Somewhere in the back a man was laughing, a young man, judging by his laughter. The doors of the passage were numbered; against No. 14 Cass set aside his misgivings. He took her about and kissed the pale lips. The girl knew every trick to arouse him, and he pressed her against the door with all the thin strength of his loins. She laughed, a metallic little laugh, then struggled free and opened the door against which he pressed her.
After the lock clicked behind her she lit a small lamp. Its glow lit faintly on the wall a picture of a bleeding heart in an oval frame. The girl went to the bed and sat on its edge, fingering a small silver cross at her throat. Seated beside her, Cass put his arms about her; sweat began rolling down the inside of his shirt from under his armpits. The girl rose and turned down the lamp till its flare was small as a match’s glow . . .
Cass slept only briefly; when he woke it was still dark. He woke with a start, with a fear at his heart. Fear that the girl might waken before he got out. He became so afraid that he could scarcely breathe in his anxiety to get through the door.
Yet he knew he had to take it easy, rise softly, step softly, go soft as a cat across the floor, softly as a young cat just half way across the room. The door was locked. He turned the knob all the way around twice without making a sound; he put all his weight against it without making a noise. It was locked, but he knew where the key was. He’d seen it on her dresser, saw it now in the dimness from where he stood. But when he reached the dresser what he had thought was a key proved to be only a small silver nail file. He opened a drawer, it had to be in there since it wasn’t on top. The dresser squeaked, and behind him he heard the whore jump up; in the dresser mirror he saw that, naked as she was, she stood at the door to block his way out. Cass turned about slowly, a half-grin smeared over half his face, his hair hanging in his eyes. He was faint with such fear as before he had never known.
How savage she stood! All naked and snarling!
“Nancy! Nancy!” Cass wanted to shout, “Nancy—come help me now!”
But there was no room in his throat for a sound; his throat seemed closed with fear. It was the girl who called out.
“Jack! Jack Gaines!” she shrilled like a magpie, “Jack! Jack Gaines!”
Cass heard heavy feet come pounding through darkness, a side-door opened and a half-clad blond came in. He was breathing heavily; the hair on his chest seemed matted with sweat. Cass watched the chest, saw its yellow matting moving, rhythmically up and down, the while the fellow regained his breath.
“The fartsnatcher ain’t give me a dime yet, Jackie, an’ he tried to heel out with mah ring on top of it. Ah’m gettin’ tired of gettin’ rooked by every punk who comes along—see what he got an’ whatever yo’ gits.”
Cass saw the rouster coming toward him in a half-crouch, like a professional wrestler. For just one moment then it seemed to Cass that someone was tickling him in the pit of the stomach with a blood-tipped feather—and he was on the floor beneath the man, and the feather was a sharp-pointed stick jabbing and splintering in his gut. He found his voice with his face thrust nose-deep in carpet.
“Ah got nothin’, mister—ol’ girl tol’ me ah didn’ have to pay nothin’—ah was but lookin’ fo’ th’ key—ah was but—”
A short swift blow with the heel of the palm caught his tongue full between his teeth and sent red waves of red pain into his brain; so that of a sudden he saw Bryan lying flat on his back and Stuart above him, kicking. Such strength did fear then give him that he threw off the heavy rouster with a single effort of his back, struggled crazily to his feet and raced in blind panic to the hall door, forgetting that that door was locked. Straining at the knob, he heard the rouster coming up behind him, turned and dodged the fellow, and tore across the room to the side-door standing wide.
The last thing Cass recalled was the white blur of the girl’s body beneath the red blur of a bleeding heart. She was in that doorway with her legs spread wide, she was holding the bed-post with her left hand—and some dark and heavy thing hung straight down out of the right.
Pain wakened Cass. A long, slow-starting, zig-zag pain that began in his viscera and ran jaggedly upward with gathering speed until it flashed like an orgasm beneath his heart, and left him sick and sweating. Twice it went through him like an electric bolt, leaving him each time sicker, number.
Cass did not open his eyes; he did not wish now to waken. He was cold, and frightened by the severity of his pain so that, as he sweated, he trembled a little. He did not wish to wake up. He wanted to sleep now. He wanted to sleep so long that he would never wake up. If once he opened his eyes, he knew, he would have to start living all over again. He would have to get to his feet and see men and women, would have to be tired and cold and alone. He would have to go begging, be mocked, shamed and beaten.
So he lay long, in the place where he was, and he would not open his eyes. And he could not return to sleep because of the pain in his belly. Then he began to feel cold, so cold; so cold that when he touched the roof of his mouth with his tongue he thought that, whatever was wet there, was frozen.
And because he was so utterly wretched, being unable to sleep or to rise, he whimpered. Tears forced his eyes open, he saw where he lay.
He was lying in an open lot that appeared to be chiefly a dumping ground. It smelled of dead flesh. The first thing he saw clearly was the head of a dog whose body was gone. That head smiled amiably, there were ants in both eyes. He rose stiffly, wondering that no one had seen him lying there. New Orleans was already gray with morning.
Cass did not know where to go, he did not know quite where he was. And he didn’t care greatly, one way or the other, and walked on only to avoid the stares that strangers would give him should he stand still. He could think only of Nancy, could only wish that he were not alone now. Nancy would tend him, tend him out of love. He touched his face, gingerly, and he felt dry blood beneath his chin—blood dried into clots like great rough scabs there. And down from the corner of his mouth ran a deep furrow into the flesh—his mouth jerked sidewise when he tried to touch the wound. Apparently the devils had tried to cut his throat.
He was too ill to walk very far at a stretch. Every few hundred yards he sat down on curbstone or step. He was glad that it was still early morning so that there were not many people—strangers—to stare at him as he rested. People—strangers—to stare as he sat. All people were strangers, he was born to be stared at. His belly burned for water.
Resting on a wooden bench in front of a little Italian grocery, Cass watched two children at play. Black children, skipping. For a minute he almost forgot his own wretchedness in watching their joy. But the man from the grocery came out, looked at him twice, shrugged his shoulders, and told him he would have to sit somewhere else. The bench was for customers, he had no room inside for it, his customers came out here and ate breakfast upon it. He might have a customer any minute now. Perhaps the customer would like to sit on the bench. Perhaps the customer would like to sit on the bench with nobody near him when he ate breakfast.
When Cass rose that time he felt as though somebody had just turned on an electric fan in his belly that whizzed hot dry air in long ripples down his stomach’s lining. Long dry ripplings, all the way down, with a whirring there as of many blades. He felt the fingers of one hand with those of the other: they were cold. His head: it was hot. People were passing, morning was blue-gray again; and he needed a drink of water.
He walked till he saw a filling station, and he looked about for a hose. There was no one about the station that he could see. A fuzzy ball of a police pup lapped water from the tank wherein inner-tubes were tested. Inside, between a safe and a rack of colorful road maps, Cass saw water in a tall glass barrel. Paper cups were hanging above it. But before he’d taken two steps toward it, a voice behind him called him back.
“They’s nothin’ inside for you there, bub. The can is around the rear.”
Cass