The Naked Storm. C.M. Kornbluth
Castle Gardens was from the outside the windows of the second floor of a corner taxpayer building. You reached the second floor by a flight of creaky stairs. Posters flanked the door: Twenty Beautiful Instructresses, See the Beautiful Palm Room, Admission Free. Cut-out pictures of Esquire girls were pasted on the posters. I’ll just go in and see what it’s all about, Boyce thought. Admission Free.
When he went through the door at the head of the stairs it was all gloom, heat and noise. Bing Crosby assaulted the ears, louder than any juke-box should be, a faceted mirror ball turned slowly in the center of the ceiling casting blots of light that crawled like insects, and women stood about in metallic evening gowns.
“Check your hat and coat,” sounded in his left ear, and a pair of heavy hands started to help him out of the overcoat. Boyce had the feeling that he was being processed like a hog at the stockyards. The owner of the hands and voice, a huge man in a waiter’s tux, pressed a disk into his palm. “The check. How many tickets you want?”
“Ten,” he said. That should be a dollar.
The big man pulled an accordion of tickets from his pocket, tore off ten and said: “That’ll be ten dollars.”
“Oh,” Boyce said, “I’m sorry. I thought they were cheaper. Can I just have one?”
“Look, mister,” said the big man. “You asked for ten, I tore off ten. We have to keep track of the numbers. What’s the idea of coming in here without any money?”
“But I have the money—” Boyce said, and realized he was sunk. He took a ten from his wallet, looking carefully at it in the gloom, and handed it over and got his tickets. He tried to read one, but the woman in evening dress bore down on him purposefully.
There was a kind of etiquette. They kept their distance and tried him one at a time. Vague faces asked him in turn, as thighs pressed him: “Dance, honey? Sit in a booth and play around a little? Have some fun?”
He said to a blonde who draped herself over him: “All right. Let’s dance.”
“You want to give me my tickets first, honey? It’s two for a dance.”
Clipped again. He tore off two tickets and handed them to her. She hoisted her skirt and tucked them into a stocking top, smiling at him with a face that might have been 16 or 46 in the gloom. But her limbs were firm. “You can do that with the next tickets, honey,” she said.
Boyce preened a little. It was turning into quite an evening.
Somebody restarted the thunderous Bing Crosby record and the blonde said: “Let’s dance back there where it’s nice and dark, honey. My name’s Jerrie. What’s yours?”
“Sam,” he said, following her across the floor. He was a fair dancer, he thought. She’d be pleasantly surprised. They probably got nothing but low-class mutts stepping all over their feet in these places…
He found out where it was nice and dark that dancing in Castle Gardens had very little to do with the feet, and that “rub-joint” was a vividly accurate phrase. Bing Crosby broke off with a squawk about half-way through the record.
“Having fun, Sam?” she asked with a professional low-lidded smile. “You want to hide my tickets for me?” She lifted the hem of her skirt. Unsteadily he tore off two more tickets. She leaned against his hand as he slid them under the top of her stocking. Bing Crosby began to thunder at them again and he straightened quickly and took her in his arms, not wanting to miss one expensive, rewarding note of the dance.
She suggested the Palm Room and “some real fun” after the dance. The big man in the waiter’s tux materialized at the curtain behind which the Palm Room lay to collect five dollars cover charge. Boyce gave him a bill and the curtain was drawn on a smaller, even darker room furnished with half a dozen booths, all empty.
“You first, honey,” she said, and he slid into a booth. She followed, intimately. “Honey,” she said, “how about a couple of tickets for sitting this one out with you?” She sat waiting. Dry-mouthed, Boyce raised her skirt almost furtively and put them with the others.
The big man was back. “What’ll it be, Jerrie?” he asked.
“Blue Moon. What are you going to drink, Sam?”
“Rye-gingerale.”
She crooned the Bing Crosby song, with dirty lyrics, into his ear and massaged him while they were waiting for their drinks.
“That’ll be three dollars,” the big man said, putting down a tray with a cocktail and a setup. Jerrie drank her cocktail off in a gulp while Boyce was finding out that he had no more ones, fives or tens. He reluctantly lay a twenty on the table.
“Twenty,” announced the big man, virtuously, holding it up. “Be right back.”
Boyce poured down his rye-gingerale and Jerrie asked for two more tickets. He gave them to her, and a good workout with them. The waiter returned with a tray on which were four Blue Moons and four rye-gingerales.
“Where’s my change?” Boyce asked, astounded.
The big man clunked the tray down on the table and said: “Did you come in here to drink or didn’t you? There’s your change, mister.”
Jerrie massaged him feverishly, saying: “Now honey, don’t make a scene just when we were getting along so good. You want to give me a couple of tickets, honey?”
He drained one of the drinks while she gulped two of hers in quick succession, and gave her the tickets. She squealed and pretended he was hurting her and they both laughed heartily and finished their drinks, exchanging caresses.
“Honey,” she said, breaking away, “you want to buy some more tickets? Just call Charlie and he’ll sell them to you.”
“Hell,” said Boyce suddenly. “Look, isn’t there some place we can go? You got a place? Or a hotel?”
“Don’t you like me right here?” Jerrie asked, with mock-surprise. “All it takes is a couple of tickets. I’ll call Charlie—”
“Nah,” Boyce said. “Don’t call Charlie. We c’d get a nice hotel room.”
“Honey, how much you got on you tonight?”
“Forty bucks left.”
“Look, honey, I’ll call Charlie and you buy some tickets and we’ll have a couple of drinks and then I’ll take you to my place and we’ll have a real party on me, honey, how’s that?”
“You won’t do it for forty bucks?”
Her busy hands took themselves off him and she said in a voice that was suddenly dry and cool: “Act your age, buster. Three-fifty for the hotel, one-fifty for miscellanies, two bucks for the cab, I get what’s left and I miss the rush hour here. You want to be a businessman, stick to your own business. Don’t try to run mine. Are you going to buy some tickets or aren’t you? This is liberty night and we’ll be getting the radar trainees from Great Lakes any minute, so make up your mind.”
“You goddamned tramp,” he said softly. “You remind me of my wife.”
Her painted mouth made a surprised scarlet O in the gloom.
“Let me out,” he said. She slid from the booth and primly straightened her dress. He ignored her, stalking from the Palm Room unsteadily. A couple of the other women headed his way but he outdistanced them.
“M’ hat and coat,” he said to the big man, who was standing by the door.
“The check, mister,” the big man said patiently. He found it and the man got his hat and coat. “That’ll be one dollar, mister,” the big man said, not handing them over. Boyce scooped out his change pocket and found four quarters. He got his coat and the big man said: “Come again, mister. Any time. You want to see a real strip show tonight? Private house? Nice mulatto girls? I can give you a card—”