A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

Gay Music

When he was eighteen, Gerald Jones found out things about himself. A gypsy woman told him, a gypsy woman with gold coins in her ears and cigarette-stained teeth and a cerise petticoat and an apple-green scarf about her head. He came across two of them trudging along by the roadside one day, and had pocket money with him, and noticed that they were noticing him.

“You a very good looking boy,” one of them remarked.

“Oh, sure,” he scoffed, but it didn’t make him angry nevertheless.

The one that had spoken to him squatted down until she was no higher than his knee. Her gaudy petticoat settled itself around her in a splashy circle like red ink soaking through the macadamized road. She produced a pack of cards and began to tell them out before her on the ground in a double row.

She said: “I read your fute.”

“Read my foot?” he asked in astonishment. These foreigners could get so embarrassing.

“Fooch,” she said.

“Oh, future, you mean.”

She squinted up at him. “You got money?” she wanted to know.

He became cautious at once. “Uh-huh.”

She had all the cards face downward on the ground and began to turn them over here and there as though at random. A number of twos and threes made their appearance.

“You gonna not be very rich,” she said.

“Aw,” he sighed, “and I wanted a yacht with a little brass gun on the deck of it.”

Two queens came up, one of hearts and one of diamonds. “Two lady,” said the gypsy woman, “gonna loave you.”

“Both at one time?” he gasped. “What’ll I do?”

She shrugged her shoulders and laughed.

In college he was called Jonesy. Everybody knew Jonesy. One of those sporty snap brim hats always pushed back on his head, always going somewhere, always just back from somewhere else, always a wee wisp of something on the breath, always chewing cloves. Everybody liked Jonesy. The night of the prom a girl named Jemima Marsh, Jimmie for short, was his room guest. They had danced themselves almost to death. Toward three in the morning they went down to the gymnasium for a breathless leave-taking. It was pitch dark, and not exactly deserted either. They found a bench with the aid of a match.

“Jonesy,” said Jemima with a mouth full of kisses, “I think you’re awfully mean.”

“Wuff, wuff,” said Jonesy.

“Only don’t muss my hair,” said Jemima. “It took me all afternoon to get it brilliantined.”

“Oh, if that’s the way you feel about it—” Jonesy turned his back to her and stuck his hands in his pockets and sulked exquisitely. “Conceited,” he remarked over his shoulder.

“Thanks!” said Jemima angrily.

There was quite a silence between them. Jonesy tapped his foot and Jemima tapped hers and they both sighed and they both went ahead tapping and they were both very angry at each other.

All at once Jonesy felt a smooth fairylike little hand, smelling of dew and rosewater, travel down one side of his face and up the other in a scary, tentative sort of way. It was her way of telling him she was sorry. He pulled her down to him and kissed her with great enthusiasm and very little technique. Somehow she seemed a little different from what she had been before. It seemed she had lost weight, and he couldn’t quite recall the perfume she had on. There was a different aura about her. The kissing went on just the same, however. He heard someone say “Ooh, the nerve of you!” right close beside her ear, and then he got a terrible slap over one eye.

Suddenly Jemima’s voice rang out. “Wha’d she do, slap you? Here, don’t you slap him — he’s with me.”

“Then he shouldn’t grab hold of me like that,” said the other one.

“Well, go ’way from us,” answered Jemima.

There was a sudden loud splash directly in front of them, so that they were both bedewed.

“Oh, Lord, she’s in the pool!” cried Jonesy excitedly.

“I know,” answered Jemima calmly. “I pushed her. What she really needs is to cool off a little.”

He started throwing off his coat and the sleeves got caught. “Take it easy,” advised Jemima. “She probably can swim a lot better than you can.”

“Just the same,” said a muffled voice from below, “I didn’t come down here to swim. You’ll pay for my dress.”

“See my lawyers,” said Jemima disdainfully.

The girl in the pool began to cry and the low ceiling for the place made it echo and reecho so that she really managed to make some noise what with splashing around and sobbing out loud and saying things to them. Jonesy got down on his hands and knees and reached out for her.

“No,” she said. “You’ll say you saved me and you didn’t even jump in after me.”

“What are you doing out there?”

“I’m treading water.”

“Well, why don’t you come on in?”

“Well, where are the lights?” she wanted to know.

