The room swung into light. A girl stood in the open door, pointing a revolver at him. There was a man behind her.
‘What are you doing? Why it’s a Western Union boy…’ The light was a coppery tangle about her hair, picked out her body under the red silk kimono. The young man was wiry and brown in his unbuttoned shirt. ‘Well what are you doing in chat room?’
‘Please maam it was hunger brought me to it, hunger an my poor ole muder starvin.’
‘Isnt that wonderful Stan? He’s a burglar.’ She brandished the revolver. ‘Come on out in the hall.’
‘Yes miss anythin you say miss, but dont give me up to de bulls. Tink o de ole muder starvin her heart out.’
‘All right but if you took anything you must give it back.’
‘Honest I didn’t have a chanct.’
Stan flopped into a chair laughing and laughing. ‘Ellie you take the cake… Wouldnt a thought you could do it.’
‘Well didnt I play this scene in stock all last summer?… Give up your gun.’
‘No miss I wouldn’t carry no gun.’
‘Well I dont believe you but I guess I’ll let you go.’
‘Gawd bless you miss.’
‘But you must make some money as a messengerboy.’
‘I was fired last week miss, it’s only hunger made me take to it.’
Stan got to his feet. ‘Let’s give him a dollar an tell him to get the hell out of here.’
When he was outside the door she held out the dollarbill to him.
‘Jez you’re white,’ he said choking. He grabbed the hand with the bill in it and kissed it; leaning over her hand kissing it wetly he caught a glimpse of her body under the arm in the drooping red silk sleeve. As he walked, still trembling, down the stairs, he looked back and saw the man and the girl standing side by side with their arms around each other watching him. His eyes were full of tears. He stuffed the dollarbill into his pocket.
Kid if you keep on bein a softie about women you’re goin to find yourself in dat lil summer hotel up de river… Pretty soft though. Whistling under his breath he walked to the L and took an uptown train. Now and then he put his hand over his back pocket to feel the roll of bills. He ran up to the third floor of an apartmenthouse that smelled of fried fish and coal gas, and rang three times at a grimy glass door. After a pause he knocked softly.
‘Zat you Moike?’ came faintly the whine of a woman’s voice.
‘No it’s Nicky Schatz.’
A sharpfaced woman with henna hair opened the door. She had on a fur coat over frilly lace underclothes.
‘Howsa boy?’
‘Jeze a swell dame caught me when I was tidying up a little job and whatjer tink she done?’ He followed the woman, talking excitedly, into a dining room with peeling walls. On the table were used glasses and a bottle of Green River whiskey. ‘She gave me a dollar an tole me to be a good little boy.’
‘The hell she did?’
‘Here’s a watch.’
‘It’s an Ingersoll, I dont call ‘at a watch.’
‘Well set yer lamps on dis.’ He pulled out the roll of bills. ‘Aint dat a wad o lettuce?… Got in himmel, dey’s tousands.’
‘Lemme see.’ She grabbed the bills out of his hand, her eyes popping. ‘Hay ye’re cookoo kid.’ She threw the roll on the floor and wrung her hands with a swaying Jewish gesture. ‘Oyoy it’s stage money. It’s stage money ye simple saphead, you goddam…’
Giggling they sat side by side on the edge of the bed. Through the stuffy smell of the room full of little silky bits of clothing falling off chairs a fading freshness came from a bunch of yellow roses on the bureau. Their arms tightened round each other’s shoulders; suddenly he wrenched himself away and leaned over her to kiss her mouth. ‘Some burglar,’ he said breathlessly.
‘Stan…’
‘Ellie.’
‘I thought it might be Jojo;’ she managed to force a whisper through a tight throat. ‘It’ll be just like him to come sneaking around.’
‘Ellie I don’t understand how you can live with him among all these people. You’re so lovely. I just dont see you in all this.’
‘It was easy enough before I met you… And honestly Jojo’s all right. He’s just a peculiar very unhappy person.’
‘But you’re out of another world old kid… You ought to live on top of the Woolworth Building in an apartment made of cutglass and cherry blossoms.’
‘Stan your back’s brown all the way down.’
‘That’s swimming.’
‘So soon?’
‘I guess most of it’s left over from last summer.’
