Death Is My Dancing Partner

1

Then the applause, crashing like an artillery bombardment. Shouts and bravos, people stamping their feet and beating their tables, people standing up in their seats drinking ecstatic toasts to her. Sometimes flowers fell into the glaring spotlight pool, and lay there quivering as though they were in actual water. Gardenias, white roses, carnations jerked from buttonholes, orchids pulled from someone else’s shoulder. Flowers from the living to the dead.

Not just applause in a night club. Hysteria.

In the wings her eyes open. But he carries her still further, out into the dressing-room alley. There he sets her down upon her feet, but holds her for a moment longer, until he is sure she has regained her balance.

Then he takes his arms away, and she glances down as if to say, “Did they have to stay that long?”

Then he takes his handkerchief and gently touches her face with it. She slants her face aside, and that stops the attention.

Then he drops to one knee and with the same handkerchief attempts to brush away any dust she may have gathered when she threw herself down on the floor.

She gives him a slight push, a disdainful flick with the back of her hand. “I have a maid, you know. My maid will do that.”

He rises slowly, crestfallen.

She turns and leaves him there. “Good night,” she dismisses him coldly.

She reaches the door of her dressing room — hers, not theirs; his is down at the other end of the alley — and puts her hand on the knob.

He calls her and comes after her, and stands beside her once more. “Mari.” And then he doesn’t seem to know what to say after all.

“Was there something you wanted to say to me?” she asks, icily polite.

“I don’t suppose tonight either—” he falters.

“Tonight either, what?”

“I don’t suppose it’s any use asking, if you’d come to some little confiteria with me, and have a cup of coffee—” He gestures involvedly. “You and me, just us, together.”

“Every night since we’ve been in Buenos Aires you’ve asked me that. And every night I’ve said no. We’ve been here four and a half weeks now. That’s thirty-one nights you’ve asked me that. That’s thirty-one nights I’ve said no. What made you think I would say yes tonight?”

He doesn’t answer that.

“You are very tedious, Mr. Jones. You are also a little stupid, I think. Thirty-one times no means no.”

“But everyone makes a mistake in their arithmetic once in awhile,” he says forlornly. “Even accountants, even bookkeepers. Why can’t you?”

“I don’t like coffee—”

Her eyes stab at him.

“I don’t like confiterias—”

They knife right through him.

“And I don’t like—”

They leave him cut to ribbons and bleeding all over.

“Me, I guess,” he shrivelled.

“—being wheedled in backstage alleys for contributions to charity. Every night, regularly, for five minutes, you spoil my whole evening; then I have to get back into a good mood again.”

“Ouch,” he winced. Then, “Don’t you remember me at all? Don’t you remember, we were once married, just outside New York harbor?”

“I’ve signed many contracts. I remember them all. In fact, I have them all put away, in my safe-deposit box at the bank, at this very moment. I signed a paper with Sertuchi, at the Excelsior in Milan, but that doesn’t mean I should go out with him. I signed a paper with — what was his name? — in Montreal, but I wasn’t expected to go around with him. I signed a paper with you.” She rolled her shoulders elaborately.

“It was a little different, wasn’t it?”

“Not even as good. No pay whatever. No limit to the engagement. And no escape clause.”

“‘Escape clause’? That’s a fine way to talk about a marriage.”

“So what’s marriage but a dancing engagement? Only you dance for one man. And he doesn’t even clap his hands to show a little appreciation.”

“Let’s start the discussion over,” he pleaded. “I got lost along the way. All right, I won’t be a husband. Just let me be a — a married admirer, a legal sweetheart. Won’t you give me one night? There must be one night you haven’t an engagement.”

She nodded matter-of-factly. “You’re right, there is. I have no engagement for Friday the thirteenth. Jorge is so superstitious; he purposely won’t come near me that night.”

“But that’s three weeks from yesterday!”

“I didn’t say you could have even that. You’re getting ahead of yourself. You said there must be one night I had free, and I said there was. But giving it to you, that’s another matter. My nights are too good, why should I throw them away?”

“Oh, murder,” he half-sobbed. “Couldn’t you leave your knife out of me in one place, at least. You make me hurt all over.”

“I don’t stick knives in you,” she told him with supreme indifference. “For Pete’s sake, what do I want with pork?”

“What can I do to please you?”

She considered this with momentary earnestness. “I don’t know. Stay over on the other side of the city when I’m on this side, I suppose.”

“You gave my candy to the doorman.”

“I shouldn’t have been so careless. I remember now, he stayed away from his post two nights in succession right after that. He’s a lovable old man, I wouldn’t want to contaminate him for the world.”

“You gave my flowers to the hospital.”

“Power of suggestion, purely and simply. They reminded me of the ill. Because they made me slightly sick myself.”

“You gave my perfume to your maid.”

“She has such cheap taste in perfume. It seemed to be just the thing for her.”

“You sent the diamond watch-bracelet back to the jewelers I ordered it from. But in such a way. And with a message with it. So that the whole store, the whole staff, were laughing at me behind the back of their hands when I went in to find out what had happened about it. And from there, the story spread all over town.”

“Why, I only said to tell you that I knew the time already. And since you weren’t going any place with me, and I wasn’t going any place with you, I really didn’t need to know it any more closely than I did already.”

“Look,” he pleaded abjectly, throwing both arms out. “What do you want?”

“To go inside and get this makeup off, and not stand wrangling outside my dressing-room door with — some somebody or other.”

“There must be something you want. There must be some way I can get to you. Some way I can get in close to you. I’ll buy you all of Buenos Aires.”

She looked him up and down, from foot to head, and down to foot again. “I already have it. Didn’t you know? Ask Jorge — I mean young Señor Carralda — about that.” He started to rub one shoulder as though it ached. “Do you really get this much kick out of seeing someone squirm? I swear you must have a cruel streak in you somewhere. Did you used to pull the wings off flies when you were a little girl? Did you used to like to step on worms and scuff your foot around?”

“Apparently there was one of each I missed. No, now don’t start grabbing for my arms. I must go. I’ve given you a lot of time tonight. I don’t know why; I must feel compassionate or something. Coming over, now that I recall, I gave a ragged little newsboy a lift from outside my apartment nearly all the way here to the club, so that he could sell his papers better. It’s been one of those days with me; I get them every now and then.”

“I’m a newsboy too,” he murmured. “Help me sell my papers.”

“Sorry,” she smiled, “I read all your news years ago. You’re just loaded with back numbers.” She managed to insert the door in between them, narrow as the snare was. He just looked at her.

“Good night, Mr. Jones. Thank you for your work tonight. Until tomorrow night at eleven; here, as usual.” The door gave the impression of hitting him square in the eyes. It didn’t, actually, but his eyes were so close to it that was the effect it gave as it fitted shut.

There was a short pause, and then, on the outside, a stunning impact suddenly sounded. It was not however on the door itself.

“Ay, que barbaridâd!” her little maid, who was in there with her, cried out sharply. “What was that? Did somebody drop a trunk out there? Look how it made all the lights shiver.

“That frightened me,” the girl said. “I come from earthquake-country, you know.”

Her mistress, totally unmoved, pinned a small towel about her own head.

The girl opened the door, reclosed it, came back more at a loss than ever. “There’s no one out there. But there’s the funniest crack running up the plaster on the wall. As though somebody kicked it with all his might. What do you suppose happened to it?”

“Maybe there was someone out there who hates walls,” her mistress shrugged. “Now get me ready. Señor will be here in a few minutes.”

2

A key nagged at the outside of her apartment door. Two silhouettes came in, along with a faint trace of Chanel Numéero Cinq and just a whiff of champagne. One turned back a moment, closed the door.

Nothing happened.