“They were disconnected on purpose at the beginning of the evening,” he admitted.

He caught her by the wrists and drew her slowly out like a captured mermaid. She was slim and supple. She kneeled on the edge of the pool and wrung out her dress behind her; then she got to her feet.

“Very fine thing you just did,” she remarked in the general direction of the red dot made by Jemima’s cigarette. “What do you think you are — a traffic cop?”

“You’re all wet, lovey,” was the only answer Jemima deigned to give.

“Better take my coat,” offered Jonesy.

She did take it but not the way he wanted her to. She took it and flung it into the water, where it did a Sir Walter Raleigh.

“There!” she said. “Now I feel better.”

“But I didn’t do anything to you,” he pleaded.

“I don’t care,” she said. “You didn’t jump in after me, did you? You’re a total loss.”

“You’re nothing to rave about yourself,” observed Jemima.

“Who was with you?” Jonesy asked.

“Nobody was with me. I was trying to get away from somebody. That’s how I came in here.”

Someone lit a cigarette lighter. Then a moment later the lights went on all over the place. The gymnasium was full of people, of the indoor sport variety. A young couple standing under a dry shower fixture jumped guiltily. In the center of everything the water, cause of all the disturbance, was heaving rebelliously under a surface unbroken as oil. It was acid green, and deep down in it swam the quicksilver reflection of the arc lights overhead. The coat had gone to the bottom but a white carnation had disengaged itself and remained afloat like a lotus on the infinite placidity of some Nirvana.

They saw each other for the first time. Beads of water clung to her lashes and her dress was like a huge cabbage. Her short hair was down over her eyes in a jet black bang that gave the look of a Japanese billiken. The pink on her cheeks had run a little bit. In fact her whole make-up had slid down toward her throat; it was lengthened out of all proportion. She looked funny. She looked cute. She looked adorable. She seemed to be about seventeen, but in all probability she was twenty. Her name was Sharlee. “Sharlee,” someone said, “what happened to you!” That’s how he knew her name was Sharlee. It was honey to the palate to say that name.

Sharlee sighed. “Keep away from me, McLaughlin, for the rest of the evening. My nerves are all woozy.” She shrugged her wet shoulders in horror and antipathy that seemed exaggerated, but most likely she was sincere.

Gossip was leaping up on all sides like wildfire. She wouldn’t have done it if she hadn’t been tight in the first place. My dear, certainly she had been tight, what then? She had said this and she had said that earlier in the evening. Dearie, she only did it because she thought her form showed up better under a wet frock. Kitty, kitty, nice kitty.

At length Sharlee covered her ears with her hands, walked backward and forward a couple of times, and cried out: “I’ll jump in it a second time if you don’t all clear out of here.”

The music started in to play again upstairs. They slowly faced around, two or three at a time, and turned toward the door. Their pocket flasks and Yale haircuts, their arched backs and panniers and flounces, their calves and jeweled heels, their perfumes and their whisperings, went up the stairs that youths in bathrobes and in running trunks were accustomed to use.

“I’m Gerald Jones.”

“Go away.”

“I’m Gerald Jones.”

“Go on away, I tell you.”

“But you’ll catch cold.”

Jemima came back. Jemima felt sorry. “I got this shawl for her,” she said. “I don’t know whose it is, but I got it anyway.”

Jonesy took it and put it around the unresistant and slightly shivering form that stood looking down into the depths of the water, brooding over the carnation that was slowly disintegrating petal by petal.

“Thanks, Jimmie, old top,” he said.

“You better give her some of our private stuff,” said Jemima. “I’m going back up and dance. See you later.”

Nothing was said for several moments.

“It isn’t bad,” Sharlee remarked, handing him back the flask. She went out on the diving board and sat down, swinging her feet above the water. “Gerald Jones, I like you. You’re a nice person.”

He crept out beside her. “Where’re you from?” he said.

“New York.”

“That’s funny. I’m from New York too.”

Sharlee didn’t say anything. She looked down into the water, and her eyes swam with the reflection of it.

“I’m s’posed to go back there too,” he added ruefully.

“I hate it here. I wish I hadn’t come,” said Sharlee. Her lip doubled over into an ugly pout.

“I’ll take you back with me.”

When he said that, she turned around and looked at him. A swarm of honeybees winged their way from her eyes and hovered about his head. He almost fell into the water.

