A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

“I’ll have a beer,” Warren said in a husky voice, which was probably due to nervousness but (Bruce thought) created a very good effect.

“Same here,” Bruce said with what he hoped was the proper sangfroid. He tried to put his foot on the brass rail below the bar, didn’t set it in far enough, and it slapped down to the floor again with an embarrassing crash that rang out in the silence. He was glad there were no other customers than the woman in the place.

They sipped, found it tangy; they took ever deeper draughts.

“Beats a Coke, any day,” Bruce remarked sophisticatedly.

“Sure, what did you think?” Warren replied with some scorn.

They drained their glasses and the barman refilled them without being asked. Bruce was beginning to glow pleasantly. The unfamiliarity of the flavor had worn off by now — or at least he had gotten used to it.

A man came in, stood midway between them and the woman, and ordered a beer. She said something to him in a slurred voice and he turned his head the other way, away from her. He’d evidently only come in to quench his thirst, and not for dalliance. He gulped his beer down and went out again.

Warren suddenly left the bar, went over into a corner, and dropped a coin into a jukebox standing there. It made a preliminary whirring sound and then began to throb out a loose-jointed, clattering tune, much as though a quantity of detached nuts, bolts, and nails were being stirred about in a tin pan. As he returned to the bar again, the woman edged up to them with a sort of cringing, sidewise-motion. “Chances of a drink, boys?” she mumbled half-furtively. At closer range she looked even more unkempt than she had at a distance.

Bruce felt very much the man of the world to be accosted that way. Warren probably did too, he knew, but between the two of them they just nodded dumbly, unable to find their voices in time to answer her. In any case, the barman, his eye always open to business, went ahead and refilled the wine-glass for her without waiting for them to become vocal. They wouldn’t have known how to adroitly refuse the request, anyway, even if they had wanted to.

She did not return however to where her glass had been standing all along and still remained, but kept her new proximity, thus plainly indicating to them that the drink had been only an excuse after all.

She smiled ingratiatingly and they both stared. Suddenly she blurted out: “You boys out for a good time tonight?”

They both knew right away what she meant. Bruce could feel the warmth as his color started mounting slowly upward from his neck. At the same time his breathing quickened a little, and he wondered why. Their stares became hypnotized, almost dilated. Was she really offering to—

The bartender broke the spell. He turned ugly all at once, hard. “Come on, none of that in here!” he rasped at her angrily. “Think I want the police closing me down? On your way, now!” And he flicked his bar-rag in the direction of the entrance.

“Then why don’t you get some customers in here once in a while?” she snarled as she sidled off. “This place is as dead as a burying-ground!” She flounced out into the street and was lost to sight, leaving her wine standing untouched on the counter.

Their two heads had turned as if pulled by wires, and they were still staring after her, even after she’d gone, almost mucilaginously. Bruce was conscious of a sense of loss, as though a supreme adventure had been almost within reach and then been snatched away again.

He turned to Warren with bated breath. “Should we go after her?”

But it was the bartender who answered, while he thriftily returned the wine she had left back into its gallon-jug. “Don’t ever take up with somebody like that, you don’t know nothing about, or you’ll only get yourselves in all kinds of trouble! I got nothing against her,” he went on broad-mindedly. He felt sorry for her, he said. “But she’s got no right picking on youngsters like you. Let her hustle somebody that’s older.” And then, some unsuspected protective streak cropping up in him, he shook an admonishing finger at them. “You got time enough!” he told them sternly. “Don’t be in such a hurry for it!”

But his psychology was that of the adult; he had forgotten himself as he was twenty years before. He had long passed the stage of their smouldering curiosity, himself. His well-meant admonitions were simply wasted.

He turned around to wait on some more mature customer who had just come in, and before he knew it they were gone.

They couldn’t find her again. That, by unspoken common consent, had been their purpose in leaving, though neither one would admit it. They turned back first toward the railroad-crossing, their eyes busy along both sides of the street. Then when they had reached it, turned a second time and retraced their steps toward the bar where they had first seen her. This time they went on past it and deeper into the Tenderloin than they had before. She was nowhere to be seen.