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

Miriam wanted to run.
    “Miriam, how are you? I really love those shoes. You really look good in them but I just don’t. I don’t know what I’m going to do with all my skirts. You only got those three things to do? I can wait while you do them.”
    “No, you go on ahead.”
    Miriam sat down in a chair and closed her eyes, and she almost went to sleep, and she thought about these girls she knew who were whores, who lived in a big apartment on Twin Peaks; they’d had an interior decorator and had white carpets and white velvet sofas and gold lamps, and they wore all these different kinds of fur coats, and white shoes. She shuddered, thinking about it: what all did they have to
do?
    The friendly girl said, “Well, bye. Have a nice day.”
    As soon as Miriam got back to the office, Kathleen started up talking again. “And I’ve just realized there’s a full moon in Scorpio this weekend! Anything could happen! He has three things in Scorpio, that’s really heavy. I’ll bet he does come up. I wonder how much dope I’ve got left. Why do I always have to provide everything, will you tell me that?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “I must really dig punishment. I guess I got it living all those years with my mother. Beating me up all the time. But if he doesn’t like me why did he pick me up at the bar and come on like that? No one’s ever come on at me in my life, not that way.”
    Miriam wondered about that, too. She wondered why anyone would pick Kathleen. Kathleen was so unlike being a woman at all; she was more like some skinny little boy who got in fights all the time. Lawry was good-looking in his pictures, with lots of straight light hair and those big pale eyes, but maybe a little girlish-looking. There had to be something funny about him somewhere, choosing Kathleen. He sure acted funny, from the sound of it.
    Kathleen asked, “You want to come over to my house? I’ll make some tuna sandwiches.”
    “Okay, I’ll get us some Cokes.”
    They walked along Fillmore Street, in the opposite direction from where that man would be waiting for Miriam at five, or maybe he wouldn’t be there—the man whom she would or would not go to meet.
    Kathleen’s place didn’t have anything nice in it, just old furniture and Indian-looking things, but at least it was her ownplace. Miriam thought about getting herself a place, but she didn’t want to until she could fix it up nice. At Kathleen’s there was steam heat; it was always too hot there. In the Project nothing worked, and cold wind leaked in through the windows.
    Sometimes Miriam wondered: Would she rather be her or Kathleen? Be Kathleen or be a hustler on Twin Peaks? Sometimes all the thinking that she did made her dizzy.
    Kathleen brought in sandwiches and their Cokes, straws in the bottles, and they both sat on the wide day bed, which was the only place to sit.
    Kathleen said, “If he could just settle down and we could have some kids. He really digs kids, we both do, and we could have one that was really beautiful. We wouldn’t have to get married or anything like that.”
    “Be nice if he was at least
around.
”
    “That’s true, you’re absolutely right.” Kathleen lit a cigarette and began to blow out smoke. Then she said, “You know, I’ve been thinking that Eliza was really more of a Leo than we always said. That grandstand way she left. I think basically she was a real Leo snob, and she couldn’t stand it that Dr. Branner wouldn’t pay any attention to her. She probably expected him to ask her out!”
    Back at the office, there was really nothing to do. Kathleen stood at the window, staring out, smoking and cursing at random. “Damn you, Dr. Branner, I hope you break your neck. You, too, Dr. Stern.”
    Miriam in her mind could still see the man from this morning, see his slant devil eyes, and his black face, and it came to her that he could be anything at all: a photographer, looking for models; a plainclothes pig; a narc. A crazy junkie with a