The Wayward Bus (22 page)

She adjusted the paper-napkin holder so that she could see herself better. But a bend in the metal surface made her nose look broken at the top and fat and bulbous at the bottom. She got up and went around the counter and into the bedroom, and she brought a round hand mirror back to the table and propped it against the sugar dispenser. She settled herself and crossed her legs. “Now there! I'd like to invite you for a drink.” She poured whisky in each glass. “No beer,” she said. “All out of beer. Well, we'll fix that.”

She went to the icebox and brought another bottle of beer. “Now, you see,” she said to the mirror, “we first put a little whisky—not too much—not too little—and we add just the right amount of beer. And there you are.” She pushed one glass toward the mirror and drained the other one. “Some people are afraid to take a drink,” she said. “They can't handle it.”

“Oh, you don't want it? Well, that's your privilege. I'm not going to make you take it. I'm not going to let it go to waste, either.” And she drank off the other glass. Her cheeks were tingling now as though a frost were stinging the surface. She brought the mirror close and inspected herself. Her eyes were damp and shiny. She whipped back a strand of loose hair.

“No reason to let yourself run down just because you're having a good time.” And without warning a vision flipped into place in her head and she turned the mirror face down. The vision struck so hard and so quickly that it was like a blow. Perhaps it was the darkened room. Alice cried, “I don't want to think about that. I hate to think about that.”

But the thought and vision were in. A darkened room and a white bed and her mother paralyzed, rigid, unmoving, the eyes staring straight up, and then the white hand rising from the counterpane in a gesture of despair, a gesture for help. Alice could creep in, no matter how stealthily, and that hand would rise in frightful helplessness, and Alice would hold it for a moment and then put it gently down and go out. Every time she came into that room she would beg the hand not to rise, to lie still, to be dead, like the rest of the body.

“I don't want to think about that,” she cried. “How did that get in?” Her hand shook and the bottle rattled against the glass. She poured an enormous drink and drained it, and it caught in her throat so that she coughed, and she just saved herself from being sick. “That'll fix you,” she said. “I want to think about something else.”

She imagined herself in bed with Juan, but her mind slipped on past that. “I could have had any man I wanted,” she boasted. “Enough made passes at me, God knows, and I didn't give in much.” Her lips writhed away from her teeth a little salaciously. “Maybe I should of while I could. I'm getting along—That's a god-damned lie,” she shouted, “I'm as good as I ever was. I'm better! Who the hell wants a skinny bitch that don't know what to do? No real man wants stuff like that. I could go right out now and pick them off like flies.”

The bottle was a little less than half full now. She spilled some in pouring and giggled at herself. “I do believe I'm getting a little drunk,” she said.

There came a great knocking at the screen door and Alice froze and sat silent. The knocking came again. A man's voice called, “Nobody here. I thought I heard talking.”

“Well, try it again. They might be in back,” a woman's voice answered.

Alice picked up the hand mirror gently and looked at herself. She nodded her head and closed one eye in a large wink. The knocking came again.

“I tell you there's nobody here.”

“Well, try the door.”

Alice heard the rattling of the screen door.

“It's locked up,” the man said, and the woman replied, “It's locked on the inside. They must be in there.”

The man laughed and his feet scraped on gravel. “Well, if they're in there they want to be alone. Don't you ever want to be alone, baby? With me, I mean.”

“Oh, shut up,” said the woman. “I want a sandwich.”

“For that you'll have to wait.”

Alice wondered why she hadn't heard the car or the footsteps on the gravel before the knock. “I'll bet I'm plastered,” she thought. She could hear the car drive away all right.

“Can't take ‘no' for an answer,” Alice said aloud. “Just because a person wants to take a day to rest and get pulled together, why, they've got to have a god-damned sandwich.”