A tactful remark was made. “No, Jorge.”

Still nothing happened.

A further remark sounded. “Now, Jorge.”

Then suddenly lights shot on all over the place. The two silhouettes became an evasive figure in evening gown making swift get-away, and a frustrated one in tails coming in after her more slowly with unhappy mien.

Jorge shrugged. “But you asked me to come up with you.”

“For a nightcap. But that is not what a nightcap is. You don’t nibble at a nightcap, you sip it.”

Jorge looked crestfallen, but willing to learn.

She relented, came back toward him, guided him slightly, on the bias. “Here. See this chair? Now can I trust you to remain quiet for a few minutes? I want to get out of this Christmas tree, it’s beginning to get on my nerves. Here are your cigarettes, on this side of you. Here are all the ingredients for a nightcap, on this side of you. If you want to play yourself a little tune, there is the piano. If you want somebody else to do it for you, just turn that little dial and you will get New York on the short wave. I know; I tried it myself last night.” She patted him three times, once on the knee, once on the shoulder, and once on the top of the head; the last time, just snatched her hand back in time. “Now behave. Stay that way. Ah! — Ah! Down, don’t move. Estate quieto.”

She went over to one of the inner doors. “Good night.”

“But?”

“You will see a different Mari in a few moments. Say good night to this one. You will not see her any more tonight.”

“Good night, Mari,” he said docilely. “Send your other one out to me soon.”

She closed the door.

It finally reopened, but in no great hurry. It reopened after some twenty minutes. By his nerves it must have been forty. His nightcap glass was twice empty, or maybe three times, six cigarettes had been cut down to ash, and he was seated at the keyboard — after having done everything else there was possible to do in the room (alone) — running over it with one hand and humming hopefully under his breath the well-known local lyrics that went

This in a room that was as bursting with light as a fireworks-factory going up in flames!

He left the piano so fast the depressed keys hadn’t even had time to spring back into place yet. Anyone would have.

The new Mari was in time to the point of an accidental intrusion complete with screams. But she didn’t, she only smiled hospitably.

She wore a nightrobe that seemed to hang in two separate pieces, the two halves of it took so long getting together. It locked the stable long after the horse had been stolen. Over this an inconsequential negligee, that seemed to cling to her only so long as you didn’t breathe on it. Her hair was down. In fact, the cards were down altogether.

She held him transfixed for several additional moments, by walking away from him at a tangent. All he could do was just turn slowly where he stood, nailed down. But the nail was going to come out any minute, he was working at it with both feet and most of the rest of him.

“There is too much light in the room, don’t you think so?”

Jorge thought so; he nearly broke his neck, the rapidity with which he nodded his head.

“I don’t like glaring rooms.”

Jorge didn’t either; his head swung from side to side now in agreement, one-hundred-twenty revolutions per minute.

She touched a switch in a strategic place and some lights went out.

Jorge offered to help, making for an axial lamp that was the worst offender of the lot.

“No, let’s leave that one on,” she said unpredictably.

She accidentally struck the shade of the one in question so that it tilted on one side. Instead of being cast decorously downward, the light now splashed itself across the windows in an enormous whitewashed bleach. As though somebody had run up a movie screen on that side of the room.

Jorge wasn’t interested in cinematographic effects at the moment. He held out his arms toward her, breathing Latin endearments.

She didn’t seem to see them.

She strolled slowly across the room, until her silhouette had climbed halfway up the center window, which was the main one of the three. She stopped there. Then she turned toward him, then she smiled at him.

That was all. That was enough.

In a moment his own silhouette was blended with hers, and they were all tangled up.

He took time out to breathe, presently. A little of where he was came back to him; not much, just a little.

“Why not sit on the sofa? Why stand over here like this?”

“I like it better here, where I’m standing.”

She looked over his shoulder at the window, as if to make sure her own profile was in the right place, opposite his. Then she let her head go languidly back, and his followed it over and down, until it had caught up with it.

When they had straightened up again, Jorge had to do some more breathing. He had to, bad.

She disengaged herself gently. The two silhouettes, following this master-plan, did so likewise.

She murmured something to herself in English, a language he was not familiar with. “I’ll take a chance.”

“What, amada?”

“Just a minute. This hairdo is hampering me. I want to make myself more informal—” Her eyelids made him promises, “—for you,” she concluded softly.

She warded him off with a slight lift of one palm. The hand that did it was held low between them, so low it missed being screened on the window.

Then it and its mate climbed to her head, took a thing or two away, and her hair came down with a rolling surge. On the window it was even more dramatic, if anything, than in the original.

Then she put her hand, first to one shoulder, then to the other, and gave them each a peculiar, downward stroking motion. Almost as if she were lowering something, stripping something down. Nothing came down — she didn’t stroke hard enough for that — but the effect was much the same; that of a person baring her shoulders.

The effect on Jorge was much the same too. It was like poking a match at dynamite. He scissored his arms wildly at her like a gardener trying to trim a hedge with a pair of unmanageable shears. She avoided them and retired deeper into the room, temporarily siphoning her shadow off the window. His promptly went after hers.

The window must have been even more eloquent now than it had been before.

He didn’t actually chase her, and she didn’t actually run from him; they just both kept going. She made a detour around a low-legged coffee-table, and again ended up by the window, in her former spot. Jorge rejoined her there precipitately, coming the short way across without bothering with the coffee-table. Any place she was, he wanted to be.

The two silhouettes got together again.

She raised her hand and stroked his hair, and watched her hand’s silhouette do the same thing on the window, with a curious sort of fascination.

“Bruja,” breathed Jorge huskily, and nestled his head against the curve of her shoulder. Then he started to worm his way around that.

She dropped her eyes discreetly, but not because of that. Down below, out of sight, she turned her wrist a little. It had a watch on it, the one false note in all her deshabille.

Three-eighteen. They’d been in the place fifteen minutes already. And fifteen minutes is a lot of rope to give an Argentine — if you do not want to get yourself hung in the process.

She sighed. But whether because of what Jorge was saying or what the watch was saying, could not have been determined.

Jorge’s kisses were starting to slant in a downward line now. Her face was beginning to wear an extremely worried look. She gave her wrist a little, loose shake, as you do when you want to hurry a watch up.

There was a crash like a crated automobile being dumped onto a pier, and outside in the entresol the door bounced back from its terminal wall, nearly jerked off its hinges. A topcoat-shrouded, mashed-hatted figure came floundering in, one shoulder forward in football lunge. It seemed to be aiming straight for the piano, as if to tackle that, but before it got there it came down in the middle of the luxurious drawing-room carpet, on one knee and the flats of both hands. Its hat rolled off and went on the rest of the way alone.

She gave a short, polite scream. Extremely short, and very polite, not noisy or anything.

Jorge’s head came up from its soundings. The figure also came up, from its grovel, and became a livid-faced, maniacally-grimacing Jones, belligerency expressed in every line of his body.

“Out!” he bellowed at Jorge. “Fast. While you can still make it.”

Jorge went toward him; perhaps it was only in uncomprehending inquiry, but it was the wrong direction to take. Jones swung circularly and missed. A moment later they were locked together. Jorge seemed to go from one clinch into another, but this wasn’t exactly the same kind.

“Please!” she wailed unnoticed, in the background. “Not in my apartment! I’m a new tenant here.”

They went down together. They got up together. They went out together. Jorge in front, a hand (not his own) at the slack of his coat-collar, a raised knee (also not his own) just under the turn of his back, giving him a sort of rushing ride forward.

They went out together in an unerring straight line, through entresol and gaping outer door, and passed from view, leaving a considerable current of air swirling around in their wake for several instants.

