near pukin’ if I smelled a hot-dog.” But her old lady didn’t trust her around the carnies or the carnies around her. Which was okay by Violet because she was makin’ good hoppin’ cars, not on’y in the fair season but all year. And which brought up another subject. “We’re Bohunks. What’re you?”
Lon turned from the wheel, guessing at the question’s meaning. “Welsh and English descent.”
“Well, we’re Bohem’an. My real first name is Fialka. That means Vi’let. My last name’s Polivka. You know what that means? Soup. Vi’let Soup. Ain’t that a kill? Vi’let Soup.”
Some of the tension eased away. Lon could laugh at this.
“Guys usta say, ‘How’s about a little hot soup?’ Horka polivka. Jeez, it usta make me so mad.” She remembered another important factor. “We’re Cath’lic. You Cath’lic?”
“My folks go to the Methodist church,” Lon told her. It would have taken too long to explain that God Tikitehatu and Goddess Hiuapopoia had produced life on the Island.
Violet grudgingly said, “I was scared maybe yez were Baptist. Or them Witnesses. Methodist ain’t too bad.”
Lon laughed again. And to sober her, Violet said, “My old man froze t’ death in a car barn. How ‘bout that?”
“Froze?”
“You think it don’t get cold back East? Wow!”
“Gee, what a rough thing to have happen.”
Violet laughed now, a tin-pan musical convulsion. “Oh, yeah? Try an’ tell that t’ my old lady.” Then, evidently remembering, reporting dutifully: “Another reason I stay home, this carny got me in trouble. We had to adopt the baby out, this place called St. Vincent’s Foundling. You think I don’t cry about that sometimes? Never again, believe you me, kid. She woulda been two years old. Jeez, I talk like she’s dead. I mean she’s two years now an’ you know how cute you c’n dress kids that age. But Holy Christ on a bicycle, I mean t’ tell you I had a hard time. I bit clean through my hand, if you wanna know. I could show you the scar, even.”
There was another world beside the other people’s world and her own. Maybe there were thousands of worlds, millions of worlds, one of them in purple pants and who knew how many others? Lon gunned the Plymouth to be on the safe side—to be sure she by-passed the new Buick when the light on Vineland Avenue turned green. And listened to the mysteries of a world much stranger than her own.
“So this bookkeeper where I worked—that was in this supermarket before I started at Luigi’s. She was butch, same as you. All she ever did was wanta sit around her place makin’ out. Jesus, I like t’ get out, so that’s why we broke up, but she made sure I got wise. I got more kicks with her than that damn lousy carny, an’ no hospital, no baby. You get wise, you don’t get hurt. You’ll find out, kid.”
Lon nodded vague agreement. “Straight ahead?”
“Yeah, but pull over left. You’re gonna make a turn in a couple blocks.”
“Are you sure this is all right? My going to this place the way I look?”
“That’s the nice thing about the twenny-eight. Anything goes. Rags, she’s this girl that owns the place, her an’ her girlfriend t’gether, she sometimes don’t dress. Other times, wow, she wears these real crazy clothes, like she has this p’ticular beatnik outfit. Black suede pants an’ shirt, kid—talk about crazy! She can afford clothes, the dough she makes. Half a buck fer Coke, same as beer—how ‘about that? But I don’ hold it against her. I seen her wear jeans plenny times. Not stuck-up or anything, kid. An’ hell! It’s about the on’y place around here the girls c’n dance.”
The questions were stacked in layers at the back of Lon’s mind, but now there was time for only one. “Why do they call it that? 28%. That can’t be the address.”
“Jest t’ show you how cute this Rags is. She read this book by some doctor, he took like a survey an’ in this book he claims twenny-eight per cent of women had somethin’ t’ do with some other woman sometime or other. So that’s the whole idea behind why Rags named the club that. Cute?”
The question left Lon as confused as before—repelled by her own raw ignorance yet fascinated by the need for answers. She drove the remaining blocks with the self-assured recklessness peculiar to drivers who can take their car apart and put it back together again. She drove harshly, yet floated on with the promised delights of the club named to honor a statistic. And breathed the delicate air of Parma violets.
IT WAS Rags who peered cautiously into the night, opening the drab green door of the lonely cement-block building at the end of the dark, undeveloped street. Lon knew Rags by the sharp black tux, the cerise bow-tie beneath a pallid, acne-scarred face. Rags stood sullen in the doorway, behind her an amateurishly lettered notice: THE 28%—MEMBERS ONLY.
“What the hell’s with the pounding?” Rags was no bigger than Violet, but the tough bass sound was enormous.
“Sweetie, meet this real good friend a mine. Lon Harris.”
Unsmiling, Rags nodded. “Hiya, Lon.”
Lon responded, “Hi!” And apparently being Violet’s “good friend” meant open sesame. Friend and proprietress led Lon into the smoke-blue dimness. Lon blinked at the strangeness of the scene.
Rags hurried ahead, circling behind the long, home-built bar. She had been interrupted apparently, by Violet’s hammering. But now she backed the girl Lon judged to be a barmaid-partner against a chipped and dented bottle cooler. Grimly, she clasped the taller girl in her arms. Kissed her as though it were a life-death matter. Lon watched, something forbidden stirring inside her. “Our kind of kids,” Violet had said. “Our kind of kids!”
Violet led Lon to the far end of the bar. She pounded amiably on the linoleum top. “Hey, quit makin’ out. How’s about some service?”
The girl in Rags’s stranglehold laughed and pushed herself free. “That’s what I’m getting! Break it up, honey. Vi wants a drink.”
She came to their end of the bar, and Lon was introduced to “a real swell kid—Betty.” Betty from out of a black-and-white movie; colorless, pale, like shoots that spring up from under sidewalks.
“We need a couple beers,” Violet told her. “How ‘bout that, Lon?”
“Right,” Lon said. Using a ruggedly deep voice that came instinctively because she knew it would sound right. Betty took two brown bottles from the cooler, popped them open with a church key and set them on the bar.
“Most of the kids are in the other room,” Violet said, swigging. “I’ll go see if I c’n find us a table.”
She wriggled her way toward the opening in the divided wall, stopping to scream, “Hi, doll!” to a girl in fly-front slacks and white T-shirt, Lon’s size. And Violet hugged another girl, a pug-faced peroxide blonde. Violet shrieked, “Swee-tie-eee!” at another group and made her sensuous way to the rope curtains that
