Read Online Listening to Billie by Alice Adams - Free Book Online

her mother’s living-room sofa from the Emporium? Even if some of the stains were from Cokes and things that she and her friends had spilled when they got high?
    She wanted a Coke now, but she was late, and it was faster to walk than take a bus to the hospital, the office. Where Kathleen might or might not be mad.
    Quarreling with her mother, in those small crowded rooms, with her brothers and sisters watching, filled Miriamwith need. She needed to scream and hit and cry, and she wildly wanted everything in the world that was not her mother, not the Project. She wanted more shoes and outfits, and velvet sofas and tall gold lamps with pleated shades, and big white refrigerators full of food, and fast white cars—things like you could win in a contest. Like the Christmas windows at Macy’s or Sears. All that wanting sometimes made her sick.
    Along Fillmore Street, where she walked, among the small greasy restaurants that had barbecue and hamburgers and Mexican food, there were a lot of new little stores that sold funny things: old dresses with yellow lace on them, and old-timey men’s suits with big shoulders and big white buttons. Who’d want that stuff? But some of the stores sold real nice things, some nice new outfits, in these bad colors. But it all cost money.
    She stopped to look at some purple velvet pants with a tunic top, wondering, Would I look good in that? Look long and thin? There was always layaway. In front of the outfit, reflected in the glass, she saw her own face, big and black, with kinky hair that she hadn’t had time to iron out that morning.
    Then, making her jump and turn around quickly, a man’s voice said, “You’re a girl that likes nice things.”
    She turned toward him, and he had to be a pimp, in those sharp tight clothes: wine suede bell-bottoms and a black silk turtleneck stretched tight across his chest. But he looked nice, too; he looked good.
    “Some, not too much,” she said, and she lifted her head and started to walk on up the street.
    Being tall, he kept up with her—no trouble for him. “You look good,” he said. “I really dig the way you look.”
    “Lucky you.” She walked faster, because it had crazily come to her that what she wanted to say was: Okay, then, why don’t you pay me for looking good? You think it happens free?
    “You work?” he asked.
    “Yeah.” Her sigh said what she thought of her job: the details that made no sense and that turned into mistakes, theboredom, Kathleen, who was always talking and mad, and her low, low pay.
    “Maybe you in the wrong line.” He laughed.
    A pimp. They all came on the same. She knew. She said, “Maybe
you
in the wrong line of work.”
    He laughed again. “You think you know? You ever think to be a model? Get money just to wear nice clothes?”
    Knowing better, still her heart raced. Had she ever thought? Just all the time. Herself in long white fur coats, with shoes that matched, and cameras all turned on her. Ten, fifteen dollars an hour.
Could
he be not a pimp? “I’m late for work,” she said.
    “You come back this way? When you get off? I’ll be looking for you after five. I might have a little Valentine for you.” He touched her arm, so that she stopped, and she looked at him again. He was blacker than she was, with eyes that slanted up, and a sharp little beard on his chin. “Well, so long,” he said, and he made a sort of salute to her with a casual, loosely clasped-up fist. “I’ll see you, baby,” and he laughed.
    She scowled, not knowing what to make of him, what to do, and she turned away with her chin up. Let him find her again if he could.
    “Miriam, you’re late!” Kathleen screamed out, in the office.
    But Miriam, who listened for tone more than words, knew that Kathleen was mad because she had something to tell.
    Miriam changed into a lab coat, which hid her almost as well, and she said, “You hear from Lawry?”
    Not at all intuitive herself, Kathleen was always amazed by Miriam. “You