Her role was to be Pep’s girl. She was not stupid enough to believe that everything they did was legitimate. Legitimacy, she knew, had lots of gray areas. Prohibition was the law, but drinking went on anyway because people liked to drink; they needed to drink and have fun. In the movies there were lots of people shown drinking and having fun in speakeasies. So what was wrong with that?
Okay, so there was bookmaking. People loved to play the horses and the numbers. They derived pleasure from that. Somebody had to run these things. Sometimes laws were silly. She had seen with her own eyes cops in uniform getting paid off by the boys on the corner. Everybody knew that the law was a joke.
And borrowing money when a bank was too stuffy to lend it was okay, too. The people that lent money to people of high risk deserved to be paid high interest rates for that risk. There were other things, too, that made sense if one thought about it carefully. Businesses did need protection against unscrupulous competitors, and sometimes businesses and unions did need middlemen to negotiate things away from public scrutiny. It wasn’t her job to be judge and jury. Besides, she had learned life had trade-offs.
She could put two and two together. She knew Pep and his friends were what people generally referred to as gangsters. She had seen enough gangster movies to know what that was. But she was able to separate what he did, which she didn’t know for sure, from what he really was, which was the most important thing. Okay, there were rumors and things said. As she had learned early in life if you are afraid of the dark, don’t go into dark places.
Pep’s work, she told herself, was certainly adventurous and filled with excitement, and probably courage, too, because what
Pep and his associates did was, she assumed, dangerous work. Maybe there were killings connected to it, but they were most certainly righteous killings, necessary to protect themselves and probably society from extremely evil and greedy people. Like Robin Hood perhaps. She could live with that idea. Still better, she forced herself to put any contrary thoughts completely out of her mind.
The important thing for her just as for the wives and girlfriends of the other fellows in the combination, was that their men were good husbands or boyfriends or fathers or sons and, of course, good providers. Pep was a wonderful son who treated his parents with great respect and was generous in his support. He was also a good uncle and brother. These were the real criteria by which to judge a man’s true character as far as she was concerned. Weren’t they?
Often she heard people say things behind her back that were not exactly complimentary. Even here at Gorlick’s, some of the other women were snooty to her or looked down on her. She attributed that to jealousy. She had the best and handsomest man of all of them.
She heard rumors, of course, that Pep might have other girls. She didn’t exactly like it, but she never ever confronted him with such suspicions. That was none of her business, either. After all, she was the one he had chosen to put up in Gorlick’s for the summer. She was his number one. If there was a number two or three she never asked.
He was also very sweet and generous to her. He bought her dresses and shoes and gave her presents. He also gave her fancy underwear and he liked her to dress up with garter belts and high heels and brassieres that pushed her breasts into high mounds. He taught her about sex, and especially about those things he liked her to do to him.
In doing those things, she felt like an actress in a movie, and he was the director. Her role was to perform and please him, which she did with obedience and enthusiasm. Once or twice she even had an orgasm, but for her, the most important thing was to give Pep pleasure. Soon she began to believe that her mother’s ideas about purity and marriage and being an old maid were laughable. Where would marriage get her?
The game plan at Gorlick’s was for the men to come up on weekends and the women to stay on during the week. Some men stayed all week, but mostly they kept to themselves all day, playing cards or taking walks together, meeting with their women or children only at mealtimes.
Pep wanted Abie Reles’s wife, Helen, to keep an eye on her, but that didn’t work out very well since Helen Reles played cards most of the day and night, which meant that Mutzie was stuck being a babysitter for their son, who was a brat. When she complained to Pep, he put an end to it. The Reles kid was a pain in the ass.
The fact that Mutzie wasn’t a card player was a definite social handicap. She was younger than most of the others, too. Not to mention the obvious, which was that she attracted a good deal of attention from the men. This didn’t sit too well with the women and probably inspired a great deal of jealousy toward her. Of course, she understood that. Also, there was a certain status in being Pep’s girlfriend, which meant she couldn’t be friendly with just anyone. Besides, she wasn’t the gregarious type. The result was that during the week, she kept to herself mostly, waiting for Pep to come up for the weekend. She sensed that people got used to her being alone and soon accepted it.