‘You’re the fortunate youth all right. I never learned how to swim properly.’
‘I’ll teach you… Look next Sunday bright and early we’ll hop into Dingo and go down to Long Beach. Way down at the end there’s never anybody… You dont even have to wear a bathingsuit.’
‘I like the way you’re so lean and hard Stan… Jojo’s white and flabby almost like a woman.’
‘For crissake don’t talk about him now.’
Stan stood with his legs apart buttoning his shirt. ‘Look Ellie let’s beat it out an have a drink… God I’d hate to run into somebody now an have to talk lies to ’em… I bet I’d crown ’em with a chair.’
‘We’ve got time. Nobody ever comes home here before twelve… I’m just here myself because I’ve got a sick headache.’
‘Ellie, d’you like your sick headache?’
‘I’m crazy about it Stan.’
‘I guess that Western Union burglar knew that… Gosh… Burglary, adultery, sneaking down fireescapes, cattreading along gutters. Judas it’s a great life.’
Ellen gripped his hand hard as they came down the stairs stepping together. In front of the letterboxes in the shabby hallway he grabbed her suddenly by the shoulders and pressed her head back and kissed her. Hardly breathing they floated down the street toward Broadway. He had his hand under her arm, she squeezed it tight against her ribs with her elbow. Aloof, as if looking through thick glass into an aquarium, she watched faces, fruit in store-windows, cans of vegetables, jars of olives, redhotpokerplants in a florist’s, newspapers, electric signs drifting by. When they passed cross-streets a puff of air came in her face off the river. Sudden jetbright glances of eyes under straw hats, attitudes of chins, thin lips, pouting lips, Cupid’s bows, hungry shadow under cheekbones, faces of girls and young men nuzzled fluttering against her like moths as she walked with her stride even to his through the tingling yellow night.
Somewhere they sat down at a table. An orchestra throbbed. ‘No Stan I cant drink anything… You go ahead.’
‘But Ellie, arent you feeling swell like I am?’
‘Sweller… I just couldnt stand feeling any better… I couldnt keep my mind on a glass long enough to drink it.’ She winced under the brightness of his eyes.
Stan was bubbling drunk. ‘I wish earth had the body as fruit to eat,’ he kept repeating. Ellen was all the time twisting about bits of rubbery cold Welsh rabbit with her fork. She had started to drop with a lurching drop like a rollercoaster’s into shuddering pits of misery. In a square place in the middle of the floor four couples were dancing the tango. She got to her feet.
‘Stan I’m going home. I’ve got to get up early and rehearse all day. Call me up at twelve at the theater.’
He nodded and poured himself another highball. She stood behind his chair a second looking down at his long head of close ruffled hair. He was spouting verses softly to himself. ‘Saw the white implacable Aphrodite, damn fine, Saw the hair unbound and the feet unsandaled, Jiminy… Shine as fire of sunset on western waters. Saw the reluctant… goddam fine sapphics.’
Once out on Broadway again she felt very merry. She stood in the middle of the street waiting for the uptown car. An occasional taxi whizzed by her. From the river on the warm wind came the long moan of a steamboat whistle. In the pit inside her thousands of gnomes were building tall brittle glittering towers. The car swo
oped ringing along the rails, stopped. As she climbed in she remembered swooningly the smell of Stan’s body sweating in her arms. She let herself drop into a seat, biting her lips to keep from crying out. God it’s terrible to be in love. Opposite two men with chinless bluefish faces were talking hilariously, slapping fat knees.
‘I’ll tell yer Jim it’s Irene Castle that makes the hit wid me… To see her dance the onestep juss makes me hear angels hummin.’
‘Naw she’s too skinny.’
‘But she’s made the biggest hit ever been made on Broadway.’
Ellen got off the car and walked east along the desolate empty pavements of 105th Street. A fetor of mattresses and sleep seeped out from the blocks of narrow-windowed houses. Along the gutters garbagecans stank sourly. In the shadow of a doorway a man and girl swayed tightly clamped in each other’s arms. Saying good night. Ellen smiled happily. Greatest hit on Broadway. The words were an elevator carrying her up dizzily, up into some stately height where electric light signs crackled scarlet and gold and green, where were bright roofgardens that smelled of orchids, and the slow throb of a tango danced in a goldgreen dress with Stan while handclapping of millions beat in gusts like a hailstorm about them. Greatest hit on Broadway.
