"Oh, and then," she said with a tilt of her mask, "I'm afraid of the
cars and the gangs and the loneliness and Inferno. I'm afraid of the
lust that undresses your face. And--" her voice hushed--"I'm afraid of
the wrestlers."
"Yes?" I prompted softly after a moment.
* * * * *
Her mask came forward. "Do you know something about the wrestlers?" she
asked rapidly. "The ones that wrestle women, I mean. They often lose,
you know. And then they have to have a girl to take their frustration
out on. A girl who's soft and weak and terribly frightened. They need
that, to keep them men. Other men don't want them to have a girl.
Other men want them just to fight women and be heroes. But they must
have a girl. It's horrible for her."
I squeezed her fingers tighter, as if courage could be
transmitted--granting I had any. "I think I can get you to England," I
said.
Shadows crawled onto the table and stayed there. I looked up at the
three men who had been at the end of the bar. They were the men I had
seen in the big coupe. They wore black sweaters and close-fitting black
trousers. Their faces were as expressionless as dopers. Two of them
stood above me. The other loomed over the girl.
"Drift off, man," I was told. I heard the other inform the girl:
"We'll wrestle a fall, sister. What shall it be? Judo, slapsie or
kill-who-can?"
I stood up. There are times when an Englishman simply must be
mal-treated. But just then the foxlike man came gliding in like the
star of a ballet. The reaction of the other three startled me. They
were acutely embarrassed.
He smiled at them thinly. "You won't win my favor by tricks like this,"
he said.
"Don't get the wrong idea, Zirk," one of them pleaded.
"I will if it's right," he said. "She told me what you tried to do this
afternoon. That won't endear you to me, either. Drift."
They backed off awkwardly. "Let's get out of here," one of them said
loudly, as they turned. "I know a place where they fight naked with
knives."
* * * * *
Little Zirk laughed musically and slipped into the seat beside my
companion. She shrank from him, just a little. I pushed my feet back,
leaned forward.
"Who's your friend, baby?" he asked, not looking at her.
She passed the question to me with a little gesture. I told him.
"British," he observed. "She's been asking you about getting out of the
country? About passports?" He smiled pleasantly. "She likes to start
running away. Don't you, baby?" His small hand began to stroke her
wrist, the fingers bent a little, the tendons ridged, as if he were
about to grab and twist.
"Look here," I said sharply. "I have to be grateful to you for ordering
off those bullies, but--"
"Think nothing of it," he told me. "They're no harm except when they're
behind steering wheels. A well-trained fourteen-year-old girl could
cripple any one of them. Why, even Theda here, if she went in for that
sort of thing...." He turned to her, shifting his hand from her wrist
to her hair. He stroked it, letting the strands slip slowly through his
fingers. "You know I lost tonight, baby, don't you?" he said softly.