The Lady is a Lush by Orrie Hitt

Author:Orrie Hitt [Hitt, Orrie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4405-3968-8
Publisher: F+W Media
Published: 2012-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

8

I DROVE myself during the next two weeks, both on the road and in the office — and after hours. Some of it wasn’t bad, but a man, believe it or not, can have too many women all coming at him at once.

“It isn’t right but I’m yours,” Gloria Hays said after we checked into a motel.

“There’s no doubt about it,” Joy would say on my trips. “How are you, Pop?”

“Who am I?” Amy would ask when she was sober enough to ask. “Some orphan off the streets?”

The cops arrested Amy again for driving without a license — this time it was a hundred dollars — but she just wouldn’t learn. She stole the car every chance she got and she drank up my money as fast as she could. When she ran out of money she hunted up men and a couple of them I found in the apartment when I walked in. I walked in and they walked out.

“I didn’t know she was married,” one man said before I slammed him in the face with my fist. “She said she was down on her luck.”

“She’s down on her luck all right.”

I raved at her afterwards and she raved back, hurling curses at me and ripping off what few clothes she had on her body in a fit of rage. It was probably the worst fight we’d ever had and we’d had a number of them.

“I wish to hell I didn’t love you,” she sobbed.

“You’ve got a fine way of showing it.”

“Showing it? What am I supposed to do? Sit around here and feel sorry for myself while you chase other women? You’re not so smart. I followed you and that Hays girl one night and I know you didn’t go to a motel to talk business.”

“So I made a mistake,” I admitted. “Who hasn’t?”

“Was she fun, Chip?”

“Don’t make it sound dirty.”

“It’s dirty enough, all right. The whole world stinks. It stinks and stinks and stinks.” Her voice rose. “Was she fun?” she demanded again, the words running together in a screaming rush. “Was she as good as me? Was she — ”

Amy had been drinking a lot and she ran into the bathroom to be sick. I didn’t wait around. I grabbed up my coat and got out of there.

“This has got to stop,” Mrs. Golden told me in the lower hall. “I heard her up there, waking everybody up, and it can’t go on. I’ll give you until the end of the month to find another place.”

I walked the streets that night, thinking, and I didn’t go to bed. It would have been so simple to have solved everything if I hadn’t wanted so much, but Amy was coming into that money — it was only a matter of months now — and I didn’t want to let go. Yet I knew I had to do something about Joy’s condition and that I couldn’t take forever to do it. She had given Sammy her notice, was going to move to Andersonville and the circle around me would be tighter.

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