted it back against the wall.

“How’s the soul-saving going, Preach?”

“Business as usual.”

“You sure get yourself around. I’ve been fighting the U.S. government. They tried to tell me they’d handle this one. I told them it was in my back yard, and anything going on in my back yard is my business.”

“You got those three kids?”

“On Monday. The Delaney girl. Fitzgerald. Derrain. One other boy and two more girls. And two pushers working the high school. A very pretty picture. Delaney, Fitzgerald, and Derrain had set up a deal in a crumb-bum hotel, with the Delaney girl turned pro for junk money, setting up the other two girls on the same pitch, and with the Fitzgerald boy and the Derrain boy fronting for them.”

“What was the home situation with the three names I gave you?”

Rowell shrugged. “The Delaney girl’s old lady is a dipso. The Fitzgerald kid’s people both work a night shift, sleep all day, live in a crummy apartment. Derrain’s people got dough and no sense. The woman isn’t his mother. There was a divorce in the picture. You know how it goes. All three families. The same yak. Not my baby. Not my sweet Ginny. Not my darling, my Bucky. There must be some mistake, Officer. My baby would never do such terrible things. I get it through their heads finally that there’s no mistake. Then they want a break for their precious babies. Take it easy on them. Officer. They didn’t realize what they were doing. It always follows the same pattern. So I have to make it clear I’m booking them for everything I can. That’s my job. It’s up to the judge, once they’ve had a cure at the county hospital, to be lenient if he wants to. I tossed that Fitz in a cell and broke him in four hours. He and Derrain mugged three guys in the last month, operating from Derrain’s car, with the Delaney girl acting as lookout. I talked to the school nurse. There’s some other little nests of users in the school. We’ll clean up what we can. You sneaked that Varaki girl out from under, Preach. I want to rattle a little information out of her, too.”

“She won’t be back for a while.”

“I can wait.”

“Let it lay, Andy. Once she’s straightened out I’ll get everything she knows and tell you if there’s any additional information worth working on.”

“We can talk about that later, Preach. I came in to talk about the Dover kid. It looks like that’s no place for him, wouldn’t you say?”

“Why the sudden concern?”

“I don’t like you putting a mess of bad eggs in one of my baskets. A tramp and two one-time losers and a junkie in one household. I don’t like it. It means trouble. I don’t like that Lockter. He’s too smooth. He’s working some kind of an angle. I can smell it. If he’s working an angle, Preach, putting that new kid in there is just giving him an assistant so he can work the angle a little better, whatever it is.”

“If you’re right, Dover wouldn’t go in with him.”

“God, you make me tired sometimes. A wrongo is a wrongo, no matter how you—”

“Not half as tired as you make me, Andy. Go ahead. Lean on Mr. Lockter. Out of the group I’ve got right now, I’d say he’s the poorest risk. I’ve never got to him.”