My regular job then, hauling around those goddamn organ pipes, I worked as hard as those guys any day. But I can’t walk over and tell ’em that. See, that’s bad enough, but then Bettybarr gets an idea, comes over and cocks this straw hat on the side of my head. I go, ‘Excuse me, but you know anybody who wears a hat this way?’ She goes, ‘You do.’ Sunday, the last day, we’re shooting on the top deck of the Algiers ferry, riding it back and forth. Everybody on the boat was up there watching us. I see these two clowns drinking Dixie beer out of longneck bottles and I know right away I’m gonna have trouble. They come around to my side, I’m standing there grinning at the camera in this all-white outfit, and they start making these kissing-sucking noises, you know, and ask me if I’m dick trawling or what. Just then Bettybarr comes up to me with a yachting cap and I think, Oh, shit, here we go. She’s about to cock the hat on my head and I say to her, ‘Excuse me.’ I turn to the two morons with the Dixie longnecks and tell ’em, ‘I hear one more fucking word somebody’s going over the side.’ Bettybarr looks grim, like she’s frozen, with no expression at all. She says, ‘That’s it for today. Pack it up,’ and gets us all down below.”
“What’d the guys do?”
“Nothing. The ferry docked and we left. But then we’re in the bar that night at the Roosevelt, she asks me, ‘Was that for my benefit?’ Like was I showing off in front of her? I said, ‘No, that was between those guys and me, something I had to do.’ She goes, ‘I see.’ She finishes her drink, looks at me and says, ‘Would you like to go upstairs?’ ”
“No shit.”
“We go up to her suite.”
“Yeah.”
“She undresses me.”
“No shit.”
“She goes, ‘You have a gorgeous body.’ ”
“Yeah?”
“I never had anybody tell me that before. I don’t know what to say about hers. It’s bigger, you know, looser, without any clothes on. And her skin was so white she looked more naked-looking than girls that have that real smooth skin and tan lines. Then when we did it it was weird to see this grown-up woman that smelled of bath powder moaning and carrying on.”