IV
The sound of the pianola woke Rico. He sat up and looked at his wrist watch. It was two o’clock in the afternoon. He had slept twelve hours.
Rico lived at a tension. His nervous system was geared up to such a pitch that he was never sleepy, never felt the desire to relax, was always keenly alive. He did not average over five hours sleep a night and as soon as he opened his eyes he was awake. When he sat in a chair he never thrust out his feet and lolled, but sat rigid and alert. He walked, ate, took his pleasures in the same manner. What distinguished him from his associates was his inability to live in the present. He was like a man on a long train journey to a promised land. To him the present was but a dingy way-station; he had his eyes on the end of the journey.
Rico leapt out of bed and hastily put on his clothes.
“Twelve hours, boy,” he said to his reflection in the mirror, as he stood combing his hair, “that’ll never do.”
He had been seeing too much of Blondy Belle; that was the trouble. Rico had very little to do with women. He regarded them with a sort of contempt; they seemed so silly, reckless and purposeless, also mendacious and extremely undependable. Not that Rico trusted men, far from it. He was temperamentally suspicious. But in the course of his life he had discovered a few men he could trust, but no women. What he feared most in women, though, was not their treachery, that could be guarded against, but their ability to relax a man, to make him soft and slack, like Joe Massara. Rico had never been deeply involved with a woman. Incapable of tender sentiments, he had escaped the commoner kind of pitfalls. He was given to short bursts of lust, and this lust once satisfied, he looked at women impersonally for a while, as one looks at inanimate objects. But at times this lust, usually the result of an inner need and not the outcome of exterior stimulus, would be aroused by the sight of some particular woman. This had been the case with Blondy Belle; she was big, healthy and lascivious. This exactly suited Rico’s tastes; she excited him, and for that very reason he was on guard against her.
“Yeah,” he said, “I got to lay off Blondy for a while.”
She wanted him to come and live with her, but he refused. The offer tickled his vanity, though, for Pepi or Joe Sansone would have jumped at the chance. But not Rico.
He went out into the living room. Blondy, in a cerise kimono, was pedalling the pianola and singing loudly. The room was in disorder. Stockings hung from the backs of chairs, the dress Blondy had worn the night before was suspended from the chandelier on a coat-hanger, and there was a pile of clothes in the middle of the room.
Blondy turned around and smiled at him, pedalling the piano at the same time.
“What the hell kind of a piece is that?” asked Rico.
“That’s an Eyetalian piece,” said Blondy. “Ain’t it swell?”
“No,” said Rico, “I like jazz better.”
Blondy stopped the pianola and back-pedalled the roll.
“I got it yesterday because I thought you’d like it,” she said.
“Hell, quit kidding,” said Rico.
“I sure did. It’s from an opera.”
“Yeah? Say, what’s wrong with you?”
Blondy looked at him. She had pretensions. Ten years ago she had been a lady’s maid and she felt that she was somewhat cultured.
“You’d think I was a regular wop to hear you talk,” said Rico; “say, I was born in Youngstown and I can’t even speak the lingo.”
“Well, I guess I wasn’t born in the old country either,” said Blondy.
She put a new roll on the pianola and Rico sat smoking, while she played it. Rico had no ear for music; he couldn’t even whistle, or distinguish one tune from another. But he liked rhythm. There was something straightforward and primitive about jazz rhythms that impressed him.
“That’s a good one,” he said, when the roll was played through.
“Want to hear some more?”
“No,” said Rico, “I got to go.”
He rose and went over to the closet for his overcoat, but Blondy said:
“Listen, Rico, I want to see you a minute before you go.”
“What about?”
“About Little Arnie.”
Rico stared at her.
“What’s the idea? To hell with Little Arnie. As long as he’s straight with me I ain’t got no interest in him at all.”
“He ain’t straight with nobody.”
Rico just looked at her.
Little Arnie had played his hand badly. At first he hadn’t minded losing Blondy Belle in the least; she cost him a good deal of money and she bored and irritated him. But he had been kidded unmercifully. As he had no sense of humour whatever and was very touchy in a personal matter, this eventually angered him. In revenge, he talked. He told all who would listen that Blondy Belle was a liar, a crook, and had certain unnatural appetites. Killer Pepi was one of the auditors and he immediately repeated Little Arnie’s assertions to his woman, Blue Jay, who ran at once to Blondy Belle. Yes, Little Arnie, who was fifty percent fool, had played his hand badly.
Blondy lit a cigarette and lay down on the davenport.
“Come over here and sit down,” she said; “I’ll give you an earful.”
“I ain’t got no time,” said Rico.
Blondy blew out a cloud of smoke.
“What you got on your mind?” said Rico; “spill it.”
“All right,” said Blondy. “Arnie’s giving you a split on the house, ain’t he? What’s the split?”
“Thirty percent.”
“How do you know you’re getting thirty?”
“I look at the books.”
Blondy laughed.
“Them books is crooked.”
“Straight dope?” asked Rico, his face hardening.
“Sure,” said Blondy, “I wasn’t gonna say nothing. It wasn’t none of my business, but Arnie’s been peddling a lot of loose talk about me and I don’t take that.”
“All right,” said Rico, “now you know so damn much, how we gonna prove it?”
“It’s a cinch,” said Blondy; “hand Arnie’s boy, Joe Peeper, some dough and he’ll spill the news. Joe hates Arnie.”
“Good!” said Rico, banging the table with his fist; “I’ll run Arnie out of town and declare you in, Blondy. You got brains.”
Blondy looked at him.
“You stick to me, boy, and we’ll own the town.”
“Don’t get swelled up,” said Rico, “just because you happened to be in the know.”
That’s what she liked about Rico. He was hard to impress.
“Hell of a lot of thanks I get for it,” said Blondy.
“Don’t worry about that,” said Rico, his head buzzing with projects, “you’ll get something better than thanks.”
Rico went to the closet and got his coat and hat.
“Wait a minute, big boy,” said Blondy, “you ain’t heard it all. Listen, that joint of Arnie’s is worth plenty of dough. He ain’t gonna give it up without a battle.”
“Hell,” said Rico, “he’s yellow.”
“Sure he is. But he’s tricky. Rico, if you can’t work the Joe Peeper stunt, here’s a lever. Remember Limpy John?”
“Sure,” said Rico, “they bumped him off.”
“Who did?”
“The cops.”
Blondy laughed.
“They thought they did. Arnie bumped him off.”
Rico grinned.
“I got you.”
Rico put on his overcoat.
“Be around tonight?” asked Blondy.
“No. I got business.”
“Monkey business.”
“No, I got to go cross town. I’ll give you a ring tomorrow.”
Blondy lay back on the davenport.
“You’ll sure be missing something,” she said.
“I’ll ketch up,” said Rico.
When Rico had gone, Blondy played a couple of rolls on the pianola, then she drank half a pint of liquor and went back to bed.