Manhattan transfer

1 Great Lady on a White Horse

Morning clatters with the first L train down Allen Street. Daylight rattles through the windows, shaking the old brick houses, splatters the girders of the L structure with bright confetti.

The cats are leaving the garbage cans, the chinches are going back into the walls, leaving sweaty limbs, leaving the grimetender necks of little children asleep. Men and women stir under blankets and bedquilts on mattresses in the corners of rooms, clots of kids begin to untangle to scream and kick.

At the corner of Riverton the old man with the hempen beard who sleeps where nobody knows is putting out his picklestand. Tubs of gherkins, pimentos, melonrind, piccalilli give out twining vines and cold tendrils of dank pepperyfragrance that grow like a marshgarden out of the musky bedsmells and the rancid clangor of the cobbled awakening street.

The old man with the hempen beard who sleeps where nobody knows sits in the midst of it like Jonah under his gourd.

Jimmy Herf walked up four creaky flights and knocked at a white door fingermarked above the knob where the name Sunderland appeared in old English characters on a card neatly held in place by brass thumbtacks. He waited a long while beside a milkbottle, two creambottles, and a copy of the Sunday Times. There was a rustle behind the door and the creak of a step, then no more sound. He pushed a white button in the doorjamb.

‘An he said, Margie I’ve got a crush on you so bad, an she said, Come in outa the rain, you’re all wet…’ Voices coming down the stairs, a man’s feet in button shoes, a girl’s feet in sandals, pink silk legs; the girl in a fluffy dress and a Spring Maid hat; the young man had white edging on his vest and a green, blue, and purple striped necktie.

‘But you’re not that kind of a girl.’

‘How do you know what kind of a girl I am?’

The voices trailed out down the stairs.

Jimmy Herf gave the bell another jab.

‘Who is it?’ came a lisping female voice through a crack in the door.

‘I want to see Miss Prynne please.’

Glimpse of a blue kimono held up to the chin of a fluffy face. ‘Oh I don’t know if she’s up yet.’

‘She said she would be.’

‘Look will you please wait a second to let me make my getaway,’ she tittered behind the door. ‘And then come in. Excuse us but Mrs Sunderland thought you were the rent collector. They sometimes come on Sunday just to fool you.’ A smile coyly bridged the crack in the door.

‘Shall I bring in the milk?’

‘Oh do and sit down in the hall and I’ll call Ruth.’ The hall was very dark; smelled of sleep and toothpaste and massagecream; across one corner a cot still bore the imprint of a body on its rumpled sheets. Straw hats, silk eveningwraps, and a couple of men’s dress overcoats hung in a jostling tangle from the staghorns of the hatrack. Jimmy picked a corsetcover off a rockingchair and sat down. Women’s voices, a subdued rustling of people dressing, Sunday newspaper noises seeped out through the partitions of the different rooms.

The bathroom door opened; a stream of sunlight reflected out of a pierglass cut the murky hall in half, out of it came a head of hair like copper wire, bluedark eyes in a brittle-white eggshaped face. Then the hair was brown down the hall above a slim back in a tangerine-colored slip, nonchalant pink heels standing up out of the bathslippers at every step.

‘Ou-ou, Jimmee…’ Ruth was yodling at him from behind her door. ‘But you mustn’t look at me or at my room.’ A head in curlpapers stuck out like a turtle’s.

‘Hullo Ruth.’

‘You can come in if you promise not to look… I’m a sight and my room’s a pigeon… I’ve just got to do my hair. Then I’ll be ready.’ The little gray room was stuffed with clothes and photographs of stage people. Jimmy stood with his back to the door, some sort of silky stuff that dangled from the hook tickling his ears.

‘Well how’s the cub reporter?’

‘I’m on Hell’s Kitchen… It’s swell. Got a job yet Ruth?’