“But I can’t walk a step,” said Sharlee. “I lost one of my slippers in the pool.”

“I’ll carry you to the train,” said he.

Upstairs there was no one on the floor any more. They were out in the moonlight doing a snake dance, hands on shoulders. Their legs rose and fell like pistons; they resembled figures from an Egyptian bas-relief. Jonesy with sleepy Sharlee in his arms tried to break through. Sharlee began half to laugh, half to whimper. They held their heads close together while jeering faces went around and around them in maddening succession.

“Nice Gerald Jones,” said Sharlee dreamily.

In New York Gerry went to see Angel Face, his mother. She lived in an apartment house that contained forty-two dogs and three monkeys but would not admit children under fifteen years of age.

“I’m Gerald Jones,” he told the maid at the door.

“Step in a minute,” said the maid. “She usually doesn’t see people at this hour of the day.”

“But I’ve come all the way from upstate.”

The maid came back and said: “She’s getting up,” and she gave him a look as of one who had seen a miracle performed. “It’ll take her a little while. She said for you to amuse yourself until she’s ready. You can turn on the radio or do anything you please.”

Gerry didn’t need the radio; there was music enough in his veins. He jumped onto a big divan with both knees and buried his face in the cushions. Through all the doors and all the windows Sharlee came in until the room was full of her and his heart was full of her too.

Then he saw that Angel Face was standing there looking at him curiously, with a blue and silver cap on her head and ribbons under her chin. “I’ve been standing here at least ten full minutes watching you,” she said. “And you never even saw me. It’s discouraging to think one is that thin.”

“Dearest!”

“Ger-ruld.” She deepened her voice purposely. Eyes blue as the skies of Paestum at high noon, blue as the fabled moon that is said to come once in a while.

“Sit down on my knee?” he wanted to know.

“I should say not.”

“Cigarette?”

“Never before noon.”

“Want me to go ’way again?”

“You can stay until half past ten,” she said. “A car is coming to call for me at eleven. You can stay all day for that matter,” she added, “only there won’t be a soul here.” She sat down to breakfast and immediately pushed her orange aside. “How was the prom?” she wanted to know. “Soaking wet, I suppose.”

“I have some news for you. I got married last night. Or rather early this morning.”

“What for?”

He looked at her for a long time, a long, long time, to gauge precisely what she had in mind. Then he said: “What does anyone marry for?”

“We won’t discuss that now. Who is she?”

“Sharlee.”

“Sharlee.” She seemed to be tasting it on the tip of her tongue. “Do I know her?”

“No.”

“When did you meet her?”

“Last night.”

“And when did you marry her?”

“Last night.”

She stood up and went to the window. “What are you anyway,” she said, “one of these minute men?” She walked back to the table and rested her hands upon it, leaning forward. “Where have you left her?”

“At the Plaza.”

“On what?” Her voice rose incredulously.

The crisis. “That,” he said, “is what I’ve come to talk to you about.”

She smiled. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I’m not in a position to—” She held her peach-colored nails close to her face and studied them. “You see, you never came to me for advice.”

“Oh, I understand,” he said politely.

“Won’t you have more breakfast?” she urged. “I love to watch young men eat; they do it with such native enjoyment.”

“Thank you, no,” he admitted. “You’ve taken my appetite away.”

“Naturally you won’t go back to college?”

“Hardly, under the circumstances.”

“Well, is there anything you can do? Anything you think you can do?”

“Last summer I organized a jazz band among some of the fellows and we got a season’s engagement at an amusement park. We made out very nicely—”

“Would you be willing to go ahead with that sort of thing?”

“Why not?”

“I may be able to help you,” she said. “I had a letter from a friend of mine in Florida—”

Each afternoon at cocktail time Mrs. Harry Werner sighed a sigh, batted an eye at the gaslight-blue Florida seas, and got up from her beach chair.

“Time to get dressed,” said Mrs. Harry Werner, emptying her cheeks of smoke.

A colored man, whose people had been in the country two hundred odd years before Mrs. Werner’s, folded her peppermint-striped umbrella for her and picked up the book she had recklessly thrown away.

“Never mind,” said Mrs. Werner. “It has no pictures.”

“Yes’m,” said the colored man, showing his teeth delightedly. Most of them were porcelain but some were gold. All were horrible.