She held up the bottle and squinted judiciously through the glass. “Not a lot left.” She became frightened. Suppose she should run out before she was ready? And then she nodded and smiled to herself. There were two bottles of port wine right in the back of that cabinet. They gave her a sense of security and she poured herself a big drink and sipped at it. Juan didn't like to be around women when they were drinking. He said their faces got crooked and he hated that. Well, Alice would just show him. She drank half the whisky in her glass and stood up heavily.

“Now, you just stay here and wait for me,” she said politely to the glass. Turning the edge of the counter she swayed a little, and the corner bit into her side just above the hip. “That's going to be black and blue,” she said. She crossed the bedroom and went into the bathroom.

She dampened the washcloth and rubbed soap into it till she had a thick paste and then she scrubbed her face. She scrubbed hard beside her nose and in the little crease that crossed her chin. She put the cloth over her little finger and twisted it into her nostrils and she washed her ears. Then, with her eyes squinted shut, she rinsed the soap off and looked at herself in the mirror over the basin. Her face seemed very red and her eyes were a little bloodshot. For a long time she worked on her face. Cream, and then that rubbed off on a towel. She inspected the towel for dirt and found it. She worked at her eyebrows with a brown eyebrow pencil. The lipstick gave her some trouble. She got a blob of carmine red too low on her under lip and had to wipe it all off on the towel and start again. She made her lips very full and then put them together and rolled one against the other, and she looked at her teeth and rubbed some lipstick off with her towel. She should have washed her teeth before she put on the lipstick. Now powder. That would take the redness out of her face. Then she brushed her hair. She had never liked her hair. Holding it this way and that for effect, she began to lose interest.

In the bedroom she dug out a close-fitting black felt hat with a kind of a visor. She pushed her hair up inside the hat and angled the brim rakishly.

“Now,” she said, “now we'll see how a woman's face gets crooked. I wish Juan would come home right now. He'd change his tune.”

In the bedroom she got the bottle of Bellodgia from her dresser drawer and put perfume on her bosom and on the lobes of her ears and at her hair line. And she patted a little on her upper lip. “I like to smell it too,” she said.

She walked back to the lunchroom, carefully avoiding the corner that had struck her before. It was even darker than it had been, for the clouds were getting thick and very little light was coming through. Alice sat down at her table and adjusted her hand mirror. “Pretty,” she said, “you're kind of pretty. What are you doing this evening? Would you like to go dancing?”

She poured off the drink in her glass. Suppose that driver for the Red Arrow Line
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should come by and knock on the door. She'd let him in. He was a great kidder. She'd give him a drink or two and then she'd show him a thing or two.

“Red,” she'd say, “you set yourself up as a great kidder but I'm going to show you something. There's some kidding on the level.” She let her mind dwell on his narrow waist and heavy muscled forearms. He wore a broad belt around his blue jeans, and the jeans—well, the guy was O.K. Something about thinking of those jeans. There was a copper rivet at the bottom where the fly started. And something about that rivet brought sorrow to Alice. Bud had had one. A copper rivet just there. She tried to evade this vision too, and failing, gathered it—gathered it to her mind. He had begged her over and over again. And finally they walked four miles out to the picnic grounds. Bud carried the lunch—hard-boiled eggs and ham sandwiches and an apple pie. Alice bought the pie but she told Bud she made it. And he didn't even wait for the lunch.

He hurt her. And after, she said, “Where are you going?”

“I've got work to do,” Bud said.

“You said you love me.”

“Did I?”

“You aren't going to leave me, Bud?”

“Listen, sister, you got laid, that's all. I didn't sign no long-term contract.”

“But it's the first time, Bud.”

“There's got to be a first time for everybody,” he said.

Alice was crying over herself now. “It's no damn good!” she shouted at herself in the mirror. “None of it's any damn good.” She blubbered while she drank off another whisky and poured the last of the bottle into her glass.

All the others were no damn good, either, and what had she now? A stinking job with bed privileges and no pay. That's what. And married to a stinking greaser, that's what. Married to him! Too far out in the country to go to the movies. Got to sit in a stinking lunchroom.