‘Um-um… A couple of things may materialize during the week. But they wont. Oh Jimmy I’m getting desperate.’ She shook her hair loose of the crimpers and combed out the new mousybrown waves. She had a pale startled face with a big mouth and blue underlids. ‘This morning I knew I ought to be up and ready, but I just couldn’t. It’s so discouraging to get up when you haven’t got a job… Sometimes I think I’ll go to bed and just stay there till the end of the world.’

‘Poor old Ruth.’

She threw a powderpuff at him that covered his necktie and the lapels of his blue serge suit with powder. ‘Dont you poor old me you little rat.’

‘That’s a nice thing to do after all the trouble I took to make myself look respectable… Darn your hide Ruth. And the smell of the carbona not off me yet.’

Ruth threw back her head with a shrieking laugh. ‘Oh you’re so comical Jimmy. Try the whisk-broom.’

Blushing he blew down his chin at his tie. ‘Who’s the funny-looking girl opened the halldoor?’

‘Shush you can hear everything through the partition… that’s Cassie,’ she whispered giggling. ‘Cassah-ndrah Wilkins… used to be with the Morgan Dancers. But we oughtnt to laugh at her, she’s very nice. I’m very fond of her.’ She let out a whoop of laughter. ‘You nut Jimmy.’ She got to her feet and punched him in the muscle of his arm. ‘You always make me act like I was crazy.’

‘God did that… No but look, I’m awfully hungry. I walked up.’

‘What time is it?’

‘It’s after one.’

‘Oh Jimmy I don’t know what to do about time… Like this hat?… Oh I forgot to tell you. I went to see Al Harrison yesterday. It was simply dreadful… If I hadnt got to the phone in time and threatened to call the police…’

‘Look at that funny woman opposite. She’s got a face exactly like a llama.’

‘It’s on account of her I have to keep my shades drawn all the time…’

‘Why?’

‘Oh you’re much too young to know. You’d be shocked Jimmy.’ Ruth was leaning close to the mirror running a stick of rouge between her lips.

‘So many things shock me, I dont see that it matters much… But come along let’s get out of here. The sun’s shining outside and people are coming out of church and going home to overeat and read at their Sunday papers among the rubberplants…’

‘Oh Jimmy you’re a shriek… Just one minute. Look out you’re hooked onto my best shimmy.’

A girl with short black hair in a yellow jumper was folding the sheets off the cot in the hall. For a second under the ambercolored powder and the rouge Jimmy did not recognize the face he had seen through the crack in the door.

‘Hello Cassie, this is… Beg pardon, Miss Wilkins this is Mr Herf. You tell him about the lady across the airshaft, you know Sappo the Monk.’

Cassandra Wilkins lisped and pouted. ‘Isn’t she dweadful Mr Herf… She says the dweadfullest things.’

‘She merely does it to annoy.’

‘Oh Mr Herf I’m so pleased to meet you at last, Ruth does nothing but talk about you… Oh I’m afwaid I was indiscweet to say that… I’m dweadfully indiscweet.’

The door across the hall opened and Jimmy found himself looking in the white face of a crookednosed man whose red hair rode in two unequal mounds on either side of a straight part. He wore a green satin bathrobe and red morocco slippers.

‘What heow Cassahndrah?’ he said in a careful Oxford drawl. ‘What prophecies today?’

‘Nothing except a wire from Mrs Fitzsimmons Green. She wants me to go to see her at Scarsdale tomorrow to talk about the Gweenery Theater… Excuse me this is Mr Herf, Mr Oglethorpe.’ The redhaired man raised one eyebrow and lowered the other and put a limp hand in Jimmy’s.

‘Herf, Herf… Let me see, it’s not a Georgiah Herf? In Atlahnta there’s an old family of Herfs…’

‘No I dont think so.’

‘Too bad. Once upon a time Josiah Herf and I were boon companions. Today he is the president of the First National Bank and leading citizen of Scranton Pennsylvahnia and I… a mere mountebank, a thing of rags and patches.’ When he shrugged his shoulders the bathrobe fell away exposing a flat smooth hairless chest.