Mrs. Harry Werner moved toward her hotel with great deliberation, sowing seeds of envy as she progressed. Her Lido pajamas fluttered about her like tattered rags, which was precisely what they were meant to do. As she walked along with the colored man at her heels, the Albuquerque Playa loomed in sight like a cliff of sandstone. It had six hundred and twenty- five windows overlooking the sea and a fountain with goldfish in the patio. Mrs. Harry Werner was not interested in goldfish, though. Neither was she interested in the sea. The sea was no affair of hers, she felt. It could take care of itself as far as she was concerned. Indeed there was only one thing that mattered very greatly to Mrs. H.W. and that was herself.

As the tea hour lengthened to a close, she made her appearance in the pavilion, escorted by two chevaliers of the five to seven. She, as the wife of a very wealthy man, felt herself to be above suspicion. Consequently she courted it at almost every turn. Playing with fire was one of her chief characteristics, and Phoenix-like she rose from the ashes of each disappointment with renewed confidence in her own loyalty. Mrs. Harry Werner, choosing a table close beside the dancing space, put out the coral taffeta light and said “Bitters.” By way of afterthought she added “Orange bitters.” She put a finger to the end of each eye. “I am so tired,” she said. Then she said: “I wonder what makes me so tired.” She waited a little while and observed, “Oh, it’s you, you people make me tired!”, at which they both laughed engagingly like sleek tomcats with collars around their necks.

The sea was deserted. From blue it had become green and from green grayish-yellow. In a short while it would turn purple and then black. But no one was at all interested. They were not down here to study nature. Instead they were studying Mrs. Harry Werner a considerable part of the time.

Mrs. Werner got up to dance with one of her friends. “I see they have a new orchestra down here this year.”

“They’ve been here ever since the holidays,” he informed her.

“I don’t think much of their playing, do you?”

Now anyone who knew anything at all about Mrs. Harry Werner would have known that to run anything down in an effort to distract her attention was the most fatal thing imaginable. Mrs. Harry Werner was stubborn and used to having her own way too much for that sort of thing to be at all successful.

“Why, I don’t see how you can say such a thing!” she exclaimed at once. “I like their playing very well.”

“Everyone’s taste is different,” murmured her partner.

“In that case you have a great deal to account for,” said she. When they sat down, she looked out at the obscured sea for a long while and her well-etched brown eyes seemed a thousand miles off. Then all at once she came to life again, borrowed a pencil from the waiter, and wrote a few words on the back of a card. This she wrapped in something crisp and yellow below the level of the table and passed it to the waiter, folding her small hand over his.

“A new leader,” she murmured into her cigarette. “How challenging!”

Presently she got up to dance once more with her friend. A tender sobbing filtered through her consciousness.

“Do you recognize that?” she said. “It’s the Meditation from Thais.” And she added with a touch of bravado: “They’re playing it for me.”

“What a heavy title,” observed her partner. “You’d think they’d call it the Deep Thinkin’ Blues or something like that.”

As they passed Jones, baton in hand, he caught their eyes.

“Thanks,” smiled Mrs. Harry Werner cordially.

“Thank you,” he answered with a slight bow.

Every afternoon Zoe Werner stopped for luncheon at the Casa Madrid. The sands of the Albuquerque Playa knew her no more. Each day she drove nine miles to and fro for the cold asparagus tips and convent-like gloom of the Madrid. Is it reasonable to suppose she knew her own mind? Leaving her car, she entered and looked about her, accustoming her eyes to the cool shadowiness that pervaded the place. The floor was of pinkish sandstone and the patio partly open to the sky. There were plants and vines and Moorish water jars. Zoe Werner sat down at a nearby table at which Jones had been seated for some time past. They shook hands above the sapphire glassware.

“Wasn’t the water chilly this morning?” she remarked casually. “Have you had your dip yet?”

“She comes here every day at this time,” a Dillingham chorus girl confided to her chum. “He’s the orchestra leader at the Albuquerque Playa.”

“The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker,” observed the chum philosophically.

“I wish you wouldn’t insist on this place,” Jones was saying. “It’s frightfully expensive.”

“Don’t let that trouble your little heart.”

His eyes followed a mountain of cotton batting drifting painlessly over the sky in the direction of the West Indies. She had a flair for romance. She went over his face inch by inch like a surveyor.

