Manhattan Transfer

  ‘A rotten five years it’s been for me… I suppose its all luck. My luck wont ever change on this earth again. Remember when I’d come in from romping with the bulls and raise hell round the office? A pretty good bonus I gave the office force that Christmas.’

  ‘Indeed it was Mr Harland.’

  ‘Must be a dull life storekeeping after the Street.’

  ‘More to my taste Mr Harland, nobody to boss me here.’

  ‘And how’s the wife and kids?’

  ‘Fine, fine; the oldest boy’s just out of highschool.’

  ‘That the one you named for me?’

  Felsius nodded. His fingers fat as sausages were tapping uneasily on the edge of the desk.

  ‘I remember I thought I’d do something for that kid someday. It’s a funny world.’ Harland laughed feebly. He felt a shuddery blackness stealing up behind his head. He clenched his hands round his knee and contracted the muscles of his arms. ‘You see Felsius, it’s this way… I find myself for the moment in a rather embarrassing situation financially… You know how those things are.’ Felsius was staring straight ahead of him into the desk. Beads of sweat were starting out of his bald head. ‘We all have our spell of bad luck dont we? I want to float a very small loan for a few days, just a few dollars, say twentyfive until certain combinations…’

  ‘Mr Harland I cant do it.’ Felsius got to his feet. ‘I’m sorry but principles is principles… I’ve never borrowed or lent a cent in my life. I’m sure you understand that…’

  ‘All right, dont say any more.’ Harland got meekly to his feet. ‘Let me have a quarter… I’m not so young as I was and I haven’t eaten for two days,’ he mumbled, looking down at his cracked shoes. He put out his hand to steady himself by the desk.

  Felsius moved back against the wall as if to ward off a blow. He held out a fiftycent piece on thick trembling fingers. Harland took it, turned without a word and stumbled out through the shop. Felsius pulled a violet bordered handkerchief out of his pocket, mopped his brow and turned to his letters again.

  We take the liberty of calling the trade’s attention to four new superfine Mullen products that we feel the greatest confidence in recommending to our customers as a fresh and absolutely unparalleled departure in the papermanufacturer’s art…

  They came out of the movie blinking into bright pools of electric glare. Cassie watched him stand with his feet apart and eyes absorbed lighting a cigar. McAvoy was a stocky man with a beefy neck; he wore a single-button coat, a checked vest and a dogshead pin in his brocade necktie.

  ‘That was a rotton show or I’m a Dutchman,’ he was growling.

  ‘But I loved the twavel pictures, Morris, those Swiss peasants dancing; I felt I was wight there.’

  ‘Damn hot in there… I’d like a drink.’

  ‘Now Morris you promised,’ she whined.

  ‘Oh I just meant sodawater, dont get nervous.’ ‘Oh that’d be lovely. I’d just love a soda.’

  ‘Then we’ll go for a walk in the Park.’

  She let the lashes fall over her eyes ‘Allwight Morris,’ she whispered without looking at him. She put her hand a little tremulously through his arm.

  ‘If only I wasn’t so goddam broke.’

  ‘I don’t care Morris.’

  ‘I do by God.’

  At Columbus Circle they went into a drugstore. Girls in green, violet, pink summer dresses, young men in straw hats were three deep along the sodafountain. She stood back and admiringly watched him shove his way through. A man was leaning across the table behind her talking to a girl; their faces were hidden by their hatbrims.

  ‘You juss tie that bull outside, I said to him, then I resigned.’

  ‘You mean you were fired.’

  ‘No honest I resigned before he had a chance… He’s a stinker d’you know it? I wont take no more of his lip. When I was walkin outa the office he called after me… Young man lemme tell ye sumpen. You wont never make good till you learn who’s boss around this town, till you learn that it aint you.’

  Morris was holding out a vanilla icecream soda to her. ‘Dreamin’ again Cassie; anybody’d think you was a snowbird.’ Smiling bright-eyed, she took the soda; he was drinking coca-cola. ‘Thank you,’ she said. She sucked with pouting lips at a spoonful of icecream. ‘Ou Morris it’s delicious.’

  The path between round splashes of arclights ducked into darkness. Through slant lights and nudging shadows came a smell of dusty leaves and trampled grass and occasionally a rift of cool fragrance from damp earth under shrubberies.

