Girls' Dormitory (16 page)

"You know better than that," he protested. "I think too much of you for that."

"Every man says the same thing before it happens. Every man makes a big speech about how he loves the girl. And maybe he does, when he says it. But when the thing's done and she's in trouble he runs like a thief in a graveyard at midnight."

His fingers tightened on her hand.

"Helen—"

"Let's not fight."

"I don't want to fight. I just want you to know that it isn't like that with me."

"Or with us," she corrected him.

Misery filled his eyes, a misery that made her feel instantly superior to him.

"Or with us," he said.

She laughed at him.

"You would if you could," she said. "And you know it."

"We've both been drinking a lot of beer, Helen, let's not—"

"Don't lie to me, Harry."

"The only reason you haven't asked me to go to bed is because you haven't got the guts."

His eyes found her face and lingered there.

"The only reason I haven't asked you," he said slowly, "is because it isn't right."

She tried to laugh at him but she couldn't quite make it. He was so moral that it was fantastic. One in a thousand, she thought; Harry Martin was one in a thousand. If there was such a thing, then he was the kind of a man a girl could depend on. Or could she? Hadn't Evelyn Carter thought the same thing about somebody? And now. Evelyn was dead and her baby was dead and the man was still as free as a bird in the sky. No, you couldn't trust any of them, not one. They gave you the business and then they gave you the gate. A girl dealing with a man fell in the same class as a gambler playing Russian roulette with a fully loaded gun—no matter when or how you pulled the trigger you blew your brains out.

"Let's talk about something else," she said. "Let's not be morbid."

"Love isn't morbid."

"It is if you die for it."

They drank a lot of beer after that, talking about school and the weather and parents' night. Harry's folks had planned to come in for it but his mother caught a bad cold and they had canceled the trip.

"You got anybody coming?" he wanted to know.

"No."

"Nobody at all?"

"Nobody at all."

Helen didn't know where either her mother or father was and she didn't give a damn. She had come this far alone and she would go the rest of the distance by herself, too.

"Another beer, Helen?"

"No, thanks."

"You don't care much for beer, do you?"

"It fills me up."

"Me, too."

On the way to the house, holding her by the left arm, he stopped once on the darkened street and turned her toward him.

"I love you," he said simply.

"You're drunk, Harry."

"No, I'm not. I'm in love with you."

Other men had told her that, men who had paid for the favors of her body. And those of her own sex had told her the same thing, Peggy and other girls whom she had pleased, even Thelma Reid.

"You're sweet," she said softly.

"Can I kiss you?"

"If you want."

Holding her close, he kissed her, his mouth hesitant and slightly trembling as it closed over her lips. "I'll never hurt you," he said.

"Promise?"

"I promise."

Somehow she felt sure that he wouldn't. In that second, Helen felt a strange urge to make him happy, to make him happy in the only way that she knew how. But she knew something else: he wasn't that kind. He was different from any man she had met before.

"Good night," she told him when they reached the house.

He made no effort to kiss her again.

"Good night."

She stood watching him as he walked down the street and out of sight.

Thelma was waiting for her at the top of the stairs.

"Where have you been?" Thelma demanded.

"Out."

"I know that. But where? I've been half out of my mind looking for you."

"You're not half out of your mind," Helen said. "You're out of it all the way."

But she did not protest as Thelma led her to the room at the end of the hall.

Everything had a price. And this was hers.

Peggy's father arrived early in the afternoon of parents' day. He was driving the big Caddy and Peggy could tell that he had made more than one stop along the way.

"Damndest roads I've ever seen," he said. "Ice up to your hips."

"Terrible," another parent said. "I skidded on a turn and had to get a wrecker to pull me out of the ditch."

"What kind of car are you driving?"

"Ford."

"No wonder. These Caddys really hold the road."