In the marble-floored corridor outside there was a brief but feverish scuffling of shoe leather, several heavy thuds, as when two full-sized bodies topple together, and finally the clashing shut of an elevator grate. Then the slow whirr of the machinery as the mechanism started to descend, whether voluntarily, due to its occupant, or involuntarily, due to outside control, it was impossible to determine.

There were imprecations in two languages, Spanish and English, running concurrently, the Spanish slowly dimming away floor by floor. The English portion made use of several extremely salty expressions that had probably never sounded inside this exclusive Argentine apartment building before.

She showed her distraction, meanwhile, by taking up a small mirror, looking at her face in it attentively, sketchily pinning up her hair once more, smoothing it back, and replacing the mirror where she’d found it.

Jones came back in, a white seam showing all around the armhole of his coat now. He reclosed the shellshocked door, turned the key in it, took it out, and carried it over to the window. He opened the window, threw the key out into the depths of Avenida Santa Fé and brushed his hands ostentatiously. “You won’t need that any more,” he said grimly.

She had gone over to the phone meanwhile, was clicking it busily.

“Oh, no you don’t!” He ran over, took the phone away from her. “I belong here, and here I stay.”

She shrugged coolly enough. “Did I say anything?”

His eyes opened and his mouth opened in company with them. His face was a lot of blank O’s. “Huh?” he said dimwittedly.

“Let me show you,” she offered. She took the phone back from him again. He was too stupefied to resist. “You can put out that lamp now,” she suggested to him parenthetically. “It’s served its purpose.”

He was too hypnotized even to do this. He just looked at it, as though he’d never seen a lamp before.

She was carrying out her original purpose on the phone, meanwhile. “This is Mari Ruyter. Don’t put any calls on here. Not all morning, not all middle-of-the-day, not all afternoon. I don’t wish to be disturbed until — oh, about seven o’clock tomorrow evening.” She looked at Jones appraisingly. He had finally gotten it through his head what a lamp was, and what you did to one to make it go out: tweaked the switch up near the top. “No, wait,” she countermanded. “I’ll make that eight o’clock instead. An hour is an hour. And when Lupita comes, you tell her for me it’s her day off. If she argues, you tell her the employer is always right.”

She had difficulty replacing the phone into its cradle; she had lost the use of both arms up to the shoulders, they were pinned as tightly to her as though she had suddenly become involved with a boa constrictor. A very adept one, with a lot of coil to it.

“Just let me get this back where it belongs,” she panted short-breathedly. “It carries sounds downstairs to him, you know.” She managed to work a little slack into one forearm, enough to drop the instrument home — from a height of about two feet. But it landed true, and the apparatus closed.

The lamp was out, and there were no shadows on the windows now. Jorge had not only taken his own silhouette with him, he had taken hers as well. It was just as well; the silhouettes couldn’t have done full justice to their originals any more, anyway. They would have had to create an outlined impression something like a sandwich on end, after it’s been run over by a twenty-ton truck.

“It took you long enough to get around to this,” she suffocated finally, when she had managed to save up enough breath for it.

“Uh?” he said brilliantly. In the dimness his face was probably a stack of O’s again.

“Don’t you suppose I knew you were down there every night watching my windows? For fifteen nights now I’ve had to give a performance in front of them, and still you didn’t have sense enough to come up and break in. Twice already Lupita has had to change the bulb in that lamp, from overwork. First to a seventy-five-watt, and all this week we’ve been using a hundred-watt. And every night the performance ran longer and grew more risky. I don’t know what I would have been able to add to it — or maybe I should say subtract — any more, after tonight. It was down to bedrock. That’s a good word for it, bedrock.

“All that good work. Thousands of dollars worth of... of my private talent. Why, Morty would have had a stroke if he’d known I was wasting it on a fifth-floor window pane, with our current engagement prices what they are! And you? All you did was kick the bases of lampposts down there—”

“How did you—?”

“I have eyes, don’t I? Don’t you suppose I noticed that slight limp you’ve been developing in one foot the last few days? You’ve been showing up at the club more and more lame each evening. I could tell your toes hurt. And the other night I caught a glimpse of you through the open door of your dressing room as I was going by. You were packing cotton around in the toe of your sock, and making all sorts of agonized faces.”

“Didn’t you feel sorry for me, suffering like that?” he whispered.

“Sorry for you! If I hadn’t had a date with Jorge, I think I would have borrowed my maid’s flatiron, gone in there with it, taken good aim when you weren’t expecting it, and let it crash-land where it would have done the most good.”

More sandwich-effects, with the bread squeezing the life out of the filling, and the filling trying to do as much for the bread.

“I told you once already tonight, Mr. Jones, and I have to say it again now. You’re very stupid.”

“And tedious you said, too.”

“That still remains to be proved.”

“And I’m just a bundle of back newspapers, remember?”

“The headlines you’re printing all over me right now couldn’t be hotter or more up-to-date.”

“Here’s one just came over the wires.”

Her neck suddenly went limp on his shoulder. “Oh, darling,” she pleaded, “let’s stop being brittle and wise. Let’s play the scene for real. There’s no one here to laugh. There’s no one here but us.”

“For real,” his lips said, finding hers. “For real... for true... like this. For ever... No more backdrop, no more make-up, no more cues.”

“I’ve loved you ever since I fell for you down those temple steps that first day I ever saw you. It came to me like that! — and never went away again, any more, after. Four years have gone by since, and I’ve watched them come and go. And each year there was someone in my way. And I’ve watched them come and go too. Josette in Paris, Malatesta in Milan—”

“I don’t remember those names; I never heard them before.”

“Four years have gone by. Where did they go? Or have they? Isn’t this just a moment afterwards, the moment afterwards that was bound to come, that I knew all along would come? Didn’t the door just slam? Aren’t we in Bradley’s cabin on the ship? Haven’t the oil-lights of the harbor just slipped below the water-line? Isn’t that the streetwalker’s big hat all covered with flowers and feathers, that Fingers borrowed to help me get away in, lying over there in the corner, where I’ve just now thrown it? Aren’t your arms around me — like this, tight, like this — the way I thought they’d be, hoped they’d be, a minute ago? That minute ago four years ago? Don’t I take your face in my hands and press my lips to it, in my love and my devotion — like I did a minute ago?”

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” he pleaded.

“I didn’t want an inside-out love. It’s not supposed to come from me to you. It’s supposed to come from you to me.”

“It does. Can’t you feel it rushing all around you? Can’t you feel it pumping from my heart?”

“And I only had to wait a minute for it. That wasn’t so long. What’s a minute, after all?”

“We’ll never miss it. Our love has so many other minutes yet to come.”

3

She woke up in a different city. Not only a different city, in a different apartment, a different room. A different sun out there in the sky, fresh from the mint, that got into places it had never managed to get into before. Everything different. A different she. Different eyes, that saw all these new things; the old ones thrown away. Even a different name. Mrs. Maxwell Jones now, not Mari Ruyter any longer.

She jumped up from the bed — and even her weight was different, it was that of a handful of feathers — and rushed to the windows and threw them open. The new city, the different city, flashed out before her eyes, all magic, all azure sky and golden sunlight and sparkling like spun sugar underfoot. Even the cars and taxicabs sounded musical notes for horn-signals. Guitars and xylophones at every street crossing.

It had been called Buenos Aires the night before. She wasn’t sure what it was called today; probably Paradise. If you listened carefully, you could hear their wings softly fluttering around you in the air — along with the drone of that inbound Panagra plane from Santiago, of course.

She had once said, Always the same loneliness. Now she would have to make that. Always the same happiness.

She turned her head, and Lupita was standing there on the balcony just behind her, holding open a dressing gown for her to put on.

She smiled at her forgivingly. “You came anyway.”

“My orders were no. My heart told me yes.”

