“Southern Pacific Hotel. I got a room.”
“Oh, then you don’t work in a house now?”
“I couldn’t never get started again,” said Ethel. “You shouldn’t of run me off.” She wiped big tears from the corners of her eyes with the tip of a cotton glove. “Things are bad,” she said. “First I had trouble when we got that new judge. Ninety days, and I didn’t have no record—not here anyways. I come out of that and I got the old Joe. I didn’t know I had it. Give it to a regular—nice fella, worked on the section gang. He got sore an’ busted me up, hurt my nose, lost four teeth, an’ that new judge he give me a hundred and eighty. Hell, Kate, you lose all your contacts in a hundred and eighty days. They forget you’re alive. I just never could get started.”
Kate nodded her head in cold and shallow sympathy. She knew that Ethel was working up to the bite. Just before it came Kate made a move. She opened her desk drawer and took out some money and held it out to Ethel. “I never let a friend down,” she said. “Why don’t you go to a new town, start fresh? It might change your luck.”
Ethel tried to keep her fingers from grabbing at the money. She fanned the bills like a poker hand—four tens. Her mouth began to work with emotion.
Ethel said, “I kind of hoped you’d see your way to let me take more than forty bucks.”
“What do you mean?”
“Didn’t you get my letter?”
“What letter?”
“Oh’“ said Ethel. “Well, maybe it got lost in the mail. They don’t take no care of things. Anyways, I thought you might look after me. I don’t feel good hardly ever. Got a kind of weight dragging my guts down.” She sighed and then she spoke so rapidly that Kate knew it had been rehearsed.
“Well, maybe you remember how I’ve got like second sight,” Ethel began. “Always predicting things that come true. Always dreaming stuff and it come out. Fella says I should go in the business. Says I’m a natural medium. You remember that?”
“No,” said Kate, “I don’t.”
“Don’t? Well, maybe you never noticed. All the others did. I told ’em lots of things and they come true.”
“What are you trying to say?”
“I had this-here dream. I remember when it was because it was the same night Faye died.” Her eves flicked up at Kate’s cold face. She continued doggedly, “It rained that night, and it was raining in my dream—anyways, it was wet. Well, in my dream I seen you come out the kitchen door. It wasn’t pitch-dark—moon was coming through a little. And the dream thing was you. You went out to the back of the lot and stooped over. I couldn’t see what you done. Then you come creeping back.
“Next thing I knew—why, Faye was dead.” She paused and waited for some comment from Kate, but Kate’s face was expressionless.
Ethel waited until she was sure Kate would not speak. “Well, like I said, I always believed in my dreams. It’s funny, there wasn’t nothing out there except some smashed medicine bottles and a little rubber tit from an eye-dropper.”
Kate said lazily, “So you took them to a doctor. What did he say had been in the bottles?”
“Oh, I didn’t do nothing like that.”
“You should have,” said Kate.
“I don’t want to see nobody get in trouble. I’ve had enough trouble myself. I put that broke glass in an envelope and stuck it away.”
Kate said softly, “And so you are coming to me for advice?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I’ll tell you what I think,” said Kate. “I think you’re a worn-out old whore and you’ve been beaten over the head too many times.”
“Don’t you start saying I’m nuts—” Ethel began.
“No, maybe you’re not, but you’re tired and you’re sick. I told you I never let a friend down. You can come back here. You can’t work but you can help around, clean and give the cook a hand. You’ll have a bed and you’ll get your meals. How would that be? And a little spending money.”
Ethel stirred uneasily. “No, ma’am,” she said. “I don’t think I want to—sleep here. I don’t carry that envelope around. I left it with a friend.”
“What did you have in mind?” Kate asked.
“Well, I thought if you could see your way to let me have a hundred dollars a month, why, I could make out and maybe get my health back.”
“You said you lived at the Southern Pacific Hotel?”
“Yes, ma’am—and my room is right up the hall from the desk. The night clerk’s a friend of mine. He don’t never sleep when he’s on duty. Nice fella.”
Kate said, “Don’t wet your pants, Ethel. All you’ve got to worry about is how much does the ‘nice fella’ want. Now wait a minute.” She counted six more ten-dollar bills from the drawer in front of her and held them out.
“Will it come the first of the month or do I have to come here for it?”
“I’ll send it to you,” said Kate. “And, Ethel,” she continued quietly, “I still think you ought to have those bottles analyzed.”
Ethel clutched the money tightly in her hand. She was bubbling over with triumph and good feeling. It was one of the few things that had ever worked out for her. “I wouldn’t think of doing that,” she said. “Not unless I had to.”
After she had gone Kate strolled out to the back of the lot behind the house. And even after years she could see from the unevenness of the earth that it must have been pretty thoroughly dug over.
The next morning the judge heard the usual chronicle of small violence and nocturnal greed. He only half listened to the fourth case and at the end of the terse testimony of the complaining witness he asked, “How much did you lose?”
The dark-haired man said, “Pretty close to a hundred dollars.”
The judge turned to the arresting officer. “How much did she have?”
“Ninety-six dollars. She got whisky and cigarettes and some magazines from the night clerk at six o’clock this morning.”
Ethel cried, “I never seen this guy in my life.”
The judge looked up from his papers. “Twice for prostitution and now robbery. You’re costing too much. I want you out of town by noon.” He turned to the officer. “Tell the sheriff to run her over the county line.” And he said to Ethel, “If you come back, I’ll give you to the county for the limit, and that’s San Quentin. Do you understand?”
Ethel said, “Judge, I want to see you alone.”
“Why?”
“I got to see you,” said Ethel. “This is a frame.”
“Everything’s a frame,” said the judge. “Next.”
While a deputy sheriff drove Ethel to the county line on the bridge over the Pajaro River, the complaining witness strolled down Castroville Street toward Kate’s, changed his mind and went back to Kenoe’s barbershop to get a hair cut.
3
Ethel’s visit did not disturb Kate very much when it happened. She knew about what attention would be paid to a whore with a grievance, and that an analysis of the broken bottles would not show anything recognizable as poison. She had nearly forgotten Faye. The forcible recalling was simply an unpleasant memory.
Gradually, however, she found herself thinking about it. One night when she was checking the items on a grocery bill a thought shot into her mind, shining and winking like a meteor. The thought flashed and went out so quickly that she had to stop what she was doing to try to find it. How was the dark face of Charles involved in the thought? And Sam Hamilton’s puzzled and merry eyes? And why did she get a shiver of fear from the flashing thought?
She gave it up and went back to her work, but the face of Charles was behind her, looking over her shoulder. Her fingers began to hurt her. She put the accounts away and made a tour through the house. It was a slow, listless night—a Tuesday night. There weren’t even enough customers to put on the circus.
Kate knew how the girls felt about her. They were desperately afraid of her. She kept them that way. It was probable that they hated her, and that didn’t matter either. But they trusted her, and that did matter. If they followed the rules she laid down, followed them exactly, Kate would take care of them and protect them. There was no love involved and no respect. She never rewarded them and she punished an offender only twice before she removed her. The girls did have the security of knowing that they would not be punished without cause.
As Kate walked about, the girls became elaborately casual. Kate knew about that too and expected it. But on this night she felt that she was not alone. Charles seemed to walk to the side and behind her.