Make Room! Make Room!(17)

“I don’t think so, Arnie, not for Shirl.” They both laughed loudly and she tried to smile and picked at the edge of the sheet of paper on the counter.

“I’d like steak or a piece of beef, if you have any,” she said, and they laughed again. They always did this, knowing how far they could go without causing trouble. They knew about her and Mike and never did or said anything that would cause trouble with him. She had tried to tell him about it once, but there was no one thing she could tell him that they did that was wrong, and he had even laughed at one of their jokes and told her that they were just playing around and not to worry, that you couldn’t expect party manners from meatleggers.

“Look at this, Shirl.” Schmidt clanked open the box door on the wall behind him and took out a small flayed carcass. “Good leg of dog, nicely hung, good and fat too.”

It did look good, but it was not for her so there was just no point in looking. “It’s very nice, but you know Mr. O’Brien likes beef.”

“Harder to get these days, Shirl.” He moved deeper into the box. “Trouble with suppliers, jacking up the price, you know how it is. But Mr. O’Brien has been trading here with me for ten years and as long as I can get it I’m going to see he gets his share. How’s that?” He came out and kicked the door shut, holding up a small piece of meat with a thin edging of white fat.

“It looks very good.”

“Little over a half pound, big enough?”

“Just right.” He took it from the scale and began to wrap it in pliofilm. “That’ll set you back just twenty-seven ninety.”

“Isn’t that … I mean more expensive than last time?” Mike always blamed her when she spent too much on food, as if she were responsible for the prices, yet he still insisted on eating meat.

“That’s how it is, Shirl. Tell you what I’ll do though, give me a kiss and I’ll knock off the ninety cents. Maybe even give you a piece of meat myself.” He and the guard laughed uproariously at this. It was just a joke, like Mike said, there was nothing she could say; she took the money from her purse.

“Here you are, Mr. Schmidt, twenty … twenty-five…. twenty-eight.” She took the tiny slate from her purse and wrote the price on it and placed it next to the money. Schmidt looked at it, then scratched an initial Sunder it with a piece of blue chalk he always used. When Mike complained about the price of meat she would show this to him, not that it ever helped.

“Dime back,” he smiled and slid the coin across the counter. “See you again soon, Shirl,” he called out as she took up the package and started for the door.

“Yeah, soon,” the guard said as he opened the door just wide enough for her to slide through. As she passed him he ran his hand across the tight rear of her dress and the closing of the door cut off their laughter.

“Home now?” Tab asked, taking the package from her.

“Yes—I guess so, a cab too, I guess.”

He looked at her face and started to say something, then changed his mind. “Cab it is.” He led the way to the street.

After the cab ride she felt better, they were slobs but no worse than usual and she wouldn’t have to go back there until next week. And, as Mike said, you didn’t expect party manners from meatleggers. They and their little-boy dirty jokes from grammar school! You almost had to laugh at them, the way they acted. And they did have good meat, not like some of the others. After she cooked the steak for Mike she would fry some oatmeal in the fat, it would be good. Tab helped her out of the cab and picked up the shopping bag.

“Want me to bring this up?”

“You better—and you could put the empty milk bottles in it. Is there any place you could leave them in the guardroom so we wouldn’t forget them tomorrow?”

“Nothing to it, Charlie has a locked cabinet that we use, I can leave them there.”

Charlie had the door open for them and the lobby felt cooler after the heat of the street. They didn’t talk while they rode up in the elevator; Shirl rummaged through her purse for the key. Tab went down the hall ahead of her and opened the outer door but stopped so suddenly that she almost bumped into him.

“Will you wait here a second, please, Miss Shirl?” he said in a low voice, placing the shopping bag silently against the wall.

“What is it …?” she started, but he touched his finger to his lips and pointed to the inner door. It was open about an inch and there was a deep gouge in the wood. She didn’t know what it meant but it was trouble of some kind, because Tab was in sort of a crouch with his fist with the knucks raised before him and he opened the door and entered the apartment that way.