From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [138]
“I thought that was ony for the pay as you go customers?” Stark said thickly.
“It is,” Billy said.
“Its five bucks, aint it?”
“Thats right. Five extra. But its worth it, Maylon, it is truly worth it.”
Stark sighed deeply. “Okay,” he said, “you made a sale.” His eyes were blooded and very deep and he got up, turning away from all of them toward the jukebox, bending over at the waist to fumble with his fly and adjust himself inside. Then he turned around, grinning sheepishly, to follow her.
“You people comin?” Billy said to Maggio and Sandra. “You got the bottle.”
“Shhh,” Maggio said.
“Nuts,” Billy spat. “To hell with the old bitch.”
“We’re coming,” Sandra grinned at her. “We’re coming, kid.”
Billy laughed feverishly.
“I don’t see how she does it,” Sandra said to Maggio. “It would kill me, or any other normal woman.”
As she passed Prew, Sandra leaned down and spoke. “When Lorene comes back, tell her we’re going across the entryway and back around to the rooms on the hallway above the outside stairs. She’ll know where.”
“Okay,” Prew said indifferently, and watched them all go on across the entryway and disappear around a corner laughing. What the hell, he told himself, it isnt two o’clock yet; Stark is having to pay five bucks extra for that Trip; Angelo aint getting a price reduction for his bottle but them two whores will drink most of it; so what the hell; you got no complaints, he told himself.
He told it to himself repeatedly. But he was alone in the silent waiting room with the darkened Wurlitzer, and there is nothing in the world so lonesome as a silent, darkened Wurlitzer, when the people and the nickels have all gone, and he kept losing count of how many times he said it and having to start over.
When he finally heard Lorene’s low, poised voice out in the hallway he got up quickly. Too quickly, he thought angrily, you better sit back down, you want her to think you’re anxious?
But he did not sit back down. Lorene said goodby to the Fort De Russy surfboard rider friendlily out in the hall. It seemed to him that it took her a very long time, more time than necessary, and that she was very friendly, much more friendly than seemed natural, and he wondered if this was to put him in his place again. But even then he didnt care and he was still standing, by the chair, fumbling for a cigaret and lighting it, when Lorene came in smiling. He was very relieved that she was smiling.
“That was a terrible way to have acted,” she rebuked him, smiling. “What you did.”
“I know it was,” he said. “I didnt mean to do it.”
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
“I am,” he said.
“At least you have the money. Poor Bill wanted to stay all night and didnt have the money. I think that this was even his last three dollars, from the way he acted, and now he’ll have to walk clear out to Waikiki.”
“Poor son of a bich,” he said. “I feel for him, and I’m sorry I was bastardly.” He was thinking of himself, broke and on KP, only this afternoon. This afternoon seemed a long way back now, he thought, at least thirty pages back, a thing that happened to another guy. Maybe it happened to poor Bill.
“Before you came over,” Lorene smiled sadly, “poor Bill was so desperate he even asked me to loan him the fifteen dollars until Payday. And then you sit there and try to needle him like that.”
“I was jealous,” he said.
“Jealous?” She smiled serenely. “Over me? A common whore? Dont try to flatter me. You still ought to be ashamed.”
“I am,” he said. “I said I was. But I’m still jealous.”
“You have no right to be.”
“I know it. But I am.”
“Poor Bill even wanted to give me five dollars interest, and offered to teach me to ride a surfboard, free. I wouldnt even have to rent one, I could use his.”
“That takes a lot of guts,” Prew said. “Brass guts.”
Lorene smiled sadly. “Just the same, I felt bad about it, especially when you came over and started picking on him.”
“Why dint you loan it to him then?”
“Well, it wasnt because of you,” she said. “How co