They were in the living room which the girls were using for the purpose of greeting relatives and parents. Some had already arrived and left for the college. But there was no hurry. Open house would last until eight in the evening and then the dean would formally welcome the group. Everybody predicted that the punch would be terrible, the sandwiches stale, and that no one would have a good time.

"I drove by that school you go to," Otis Markey said to his daughter. "It looks like a prison without a fence."

"Well, it isn't."

"They ought to have some nice buildings. Big buildings.

"They're growing."

"I don't see how it could be any other way. The place couldn't be much smaller."

She had known that her father would ridicule the school. Everything had to be big with Otis Markey. Houses had to be big, cars had to be big, and money had to be big. Nothing small made any sense to him.

"Frank wanted to come," he said. "He came to the house four times and insisted on driving up with me, but I told him that I better not."

"I'm glad you didn't."

"I told him you were having your fling and that you'd get over it soon. He's waiting it out for you."

Frank, she decided, could keep right on waiting. She had found the man she had wanted. But she had lost him. What was the matter with her? What was wrong with Jerry? She was pretty, as pretty as any of the other girls, but now he wouldn't have anything to do with her. Maybe the old belief that said not to let a man have his way was right, after all. But she knew she would do the same thing again if she had the choice. That moment in the cabin had been one of beauty; it had awakened in her the woman that had been there sleeping all these years. She could look at Helen and not desire her. She could look at Helen and want her only as a friend. She felt sorry for her because she was that way, and felt sorry for herself because she had been a part of it.

"I asked you in my letter not to drive the Caddy," Peggy said. "But I should have known you would do it anyway."

"What's wrong with the Caddy?"

"You've seen the other people here. They don't have very much."

"You think I'm rubbing it in?"

"A little."

Otis Markey stared intently at a girl in a tight-fitting red dress.

"You have to get used to money," he said. "You have to realize that money is power and that people respect power." He looked around the room. "My God, isn't there a drink in the place?" he demanded.

"Not here."

He looked disgusted. "Let's get out of here and get some liquor," he said. "I'm as dry as dust after that trip."

"I see you're still drinking as much as ever."

"I drink because I can afford it. And also for the hell of it."

Peggy recalled the brandy at the cabin. She couldn't understand how anybody could drink and still think straight.

"There's a girl going with us," she said. "We have to wait for her."

"Oh?"

"Helen Lee. Her parents aren't here and I promised we'd take her along."

Other parents were now arriving and the living room began to fill with people. Thelma Reid introduced herself to everybody. She laughed a lot and kept shouting for Jerry to bring in more chairs from the dining room.

"Who's Jerry?" Otis Markey asked.

"He works here."

"Well, he keeps looking at you all the time."

"Does he?"

"Yes. And you keep looking at him. What goes on with you two?"

"Nothing."

"There better not be. Frank is a good boy."

Peggy felt suddenly angry.

"Don't I have a right to love anybody except Frank Taylor?"

"Of course, you have the right—if he's in our class."

"What class is that?"

"Money."

"You didn't always have money."

"But I do now. And that's what counts. When you're poor you marry poor, but when you're rich you have to marry rich."

"Nothing like being a snob."

"Or being practical."

Mrs. Reid came over to them and Peggy's father asked how his daughter was getting along. Mrs. Reid said she was doing fine, just fine. Peggy, feeling left out of things, watched Jerry bring in chairs from the dining room. He did look at her but he didn't smile. She wished that he would smile at her so that she would feel wanted again. Not the way he had wanted her out at the lake. Peggy ached to be wanted for herself alone.

Suddenly, almost every head turned. Helen was coming down the open stairs. She was wearing a tight blue dress cut very low in front, caught with a tiny bow between her two high breasts. Her movements were like those of a cat walking over hot coals. Somebody let their breath out in a rush. Peggy looked to see who it was. It was her father.

"Hi," Helen said to Peggy. "Your dad get here yet?"

"Yes."

She made the introductions but she wasn't quite sure of what she said. She hadn't wanted Helen to dress in so revealing and sexually attractive a way. A skirt and a blouse would have been better.

