Half World: A Novel by Scott O'Connor Read Free Book Online Page A

where girls hooked johns, Dorn said. He gave his briefing in the north living room, walking a slow perimeter as he spoke. Elizabeth watched from the window seat, smoking. Henry sat on the burgundy sofa, looking at the heavy matching drapes, the boudoir paintings. The apartment looked like the movie set of a low-rent Parisian bordello.
    The girls also met men on the street, Dorn said, but these encounters were less desirable than the bar meetings. There was more danger on the street. The possibility of being pushed into an alley, pulled into a doorway.
    Elizabeth finished her cigarette, stood and crossed the room. She was wearing another short, loose cotton dress. She walked barefoot across the rug, arching up on her toes with each step, betraying a dancer’s grace, maybe, somewhere years ago, a previous life.
    Some of the girls were skilled at slipping mickeys into johns’ drinks, Dorn said. It was a lucrative side business, almost foolproof. Most johns wouldn’t go running to the cops when they came to and found they’d been rolled.
    Elizabeth stood in front of the couch and Henry handed her a cigarette. She leaned in for a light, giving him a clear look down her dress, the absence of undergarments, and then she straightened and walked tothe record player by the bedroom doorway. She began flipping through the secretaries’ abandoned crate of LPs, Glenn Miller and Lester Brown and Frank Sinatra.
    Dorn lit his own cigarette, watched Elizabeth’s behind as she bent over the crate.
    “You ever see a magician?” Dorn said. “Whadotheycallem? Street magicians. Close-up magicians.” He smiled at the retrieval of the proper term. “They can find a canary in your pocket or a nickel behind your ear. That kind of shit. Prestidigitation. Some of these girls are like magicians.”
    Henry lifted his cup to his lips. He stopped, just shy of a sip, looked at his coffee, now shot through with a faint white swirl, the new liquid rapidly disappearing into the old.
    Henry looked up. Dorn was watching him with a smile. An old Benny Goodman tune began from the record player. Elizabeth began to hum along.
    “I’ve always loved magic,” Dorn said.
    *   *   *
    They crossed the Embarcadero in Dorn’s big blue Lincoln. Dorn drove slowly, close to the curb, his arm hanging out the open window. The stretches between streetlights were dark; the smell was strong: salt, fish, cigars, urine, garbage. Spilled beer when they passed a bar with an open door. Every few blocks Dorn lifted his hand and pulled on his Lucky Strike. The thing looked tiny in his beefy mitt, like a child’s candy cigarette. He had the radio on, a late-night classical music program playing low.
    “Prostitutes, pimps, vagrants, queers,” Dorn said. “There’s nobody else down here. Let me know if you see anybody different. You won’t.”
    Most of the bars were full, men spilling out onto the sidewalk to laugh and smoke and argue. A few girls walked alone or in pairs, stopping to talk with groups of men or to lean into the open windows of cars that pulled to the curb.
    The people on the street eyed them warily. Henry couldn’t tellwhether they recognized the car, if they saw Dorn’s big bald head in the red dashboard light, or if they were just in a constant state of vigilance.
    “Every guy down here is carrying something,” Dorn said. “A knife, a gun, a bottle he can’t wait to crack over your head. The girls, too, most of them. This is another place entirely. The rules are different. The rules are pretty much the opposite of the rules where you’re from. Remember that and you’ll be fine.”
    Dorn brought his cigarette to his mouth, left it burning between his lips. He took a hard turn onto a pier access road, cut his headlights, and let the Lincoln coast. Men and women moved in the shadows. Some lay on the sidewalk, passed out or sleeping something off. Small groups huddled around trash-can fires, passing bottles. After about a hundred feet the pavement