“We can’t do anything with our hearts, can we?”

“Come in, don’t catch cold.”

“Cold? What is cold? I have never heard that word before.”

“I know. You have forgotten cold. But the thing is, has cold forgotten you? Sit down, and I will do the hair for you. Do you want it the same, or some new way?”

“Not the old way, something new. Everything is new, my hair has to be new too. Can you say my new name?”

“Oh, easily. Mees-sez Mackiss-well Djones.”

She whirled around on the chair. “How did you ever—?”

“He taught me. He taught me for ten minutes, outside in the other room, before I came in to you. Oh, he is wonderful, your husband, Mees-ez Djones! Look, he gave me this, for learning it good, for getting it right.” She produced a fistful of banknotes.

“Oh, he did, did he?” She shot open a bureau drawer, brought up another fistful of her own. “Well, two can coach as well as one! Let me hear you say ‘Mister Maxwell Jones,’ and you’ve won yourself this.”

“Missata Mackiss-well Djones,” said Lupita dutifully, raising her eyes as if she were reading it off the upper wainscoting of the wall.

Her mistress crushed the lettuce-like bonus into her two hands, adding it to his, and squeezed them tight around it.

“Missata Mackiss-well Djones, Missata Mackisswell-Djones, Missatamackiswelldjones,” rattled Lupita enthusiastically, like a train clicking over a trestle.

Her mistress sandwiched her hands down near where her heart was. “That’s my music, that’s my song! That perfume standing there, that’s yours, take it. Now say, ‘Mister Maxwell Jones, husband of Mrs. Maxwell Jones.’ Oh, say it out, let me hear it!”

“Missata Mackis-well Djones, hoz-burn of Mees-ez Mackiss-well Djones,” recited the scholar.

“Careful on that second syllable,” cautioned her mistress. She clasped her hands raptly before her face. “Oh, but that rings sweet in my ears. Those little silver shoes, he ones with the halters — take them, take them, it’s a pleasure. Now try this. ‘Mister Maxwell Jones, boss of Mrs. Maxwell Jones.’”

“—bus of Mees-ez Mackiss-well Djones,” she got.

“The dress with the shiny buckles you’ve always admired — in there on the end — take it down, take it away!”

“Missata Mackiswell Djones, hos-burn of Mees-ez Djones, bus of Mees-ez Djones,” panted Lupita, and then blew out her breath vaingloriously.

“Oh, stop, stop!” her mistress pleaded. “You’ll have me down to my jewelry yet, if you keep it up.”

“I say it for free,” offered Lupita. “It makes your face so shiny.”

“And I’ll say it with you. I have to, or I’ll burst. Put three cheers on the end of it. Now. One— Two—

“Missata Mackis-well Djones, hos-burnn of Mees-ez Mackiss-well Djones, bus of Mees-ez Mackis-well Djones, they both poured out in unison.

“Three cheers for him!”

“Que viva El!”

“Come here. Bend your face down.” Her mistress planted a resounding kiss squarely on Lupita’s forehead. Then she pushed her away. “Now check out. Make yourself scarce. Crawl toward the front door on your hands and knees or something.”

“Don’t you want me to wait on the table?”

“Did you ever hear of a crowd?”

She summed herself up in the mirror, walked over to the bedroom door, stood there a moment by it, hand to knob.

“What is it, Señora? Did you forget something?”

“I just wanted to make this minute last a little longer, this wonderful minute of first opening my bedroom door in the morning. You see, on the other side of it, in the next room, I have a husband waiting for me at the breakfast table. And I never had that before. It’s Christmas morning every morning of my life from now on. She sighed, and turned the knob, and opened it. Now. Here come my presents, all rolled into one.”

His head turned, and he grinned, and all of a sudden the walls had all been done over in luminous paint.

“Good morning. Gee, it’s wonderful to have you here to say good morning to.”

“What a beautiful expression! The most beautiful expression there is! Say it again. Give it to me again.”

“Good morning. Good morning.”

“Here, sit down,” she said, when they’d been all through that a few times, “and I’ll wait on you.”

“Why not let me wait on you?” he objected.

“That’s for nightlife, outside — the man waits on his lady. This is homelife, inside — the wife waits on her man.”

She poured coffee, moved their two cups so close together that they formed a double-header; or one big cup with a figure-eight-shaped rim.

“Do you know what this is? Our first breakfast together. And we’ve been married four years.”

“We came the long way around, but we got there just the same. Oh, if you looked good at night,” he faltered, “you ought to see what you look like in the morning. Number Eight in the books—”

“‘You’re the Cream in My Coffee.’”

“Number Fourteen—”

“‘Hands Across the Table.’”

“Gee, your eyes are shining.”

“Sure. I have everything now. I finally made it. I have a breakfast table. I have a coffee pot. I have a husband. What more is there in the world to have? What more is there to try for?”

She sighed. She let her eyelids close blissfully. “Let me have it just once more. Say it in that way that means this is where you spend your nights.”

“Good morning.”

“Good morning.”

They chinked the rims of their cups together.

They came outside together under the glass door-canopy of her apartment building, into a night that was pure black velvet and gold sequins. She threw her head far back and inhaled delightedly. “Ah, champagne,” she crooned. “The poor man’s champagne — fresh air. Elixir. Can’t you smell the ghosts of springtime flowers?”

“Springtime in October,” he smiled.

“When it should be in May.”

“Isn’t that your chauffeur over there, at the curb, trying to attract your attention?”

“I know, I’m trying to pretend I don’t see him.” She made a furtive outward slice with the flat of her hand. “Go ’way, Alberto. Don’t bother me; not tonight.” She snuggled up against Jones, her two arms twined around his one. “Let’s walk to work tonight. I feel very boy-and-girlish. I feel very bride-and-groomy, newlyweddish. Let’s walk and see the town. I want to get to know this town, it’s brought me so much happiness. Like — when someone sends you a present, you want to thank them by dropping in on them for a visit.”

He looked around briefly. “You’ll have to do something about Alberto. He’s still coasting along behind you with the car.”

“I’ll put him out of his misery,” she said. She opened her handbag, took out a banknote, left Jones for a moment, and went back to the car. Then she rejoined him, her Virginia-creeper arms took up where they had left off before.

“Now I’m strictly on the hoof. But look who I’ve got with me.”

“I’d doing even better than you,” he grinned. “Ask anyone who has the best of the deal.”

“All right, I will!” she said with sudden gay insanity. Before he could stop her she’d veered aside and accosted a well-dressed matron who was going by at the moment. “Dispensa, but I’d like to ask you something. Would you rather be him, with me along, or me, with him along?”

“Mari!” he expostulated, appalled.

The matron shrugged with elaborate politeness, smiled unsurely, finally pointed off into the middle distance, about three blocks away. “Por alia, creo,” she said in flurried improvisation. Down that way, I believe.

He hastily tipped his hat and dragged the happiness-intoxicated Mari on her way. They nearly choked with laughter. “Where was she sending us?” he wondered. “And don’t answer that!”

“Let’s play a game,” she suggested. “Let’s pretend we’re — what we would have been four years ago. Very broke, married on a shoestring. We haven’t even got the price to ride to work. You’re... you’re just a drummer in the band, see?” (“Can’t you make me at least a cornetist?” he pleaded.) “And I’m just the girl singer with the same band. Oh, we’re full of ambition, but we’ve got holes in our socks and stockings.” (“You’re not kidding, even today,” he snickered. “You must have been peeking.”) “But you must buy me things along the way,” she concluded. “You would have even then.”

An old woman with a basket came up to them while they were waiting to cross at the next intersection. “Claveles? Pretty pink carnations for the lady?”

“Would he have bought ’em for her?” he said to Mari in an aside. “You bet he would!”

