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She put on her light blue shorts and knitted sweater and house slippers and left the room. A minute later somebody knocked on the door.
“Put something on. It’s me,” Emma said.
J.P. got up from the bed and slipped his trousers on. He felt dizzy when he stood up. Emma came in and shut the door behind her.
“What’s the trouble?” she said.
“Bring Honey in.”
“What’s wrong with the girl I gave you?”
“I don’t like her,” he said.
“I ain’t had any complaints about her before.”
“Send me another girl. I done paid for the afternoon.”
“It will cost you twenty-five dollars more,” she said.
“I already give you fifty.”
“You paid for Rita.”
“What difference does that make?”
“If you want somebody else you got to pay again.”
“The bitch went to sleep on me,” he said.
“She’s one of my best girls. I never had no complaints.”
“She sleeps with her mouth open.”
“A man told me last night she was the nicest lay in the house. Her customers don’t complain,” she said.
“I didn’t hire a wore-out whore that can’t stay awake.”
“If you’re one of these flip guys with different tastes you can go down the street. They’ll take care of you. I run a respectable place. There’s others waiting for this room that will pay extra to have Rita.”
She folded her heavy arms across her breasts and looked at him.
“All right. Here. Tell Honey to come in,” he said, giving her the money.
“She’s in another room now. You’ll have to wait a few minutes.”
After the woman had left he poured a glass of bourbon and sat in the chair and drank slowly and looked at his bare yellow feet on the floor. His fingers shook slightly on the glass. He thought about Honey and her soft belly and pink breasts. He had made love to the first girl twice, and he should have felt spent, but he could feel it go through him again, weak in the lo
ins and the pit of his stomach, and he put the tip of his tongue between his teeth when he thought about it. He drank down the whiskey and filled the glass again. The bottle was two-thirds empty. He tried to remember what had taken place the last three days. Everything was confused in time, and he couldn’t concentrate on any one thing long without its becoming confused with something else. He knew that something had happened in a bar somewhere and there had been a fight. Maybe someone had taken him outside and rolled him. His watch. Yes, and his billfold. That had been it. There was a fight and he had been rolled. Saturday night he had been on the Jubilee. That was last night. He didn’t have his guitar with him or he could have played right. They had given him one of them goddamn electric things that sounded like somebody was twanging on a strand of baling wire. The only person who could use an electric guitar was Charley Christian, and he was dead. A man gave a guitar its tone. It didn’t need nothing else but the man playing it. J.P. could hear and feel the rosinous squeak of his fingers working over the frets and the chords vibrating through the dark wood.
The girl he had wanted came into the room. She had on a pink robe and sandals. Her hair had dark and light amber streaks in it. He expected her to smile or to make some show of recognition when she saw him. She didn’t speak, and her pale blue eyes looked at him for a moment and then turned away blankly as she took off her robe and dropped it over the brass bedstead.
“Miss Emma said you give Rita some trouble. This is just a straight date without no trouble, hear.”
“I didn’t bruise nothing of yours the last time I was here,” he said.
“Miss Emma says you give Rita a bad time.”
“I didn’t pay for no drunk whore to yawn in my face.”