At meal times she ate at the same table with Helen and Harriet, Bugsy’s wife, and some of the others, but she was rarely
part of the main conversation, although she listened to what was being said. Rarely did the women discuss anything about their husband’s business, which apparently was the rules of the game. Mutzie was certain that they were watching her to be sure that she was sticking to the letter of the rules.
Being with these women did, however, make her realize that being the wife or girlfriend of a gangster was no bed of roses. Kid Twist had spent three years in Elmira, a state prison, and was always being hauled in by the police on suspicion of something or other. The same was true of Pep and Bugsy Goldstein.
But the women led her to believe that what the police were doing were harassing their men largely because they were not the ones in on the “take.”
“They’re always picking on the boys because they want a piece of the action,” Helen told her. “Simple as that. It’s true that sometimes my Abie loses his temper and does things maybe he shouldn’t, but as far as I’m concerned he’s a good husband and father and provider and those things matter the most to me.”
During the first week of her stay at Gorlick’s, Mutzie was subject to words of advice from both Reles’s and Goldstein’s wife. They added up to what she already knew, which was never ever to double-cross Pep or even look at another man while she was Pep’s girl.
Although she didn’t complain to Pep that she was lonely during the week, he must have gotten differing reports from the other women.
“You bored up here, Mutzie?” he asked her one Friday night after they had made love. Pep was always pretty hot when he came in from the city on Friday afternoons. The first time was always over with quick.
“I’ll bet you heard that from the other girls. They probably
think I’m stuck-up when all I want to be is alone. I’m happy here, Pep. Especially when you come up.”
Above all, she didn’t want him to think that she was unhappy, ungrateful or troublesome to him. It was certainly better being at Gorlick’s than in the hot city and her parent’s stinking apartment for the summer. And she had Pep on weekends and all the prestige that went with being his girl.
“Those cunts are all jealous, ya know,” Pep said as they lay naked in bed. “Yaw a looker and they all got them fat Jewish tushes.”
“Maybe, but they don’t really bother me.”
“They bother ya, I’ll give ’em a headache they don’t feget. Maybe I gotta talk to them.”
“I wouldn’t like that, Pep. And I’m not bored. Mickey Fine … he’s the tumler, puts on some really good shows. And there’s movies twice a week. You know how I like movies.”
“He can be funny sometimes, that Mickey,” Pep said.
“He treats me very nice. A perfect gentleman.”
“Putz better be.” Pep suddenly became reflective. “He’s a good kid. We did business wid his fada. They got a staw sells foundation garments. I’m gonna talk to him to keep an eye out.”
“You don’t have to do that, Pep.”
“Maybe ya keep away from dem cunts, ya be better awf. Mickey’s job is to make ya happy heah, make ya laugh. I don want no long face when I come heah. I want happy. Women don make love so good when dere not happy. I come up here I want no aggravation.”
“Believe me, Pep, I don’t want any aggravation for you. No way. All I want is to make you happy.”
“You make him happy,” he said after a pause, pointing to his growing hard-on. “He’s happy, I’m happy.”
“What a beauty, Pep,” she cried, touching its velvety head with her lips. “It’s the most beautiful thing I ever saw.” She had learned all about the special compliments he liked to hear.
“It’s just faw you baby. Just faw you.”
She would spend the weekend as close to him as he would let her get. She would stand right behind him when he played cards with the boys or blackjack at the tables and he called her his good-luck charm. She would even be close by when he just sat around and schmoozed with the boys, most times being the only woman in the group.
She wasn’t ever part of the conversation and it wasn’t long before she knew she was considered more like an ornament, Pep’s ornament, like a tie clasp or diamond cufflinks, a thing to admire then ignore.
She was always fearful that they would send her away, and because of that maintained a kind of indifferent expression, as if she wasn’t listening to what the men said to each other. The fact was that it was impossible not to hear, although she tried her best to quickly forget what was said.
They told some weird stories and sometimes it wasn’t easy to pretend that she was not listening.
Like Kid Twist’s story about some man named Ernie.