She was walking up the scaling white stairs. Before the door marked Sunderland a feeling of sick disgust suddenly choked her. She stood a long time her heart pounding with the key poised before the lock. Then with a jerk she pushed the key in the lock and opened the door.
‘Strange fish, Jimmy, strange fish.’ Herf and Ruth Prynne sat giggling over plates of paté in the innermost corner of a clattery lowceilinged restaurant. ‘All the ham actors in the world seem to eat here.’
‘All the ham actors in the world live up at Mrs Sunderland’s.’
‘What’s the latest news from the Balkans?’
‘Balkans is right…’
Beyond Ruth’s black straw hat with red poppies round the crown Jimmy looked at the packed tables where faces decomposed into a graygreen blur. Two sallow hawkfaced waiters elbowed their way through the seesawing chatter of talk. Ruth was looking at him with dilated laughing eyes while she bit at a stalk of celery.
‘Whee I feel so drunk,’ she was spluttering. ‘It went straight to my head… Isnt it terrible?’
‘Well what were these shocking goingson at 105th Street?’
‘O you missed it. It was a shriek… Everybody was out in the hall, Mrs Sunderland with her hair in curlpapers, and Cassie was crying and Tony Hunter was standing in his door in pink pyjamas…’
‘Who’s he?’
‘Just a juvenile… But Jimmy I must have told you about Tony Hunter. Peculiar poissons Jimmy, peculiar poissons.’
Jimmy felt himself blushing, he bent over his place. ‘Oh is that’s what’s his trouble?’ he said stiffly.
‘Now you’re shocked, Jimmy; admit that you’re shocked.’
‘No I’m not; go ahead, spill the dirt.’
‘Oh Jimmy you’re such a shriek… Well Cassie was sobbing and the little dog was barking, and the invisible Costello was yelling Police and fainting into the arms of an unknown man in a dress suit. And Jojo was brandishing a revolver, a little nickel one, may have been a waterpistol for all I know… The only person who looked in their right senses was Elaine Oglethorpe… You know the titianhaired vision that so impressed your infant mind.’
‘Honestly Ruth my infant mind wasnt as impressed as all that.’
‘Well at last the Ogle got tired of his big scene and cried out in ringing tones, Disarm me or I shall kill this woman. And Tony Hunter grabbed the pistol and took it into his room. Then Elaine Oglethorpe made a little bow as if she were taking a curtaincall, said Well goodnight everybody, and ducked into her room cool as a cucumber… Can you picture it?’ Ruth suddenly lowered her voice, ‘But everybody in the restaurant is listening to us… And really I think its very disgusting. But the worst is yet to come. After the Ogle had banged on the door a couple of times and not gotten any answer he went up to Tony and rolling his eyes like Forbes Robertson in Hamlet put his arm round him and said Tony can a broken man crave asylum in your room for the night… Honestly I was just so shocked.’
‘Is Oglethorpe that way too?’
Ruth nodded several times.
‘Then why did she marry him?’
‘Why that girl’d marry a trolleycar if she thought she could get anything by it.’
‘Ruth honestly I think you’ve got the whole thing sized up wrong.’
‘Jimmy you’re too innocent to live. But let me finish the tragic tale… After those two had disappeared and locked the door behind them the most awful powwow you’ve ever imagined went on in the hall. Of course Cassie had been having hysterics all along just to add to the excitement. When I came back from getting her some sweet spirits of ammonia in the bathroom I found the court in session. It was a shriek. Miss Costello wanted the Oglethorpes thrown out at dawn and said she’d leave if they didn’t and Mrs Sunderland kept moaning that in thirty years of theatrical experience she’d never seen a scene like that, and the man in the dress suit who was Benjamin Arden… you know he played a character part in Honeysuckle Jim… said he thought people like Tony Hunter ought to be in jail. When I went to bed it was still going on. Do you wonder that I slept late after all that and kept you waiting, poor child, an hour in the Times Drug Store?’