She put her hand on his arm restrainingly. “Nothing over a quarter.”

“How much are they?” he asked the old lady.

“Four for a half-peso, Señorita.”

“I have only twenty-five cents to spend. Give me two.” He turned to Mari with them. “Here, pin them to your coat.”

“Here,” said the old woman suddenly. “Here’s a third. You’re so much in love. It’s for you that such flowers are grown.”

“Let me give her something,” he urged in an undertone.

She shook her head firmly. “Don’t spoil it. Don’t you see, that’s the beauty of the gesture; it’s her gift to us. You’re just a poor drummer in the band, I’m just a singer.” (“Cornetist,” he corrected.) “That’s all we have, that quarter. But we’re so wealthy. Everyone in the world loves us tonight, and we love everyone.”

They crossed the street together almost at a run, laughing. And nearly got run down.

“He didn’t love us, just then, that taxi-driver,” he commented.

“What do they mean when they say cabron?”

He quickly put his hand over her mouth.

“Look, a five-and-ten!” she squealed. “That’s the place for him and her! Take me in and buy me something there!”

“What do you need?”

“No,” she grimaced. “A present. Even in a five-and-ten he’d throw his money away on something she didn’t need.”

“Foolish boy,” he murmured disapprovingly. “How about this?” he said presently. He scanned the label on a little flask, about the size of a pinkey, filled with something grass-green. “Fiores de mi Alma.” He uncapped it, took a whiff, jerked his nose aside. “Whew! No! Benzine and overripe melons. Whoever’s soul that was kept it too long, without ice.”

They passed on to another counter. “Here’s something, now!” he brayed. “Now we’re getting somewhere! Garnet rings. Or at least a reasonable facsimile thereof. Priced at only a peso twenty-five.”

“You’re making fun of our game,” she cautioned him gently. “He wouldn’t do it that way.”

“Then cue me,” he said penitently.

“All right.” She hastily stripped a solitaire worth about eighteen thousand from her finger, dropped it into her handbag. “Max,” she said wistfully, “I’ve never had a ring from you. Even when we were married, I had to borrow Bee’s, remember? I know you can’t afford it right now, but until the real thing comes along—” She eyed the tray longingly. “It’d be something from you, to me. That’d make the brass gold. That’d make the glass ruby. Times when you’re not with me, I’d have it to put to my cheek and whisper to.”

He selected one and slipped it on her finger. A darkeyed, sleek-bobbed little salesgirl drew near, stood watching them.

They raised the newly-ringed finger between them, and, surreptitiously, first he touched his lips to it, then she.

“Like in that alto sax passage,” he murmured. “‘Diamond bracelets Woolworth doesn’t sell, baby.’”

She kissed him. “Thank you for my present, darling.”

“It’s funny what a hand’ll do. You make it look like the real thing, just because it’s on your hand. When it’s off your hand, it’s junk. When it’s on, it’s a million dollars.”

They lingered on there hogging the counter. The salesgirl stood by, smiling benevolently, understandingly.

Mari turned to her suddenly. “D’you like him? What do you think of him? But you can’t have him. I got him first.”

“I have one myself,” the pert little salesgirl answered. “And you can’t have him.”

“That leaves everybody even. And everybody happy.”

They went running out of the store again, giving the glass swing-doors such a fling that they all but knocked a package out of the arms of the next customer behind them.

“You think I’m crazy, don’t you? Maybe I am — crazy with happiness.”

“And now to work.” They broke into a quickstep together, to make up for lost time.

“Oh, this beautiful town,” she exulted, trotting along beside him. “Max, let’s settle down here. I know we’d be happy here. When our engagement’s over, let’s stay on here for good, never go back. We found our happiness in this place, let’s not leave it again.”

“Is this us, now, or them? I’m just a little mixed-up.”

“Us. Us. The four of us that we’ve become. The two of us, that are still them. The two of them that have become us.”

“Yeah,” he said thoughtfully. “Why not? Why shouldn’t we? No more trains, no more hotels. Let’s become just Mr. and Mrs. We’ll buy a home of our own. I can have the bank account transferred, there’s a branch of the National City here. We’ll throw away our suitcases, and we’ll let our waistlines fill out a little—”

“Mine will have a good reason to,” she slipped in, in a hasty undertone.

“We’ll live like all the others do, and get something for our lives. Why didn’t we figure it out sooner? Five hundred million people can’t be wrong!”

“And we’ll never think of that again; you know, that other thing. We’ll put that behind us forever. That was just a publicity pipe-dream, anyway. We got so, we believed it ourselves.”

He started to whistle.

“Know that? What does it mean to you?”

“Give me another chorus. It’s bringing something back.”

“Made for each other, your heart and mine, Fashioned together, from one design—”

“Are your feet getting tired? You have to dance yet tonight, you know.”

“What do you suppose I’m doing now? Walking? Oh, use your heart.”

They turned a corner, on wings.

“Here’s the job.”

“It’s not a job tonight. It’s — we’re together, aren’t we? Oh, I’m going to knock them—” She stopped suddenly, looked at him.

“Don’t say that,” he cautioned her gently.

Then they both laughed. And knew, by that, they had it licked at last. When you can laugh about a thing, you’ve got it licked.

“Let’s go in the side way like the hired hands do,” she suggested. “The heck with their lobbies and plush carpets and all the bows you always get. And above all, those pictures of mine, with sinister shadows all over them. I don’t want to pass them tonight.”

“They are sort of grim,” he agreed. “Well, it’s just a selling angle.”

When they got in, still arm in arm, he walked right on past the door of his dressing room with her, and on to hers.

“Mind?”

“Who ever heard of a married pair with more than one dressing room between them?”

“What’ll your maid say?”

She closed the door after the two of them. That door that he’d never yet got past until now. He turned and gave the inside of it a quizzical look, as much as to say “Now what’ve you got to say?”

The maid, who’d been pottering around over in a corner, advanced toward her holding out a dressing gown.

Mari turned her head toward her from the make-up table. “You can’t stay in here tonight. I’m a married woman now.”

“But... but who’ll help you dress, Señorita?”

“My husband, who else? You can come back afterwards and put the things away, tidy up.” She waved her on her way.

Presently she had to say to him, “I’m getting nowhere fast. Every time I get a little pancake on, you kiss it off again. You’re going to have a very bad case of makeup poisoning before the night is out.”

“I’ll behave,” he said. “I’ll try to keep away from you.”

“She has my dress back there on a hanger. No, in back — you can’t miss it.”

Somebody knocked on the door.

“Come,” she said.

Robles, the club manager, stuck his head in the door. “Señorita Ruyter, the band is ready and waiting, and there is no sign of Señor Jones anywhere. He is not in his dressing room. I have been calling his hotel and no one has seen him there since late yesterday aft—”

“Who d’you suppose this is, Xavier Cugat?” Jones answered, stepping out from behind a costume-laden screen where he had gone for a moment.

Robles pointed perpendicularly to the floor, extremely disconcerted, almost scandalized. “You are in here?”

“Old-fashioned sort of guy, isn’t he?” Jones murmured to her in English. “Señor, your jaw needs rewiring; push it up a little. We have started going with each other, the senorita and I. Tell the boys Number Seven in the book; I’ll be right behind you.”

The manager backed out, appalled. “Pew que locura,” they heard him mumble to himself.

“Some husband,” Jones said. “I’m afraid I’m tarnishing your reputation all over the place.”

“Oh, blacken it like shoe polish,” she begged. “Don’t leave a bright spot on it any place.”

He pressed his cheek against the top of her head. “I hate to leave you. Even just for three fast choruses. Come soon, darling. See you on cue.”

“Don’t forget. For real — for true—”

He kissed her again. “For ever.”

