Ask for Me Tomorrow

He had almost reached the main gate when he felt a hand touch his back between his shoulder blades. He turned abruptly, expecting to catch an inept pickpocket. Instead, he saw a Mexican woman about thirty, with dark despondent eyes and wiry black hair that seemed to have sprung out of her scalp in revolt. Her arms and hands were covered with scars of various sizes and shapes and colors, as if the wounds had occurred at different times under different circumstances.

Her voice had the hoarseness of someone who talked too loud and too long. “I heard a shouter calling for Harry Jenkins. I said, ‘Who hired you?’ and he said, ‘An American with big glasses and a blue striped shirt.’ That’s you.”

“That’s me. Tomas Aragon.”

“Why do you want to see Harry?”

“Why do you want to know why I want to see Harry?”

“I’m Emilia, Harry’s good friend. Very good, special. Someday we will be married in the church but that must wait. Right now I am in and he is out. Before that, I was out and he was in, and before that, we were both in. What did Harry do to you?”

“Nothing.”

“Then why are you looking for him?”

“Actually I’m looking for a friend of his. I thought Harry might give me — or sell me — some information.”

“You buy information?”

“Sometimes.”

Her lips parted enough to reveal two slightly protruding front teeth. It was the closest Emilia ever came to a smile. “I have information.”

“What kind?”

“All kinds. The best. I’ve been around the Quarry off and on since I was fifteen. When I go away they beg me, ‘Emilia Ontiveros, come back, come back.’ If I say no, they invent charges to force me to come back because I am such a fine cook. I am the head cook in the Quarry café.”

That explained the scars. They were burns and cuts accumulated throughout the years.

“Do you have information about Harry Jenkins, Emilia?”

“He is a snake. That much I give you free. The rest will be more expensive.”

“I’d like to talk to you. Isn’t there some place we could have a little more privacy?”

“There’s a talking room. It will cost you money, fifty cents. But a dollar would be better.”

It was probably the primary law of the Quarry: a dollar was better than fifty cents but not as good as two dollars, which was vastly inferior to ten.

For a dollar they were given a couple of wooden stools in the corner of a room half filled with people, most of them in the fifty-cent, or standing, class. Emilia sat with her scarred hands clenched in her lap.

“A snake,” she repeated. “Though you would never guess it to look at him. Such honest blue eyes, such even teeth.”

“Do you know where he’s living?”

“Ha! I have people keeping track of him every day, every minute. I know what clothes he wears, what he eats for breakfast. He can’t buy a pack of cigarettes without me finding out. What a fool he was to think he could leave me cold after I paid good money for his release. When I leave this place again, I’m going to mash him like a turnip.”

“I thought you intended to get married in the church.”

“First I mash him like a turnip. Then we get married.”

She was unmistakably serious. No matter where he was, Harry’s future didn’t look too bright.

“Marriage might improve my temper,” she added thoughtfully. “I lose it at the stove, at the pots and pans, because they burn me. Then I throw them and they burn me again, and on it goes, back and forth. Do you think marriage has an improving effect?”

“Occasionally.”

“How much are you planning to pay me?”

“You haven’t told me anything useful yet.”

“What do you want to know?”

“You said you and Jenkins served time together.”

“That’s how we met. These two Americans were brought in one day and as soon as I saw Harry my insides started spinning.”

“The other American was Lockwood?”

Emilia nodded. “Him, what a crybaby, always fussing about this and that. The guards had to give him stuff to shut him down. Harry was a real man, pretending he didn’t care what the authorities did to him or how long they kept him there.”

“What was the charge against him?”

“Something silly like cheating. It’s the custom. Somebody cheats you, you cheat somebody else.”

“How did Jenkins get out?”

“Me. I had some money saved — the head cook’s pay is pretty good and there’s nothing pretty to spend it on in this place. When I finished serving my sentence I rented a nice apartment and then I went and paid Harry’s fine and we set up housekeeping. For a while we had a rosy time. But my rosy times never last. As soon as the money ran out, so did Harry. Or tried to. I caught him packing and beat him up, not bad, just enough to put him in the hospital. He didn’t squeal on me — he knew he had it coming — but the doctor at the hospital reported me to the police and they brought me back here to the Quarry. Everybody was glad to see me, of course, because my tamale pie is the best in town... How much are you going to pay me?”

“For telling me your tamale pie is the best in town? Nothing. It’s not the kind of information that’s worth anything to me.”