Stop This Man! by Peter Rabe Page A

turned carefully and started to walk back to the stairwell when a door at the end of the dim corridor creaked. He flattened himself against the wall, his blood throbbing under his skull. The door clicked shut and a figure came toward the stairwell. It was a man. He looked like a bum, but so what? Then the man turned down the stairs, never looking in Catell’s direction. Licking his dry lips, Catell started to move when the voice behind 206 started to mumble again. Then there was a cackling laugh—the Turtle’s laugh. Catell pushed open the door and looked in. There was no light in the room, just the red reflection from a gas heater that stood near one wall. The light showed the bare legs of a woman who was shaking a skirt down over her head, and it showed the droopy pajamas of a short man. When Catell clicked the door shut, the Turtle turned around, looking surprised.
    “Why, Tony, we thought you’d never come. Didn’t we, sweetness?”
    The woman had the skirt down now and pulled the zipper over her hip. She was still naked from the waist up, her big breasts making a billowing shadow on the wall. She turned and Catell recognized the whore from the bar.
    “For chrissakes, you again?”
    “It’s destiny,” said the Turtle. “I always say, don’t try to buck destiny. What do you say, Millie?”
    “I say, speaking of a buck—” and she planted her hands on her hips and looked hard at the Turtle.
    After the Turtle had given her a bill she picked up her brassiere and slipped the straps over her shoulders. She did it slowly, looking at Catell with a mean look on her face. Catell didn’t think she looked so bad at all, and he leaned back in his chair. He fumbled for a cigarette, looking at the woman in the red light from the heater. She pulled the cups of the brassiere around her breasts and arched her back to hook the clasp. Catell noticed how the big shadow on the wall had changed shape. Then he looked back at her.
    “One more look and you pay,” she said to Catell.
    He grinned.
    “Throw me my blouse, Daisy,” she said.
    Catell threw her the thin blouse. She put it on and Catell watched how it buttoned tight across the front.
    “Now the shoes. Under your chair, Mary.”
    “You don’t need ‘em,” Catell said.
    “The shoes, Mary. I’m a respectable woman. I wear shoes.”
    “The hell with the shoes. You look more sexy with your feet naked.”
    “Come on, faggot, the shoes,” and she stamped her foot.
    “Do that again, baby. It makes you wiggle so nice.” Catell grinned at her. She came at him with mouth curled back over her teeth and her loose hair flying. When she reached out to claw at him, Catell caught her wrists and pinned her arms to her sides. Trying to wrench free, she popped a button and the blouse fell open.
    “I get more cooperation from that button than I get from you,” he said.
    “I told ya I’m a respectable woman,” she hissed, kicking at him.
    The Turtle had picked up his bathrobe and was just opening the door to go out.
    “Leave some dough on the table. Millie’s going to earn it.” Catell leaned over to reach her mouth and she bit him. He jerked back and laughed. “Millie’s gonna make whoopee with a fruitcake, ha, Millie?”
    The door shut behind the Turtle and Catell reached for the woman’s straps. She stepped back fast, knocking his hands out of the way and lashing at his face. Her nails cut a fine line of blood down his cheek and her other hand caught him flat on the nose. Catell stumbled back, cursing, and fell over the chair. When he looked up she was standing near the rim of the red reflection. Her skirt was a heap on the floor, and the light made dim patterns on her bare legs and belly. Then the blouse fell off, and the brassiere. When the woman was naked she came at him again, but she didn’t try to scratch this time.

Chapter Nine
    Catell left for Burbank at nine in the morning. For the next five hours he shuffled back and forth in one bus after another,