‘You see Mr Oglethorpe and I are going to do the Song of Songs. He weads it and I interpwet it in dancing. You must come up and see us wehearse sometime.’

‘Thy navel is like a round goblet which wanteth not liquor, thy belly is like a heap of wheat set about with lilies…’

‘Oh dont begin now.’ She tittered and pressed her legs together.

‘Jojo close that door,’ came a quiet deep girl’s voice from inside the room.

‘Oh poo-er deah Elaine, she wants to sleep . . So glahd to have met you, Mr Herf.’

‘Jojo!’

‘Yes my deah…’

Through the leaden drowse that cramped him the girl’s voice set Jimmy tingling. He stood beside Cassie constrainedly without speaking in the dingydark hall. A smell of coffee and singeing toast seeped in from somewhere. Ruth came up behind them.

‘All right Jimmy I’m ready… I wonder if I’ve forgotten anything.’

‘I dont care whether you have or not, I’m starving.’ Jimmy took hold of her shoulders and pushed her gently towards the door. ‘It’s two o’clock.’

‘Well goodby Cassie dear, I’ll call you up at about six.’

‘All wight Wuthy… So pleased to have met you Mr Herf.’ The door closed on Cassie’s tittering lisp.

‘Wow, Ruth that place gives me the infernal jimjams.’

‘Now Jimmy dont get peevish because you need food.’

‘But tell me Ruth, what the hell is Mr Oglethorpe? He beats anything I ever saw.’

‘Oh did the Ogle come out of his lair?’ Ruth let out a whoop of laughter. They came out into grimy sunlight. ‘Did he tell you he was of the main brawnch, dontcher know, of the Oglethorpes of Georgiah?’

‘Is that lovely girl with copper hair his wife?’

‘Elaine Oglethorpe has reddish hair. She’s not so darn lovely either… She’s just a kid and she’s upstage as the deuce already. All because she made a kind of a hit in Peach Blossoms. You know one of these tiny exquisite bits everybody makes such a fuss over. She can act all right.’

‘It’s a shame she’s got that for a husband.’

‘Ogle’s done everything in the world for her. If it hadnt been for him she’d still be in the chorus…’

‘Beauty and the beast.’

‘You’d better look out if he sets his lamps on you Jimmy.’

‘Why?’

‘Strange fish, Jimmy, strange fish.’

An Elevated train shattered the barred sunlight overhead. He could see Ruth’s mouth forming words.

‘Look,’ he shouted above the diminishing clatter. ‘Let’s go have brunch at the Campus and then go for a walk on the Palisades.’

‘You nut Jimmy what’s brunch?’

‘You’ll eat breakfast and I’ll eat lunch.’

‘It’ll be a scream.’ Whooping with laughter she put her arm in his. Her silvernet bag knocked against his elbow as they walked.

‘And what about Cassie, the mysterious Cassandra?’

‘You mustn’t laugh at her, she’s a peach… If only she wouldn’t keep that horrid little white poodle. She keeps it in her room and it never gets any exercise and it smells something terrible. She has that little room next to mine… Then she’s got a steady…’ Ruth giggled. ‘He’s worse than the poodle. They’re engaged and he borrows all her money away from her. For Heaven’s sake dont tell anybody.’

‘I don’t know anybody to tell.’

‘Then there’s Mrs Sunderland…’

‘Oh yes I got a glimpse of her going into the bathroom - an old lady in a wadded dressing gown with a pink boudoir cap on.’

‘Jimmy you shock me… She keeps losing her false teeth,’ began Ruth; an L train drowned out the rest. The restaurant door closing behind them choked off the roar of wheels on rails.

An orchestra was playing When It’s Appleblossom Time in Normandee. The place was full of smokewrithing slants of sunlight, paper festoons, signs announcing LOBSTERS ARRIVE DAILY, EAT CLAMS NOW, TRY OUR DELICIOUS FRENCH STYLE STEAMED MUSSLES (Recommended by the Department of Agriculture). They sat down under a redlettered placard BEEFSTEAK PARTIES UPSTAIRS and Ruth made a pass at him with a breadstick. ‘Jimmy do you think it’d be immoral to eat scallops for breakfast? But first I’ve got to have coffee coffee coffee…’

‘I’m going to eat a small steak and onions.’