  ‘Oh I love it in the Park,’ chanted Cassie. She stifled a belch. ‘D’you know Morris I oughtnt to have eaten that icecweam. It always gives me gas.’

  Morris said nothing. He put his arm round her and held her tight to him so that his thigh rubbed against hers as they walked. ‘Well Pierpont Morgan is dead… I wish he’d left me a couple of million.’

  ‘Oh Morris wouldn’t it be wonderful? Where’d we live? On Central Park South.’ They stood looking back at the glow of electric signs that came from Columbus Circle. To the left they could see curtained lights in the windows of a whitefaced apartmenthouse. He looked stealthily to the right and left and then kissed her. She twisted her mouth out from under his.

  ‘Dont… Somebody might see us,’ she whispered breathless. Inside something like a dynamo was whirring, whirring. ‘Morris I’ve been saving it up to tell you. I think Goldweiser’s going to give me a specialty bit in his next show. He’s stagemanager of the second woad company and he’s got a lot of pull up at the office. He saw me dance yesterday.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He said he’d fix it up for me to see the big boss Monday… Oh but Morris it’s not the sort of thing I want to do, it’s so vulgar and howid… I want to do such beautiful things. I feel I’ve got it in me, something without a name fluttering inside, a bird of beautiful plumage in a howid iron cage.’

  ‘That’s the trouble with you, you’ll never make good, you’re too upstage.’ She looked up at him with streaming eyes that glistened in the white powdery light of an arclamp.

  ‘Oh don’t cry for God’s sake. I didnt mean anythin.’

  ‘I’m not upstage with you Morris, am I?’ She sniffed and wiped her eyes.

  ‘You are kinda, that’s what makes me sore. I like my little girl to pet me an love me up a little. Hell Cassie life aint all beer an sourkraut.’ As they walked tightly pressed one to another they felt rock under their feet. They were on a little hill of granite outcrop with shrubbery all round. The lights from the buildings that hemmed in the end of the Park shone in their faces. They stood apart holding each other’s hands.

  ‘Take that redhaired girl up at 105th Street… I bet she wouldnt be upstage when she was alone with a feller.’

  ‘She’s a dweadful woman, she dont care what kind of a wep she has… Oh I think you’re howid.’ She began to cry again.

  He pulled her to him roughly, pressed her to him hard with his spread hands on her back. She felt her legs tremble and go weak. She was falling through colored shafts of faintness. His mouth wouldnt let her catch her breath.

  ‘Look out,’ he whispered pulling himself away from her. They walked on unsteadily down the path through the shrubbery. ‘I guess it aint.’

  ‘What Morris?’

  ‘A cop. God it’s hell not havin anywhere to go. Cant we go to your room?’

  ‘But Morris they’ll all see us.’

  ‘Who cares? They all do it in that house.’

  ‘Oh I hate you when you talk that way… Weal love is all pure and lovely… Morris you don’t love me.’

  ‘Quit pickin on me cant you Cassie for a minute… ? Goddam it’s hell to be broke.’

  They sat down on a bench in the light. Behind them automobiles slithered with a constant hissing scuttle in two streams along the roadway. She put her hand on his knee and he covered it with his big stubby hand.

  ‘Morris I feel that we are going to be very happy from now on, I
feel it. You’re going to get a fine job, I’m sure you are.’

  ‘I aint so sure… I’m not so young as I was Cassie. I aint got any time to lose.’

  ‘Why you’re terribly young, you’re only thirtyfive Morris… And I think that something wonderful is going to happen. I’m going to get a chance to dance.’

  ‘Why you ought to make more than that redhaired girl.’

  ‘Elaine Oglethorpe… She doesnt make so much. But I’m different from her. I dont care about money; I want to live for my dancing.’

  ‘I want money. Once you got money you can do what you like.’

  ‘But Morris dont you believe that you can do anything if you just want to hard enough? I believe that.’ He edged his free arm round her waist. Gradually she let her head fall on his shoulder. ‘Oh I dont care,’ she whispered with dry lips. Behind them limousines, roadsters, touringcars, sedans, slithered along the roadway with snaky glint of lights running in two smooth continuous streams.

