“That’s right.”
“I expected someone old and greasy.”
“Babe says you like politicians.”
Sheila laughed.
“You’re a—good dancer,” Warner said.
She sipped the Champale. “Thank you.”
“Do you like it? Dancing.”
“Sure. Why wouldn’t I?”
“I don’t know. I just wondered.”
“Do people ask you if you like being a state rep?”
“No. Maybe they should. They might be surprised at the answer.”
“OK, then, do you?”
“Yes and no.” Warner laughed, and she did too. The beer was clearing his head. He offered her a cigarette.
“No, thank you. They stain the teeth.”
“You have lovely teeth.”
“Thank you. You sure are complimentary. You don’t have to do that.”
“You don’t have to say ‘thank you’ all the time, either.”
“What do you do when you’re not making laws?”
“Guess.”
She looked him up and down. “You’re a lawyer.”
“That’s right. How did you know?”
“You look like a lawyer. If you saw me on the street, what would you think I was?”
Warner hesitated.
“An exotic dancer, right?”
“Right.”
“And that’s what I am. People look like what they are.”
“What about Babe?”
She laughed. “Babe looks like Babe. He says you’re rich. Are you?”
“Well, I wouldn’t say ‘rich.’ I’m a state representative and a somewhat successful attorney.”
“As you said, I’m an expensive woman. You can afford me, can’t you?”
“I think so.”
Her smile took on the sultry quality she had used on the stage. Her apparent shyness was gone. She picked up Warner’s hand and held it between her own. “It’s raining. Where’s your car?”
“I don’t have one. I flew in.”
“Hey, Babe!” she called over her shoulder. “Call us a cab, will you?”
Babe limped to the phone and dropped a nickel. “Five minutes,” he said when he hung up. “I told him to honk.”
“Babe told me you don’t like my place,” Sheila said.
“Mine’s better.”
“Where is it?”
“The Adolphus.”
“That’s fine.”
LUCIUS
Lucius Jackson never objected to working the night shift, although both the fares and the tips were lighter then, except on the airport runs. He enjoyed the dark, empty streets and the black ghosts of buildings with the lights burning in them. He wondered who the lights were for. Watchmen? Janitors? Burglars? He wondered if they liked being alone in the buildings as much as he liked being in the empty streets. There were almost no cars, and the few there were seemed to move so much more quietly and slowly than in the daylight. In the daylight, they roared. In the night, they whispered. On rainy nights like this, they were even quieter. The police cars, especially, moved almost silently. Lucius hated it when in the night he would look into the mirror and see a police car creeping behind him. He had never been in trouble, never even gotten a traffic ticket, but he didn’t like cops. They made him nervous, more nervous hidden in their creeping cars than in person, for he always thought they were watching him, waiting for him to make a mistake, looking for an excuse to arrest him. He wondered if white people felt that way, too. He never broke the speed limit, even when his passengers asked him to, even when they were in a hurry to catch a plane and promised big tips. He never ran a red light, even late at night when he could see for blocks in every direction and no headlights were shining anywhere. That was the sort of thing the cops were waiting for him to do. If he ever did it, blinking lights would come out of nowhere, from behind him where the cops were stalking, and he would be in trouble.
It had been a slow night, and he hoped this would be an airport fare, but his hope was slim. People didn’t go to Love Field from Babe’s. He hoped it wasn’t a drunk. That was the bad thing about working nights, the drunks. Especially those who staggered out of the strip joints. There were only two kinds of them, those who wore name tags and moved in groups and laughed and cursed and called him “boy” and demanded to know where they could get laid, and the lonely one who babbled about home or got sick or passed out in his cab. He didn’t blame Babe Slater and the others for calling a cab instead of the cops, but it was the one bad thing about working nights.
It was late for drunks, though. The clubs had closed almost an hour ago. Maybe Babe himself was going somewhere.
When Lucius rounded the corner, Babe’s sign and the signs of the other clubs were dark, but he found the place and pulled to the curb and honked. A figure stepped out of the doorway, and Lucius leaned across the seat and rolled down the window. “You call a cab, mister?” he said.
The figure stepped toward him. “Huh? Me? Not me. I thought you was the cops.”
It was a man, but Lucius couldn’t see his face. The voice was weak and shaky, as if frightened. “You need the cops?” Lucius asked.
“Huh? No. I was just kind of expecting them.”
Babe’s door opened, and a man and a woman were silhouetted for a moment against the dim light inside. The woman started to open an umbrella, then didn’t. The man carried something tucked under his arm. The frightened man opened the back door of the cab, and Lucius thought he was about to climb in, but he just held the door for the woman.
“Henry!” she said. “What are you doing here so late?”
“Just trying to get by, Miss Sheila,” the man said.
Lucius recognized the whine of a wino. “Hey, mister!” he said.
The man ignored him. “I wonder if your friend has any use for that bottle,” he said to the woman.
The other man laughed. “I guess not,” he said thickly. “She won’t drink it, and I’ve had enough.” He gave the wino the bundle under his arm.
“Bless you,” the wino said. “Have a nice evening, Miss Sheila.”
The couple got into the cab, and the wino slammed the door. Lucius looked back to ask where they wanted to go, but they were already in a clinch, kissing. Lucius turned his eyes to the mirror and tried to watch, but it was too dark. The woman was breathing hard. Her plastic raincoat rustled.
“Where to?” Lucius asked without turning.
“Adolphus,” the man managed to say.
Lucius started the meter and cursed silently. The hotel was only four blocks away.
The Second Hour
BETTY LOU
DURING COCKTAILS and most of dinner, Rodney and Elsie Dart had been almost charming. Of course, Rodney had bragged about his glory days as the SMU Mustangs’ star tackle and his courtship of Elsie, the school’s prettiest and most popular cheerleader.