After a while they renewed a discussion that had been going on between them for several days in succession.

“Then you want me to believe you are married?” she smiled.

“What makes you think I’m not?”

“Oh, it wouldn’t be right somehow,” she cried impatiently.

“Haven’t I a right to be married as well as the next fellow?” he said dryly.

She smiled into the corrugated blue glass. “You can’t convince me.”

“I can’t, eh?”

They laughed foolishly into each other’s faces.

“Not even if I were to tell you my wife’s right down here with me?”

Zoe Werner choked with mirth. “Absurd!” she cried. In the emotional intensity of the effort to convince her, he took one of her hands. Neither of them appeared to notice.

“She has charge of the perfumery counter at the Albuquerque.”

Her fire-red lips were ever so slightly ajar. She seemed puzzled. She drew her hand away. “I think I know who you mean. That baby-faced thing with the boy haircut.”

“She wears a ring around her throat, an alabaster ring I gave her.”

Zoe Werner made a little fist. “I’m going to ask her,” she cried rapturously.

He meanwhile was fumbling with the inside pocket of his coat and growing red in the face. She watched him with an expression that seemed to say “Yes, I know.”

“Try one of the side pockets,” she suggested, looking down shyly.

He put his hand in and felt a small envelope that had been left open.

Mrs. Harry Werner had sent down to say that she wanted to make a selection of toiletries. Sharlee was shown into her suite at ten the next day, carrying a tray loaded with flasks and vials strapped over her shoulders.

“Send her in here to me,” directed Mrs. Werner from an inner room. She was on the bed but not in it, her ankles crossed on the coverlet. She wore her hair in a Grecian knot at the back of her neck.

She looked Sharlee over. “What have you got there?” she asked indifferently.

“Coty, Caron, Bourjois—”

“I, ah, was speaking to your husband yesterday evening,” proceeded Mrs. Werner without stopping to listen.

Sharlee nodded obediently. “He leads the orchestra.”

“You both of you seem so well bred,” observed Mrs. Werner. “I can’t quite grasp the situation.”

“I came down here to be near him. Everyone has to make a living, you know.”

“Yes, we lunch together quite often,” mused Mrs. Werner dreamily.

“I know,” said Sharlee spiritedly. “Mr. Jones tells me everything.”

Mrs. Werner treated her to an indulgent smile. “Not quite everything, my dear.”

Sharlee looked at her as though a rattlesnake had just bitten her. She could hardly wait until she got away.

“Will that be all?”

“Yes, that will be all.”

That evening Gerry stood with his back to the dance floor, shaking spasmodically first one leg then the other, resting the baton against his waistcoat, leading his saxophones like whimpering panthers. And all about him danced Zoe Werner, a thing possessed, devils in her eyes, a bacchante brave with silver and with jet. They played Poor little rich girl, Poor little rich girl, Better take care. Diluted breezes came in under the scalloped awnings. This pitiful music drowned out the sound of the sea for a little while only, but the sound of the sea would last forever.

“Look, Gerry, how’s this for real dancing?” Her hair began uncoiling and then all at once tumbled headlong down her back. She gave a hilarious scream of dismay and ran out of the room.

A little while after that there was an intermission, and Sharlee met Gerry on his way out through the lobby for a breath of air.

“Gerry, I haven’t seen you all day.”

He murmured something about being called back.

“There’s loads of time,” she said. “You won’t have to play again for another half hour.”

He lit a cigarette with a trembling hand, but she could see that he wasn’t even thinking of her; he was all keyed up to the intrigue set for him, looking over her shoulder toward the elevators all the time.

“What?” he said absently.

“Gerry Jones,” she lamented in a peculiar sing-song, “you’re the talk of the season, you two. I’ve stood all I can. You’re the laughing-stock of this place—”

“What are you doing — trying to start a scene with me here?” he demanded angrily. “You couldn’t pick a better spot, could you?”

“I’m not trying to start any scene,” she repeated in a trance-like calm. “I’ve got my ticket to go back to New York.”

He woke up to what she was saying then.

“That night we met,” she went on very earnestly, “must have been a mistake. I’ve thought it over.” And going over to the perfume case she switched off all the lights.