“We brung him to my place. My mudder-in-law was in da next room. So I get the rope and Pep gets da pick and so fa da guy knows from nothin, but somehow he sees da rope in my hand and he gets antsy. Den he sees da pick and he goes crazy and he bites Pep’s fingah.” Reles started to howl with laughter. “And Pep gets real mad and he asks me fa a Band-Aid. I say, ‘Now in da middle a dis? Can’t you wait till we finish?’ But Pep says, ‘He’s gonna give me goims, maybe hydrophobia or sumpin.’ So I said we better hurry so we can get the iodine. ‘Iodine’ he
cries out. ‘That hoits. Ain’t ya got mercurochrome?’ ” Again he doubled up with laughter.
“So what happened?” one of the men asked.
“We hurried,” Kid Twist said. “My mudder-in-law yells from her room. ‘What’s happenin down dere, Abie’ and I calls back and says, ‘Nothin, Ma, Pep just got his fingah bit.’ ‘You want I should get him a Band-Aid’ the old lady calls back. So I tell her ta shuddup and go back ta sleep and I’ll take care of Pep’s fuckin fingah.”
He bent double with laughter. Naturally, Mutzie pretended not to hear, taking out her compact and fixing her face. She wasn’t sure what they meant when they talked of hurrying something, but she was certain that Pep didn’t do anything really bad. At least she hoped not.
Sometimes one of the men might mention keeping it down in Mutzie’s presence.
“Never mind Mutzie,” Pep would say. “She don know nothin, right, baby?”
Mutzie would shrug and nod and bend down and kiss Pep on the lips and he would pat her on the ass.
“You got a great lookin whatamacallit,” Kid Twist would say to Pep winking in her direction.
“My protégée,” Pep would say, giving the men around the table a big grin. “Best of all, she’s good to Peppy, ain’t you, baby?”
Her response was always to kiss him or sometimes to sit on his lap. Occasionally Pep would squeeze her breasts in front of the men, but it was playful and not mean and didn’t embarrass her, although she would push his hand away as a show of dignity.
Once, Bugsy Goldstein baited him as they played cards. He had, she noted, lost a great deal that night and was probably feeling sore and nasty. Mutzie, as always, stood right behind Pep with her hand on his shoulder. He caressed her arm as he played. It was
between hands and she had bent down to get a kiss and while he kissed her he squeezed her breasts.
“Five bucks says dey ain’t real,” Bugsy said suddenly.
“Ain’t real?” Pep squeezed and she pushed his hand away. “Any udder takers on dat?”
“I got five,” Kid Twist said.
“Me, too,” Charlie Workman said.
“Na,” Pep said. “Double maybe.” He looked up at Mutzie. “Right, doll?”
She wasn’t quite sure what was going on so she nodded.
“Okay, doubles,” Bugsy said and the other men at the table agreed. The money was put in the center of the table as if it was a poker pot. Mutzie was wearing a dress that wasn’t very low cut and, as usual, she had on a pointy brassiere.
“C’mere sweets,” Pep said. He guided her to his lap and put his arms around her. Then she realized that he was undoing the back of her dress. She tried to get away but he held her fast. The men laughed.
“Hey, Mutzie. Money’s on da table. Yaw gonna win it for us, right, doll?”
“Pep, don’t,” she squirmed. Yet, although she was embarrassed, she did not feel frightened. Pep was just having fun, kidding around. It was just a joke. Wasn’t it? He wasn’t going to really let it happen. Then suddenly Pep grabbed her hard by the shoulders.
“Ya gonna make me tear this shmata?” he said. “Jes a bet, baby, for old Pep.”
“Please, Pep,” she begged.
“Jes a free show, baby. No harm in it. Dese are my buddies.”
She tried to wiggle free and he slapped her hard on her upper arm. Her response was to stop wiggling and hide
her face in his neck. Pep unhooked her bra and she felt her breasts fall free. Then he pushed her to a position that gave the men a good look. She kept her eyes tight shut. She felt sick to her stomach.
“Them’s as real as your balls, Bugsy,” Pep said proudly.
“I don know, Pep, if I can believe my eyes,” Bugsy said. “Some things ya can only tell by feel.” He put out his hand and squeezed Mutzie’s breasts. His touch filled her with self-disgust.
“Real, I tink,” Bugsy said.
“Lemmee make sure,” Kid Twist said. He moved to where she was sitting on Pep’s lap and also felt them. Then Charlie Workman did the same. A sob began to grow inside of her. She tried to imagine this was happening to someone else. It was the most shamful moment in her whole life.