Her maid crept timorously back in, in his wake. “Leave the door open. I want to hear him playing.”

She held her finger up at attention, waiting.

“There! There it is! Hear it? That’s for me.”

“No, not yet, Señorita. I know your music by heart mys—”

“You don’t understand. Not my professional music. He’s talking to me, from out front there. That’s for me. He’s sending me a message back. He knows I’m listening to it.”

She opened her arms wide toward the doorway, held them in preferred embrace. “Made for each other, your heart and mine—”

The maid began to hum along with her, in the Spanish version of it. “Di que me quieres, asi asi—”

“The senorita is going out tonight? What dress...?”

“The senorita is going home tonight. Home, with her husband. Just the plain dress of a wife.”

“I can’t find that kind here on the rack. What does one of those look like?”

She wasn’t there any more to hear her. She went down the backstage alley until she could see his face, out there before her. He turned her way, looking for her, and she caught his eye. She blew him a kiss.

He couldn’t do it as openly, because he was out front, but he secretly sent her one in return, raising his hand to touch his mouth, then indicating her direction with it.

She pressed it to her heart, as though she had caught it there. She had.

Her cue.

She could have done this with her eyes closed. She kept them on his face, let her muscles carry her forward by memory. Once in awhile she had to turn, or she had to face front, and that broke the look between them. But never for long.

She was dancing in a void, dancing in a vacuum. There wasn’t anyone else there but him.

The snake wasn’t very vicious tonight. The victim wasn’t very frightened. It was a lazy snake, it was a dreamy victim.

A house somewhere in the suburbs. A kid. Maybe even a pair of them, a little girl, then a little boy. Why not? Other women had them. He could go on playing if he wanted to. But just close by in the city, no more tours. And she’d never set foot in another night club again; even if she came to pick him up in the car, she’d wait outside until he was through.

No more of this. No more tinsel, no more sequins, no more colored gelatin-slides.

A minute ago, she said to herself. A minute from now, she promised herself. A dream only lasts a minute. But when you wake up, you’re awake all day. I’m waking up now. The day is beginning for me. The long, long day—

She flung herself downward. The murderer-snake flickered about her head, finally lay still athwart her.

Somebody screamed, far off in the distance. In another world.

A house in the suburbs. A little breakfast-room, all in—

There was a lot of noise, like there always was at the conclusion of one of her performances.

It wasn’t quite as even, tonight, the noise. Something about it.

Someone kept calling “Put on the lights! Put on the lights!” over and over again.

That scream came again, closer at hand. It was the scream of a man’s voice. It was usually the scream of a woman’s, but this time it was the scream of a man’s voice. A heartrending scream of protest, of denial. “No-o-o-o!” prolonged almost beyond endurance.

And then again, that other voice, not the same one, two or three other voices now, for more had joined the first one: “Put on the lights! For God’s sake, somebody put on those lights! Can’t you see something’s happened here?”

Suddenly they were on in burning brightness all around her; they crept under her eyelids, which she kept closed.

That wasn’t on cue; they weren’t supposed to come on until after Max had picked her up and gone out with her.

There was a trampling sound, of people fighting, or struggling in some way.

A glass suddenly crashed to the floor, close by her prone head, and shattered. One of the little pieces nicked her forehead, she could feel the sting.

The screaming voice had come again. “My wife is dead! She killed her! There she is, there! See her? Murderess! Assassin! Let go of me! Stop holding me back! I’ll kill her! I’ll beat her to death with my bare hands!”

Max’s face was suddenly down close beside hers on the floor. “Hurry up, get up! Never mind the finale routine. They’ve turned hysterical and ugly. I’ve got to get you out of this place fast!”

She scrambled to her feet, his arms giving her a quick lift. He began to pull her toward the wings.

“Do something!” she heard him say to one of his musicians. “Hold them back until I can get her out of the building. Those waiters aren’t enough.”

Over her shoulder, in quick horror, as he whisked her with him, she received the impression of a massed crowd at bay, forming a living wall, so to speak, all along one side of the dance floor. Waiters, desperately forming a chain of outstretched arms, were trying to hold them back.

It was the voice of a mob, now, a lynch-mob.

“Kill her! She caused the death of this woman here! She’s a witch, a devil! Kill her before the police can get here! Kill them both!”

Two or three broke through, and there were isolated flurries of fisticuffs as the musicians loyally tried to head them off.

And in the background, more ominous even than the cries for her death, a sudden shout raised by someone: “Head them off outside, around the back way! He’s trying to get her out that way! We can get them around at the back!”

“We’ll never get out of this building alive—” she panted.

The manager suddenly blocked their way, in the back-stage alley, as they came running down it, she cowering close to Jones.

Jones backed a fist toward him. “Get out of the way or I’ll—!”

The manager was pale to the point of leukemia. “No — I’m trying to help you! It’s already too late, that way. They’re already out there. We just locked the door. Here, through here, into my office, is the only way left!”

Jones suddenly balked at the threshhold. “What are you trying, to trick us? What other way out is there from there?”

“The window. You can drop down from it. Is a little alley between the two buildings. You know, garbage-alley? Very dark and narrow. Leads up to street. You can wait in there, watch your chance, slip out quick when their backs are turned.”

He went in with them, threw back a drape to reveal it. It was very small, only half the size of an ordinary window-square. It jammed when he tried to force it open. “Valgame Dios!” he sobbed, terrified.

“Here, let me do it,” said Jones. “Give me that onyx ashtray from the desk.” He smashed the glass out from the frame, then pecked at it around on all sides to get the clinging glass fragments out of it.

“Lock the door, lock the door!” the manager said to someone over his shoulder. He picked up the phone. “Give me the police!” he said agitatedly. “Quickly, Señorita, quickly! I have a riot here at the Ta-Ba-Ris, tell them to send some people around right away!”

They were already beginning to pound on the door from the outside.

“Hurry, hurry!” the manager heaved. “You don’t know them down here when they get started. They’ll not only tear you both to pieces, they’ll tear my beautiful office to pieces!”

“And that’s what really counts,” said Jones coldly. “Don’t nudge, I want to see what I’m getting into out here.” He let himself out backward, clung, and then slowly let his body straighten out under him, groping with his feet. It wasn’t prohibitively high, just a full arm’s reach overhead from the ground.

“Come on,” he said to her, “I’m here to hold you.”

They were taking a fire axe to the other side of the door now. Sudden white streaks showed up on the inside, with a blade in them each time.

He held her in his arms and eased her drop down to the ground.

“No show tomorrow night!” the manager hissed down out of the window at them, forbiddingly.

“No, no show tomorrow night, you bet!” Jones agreed grimly.

The manager popped his head back in, blotted out the lighted window-square by jerking the drape across it once more.

In the dark, there was a crunching and fluted sound as her feet found the ground directly in front of him, lowered by his embrace.

“What was that?” he said. “Look out for all the broken glass and bottles lying around back here!”

“Not glass, Max,” she murmured. “These are my dreams that are scattered around here, all smashed up into little pieces, thrown away and waiting for the garbage-man.”

4

They were back in New York. Just back. In a perpendicular hotelshaft that shrank Central Park to the size of a green bath-mat spread out flat way down below their windows. They were unpacking — or rather she was doing the unpacking, he was fooling around on the phone.

“I can’t get him,” he said, and hung up.

“Why don’t you try him at his home?” she said. “He must have left the office by this time. It’s after six already.”

“I can try again later. Let’s go downstairs and eat awhile. I’m starved.”

On their way along the corridor he switched aside to one of the other doors, knocked. “I want to let the fellows know about rehearsal, in case I don’t see them later.”

They were all in there. Strangely quiescent, for some reason. Just sitting around. Muted.