"Driest place this side of prohibition," her father was saying. "Would you care for a drink, Miss Lee?"

"Call me Helen."

"Well—Helen?"

"I wouldn't mind," Helen said. "But I forgot my coat I'll have to get it."

Helen made the same sort of exit from the room as her entrance. Her hips were trim and rounded, and her legs were long and straight.

"She's a looker," Otis Markey said.

"Dad!"

"Can I help it if she looks like that?"

"She's a nice girl."

"I didn't say she wasn't."

"Well, see that you don't act like you think she isn't."

They drove uptown to a bar on South Adams Street, an expensive place with deep-cushioned seats and enough waiters to man a fair-sized sea-going ship.

"You pay for the atmosphere," Otis Markey said. He grinned, and he wasn't looking at the tablecloth. "But when don't you pay for the atmosphere?"

"You don't pay for it at Cooper Community College," Helen said.

"That's because there isn't any."

She laughed. "You're right."

The waiter, who had been ignored, stood patiently by, waiting.

"It isn't so bad," Peggy said. "They teach you what you're supposed to know and that's what you're supposed to go to college to get.

"Hell," her father said. He glanced up at the waiter. "Who's first?" he asked.

"I'll take a stinger," Helen said.

Peggy's father nodded his approval.

"Sounds good to me. And you, Peggy?"

"Ginger ale."

"She doesn't drink," Otis Markey said. "Can you imagine me having a daughter who doesn't drink?"

"I know she doesn't drink," Helen said. "She never would."

"Silly. A few never hurt anybody."

"That's what I say."

Things got off to a bad start and they stayed that way. Helen and Peggy's father drank stingers, kept on saying that they ought to go out to the college if they were ever going to go, and Helen's dress continued to get lower and lower in front. She pulled the dress up a couple of times, but whenever she laughed it slid down again. She finally left it where it was. Peggy began to wish that her father had never come, and that she hadn't invited Helen to go with them.

"You and Peggy room together?" Otis Markey wanted to know.

"We used to, yes."

"I'll bet it was fun."

Helen's eyes and voice were filled with meaning when she replied, "It was fun."

"We should be getting out to the college."

"If you want to."

"I don't want to," Otis Markey said. "What do I care about going out to that stinking little college? It's you girls I'm thinking of. You're supposed to be there, aren't you?"

"There's no rule about it," Helen said.

The waiter hovered over the table and Peggy refused another ginger ale. How much could a person drink, anyway? She had ordered a glass for every round of stingers, and felt almost bloated. She wondered where her father and Helen could possibly put so much liquor.

"Let's go, Dad," Peggy said. She tried a laugh and the result was a little weak. "I want you to show up sober."

"I'm sober," her father said belligerently.

"Of course, you are."

"And so is Helen. She's plenty sober. This girl friend of yours can drink with the best. She still holds her own like a lady."

Helen smiled.

"Old sponge, they call me," she said.

"I'll bet."

"Old sponge with the hollow legs."

Otis Markey lifted the tablecloth and looked under the table.

"They're the nicest hollow legs I ever saw," he said. "And believe me, I've seen a lot of hollow legs."

"A man like you wouldn't be likely to miss a woman's legs."

"Hardly."

"Or anything else."

"There are a couple of things I'm not missing, you can bet your bottom dollar on that." He grinned at her.

Helen laughed. "You're a card," she said. "A real card."

Peggy was disgusted with both of them. Her father was making all the familiar pitches, and Helen was catching every one.

"Another stinger?"

"Another stinger."

"You like to get stung?"

"I don't mind getting stung."

"By the right man, huh?"

"You read my mind, Mr. Markey."

"I thought you were going to call me Otis."

"Otis."

"I sting like a hornet, I do."

"Dad!" Peggy said.

He glanced at her and then away. "You're a puritan," he said. "You always were a puritan. You must have gotten it from your mother."

"I'm not sorry if I did."