So wrapped up did I become in these ruminations that by Saturday evening I was still going at it-two days of steady study, a longer time than I’d been able to manage in my two years of service with the Doctor. As night descended along with a late rainstorm that blew in from the northwest, I realized with a sudden start just how late in the week it was, and remembered that Kat had told me she planned to move out of Frankie’s dive and into the Dusters’ headquarters sometime during the next week. Checking to see that the Doctor was still locked up in his study, I told Cyrus that I was heading out for a while and began the long, wet walk down to my old stomping grounds near the intersection of Baxter and Worth Streets.
The dive known as Frankie’s was located at Number 55 Worth, and was as dismal a place as any kid ever passed an idle hour in. It was also the location where I’d first met Kat about six months previous. Its main attractions were bloody battles between dogs and rats in a deep pit, an even younger than usual collection of girls in the back, and a drink that was a nasty mix of buttered rum, benzene, and cocaine shavings. I’d never spent much time there during my criminal days, though I knew plenty who did; but my acquaintance with Kat had, I regret to say, caused me to journey down in recent months and pass far more hours amid the violence and squalor than I probably should’ve.
That Kat… She’d arrived in the city about a year before I’d met her in the company of her father, a smalltime con man who got too drunk one winter night and fell into the East River. After his death Kat had tried for months to make a legitimate living vending ears of hot roasted corn out of an old baby carriage on downtown streets, a job what wasn’t in any way as simple as it might sound. Hot corn girls in New York were something of a puzzle: most of them weren’t whores, but somehow the average person-particularly your run-of-the-mill out-of-towner-was always convinced otherwise. Nobody seems to know where the idea got started. The Doctor says it all had to do with “subconscious associations” that most people formed about young girls alone on the street selling something “hot” that had a general shape what the alienists call “phallic.” Who knows… The point is that a lot of men who bought corn off those girls figured they were actually making a bargain for sexual favors; and when Kat wised up to how much more money she could make actually selling those favors, well, she took the chance. I didn’t judge her for it; nobody who’s ever been on the streets would’ve. You could get damned sick and real tired standing barefoot in the cold all day hawking corn, not even making enough money to buy yourself a bed in one of the worst flophouses in town.
In her early days of whoring, Kat found her trade on the streets. But eventually she ended up working out of Frankie’s, as the kid trade was steadier, safer, and, she said, a lot less painful on her insides. I met her by chance, when I stopped in to Frankie’s to see an old pal. Sad and strange, what a year on the streets and working the skin trade can do to a country girl: she’d become all brass by the time we were introduced, having seen more of the way of the world in her short piece of a life than your average citizen experiences in a full one. Maybe I fell for her the minute I saw her, I’m not sure; but if it wasn’t that exact minute, it wasn’t too long after. The brass was mostly an act that covered something much more decent, I could see that even then, although she would never admit it. And I think maybe, too, that I just wanted to see one of those poor kids at Frankie’s make it out to a better way of life, since I’d learned that such a thing did, in fact, exist. It was all a boy’s romantic foolery, of course; but there aren’t many things more powerful in this life.
She made me pay for my time with her; said she had to or Frankie would get upset. But most of those nights we just went into the back and talked, her telling me about her years with her father, moving from small town to small town, one step ahead of the local law enforcement. For my part, I told her about my old lady, my underworld career, and growing up in New York in general. It was months before anything physical happened between us, and then it was only because Kat was hopped up on Frankie’s doctored liquor. The whole experience was difficult for me, as I knew nothing about such ways and she was already an expert, amused by my ignorance and embarrassment. We managed the act itself, and she said it wasn’t half bad; but it hadn’t been what I’d dreamed about having with her. We never repeated it, but we stayed friends, even though my continued attempts to get her to quit the trade were sometimes cause for real anger on her part.
As I made my way downtown that night, I passed by many of the streets I’d once lived on, which now looked more than ever to me like what they were: some of the worst stretches of tenement hell in the city. The rain was keeping most people inside, so I didn’t worry too much about getting jumped; and before I knew it, I was rounding the corner of Worth Street and closing in on Frankie’s. Saturday nights were, of course, especially wild there, and when I got close I could see kids spilling up and out of the dark basement space in various states of drunkenness and drug intoxication. Making my way down the steps through this crowd and saying hello to the kids I knew, I ran into Nosy, the boy what I’d seen on the waterfront earlier in the week. He told me that the cops had held him and his friends overnight in nothing but their shorts but that they’d gotten clear the next morning and had been having good laughs all week about the reports that were continuing to pop up in the papers about the “headless body” being the work of a crazed anatomist or medical student. Even the halfwit what Nosy called Slap knew enough to say that the story was a lot of hot air.
Inside Frankie’s the smoke was so thick I couldn’t even see the back wall, and the sounds of kids screaming out bets, a dog barking and growling, and rats squealing clued me in to the fact that there was a hot contest going on in the pit. I didn’t stop to look at it-that was one sport that truly made me sick-but kept on pushing my way through the crowd and into the back hall, eventually reaching the door of the little room that I knew Kat shared with two other girls. I gave the door a loud knock and heard some female giggling coming from inside. Then Kat’s voice sang out, “Come on in, though if it’s a good time you want, you’re too late!” I opened the door.
Kat was standing over the room’s lousy mattress, a small wicker suitcase open before her. The other two girls, who I also knew, were drinking and obviously had been for quite some time. The look in Kat’s eyes said that she wasn’t far behind them. A big smile came into her face when she saw me, and the other two girls started to laugh as they said hello; then Kat came over and threw her arms around my neck, reeking of benzene.
“Stevie!” she said. “You decided to come to my goodbye party! That’s sweet!”
I put my arms around her awkwardly, causing one of the other girls to say, “Go ahead, Stevie, get it while you can!” Then another round of giggles broke out.
“Hey, Betty,” I said to the one with the mouth, handing her a couple of bucks, “why don’t you and Moll go chase yourselves around the bar?”
“For two bucks?” Betty looked at the money like it was the Federal Depository. “You got it, lover-man!” As they went out she mumbled, “Give him something special, Kat, for his last whirl!” Kat laughed, the door closed, and we were finally alone.
“I mean it,” Kat said, looking drowsily into my eyes. “It’s sweet of you to come, Stevie-” She caught herself, then took her arms away. “Oh, no. Wait a minute. I’m mad at you. Almost cost me that gentleman, you did, with your damned whip. What’d you go and do that for, anyway? He was old, it didn’t take but a few minutes to make him happy. Easy jobs like that are tough to find, you know.”