At this point Mrs. Werner, her hair freshly done up, stepped out of one of the elevators, a black velvet cape gathered jealously about her. Her eyes were particularly Venetian this evening.

Poor Gerry Jones, trying to unravel his destiny in a few broken whispers. “You make me feel like two cents, sweetheart—”

“Say it with your music,” said Sharlee. “You’re so weak you’re not worth saving.” And she walked off.

Zoe Werner’s candle-like fingers closed on Gerry’s arm.

“What’s all the shooting for?”

“Sharlee just told me she’s going back to New York.”

“Oh, you silly children. You sil-lee, sil-lee children.”

“Dear lady,” he told her, “we are children. Why did you ever meddle with us?”

She regarded him gloomily. “The good die young,” she said with a touch of sarcasm.

Gerry went back to his music. People wanted to dance; they wanted gay music to shut out the sound the sea was making. Gerry stood up in his place and trembled spasmodically, shifting his weight first to one leg then to the other, and swung the baton dreamily before his chest. Before him swam the image of a beautiful woman in beautiful clothes. A vain selfish woman, the sort of woman Zoe Werner was.

And at first he thought she was more beautiful than an artery of mauve lightning in an angry sky. Every day for days and days of her life she had rubbed creams of almond blossom and of orange blossom, essences of honey and heliotrope dew gently, ever so gently, into her skin. Every day for days and days of her life she had bathed her shoulders in steam and jasmine, pressed a sponge choked with ice cold water to her heart, touched a glass rod with a drop of liquid violets and French chemistry to her lashes and the lobes of her ears. She had protected herself against drafts with spun silk and with lace of Ireland and of Flanders. She had protected herself against cold with the skins of leopards and of seals, with shawls of Persia and Seville. She had protected herself from darkness with electricity in rose and pearl and amber globes, and when the globes burst, it was seen that there was no light to be had from them at all, only an illusion.

And all at once he looked closer and saw that there was no face there at all, only grinning decaying teeth and eyeless sockets and the worm-eaten bridge of a nose. It was a death’s head. The mouth was painted and the cheeks, and the ears were colored shell pink. She even had a gardenia in her hair. And with it all she was a ghastly looking thing. The gay music wavered, then broke, and the bottom fell out of it. The dancing outlasted it only a matter of a second or two. People came to a halt and looked at one another uncertainly, not knowing what to make of it.

“Water!” said a voice at the far end of the room. “He’s fainted. Take him outside.”

Sharlee was upstairs, getting ready to go away. She took time off from her packing to bury her head in the pillows and sob. Then there were voices outside and someone knocked on the door.

“Yes?” said Sharlee, jumping up and dabbing at her eyes.

The door opened without waiting for her, and she saw a corridor full of people, all staring at her. They brought Gerry in, very pale, with his eyes closed, and put him down on the bed.

“My honeyboy!” Sharlee gave an agonized little whimper, and all thought of New York vanished completely as she bent over him and kissed him. She got everyone out of the room and closed the door on them, but her back was no sooner turned than the door opened again and a voice said: “Mayn’t I help? I’ve brought my spirits of ammonia in case—”

The Venetian-eyed Zoe Werner had insinuated herself into the room.

“If I thought I could trust you to take the right care of him,” said Sharlee bitterly, “I wouldn’t spend another night in this hotel.”

“He’s overworked,” Zoe murmured, not noticing. “The hours here are too long.”

Sharlee snatched up her valise and took long hysterical strides to the door. “Stay here if you want,” she said, half strangled with sobs. “I’m going to New York.”

“You needn’t go,” said Zoe gently. “I’m leaving in the early morning for Jacksonville.” She passed her, and on the way out said softly, “Tell him goodbye for me.”

The sea was blue as only the Florida seas can be: acetylene blue. It reminded Gerry of the eyes of Angel Face, his mother. A dripping mermaid came splashing out of the surf to greet him.

“I saw you leave the hotel,” said Sharlee, “and I was afraid you might want to try the water. I don’t think it would be good for you just yet.”

They sat down on a little hillock of sand, and their arms went around each other.

“We will go away from Florida,” said Gerry.

“We can’t,” said Sharlee, grinning up at the sky. “I wired Angel Face and she’s on the way down. She says she wants to dance to your music. Go in and dress, and I’ll sit out here listening, and when you play, I’ll know it’s all for me.”