Part 3 (2/2)
”Good Heavens,” screamed Pearl, ”Those women are tearing each other to pieces--why don't somebody try to separate them?”
”Come on, let's get going,” said Harry, as he took Pearl by the arm and piloted her out of the place, never bothering to pay the check.
”So long, kids, I'll see you tomorrow,” called Evelyn.
”But where do you live, Ev?”
”San Antonio Apartments, on San Antonio Street, number twenty-seven.
Come up tomorrow, dear--adios.”
Harry and Pearl went out into the beautiful new car, and took a long ride toward the Smelter Road, to the fork where you return by the Mesa Road.
”Shall we stop and look at the moon for a while?” asked Harry.
”I'd love it.”
”Then we'll stop.”
Harry pulled the car off the road at the top of a small Mesa b.u.t.te, and turned off the lights.
”Isn't it beautiful here?”
”Yes, but you are more beautiful than a thousand nights,” whispered Harry into her ear.
She turned her head, looked into his expectant eyes, and thought how handsome he was, with that tightly brushed blonde hair, bushy eyebrows, beautiful smile, backed by manly big white teeth, surrounded by red lips.
”Oh, Harry, you are a darling,” as their lips met and their young bodies quivered with the thrill of expectation to be fulfilled.
El Paso, city of one hundred thousand, not counting the nearby towns and villages. Noon, the sun maddening with its terrific heat, asphalt in the street so soft that your foot-print is left in it on crossing, only the business that has to be done is all that is going on. People move about lifelessly, clothes sticking to them. Mexicans, dressed in black, with the usual black shawl around their heads, as though it were the dead of winter, and not a bead of perspiration on them, with the only cooling place in the town being in the theatres that are ice-cooled.
”My G.o.d--I'll die from this heat,” said Pearl to herself, as she raised up in bed, with her night-gown sticking to her. ”Jees, I wonder if I'll ever get used to it,” she mused, as she climbed out of bed and raised the shade, and looked out on the sun-baked city.
”I wonder what I'll do today to kill the time before I have to go over to Juarez tonight. I know, I'll put on my things and go and wake Ev up and have breakfast--then maybe she can suggest some place to go where it's cool.”
Pearl stepped out of her nightgown, looked at herself in the mirror. She was twenty-three, but she didn't look more than twenty, her beautiful white figure, with all the curves of youth reflected back at her, gave her a happy feeling, knowing that she didn't look anything like the rest of the girls that had been down on the border long, and promising herself that she would watch out and see that she would never--never be like them. The door-k.n.o.b turned slowly, then the door was thrown wide open. In walked the big boy of the night before.
”Oh, Heavens,” screamed Pearl, ”Wait a minute till I get something on,”
as she fled into the bathroom.
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