Community of Women by Lawrence Block Page B

sidestepped it and kept on walking. He was looking for something. He was not sure what he was looking for, but somewhere—
    The girl fell in step with him at the corner of Vine and Dawson. She was a frail girl, looked about seventeen, with hollows under her eyes and very little flesh to her body. She looked hungry, as though she had not had a really fulfilling meal in days.
    “Mister—”
    He turned, studied her. She was trying to look sexy and it did not work at all. She was too young to look sexy, and too thin, and too hungry, and altogether too pathetic.
    “You come with me, mister. I’ll show you a good time.”
    He wanted to laugh at her. Sister, he thought, you’re barking up the wrong fire hydrant. You couldn’t show me a good time. I’m the no-action kid. See me when the slump ends.
    “Any way you want it, mister. I go any way in the world. Just a couple dollars, sugar.”
    Mister had been better. The more intimate sugar was out of place on her thin bloodless lips.
    “Mister—”
    Not lust, he thought. Not lust, either because I am incapable of that emotion now or because she is incapable of arousing it. Not lust, certainly, but something else.
    Pathos.
    He reached into his pocket, found his wallet, drew out a five dollar bill. He gave it to the girl and her eyes brightened. She looked even younger now.
    “Come on,” she said. “I gotta room downtown. We’ll have a ball, mister. We’ll have ourselves a time.”
    “Keep the money,” he said. “I can’t come with you.”
    “What’s the matter?”
    “Nothing.”
    “I’m not good enough for you?”
    He saw the pain in her eyes, the hurt, the injury. “No,” he said carefully. “No, it’s not that. But I’ve got a perfectly good wife at home. Go get yourself a meal.”
    He looked at her, saw the play of emotions across her face, saw injured pride give way slowly and be replaced by gratitude. Poor kid, he thought, she couldn’t be a professional hustler, not wasting her time in Cheshire Point. Just a kid on the skids, a traveling kid with no money in her jeans and only one thing to offer, only one commodity to put on the market. He watched her scurry off toward the all-night diner, the five-dollar bill clenched tightly in her fist.
    I’ve got a perfectly good wife at home. The sentence mocked him now. He had a perfectly good wife at home, but she was home and he was not, and she needed him while he remained unable to make her happy. What on earth was wrong with him?
    Just a slump, he answered himself. And it was not a permanent thing. It would improve.
    He found his way back to the tavern, got into his car. He started up the motor and drove slowly home. The slump would end. Soon, he hoped.
    Soon.
    Nan Haskell was at a party that Jenny and Les Cameron had had the temerity to throw. It was currently transforming the Cameron ranch house into something not far removed from a pigsty, and not even too far removed from the Augean stables. Nan sipped a Something Collins through a flavored straw and thought about Ted.
    Who, for his part, was absent.
    The Carrs were not at that particular party. The Carrs were never invited to the Camerons, and the Camerons in turn were never invited to the Carrs. Each had been frequently invited to the other home a year ago, but since then something had happened.
    Nan, like everyone else in Cheshire Point, had a fair idea what had happened. It was never openly discussed, but general word had it that Ted Carr had said something to Jennifer Cameron, and that the something had been indiscreet, since Ted Carr had never been awarded medals for discretion. The various stories ran different courses from that point on. Some had it that Jenny had slapped Ted’s face, and that was all. Others held that Jenny ran screaming to Les Cameron, who punched Ted in the nose. Still other versions had it that Les Cameron had walked into a bedchamber while Jenny and Ted were engaging in horizontal pleasantries.
    The stories varied, but the