I laughed and said it to Tommy.
“I swear to Christ I’ve never been anywhere like this,” he said. “Look at the three of them.” Then the cook spoke up.
“How old are you boys?”
“I’m ninety-six and he’s sixty-nine,” Tommy said.
“Ho! Ho! Ho!” the big whore shook with laughing. She had a really pretty voice. The other whores didn’t smile.
“Oh, can’t you be decent?” the cook said. “I asked just to be friendly.”
“We’re seventeen and nineteen,” I said.
“What’s the matter with you?” Tommy turned to me.
“That’s all right.”
“You can call me Alice,” the big whore said and then she began to shake again.
“Is that your name?” Tommy asked.
“Sure,” she said. “Alice. Isn’t it?” she turned to the man who sat by the cook.
“Alice. That’s right.”
“That’s the sort of name Vou’d have,” the cook said.
“It’s my real name,” Alice said.
“What’s the other girls’ names?” Tom asked.
“Hazel and Ethel,” Alice said. Hazel and Ethel smiled. They weren’t very bright.
“What’s your name?” I said to one of the blondes.
“Frances,” she said.
“Frances what?”
“Frances Wilson. What’s it to you?”
“What’s yours?” I asked the other one.
“Oh, don’t be fresh,” she said.
“He just wants us all to be friends,” the man who talked said. “Don’t you want to be friends?”
“No,” the peroxide one said. “Not with you.”
“She’s just a spitfire,” the man said. “A regular little spitfire.”
The one blonde looked at the other and shook her head.
“Goddamned mossbacks,” she said.
