Jolly Read Free

cautiously the cardboard box that lay on the floor next to the opposite wall. She knelt beside it. Before she tucked the blanket over the tiny fists, under the chin, she swept a long, loose strand of her hair back from her eyes. Tomorrow night, before she came to work, she would have to find a bigger box, maybe a nice wooden one, because he had about kicked his way out of this one already. She picked up his rubber dog from the floor where he had tossed it, and standing stiffly, she crossed to rinse it with hot water from the tap. Freddy Martinez had given her the toy for the baby when he was a year old, four months ago, after she had worked here for Freddy six months. He hadn’t liked the idea of having the baby around the place at first, but he had finally agreed, only he had made her promise to be careful that they did not have a child because, as he pointed out, he had five already and it would be bad enough if his wife ever found out what kept him an hour later at night sometimes, and anyway, wasn’t a favor deserving of a favor.
    If she had had the strength left to hate, the blond girl would have hated Freddy Martinez, whose flesh was oily and soft and smelled always of cooking grease and French fried onions. But what had been hate for another had long since turned to something different; a kind of patience, perhaps, and a certain gladness that replaced hate when in the mornings she played with the robust boy whose black damp hair now curled over closed blue eyes.
     
    “Where?” asked Luke as he flung the blue coupe squealing onto the highway.
    “Home, Lucas, home,” said Jolly.
    “Already? You know you’re not the greatest company in the world tonight, don’t you? What’s eatin’ you anyway? You practically threw that big-tittied freshman outa the car tonight, and you damn near got yourself clobbered in there. And can’t you open the wing if you’re gonna blow more a that goddam smoke?”
    “You through?”
    “Yes.”
    “Well, number one; we got an English test in less than ten hours, including sleep.”
    Luke spoke one word, precisely enunciated.
    “What did you say?”
    “Skip it.”
    “Number two; if I’m lousy company it’s probably because you pick the damn morbidest places to park—like the graveyard, for crapssake.”
    “Cemetery.”
    Jolly rolled the back of his head on the back of the seat. “Okay, cemetery. Number three; nothing or nobody is eating me, but if you’d like to take a whirl…?”
    “Funny.”
    “Numbers four and five; I told you already she’s a pig, and he’s about the biggest horse’s ass ever walked. A regular animal farm I got on my hands. Number six; yes, I can open a window to let out the smoke, only make up your mind had you rather freeze to death or suffocate.”
    They drove along Whiskey Row in silence, both intent on seeing into as many bars as possible in an attempt to fathom the juke-lighted dimness that held unaccountable the mysteries of whiskey and pick-up girls and back-room gaming. Most of the places seemed empty, but from Friday night to Sunday night—or rather early Monday morning—they would seep their happy life, their smells, their guitar music, their destruction out onto Montezuma Street like sweat from giant pores. One loose-hipped woman clattered down the Row swinging her purse to some secret inside her home-parlored head, the iridescence of her skirt changing to match each flash of neon she passed. Luke slowed the car.
    “Jeez,” he said.
    “Oh, for God’s sake, Luke,” said Jolly.
    “Well, you never know. You gotta keep on the lookout.”
    “Yeh, you told me. Home.”
    Luke reluctantly shifted gears and turned the corner and nosed the car toward Jolly’s side of town. “Rosy’s got business tonight.” Luke pointed toward a two-storied brick building, the bottom floor of which housed a colored tavern, the top floor (reached by a single steep flight of stairs behind a green door) of which housed Rosy and whatever charms she