  The brown serge smelled of mothballs as she folded it. She stooped to lay it in the trunk; a layer of tissuepaper below rustled when she smoothed the wrinkles with her hand. The first violet morning light outside the window was making the electriclight bulb grow red like a sleepless eye. Ellen straightened herself suddenly and stood stiff with her arms at her sides, her face flushed pink. ‘It’s just too low,’ she said. She spread a towel over the dresses and piled brushes, a handmirror, slippers, chemises, boxes of powder in pellmell on top of them. Then she slammed down the lid of the trunk, locked it and put the key in her flat alligatorskin purse. She stood looking dazedly about the room sucking a broken fingernail. Yellow sunlight was obliquely drenching the chimneypots and cornices of the houses across the street. She found herself staring at the white E.T.O. at the end of her trunk. ‘It’s all too terribly disgustingly low,’ she said again. Then she grabbed a nailfile off the bureau and scratched out the O. ‘Whee,’ she whispered and snapped her fingers. After she had put on a little bucketshaped black hat and a veil, so that people wouldn’t see she’d been crying, she piled a lot of books, Youth’s Encounter, Thus Spoke Zara-thustra, The Golden Ass, Imaginary Conversations, Aphrodite, Chansons de Bilitis and the Oxford Book of French Verse in a silk shawl and tied them together.

  There was a faint tapping at the door. ‘Who’s that,’ she whispered.

  ‘It just me,’ came a tearful voice.

  Ellen unlocked the door. ‘Why Cassie what’s the matter?’ Cassie rubbed her wet face in the hollow of Ellen’s neck. ‘Oh Cassie you’re gumming my veil… What on earth’s the matter?’

  ‘I’ve been up all night thinking how unhappy you must be.’

  ‘But Cassie I’ve never been happier in my life.’

  ‘Aren’t men dweadful?’

  ‘No… They are much nicer than women anyway.’

  ‘Elaine I’ve got to tell you something. I know you dont care anything about me but I’m going to tell you all the same.’

  ‘Of course I care about you Cassie… Dont be silly. But I’m busy now… Why dont you go back to bed and tell me later?’

  ‘I’ve got to tell you now.’ Ellen sat down on her trunk resignedly. ‘Elaine I’ve bwoken it off with Morris… Isn’t it tewible?’ Cassie wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her lavender dressinggown and sat down beside Ellen on the trunk.

  ‘Look dear,’ said Ellen gently. ‘Suppose you wait just a second, I’m going to telephone for a taxi. I want to make a getaway before Jojo’s up. I’m sick of big scenes.’ The hall smelled stuffily of sleep and massagecream. Ellen talked very low into the receiver. The gruff man’s voice at the garage growled pleasantly in her ears. ‘Sure right away miss.’ She tiptoed springily back into the room and closed the door.

  ‘I thought he loved me, honestly I did Elaine. Oh men are so dweadful. Morris was angwy because I wouldn’t live with him. I think it would be wicked. I’d work my fingers to the bone for him, he knows that. Havent I been doing it two years? He said he couldnt go on unless he had me weally, you know what he meant, and I said our love was so beautiful it could go on for years and years. I could love him for a lifetime without even kissing him. Dont you think love should be pure? And then he made fun of my dancing and said I was Chalif’s mistwess and just kidding him along and we quaweled dweadfully and he called me dweadful names and went away and said he’d never come back.’

  ‘Dont worry about that Cassie, he’ll come back all right.’

  ‘No but you’re so material, Elaine. I mean spiwitually our union is bwoken forever. Cant you see there was this beautiful divine spiwitual thing between us and it’s bwoken.’ She began to sob again with her face pressed into Ellen’s shoulder.

  ‘But Cassie I dont see what fun you get out of it all?’

  ‘Oh you dont understand. You’re too young. I was like you at first except that I wasnt mawied and didnt wun awound with men. But now I want spiwitual beauty. I want to get it through my dancing and my life, I want beauty everywhere and I thought Morris wanted it.’

  ‘But Morris evidently did.’

  ‘Oh Elaine you’re howid, and I love you so much.’

  Ellen got to her feet. ‘I’m going to run downstairs so that the taximan wont ring the bell.’

  ‘But you cant go like this.’

  ‘You just watch me.’ Ellen gathered up the bundle of books in one hand and in the other carried the black leather dressingcase. ‘Look Cassie will you be a dear and show him the trunk when he comes up to get it… And one other thing, when Stan Emery calls up tell him to call me at the Brevoort or at the Lafayette. Thank goodness I didn’t deposit my money last week… And Cassie if you find any little odds and ends of mine around you just keep em… Goodby.’ She lifted her veil and kissed Cassie quickly on the cheeks.