“Ryan Hall, Friday afternoon, huh?” he announced. “I hired the same studio we used to use.”

Everyone was very quiet.

She came up, stood right beside him, as if sensing something.

“Max,” Dixon said abruptly, and then stopped.

“Hm?”

“I won’t be there. I’m getting out.”

Jones came the rest of the way into the room, she with him, closed the door after him. His face had got a little whiter, she couldn’t help noticing. But he was very steady, quiet, casual. “Getting out of the band?”

Dixon was forthright about it, anyhow. “Yeah,” he said, “yeah,” looking Jones straight in the eye.

“Any... particular reason?”

“Yeah. I’m getting married. You met Helen.”

“Well — I’m married. Brad and Bee were married when they first came to me.”

Dixon wouldn’t look anywhere but at him, wouldn’t even blink. But he hated it, you could see. She could see.

“She asked me to,” he said.

Jones didn’t answer.

“I had her on the phone just now.”

Jones didn’t answer.

“She said she wouldn’t marry me if I stayed with the band.” Then he added, “This band.”

Jones didn’t answer.

Dixon finished it down to the last bitter phrase. Like medicine. “She said she doesn’t want us to have bad luck. It was either her or the band.” He looked down for the first time, then up again. “I made it her.”

Jones answered at last. “Congratulations,” he said, and went toward him holding out his hand.

Dixon got up and they shook. Hard.

They didn’t say anything more, either one of them. What more was there? Dixon went over to the window and looked the other way.

Jones turned to go, with her. “Well, I’ll see you other guys, then—”

Fingers took a telegram out of his pocket, in such a way that it arrested his attention. “I can’t quit you right when Dix does,” he said, when he had it.

“Sure you can, why not? What’s that you’ve got there?”

“It’s an offer from Tommy Everback. Russ got one too.”

For the first time Jones showed a little emotion. His face flushed up a bit. “What’s he trying to do, hijack—” He stopped that. “What do you want to do about it?”

“Accept,” Fingers said sturdily. “I like you too much not to give it to you straight. That’s all you can do for a guy when you like him, give it to him straight. I don’t want to stay on.”

And Russell, drums and percussion, didn’t answer, so that was his answer.

She spoke for the first time, forlornly. “It’s on account of me, Max.”

“I know.”

“It’s nobody’s fault,” Dixon said. “It’s too scary. I don’t want to fool around with it any more. I don’t want to be near it. I don’t want to live with it. Bee and Brad got out long ago, and they were right.”

“We love her too,” Fingers said. “Just as much as you. Don’t think we don’t.”

“That leaves you, Parr,” Jones said. He read his face. “Oh, you too.”

“I’m quitting the business altogether, Max,” Parr said gently. “Buying into a partnership in a sporting-goods store.” He was Bradley’s successor on tenor sax.

Jones had forgotten to move. He just stood there looking brave, and hurting all over.

They were hurting just as much. No one seemed to know how to end it. Women would have, but they were men.

Dixon didn’t want to keep staring the other way, down at Central Park.

Russell didn’t want to keep looking down at the cigar he wasn’t smoking any more but was still holding between his fingers.

Fingers didn’t want to keep looking down at a glass that someone had taken a short drink from awhile back.

Any more than Jones wanted to keep standing there in the middle of the room like a schoolteacher overawing a bunch of truants.

She knew that about each one of them.

They didn’t know how to end it, that was all.

Finally she took him, unnoticeably of course, and led him out of the room with her. And she was the one made their adieux for him, as she did. Lightly, so as not to hurt. “Well, we’re going down to eat. See you after supper, boys.”

Outside the door he looked at her and he smiled.

“It looks like I haven’t got a band any more.”

She couldn’t console him; she didn’t try.

“Which way are we going? Down anyway, or back to our own rooms?”

“I guess I’m not hungry any more, either,” he admitted, turning the way she had.

It was one of those plushy apartment houses along Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn’s Fifth Avenue. Ten to fifteen thousand a year income bracket. Jones wouldn’t let the hallman announce them. They went right to the upstairs door.

She had misgivings. “He may not be home, Max. We should have phoned.”

“Then we’ll wait. He’d be glad to see us at any hour of the night or day. This is Morty, honey. Are you forgetting?”

“Well I can’t understand—”

“I think he was out of town, don’t you?” he passed it off cheerfully. “Maybe one of those office mix-ups.”

The door opened. Opened wide, full-span; not cagily. It was one of those homes where the door always opened wide at a summons, you could tell that, not suspiciously narrow. Rubin was standing there, tie at décolleté, reading-glasses in hand.

Behind him there was a vista of homey reading-lamplight in several epicentric interlocking circles on the floor, a little girl with glossy black Japanese-doll bangs stretched out on her stomach in one of them, legs swinging backward in air, reading a comic sheet; sage-green carpeting; a TV percolating: “And now, for three thousand...” a black bull-terrier with a white spot in the middle of his forehead monopolizing the seat of an easy-chair, but with a guilty look in its soulful eyes.

“Well!” Jones exploded in his face, enthusiastically.

“Hello, Mort,” she said in a quieter key.

“Mari and Max,” was all he said. There was something strained about him.

“Say, what’s going on down at your office? The livelong week I’ve been trying—”

“I’ve got a new girl,” Rubin said lamely. “Goldie left me, you know. She finally got married.”

“She got my name plain enough. I made her repeat it after me each time.”

“I think Morty was out of town,” she suggested tactfully.

He just looked at her; didn’t say whether he had been or not.

“Look, I’ve been trying all week to get you. The band blew up in my face.”

Rubin acted as though he’d already heard that by indirection; nothing happened to his eyes. “I’ve been thinking of giving up the business,” he said reticently.

Meanwhile, they hadn’t seemed to progress beyond the door. Rubin appeared to notice this himself, at about the same time Jones did; she already had, some little time before.

“Come in,” he said somewhat belatedly. He gave a look over his shoulder first. A dubious look, a look of uncertainty. Or almost a furtive look, the kind that you give when you look to see if the coast is clear.

He closed the door. “You never met my little girl Shirley. Get up, dolling; that’s not nice you should say hello to people with your tummy on the floor.”

“I was going to get up,” the child protested earnestly. “But I can’t get up all at one time, I have to get up one end first and then the other. I was already moving one end, but the other end hadn’t started yet, that’s all.”

“Oh, I see, dolling,” he said with tender gravity. “Say hello to Papa’s friends.”

She shook Mari’s hand. “Isn’t she pretty!” she marvelled to her father.

“You’re pretty, too,” Mari said.

“I know,” the child acquiesced. “But I’m not supposed to know that ’til I’m older, ’cause it’ll make me stuck-up.”

And “You,” Rubin said severely, addressing the terrier, “get down. I can’t even go to the door? The minute my back is turned.” The chair was already vacant at the second word, with a vaulting leap.

“Shall I tell Mamma to come in?” the little girl asked.

“Not just yet, a little later maybe,” he said evasively.

The child suddenly seemed to have made an esoteric discovery of stupefying consequence. Her eyes opened wide, and her mouth too. “Is that the lady that dances, Papa?” she gasped breathlessly. She took a step backward and sidled around to the sheltered side of him, clinging.

“Sh, sh, sh,” he cautioned her, staccato. He guided her ahead of him gently, by the shoulders, toward a door, eased her through. “Go inside now, the kitchen. Help Mamma dry.” She went with her little body turned one way, her face steadily the other.

“Cigarette, Mari?” he offered when he’d come back, as if to make amends.

“No, thanks,” Mari said despondently, lowering her head.

