“I can pay, yeah? We’ll go anywhere you want.”
Evie stood on her toes to kiss him. She moved dreamy and graceful, brushing things as she slipped behind the screen to change. He felt the mark her lipstick left on his cheek.
“Anyway. I don’t go out. I take deliveries.” Her pink kimono floated up to land near him. She smiled from around the screen. “They treat me poorly out there. You saw that.”
She emerged in a sundress that drifted over her body, advanced on the balls of her feet, all limbs and round angles. Swinging arms, dress straps off her bare shoulders, toes curling into rug fiber. She hummed a tune as she moved clutter from one spot to another. Plucked garments from the floor and laid them on a chair back. Swept newspapers off a great oak table that took up much of the room. Dozens of suede shoes were sown around, her rabbit fur coat hung over a wire dummy near a rack of feather-garnished hats that would have been scandalous in Jake’s hometown. The rooms were cool and drafty, but Evie didn’t seem to notice in her sundress.
Jake’s collar had doubled over itself at the back of his neck, so she reached to fix it, ran her fingers between the layers of fabric, around his neck, to his chest, until it laid right, then patted the breast of his jacket and pushed back on his shoulders to erase a crick in his posture.
“Don’t slouch, honey. You got nothing to be ashamed of.”
Blood throbbed in Jake’s ears. He felt himself blush, seeing how her top three buttons were undone, and how light from the window shined on her sternum. She breathed. She smiled at him. Her lips pinched when she smiled. It suited her. Hers was a melancholy beauty. The way her eyebrows arched, how curls framed her cheeks, one catching at the corner of her mouth.
“Don’t stand there,” she said. “Aren’t you here to give me something?”
Jake nodded.
“Well, where is it, you brute? Where’s my present?”
He stumbled back to snatch the package from the radiator then pulled her to the Victrola cabinet. “I bought these,” he said. “Boys ran off with yours.”
“That’s what happens when they toss you out. Haven’t you been to an eviction before?”
Jake hadn’t but didn’t say so. He tore the paper to reveal an Enrico Caruso record. The clerk at the Brandeis department store had explained that anyone with a phonograph had to own a Caruso. There was a Rachmaninoff. Another with oldies by Paul Dresser and Harry Von Tilzer. All were suggestions from the clerk. Jake didn’t want Evie to think he was simple. There were compilations of Tin Pan Alley hits, Scott Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag.”
Evie held out the Joplin to see its sleeve before she placed it on the player and lifted the needle from its cork spool. “This one I had.” She turned the side crank to wind the spring motor. Once the deck was spinning, she put her cheek against Jake’s chest so he could put his arms around her. He moved to open space—the music playing, the chiming rises and descents of hothouse piano, the hectic jittering—so they could dance. Her body close to his as he smelled the top of her head. The oil of her hair.
She restarted the Joplin when it finished then led him to a chair, climbed over his hips. “This is awful nice,” she said. She moved fast.
Once Evie kissed him, he thought too much about what was happening. Would she like what he did? Would he lose it quick? Would she want to see him again after? He didn’t know what to do with a woman like Evie. It was different with her. The girls he was used to tended to lie there and let him finish at his own great speed. But Evie paced their bodies. Kissed his ears, rubbed the back of his neck where muscle knotted, squeezed his legs with her legs, moved his hands to her thighs and her goose bumps. Some part of her always in motion touching him. Jake needed to forget himself. God, he was sober. Why hadn’t he stopped for a drink on the way? Her dress flowed up with his fingertips, it was amazing. She undid his belt but he blocked her hands from doing more. She unbuttoned his shirt, slowly, until he couldn’t wait any longer and shucked it over his head. He grabbed around her waist. Kissed her elbow. Jake liked this girl. He’d helped her out because he liked her, not to earn favors. Now this. He wanted to be inside her, further than anyone ever had before. He wanted to win, to see how rough she’d let him be. She reached between his legs but he blocked her. She laughed finally, and kept at him, because this was funny, wasn’t it. He chuckled. He didn’t understand what he was doing. He wanted to bust out. Nearly exploding in his shorts. But still he stymied her. Fought her hands, wouldn’t let her take his penis out. Their hips knocked, their hands and legs and mouths worked desperate. She breathed and deepened and rubbed on his leg. Mounted over him on the chair. Between her thighs, her swollen, her wet, on his knee. Kissing. Her back arched, unarched. Her breath came out of her.
They sat locked in position. Evie’s skin was dark in the dressing glass. She held him, her face hidden in the crook of his neck. She didn’t move but to breathe.
Jake didn’t know what to say. It was embarrassing how he hadn’t done it to her. All of this went too easy for a girl he actually liked. He’d never tried it sober before, still hadn’t. Never in the daylight.
He’d be good for her next time. He’d show what he could do.
“I got to go to work,” he said.
She straightened and smiled, her cheeks flushed. “You’ll come back and see me?”
He went to a grocer right away. “I want the whole works. Your best fruit. Vegetables. Green beans, spinach, pickled beets, strawberries when you get them. Canned meats, bread, milk.” Jake leaned into the counter over the grocer’s wife as she jotted down his request. He had to make things up to Evie. It was that simple. He pulled the neat fold of machine cash from his pocket and slid it from hand to hand. Nobody would care, he told himself. Nobody would notice if he diverted a little cash to Evie. Jake didn’t have enough of his own money to do something like this. It was only by sneaking from the clip of cash that Tom Dennison had given him that he could afford to pay for Evie’s room and now some groceries too. He wanted to be a big shot. Jake couldn’t help himself. He smelled Evie’s perfume on his face, was still half-hard and aching.
“I want the best you have for as long as I can have it,” he said, then slapped two tens on the counter and wrote Evie’s address in black wax on a paper sack. “Send it here. Say JS sent it.”