She put her head down on her arms and cried brokenheart edly. And a second Alice could hear her crying. A second Alice stood at her shoulder and watched her. Got to walk on eggs all the time to keep him happy. She raised her head and looked in the mirror. The lipstick was smeared all over her upper lip. Her eyes were red and her nose was running. She reached for the napkin container, pulled out two paper napkins, and blew her nose. She balled up the paper and threw it on the floor.

What did she want to keep this joint clean for? Who cared? Who gave a damn about her? Nobody! But she could take care of herself. Nobody was going to kick Alice around and get away with it. She emptied the last of the whisky.

Getting out the port wine was a job. She staggered and fell against the sink. There was hot pressure against the inside of her nose and her breath whistled in her nostrils. She stood the bottle of port wine on the counter and got a corkscrew. The bottle fell over when she tried to get the corkscrew into it, and the second time the cork broke into small pieces. She pushed the rest of it into the bottle with her thumb and lunged back to the table.

“Soda pop,” she said. She filled her glass full of the dark red wine. “Wish there was some more whisky.” Her mouth was dry. She drank half the tumbler of wine thirstily. “Why, that's good,” she giggled. Maybe she'd always have whisky first to give flavor to the wine.

She drew the mirror close to her. “You're an old bag,” she said bitterly. “You're a dirty drunken old bag. No wonder nobody wants you. I wouldn't have you myself.”

The image in the mirror was not double but it had double outlines, and at the outside of her range of vision Alice could feel the room begin to rock and sway. She drank the rest of the glass and choked and sputtered and the red wine ran out of the corners of her mouth. She missed the glass and poured wine over the tabletop before she got her glass filled. Her heart was pounding. She could hear it, and she could feel it beat in her arms and shoulders and in the veins on her breasts. She drank solemnly.

I'm gonna pass out, and a damn good thing. I wish I would never come to. I wish that would be the end of it—the end of it—the end of it—Show these bastards I don't have to live if I don't want to. I'll show 'em.

And then she saw the fly. He wasn't an ordinary housefly but a newborn bluebottle, and his body shone with an iridescent blue sheen. He had come to the table and was standing on the edge of the pool of wine. He dipped his proboscis and went back to cleaning himself.

Alice sat perfectly still. Her flesh crawled with hatred. All her unhappiness, all her resentments, centered in the fly. With an effort of will she forced the two images of the fly to be one image. “You son of a bitch,” she said softly. “You think I'm drunk. I'll show you.”

Her eyes were wary and smart. Slowly, slowly, she slipped sideways from the table and crouched low to the floor, supporting herself with her hand. She kept her eyes on the fly. He had not moved. She crept over to the counter and went behind it. A dish towel was lying on the stainless steel sink. She took it in her right hand and folded it carefully. It was too light. She dampened it under the tap and squeezed out the excess water. “I'll show the son of a bitch,” she said, and she moved catlike along the counter. The fly was still there, still shining.

Alice raised her hand and let the towel fall back on her shoulder. Step by careful step she moved close, her hand raised and flexed. She struck. Bottle and glasses and sugar dispenser and napkin holder all crashed to the floor. The fly zoomed and circled. Alice stood still, following him with her eyes. He landed on the lunch counter. She lunged, striking at him, and when he rose again she flailed the air with the towel.

“That's not the way,” she said to herself. “Creep up on him. Creep up on him.” The floor tilted under her feet. She put out her hand and supported herself on the stool. Where was he now? She could hear the buzz. The angry, sickening whine of his wings. He's got to land sometime, somewhere. She felt sickness rising in her throat.

The fly made a series of loops and eights and circles and then settled down to low, swooping flights from one end of the room to the other. Alice waited. There was darkness crowding in on the edges of her vision. The fly landed with a little plop on the box of cornflakes on the top of the great pyramid of dry cereals on the shelf behind the counter. He landed on the “C” of “corn” and moved restlessly over to the “O.” He stood very still. Alice snuffled.