“Don’t say anything—”

He never had a chance to finish telling them what not to say. A pleasant-looking middle-aged woman came in. “Friends, Mort?” she said cordially. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“This is my wife Rachel, better known as Ray,” he said fondly, slipping an arm about her waist. He noticeably didn’t give their names. There was something a little taut, brittle about him.

“Why don’t you make the folks some coffee, Ray?” he suggested.

“A pleasure,” she acceded. “And I think we can do a little better than just coffee around here, don’t you?” she said with a friendly wink at all three.

“Oh, don’t trouble. Please,” Mari besought, almost with a woebegone look.

“Mort’s friends shouldn’t have a cup of coffee in his house?” she insisted warmly. “It’s a privilege to make it.”

She went out again.

“Excuse me a minute,” Rubin said unhappily, after a moment’s lapse, and went after her.

“Something seems to be on Mort’s mind,” Jones remarked presently, to break the silence. “Notice it?”

A china cup suddenly shattered, somewhere nearby.

“Somebody dropped something,” he smiled obtusely.

There was no answering smile in her eyes. “She just found out who we were. Who I am.”

“I don’t get you,” he said blankly. “What are you talking ab—”

“Max, let’s get out of here. For my own sake, as well as theirs. Don’t prolong this. It’s cruel.”

“What’s come over you? We can’t just get up and stalk out without a word, now that we’re here.”

She shaded her eyes with her hand. “Oh, this is an awful situation. I knew we shouldn’t have come. I knew, I knew, ahead of time. All that trouble you’ve been having getting him down at his office. I knew what it meant. I didn’t want to tell you, but I knew.”

“You’re talking riddles,” he said. “You’re talking through your hat.”

“Then listen. Just listen a minute.”

Two voices could be heard, somewhere beyond the door, mingled in guarded but heated contention; one protesting, one attempting to reassure. Wordlessly blurred for the most part, an occasional phrase piercing through to merciless clarity.

“It’s the child I’m thinking of! I don’t want anything like that in the same house with her. Who knows what it is?”

“Did I know they were coming here?”

“Make them go, make them go. I couldn’t come out there again, I’m too nervous. Look, I’m shaking like a leaf.”

And then, rising in sudden, almost terrified, command: “Shirley, come back here! Come away from that door!”

“She was peeking out at us through the crack,” she said to Jones poignantly. “Like kids do, when you’ve become a freak.”

Rubin re-entered suddenly. He was holding his hat in his hand.

“Look, I’m going to ask you to let me take you down and buy you coffee in the restaurant, around the corner,” he said diffidently. “We just found out, not a grain of coffee in the house.” He swallowed. “Ray’s too ashamed to show her face again. We come back in a few minutes and finish our talk here—”

“You did that very well, Morty,” Mari murmured forgivingly, getting up and preceding him to the door. “We didn’t want any coffee. We just want to go, ourselves.”

Jones couldn’t talk at all. His face was very white. Like when you’ve been kicked in the stomach, and all the wind’s been driven out of you.

“You don’t have to come down with us,” she said at the elevator, trying to spare him. “We can find our way.”

“I want to; I got to,” Rubin said almost fiercely. “I can’t let you go like this.”

They rode down together. He walked with them outside the building. He walked with them to the corner. An arc-light made it pale there. The subway-chute was right across the street. They were taking the subway these days.

Jones spoke for the first time. “We know,” he said disheartenedly.

“Sure you know,” Rubin agreed. “It’s better you do. Who wants to lie to you?”

“Are we through?” Jones asked bluntly. “You and us, I mean.”

Rubin, always so voluble, seemed to have trouble getting together enough words to make an answer out of. “I’m... cutting down my list these days. The five Di Martino sisters, Hal Weston’s band — nobody else much. With the Di Martinos is a personal hobligation — their father and I—

“New clients I’m not taking on... In fact I’m thinking ser’usly getting out the business altogether. Let the younger fellows worry themselves bald in the head.”

“We are through,” Jones deciphered. “You just told us so.”

“There isn’t anything I could do for you, even if I wanted to. You’re up against a stone wall. It happened once too often, maybe. It should have stopped while it, while you was still ahead. What it is, I couldn’t say. Before they all wanted you. Now they’re all afraid you should come near them. You got like a jinx, a huddu, on you. You don’t think I tried, I been working? Even before you came back. Was in all the papers, you know, that lest time. Another thing that’s funny. When it happened close by, would nobody believe it, they think it’s still some kind of a trick, a fake. A horrengement even with the police yet, the medical exemener. It heppens far away, in Italy, in South America yet, they read it in the newspapers, and soddenly because it heppens far away, that seems to make it true. Why this is, don’t ask me. Was even an editorial in the Times about it, I saw it myself, and than that is nothing more ser’us. Only the other day Willy Robbins, you know, the Lucky Horseshoe, before I could even open my mouth on the phone, he stops me. ‘Mort, if you culled to talk about anybody else, I’ll listen. If you culled to talk about those two people, I’ll heng up. It makes me nervous even on the telephone. I’m operating a cabaret-restaurant, not a morgue.’”

“That’s giving it to us,” Jones agreed dismally.

“You want to try M.C.A. William Morris, one of the others, maybe they can do more for you than I can.”

“You or nobody,” Jones let him know dispiritedly. “I’m afraid you got to count me out. Is not only from a business angle, is also my own personal feelings I would rather not kip up the association.”

“Mort means he’s promised his wife to get rid of us,” she translated clairvoyantly.

He didn’t contradict her. “She’s a mother... You know how mothers are, she’s thinking of the child...”

“She should come first with you,” she approved.

“She does,” he said heavily. “Look, I—” He started having trouble with his pockets, going in this one, coming out of that one, both hands at once, all over himself. Like when your hands are embarrassed over what they’re going to do. “Is some money coming to you, I think — I’m not sure how much, or what from; I haven’t time right now to go into it—”

Jones put his floundering hands at rest, with one of his own. Kindly but firm. “No, there isn’t. There are no royalties in our line. We weren’t able to finish out the South American date, so we forfeited the balance of what was due us on that. I already straightened all that out with you at the office; we went over the accounts. No loans. No gifts. We just want to work for our money.”

“You make me feel perfect,” Rubin murmured bitterly.

“We feel good too,” Jones said. “Awful good. Let’s get away from here,” he said to her. “It’s like there was someone dead around here.”

“Old times,” Rubin said thoughtfully. “Old times is what is dead around here, must be.”

He tapped his pocket some more. Absently, this time, as though he had a pain in there. “There’s on my desk a letter. Came in the other day. It must be still there. I didn’t pay much attention to it. From a man in Panama, has some hole-in-the-wall café down there. He’s asking do I know of anyone... To you I wouldn’t want to suggest it—”

“Then we will!” snapped Jones decisively. “We’ll take anything. Without asking.”

“I’ll... I’ll write him.” He seemed to have trouble speaking. “I’ll look into it for you. This is just as a friend, I’m not accepting commission. In case it’s — it’s bona fide, I’ll have the two tickets waiting for you at the office. Drop in a week or ten days—”

“No,” said Jones firmly. “Mail them to us at the hotel, whenever you’re ready with them. No more of these goodbyes. It takes your appendix out. Just look at your face.”

“Such a windy corner,” protested Rubin virtuously. “I hate this corner. Every time I come down here, it makes my eyes smot. You wouldn’t believe it. In ull Brooklyn you couldn’t find such a windy corner like this one; Eastern Pokkway and—”

“So long,” said Jones brusquely, and started away on his own.

He was still ranting about the windy corner, and blinking with wet disapproval. “I couldn’t figure out where it comes from, could you?”

“From the heart,” she said quietly. She put her face over toward him. “Kiss me goodbye, on the cheek. And feel a little sorry for me.”

Then she turned and ran for her life, to overtake her fast-striding husband, without looking back.