Joe Harland stood in his hall bedroom with his hands in his pockets staring at the picture of The Stag at Bay that hung crooked in the middle of the verdegris wall that hemmed in the shaky iron bed. His clawcold fingers moved restlessly in the bottoms of his trousers pockets. He was talking aloud in a low even voice: ‘Oh, it’s all luck you know, but that’s the last time I try the Merivales. Emily’d have given it to me if it hadn’t been for that damned old tightwad. Got a soft spot in her heart Emily has. But none of em seem to realize that these things aren’t always a man’s own fault. It’s luck that’s all it is, and Lord knows they used to eat out of my hand in the old days.’ His rising voice grated on his ears. He pressed his lips together. You’re getting batty old man. He stepped back and forth in the narrow space between the bed and the wall. Three steps. Three steps. He went to the washstand and drank out of the pitcher. The water tasted of rank wood and sloppails. He spat the last mouthful back. I need a good tenderloin steak not water. He pounded his clenched fists together. I got to do something. I got to do something.
He put on his overcoat to hide the rip in the seat of his trousers. The frayed sleeves tickled his wrists. The dark stairs creaked. He was so weak he kept grabbing the rail for fear of falling. The old woman pounced out of a door on him in the lower hall. The rat had squirmed sideways on her head as if trying to escape from under the thin gray pompadour.
‘Meester Harland how about you pay me tree veeks rent?’
‘I’m just on my way out to cash a check now, Mrs Budkowitz. You’ve been so kind about this little matter… And perhaps it will interest you to know that I have the promise, no I may say the certainty of a very good position beginning Monday.’
‘I vait tree veeks… I not vait any more.’
‘But my dear lady I assure you upon my honor as a gentleman…’
Mrs Budkowitz began to jerk her shoulders about. Her voice rose thin and wailing like the sound of a peanut wagon. ‘You pay me tat fifteen dollar or I rent te room to somebody else.’
‘I’ll pay you this very evening.’
‘Vat time?’
‘Six o’clock.’
‘Allright. Plis you give me key.’
‘But I cant do that. Suppose I was late?’
‘Tat’s vy I vant te key. I’m trough vit vaiting.’
‘All right take the key… I hope you understand that after this insulting behavior it will be impossible for me to remain longer under your roof.’
Mrs Budkowitz laughed hoarsely. ‘Allright ven you pay me fifteen dollar you can take avay your grip.’ He put the two keys tied together with string into he
r gray hand and slammed the door and strode down the street.
At the corner of Third Avenue he stopped and stood shivering in the hot afternoon sunlight, sweat running down behind his ears. He was too weak to swear. Jagged oblongs of harsh sound broke one after another over his head as an elevated past over. Trucks grated by along the avenue raising a dust that smelled of gasoline and trampled horsedung. The dead air stank of stores and lunchrooms. He began walking slowly uptown towards Fourteenth Street. At a corner a crinkly warm smell of cigars stopped him like a hand on his shoulder. He stood a while looking in the little shop watching the slim stained fingers of the cigarroller shuffle the brittle outside leaves of tobacco. Remembering Romeo and Juliet Arguelles Morales he sniffed deeply. The slick tearing of tinfoil, the careful slipping off of the band, the tiny ivory penknife for the end that slit delicately as flesh, the smell of the wax match, the long inhaling of bitter crinkled deep sweet smoke. And now sir about this little matter of the new Northern Pacific bond issue… He clenched his fists in the clammy pockets of his raincoat. Take my key would she the old harridan? I’ll show her, damn it. Joe Harland may be down and out but he’s got his pride yet.
He walked west along Fourteenth and without stopping to think and lose his nerve went down into a small basement stationery store, strode through unsteadily to the back, and stood swaying in the doorway of a little office where sat at a rolltop desk a blueeyed baldheaded fat man.
‘Hello Felsius,’ croaked Harland.
The fat man got to his feet bewildered. ‘God it aint Mr Harland is it?’
‘Joe Harland himself Felsius… er somewhat the worse for wear.’ A titter died in his throat.
‘Well I’ll be… Sit right down Mr Harland.’
‘Thank you Felsius… Felsius I’m down and out.’
‘It must be five years since I’ve seen you Mr Harland.’