  ‘Oh how can you be so bwave as to go away all alone like this… You’ll let Wuth and me come down to see you wont you? We’re so fond of you. Oh Elaine you’re going to have a wonderful career, I know you are.’

  ‘And promise not to tell Jojo where I am… He’ll find out soon enough anyway… I’ll call him up in a week.’

  She found the taxidriver in the hall looking at the names above the pushbuttons. He went up to fetch her trunk. She settled herself happily on the dusty buff seat of the taxi, taking deep breaths of the riversmelling morning air. The taxidriver smiled roundly at her when he had let the trunk slide off his back onto the dashboard.

  ‘Pretty heavy, miss.’

  ‘It’s a shame you had to carry it all alone.’

  ‘Oh I kin carry heavier’n ’at.’

  ‘I want to go to the Hotel Brevoort, Fifth Avenue at about Eighth Street.’

  When he leaned to crank the car the man pushed his hat back on his head letting ruddy curly hair out over his eyes. ‘All right I’ll take you anywhere you like,’ he said as he hopped into his seat in the jiggling car. When they turned down into the very empty sunlight of Broadway a feeling of happiness began to sizzle and soar like rockets inside her. The air beat fresh, thrilling in her face. The taxidriver talked back at her through the open window.

  ‘I thought yous was catchin a train to go away somewhere, miss.’

  ‘Well I am going away somewhere.’

  ‘It’d be a foine day to be goin away somewhere.’

  ‘I’m going away from my husband.’ The words popped out of her mouth before she could stop them.

  ‘Did he trow you out?’

  ‘No I can’t say he did that,’ she said laughing.

  ‘My wife trun me out tree weeks ago.’

  ‘How was that?’

  ‘Locked de door when I came home one night an wouldnt let me in. She’d had the lock changed when I was out workin.’

  ‘That’s a funny thing to do.’

  ‘She says I git slopped too often. I aint goin back to her an I aint going to support her no more… She can put me in jail if she likes. I’m troo. I’m gettin an apartment on Twentysecond Avenoo wid another feller an we’re goin to git a pianer an live
quiet an lay offen the skoits.’

  ‘Matrimony isnt much is it?’

  ‘You said it. What leads up to it’s all right, but gettin married is loike de mornin after.’

  Fifth Avenue was white and empty and swept by a sparkling wind. The trees in Madison Square were unexpectedly bright green like ferns in a dun room. At the Brevoort a sleepy French night-porter carried her baggage. In the low whitepainted room the sunlight drowsed on a faded crimson armchair. Ellen ran about the room like a small child kicking her heels and clapping her hands. With pursed lips and tilted head she arranged her toilet things on the bureau. Then she hung her yellow nightgown on a chair and undressed, caught sight of herself in the mirror, stood naked looking at herself with her hands on her tiny firm appleshaped breasts.

  She pulled on her nightgown and went to the phone. ‘Please send up a pot of chocolate and rolls to 108… as soon as you can please.’ Then she got into bed. She lay laughing with her legs stretched wide in the cool slippery sheets.

  Hairpins were sticking into her head. She sat up and pulled them all out and shook the heavy coil of her hair down about her shoulders. She drew her knees up to her chin and sat thinking. From the street she could hear the occasional rumble of a truck. In the kitchens below her room a sound of clattering had begun. From all around came a growing rumble of traffic beginning. She felt hungry and alone. The bed was a raft on which she was marooned alone, always alone, afloat on a growling ocean. A shudder went down her spine. She drew her knees up closer to her chin.

  3 Nine Days’ Wonder

  The sun’s moved to Jersey, the sun’s behind Hoboken.

  Covers are clicking on typewriters, rolltop desks are closing; elevators go up empty, come down jammed. It’s ebbtide in the downtown district, flood in Flatbush, Woodlawn, Dyckman Street, Sheepshead Bay, New Lots Avenue, Canarsie.

  Pink sheets, green sheets, gray sheets, FULL MARKET REPORTS, FINALS ON HAVRE DE GRACE. Print squirms among the shopworn officeworn sagging faces, sore fingertips, aching insteps, strongarm men cram into subway expresses. SENATORS 8, GIANTS 2, DIVA RECOVERS PEARLS, $800,000 ROBBERY.