“That old bird downstairs is deaf as a post. You don’t have to worry over her.”

“Shoot,” she said. “You could murder somebody in one of these rooms and wouldn’t anybody care, long’s the room’s paid up. That’s not the trouble I’ve got in mind.”

He took one of the sandwiches from the sack and left it open on the bed between them. He said “Help yourself” and bit into the bread and egg and then said, “So what happened to you?”

“Not what but who,” she said. Then, “You never made it into Charlie Bacon’s did you? Seems to me you didn’t try very hard. But they told me, Mike told me, said, ‘That slicked-up boy what’s hauling wine for the guineas is outside asking after you and I run him off.’ I’d thought you were the persistent type.”

“I hung around a couple nights thinking I’d run into you leaving.”

“I never leave there by the front or even the side, just to avoid the moon-faced boys and men. At least I try and avoid them.”

“You want one of these sandwiches?”

“I’d just puke it up. My stomach’s awful sore. He worked me over pretty good.”

“You look a little rough but those bruises’ll fade out. I never seen a woman beat up before. It would be one sick pup would do a thing like that.”

“Good God. You don’t just not know a thing about women, you’re stupid about men too.”

He took another bite of sandwich. “All right. I’m ignorant. Who did all this to you?”

She shook her head, not denying him but as if he were hopeless. “I already told you I’m an entertainer. What that means is I wear outfits that make clear there’s a girl underneath and five or six times a night I stand up there on Charlie’s little stage and sing. Songs like ‘If You Were a Kinder Fellow Than the Kind of Fellow You Are’ or ‘The Man Was a Stranger to Me’ or to slow em down a little things like ‘Don’t Go Out Tonight Daddy.’ You wouldn’t know it to hear me talk but I’ve got a good voice. Between numbers I have to circulate, work up the crowd. Keep em buying drinks, let em buy me drinks—which is always nothing but cold tea. Keep the money flowing. That’s what Charlie says he sees you hanging around the back, Get out there girl and keep the money flowing. Sure some of it flows to me. Fellows tip you for a song, you flirt a little bit, they tip some more. And there’s some who’ll get a crush on a girl and bring presents to her, give her money that sort of thing. Charlie doesn’t allow his girls to hook but that doesn’t mean some of the girls some of the times don’t make arrangements to meet men outside of the club. What they do then is their own business unless they get arrested and then they don’t have a job. Now, the thing about that business is you have to pick and choose. Because what you want to do is keep the fellow coming around, both to the club and on the side. So you have to work them along, maybe giving a little but mostly putting the idea always in their heads like they’re getting far more than they are, or like they’re just about to. Some girls can keep a man going for months like that. There’s others who don’t bother with it but pick their men carefully, usually older men who long since gave up ever seeing a young woman with her clothes off again. Now those fellows, you choose the right one, the faster, more eager you are, the longer you’ve got them nailed. I’ve not gone that route myself. Although there’s more danger in the tease-squeeze-and-run. Mostly I’ve been lucky.”