Free The Pawnbroker by Edward Lewis Wallant Page B

nothing to each other. After a few minutes, Sol got up and straightened his clothing. Then he took some money from his pocket and wedged it under the samovar. With his hand on the door, he spoke without turning.
    "Maybe Monday, Tuesday I will come again," he said.
    "What shall I do about that torturer Goberman?" she asked dully, expecting no illusion of grace from him. Her collapsed body lay wraithlike in the darkened room.
    "All right, I will come Monday night. Tell Goberman to come then, that you will settle with him then. I will be here, I will deal with him."
    She sighed for answer.
    He closed the door on her and her father; it was like administering a drug to himself, that closing of the door, an opiate locking off a corridor of his mind. He went out through the tiled hallway, with its smell of garbage and its resemblance to some ancient, abandoned hospital, until he was on the street, which was erratically lit and smoky with the increasing heat.
    Then he walked like a man in a dream toward the subway, sagging with tiredness again at the prospect of the distance between him and his bed.

FIVE
    Mabel Wheatly hung on Jesus Ortiz's arm like a bride; he suffered her possessive embrace because it made him feel manly to walk through the crowd that way. The counterfeit exoticism of the dance hall, garish and frenetic, fell over them as they walked. There was a huge babble of voices, the feathery rustling of dresses. The savage farce of light that came from a rotating prism on the ceiling bathed Jesus and the girl in green, in red, in yellow, in blue. The orchestra crashed rhythmically, with a minimum of tune. Dark faces, white teeth, and fluttering clothes made a shifting corridor for them as they shoved their way along one side of the huge room toward an empty table.
    Ortiz plunked the two bottles of beer on the table, and they sat. He scanned the teeming hall with cool, faintly bared eyes, liking the picture of them; him sitting like a man who had been around, Mabel half leaning over the table, holding his hand, her eyes fixed on him. Her expression was a naïve attempt at sultriness; it was her stock in trade, but also the only way she knew how to show emotion. She had on a dress of metallic green, cut low to reveal the tops of her full, brown breasts. Her face was softly curved, wide-nostriled, long-eyed; she offered the best of herself to her companion, but he sat in a sullen reverie, casting his eyes around for something he had no hope of finding there.
    "You want to dance, hon?" she asked timidly, brushing her fingers against the back of his hand.
    "Let's just sit ... talk a while. I'm tired. That Jew had me working my
cojones
off all afternoon. Let's just talk," he said idly, his eyes everywhere but on her.
    "What you want to talk about, honey?" she asked. She clung to him hungrily with her eyes, yearning toward some odd, bright cleanliness she imagined in him. Half consciously she saw a hope of escape in him. Not that she actually thought her prostitution was a bad way to earn a living. Only she became drugged with hopelessness at times, experienced boredom of such an intense degree, as she indulged the queer fears and lusts of her paying customers, that she had even considered suicide, and passed it by only because of some inexplicable curiosity about what the next day would bring. This boy was so cool, so sweet to look at. He seemed to know something, have some marvelous answer in him. "You got somethin' special in mind, sweety? What?"
    "Talk?" He turned to her as though she had brought up the suggestion. "Well now, what could you and me have to talk? Business, you want to talk about what kind of business I should go into?" he said sarcastically. "You an expert or something? All right then, tell me. Should I go into the clothing business like my uncle in Detroit? Or tombstones, or baby carriages, or groceries, or ... or a pawnshop?"
    "Good money in that pawnshop business," she said, pretending he hadn't been teasing