‘Not if you’re intending to spend the afternoon with me, Mr Herf.’

‘Oh all right. Ruth I lay my onions at your feet.’

‘That doesn’t mean I’m going to let you kiss me.’

‘What… on the Palisades?’ Ruth’s giggle broke into a whoop of laughter. Jimmy blushed crimson. ‘I never axed you maam, he sayed.’

Sunlight dripped in her face through the little holes in the brim of her straw hat. She was walking with brisk steps too short on account of her narrow skirt; through the thin china silk the sunlight tingled like a hand stroking her back. In the heavy heat streets, stores, people in Sunday clothes, strawhats, sunshades, surfacecars, taxis, broke and crinkled brightly about her grazing her with sharp cutting glints as if she were walking through piles of metalshavings. She was groping continually through a tangle of gritty sawedged brittle noise.

At Lincoln Square a girl rode slowly through the traffic on a white horse; chestnut hair hung down in even faky waves over the horse’s chalky rump and over the giltedged saddlecloth where in green letters pointed with crimson, read DANDERINE. She had on a green Dolly Varden hat with a crimson plume; one hand in a white gauntlet nonchalantly jiggled at the reins, in the other wabbled a goldknobbed riding crop.

Ellen watched her pass; then she followed a smudge of green through a cross-street to the Park. A smell of trampled sunsinged grass came from boys playing baseball. All the shady benches were full of people. When she crossed the curving automobile road her sharp French heels sank into the asphalt. Two sailors were sprawling on a bench in the sun; one of them popped his lips as she passed, she could feel their seagreedy eyes cling stickily to her neck, her thighs, her ankles. She tried to keep her hips from swaying so much as she walked. The leaves were shriveled on the saplings along the path. South and east sunnyfaced buildings hemmed in the Park, to the west they were violet with shadow. Everything was itching sweaty dusty constrained by policemen and Sunday clothes. Why hadn’t she taken the L? She was looking in the black eyes of a young man in a straw hat who was drawing up a red Stutz roadster to the curb. His eyes twinkled in hers, he jerked back his head smiling an upsidedown smile, pursing his lips so that they seemed to brush her cheek. He pulled the lever of the brake and opened the door with the other hand. She snapped her eyes away and walked on with her chin up. Two pigeons with metalgreen necks and feet of coral waddled out of her way. An old man was coaxing a squirrel to fish for peanuts in a paper bag.

All in green on a white stallion rode the Lady of the Lost Battalion… Green, green, danderine… Godiva in the haughty mantle of her hair…

General Sherman in gold interrupted her. She stopped a second to look at the Plaza that gleamed white as motherofpearl… Yes this is Elaine Oglethorpe’s apartment… She climbed up onto a Washington Square bus. Sunday afternoon Fifth Avenue filed by rosily dustily jerkily. On the shady side there was an occasional man in a top hat and frock coat. Sunshades, summer dresses, straw hats were bright in the sun that glinted in squares on the upper windows of houses, lay in bright slivers on the hard paint of limousines and taxicabs. It smelled of gasoline and asphalt, of spearmint and talcumpowder and perfume from the couples that jiggled closer and closer together on the seats of the bus. In an occasional storewindow, paintings, maroon draperies, varnished antique chairs behind plate glass. The St Regis. Sherry’s. The man beside her wore spats and lemon gloves, a floorwalker probably. As they passed St Patrick’s she caught a whiff of incense through the tall doors open into gloom. Delmonico’s. In front of her the young man’s arm was stealing round the narrow gray flannel back of the girl beside him.

‘Jez ole Joe had rotten luck, he had to marry her. He’s only nineteen.’

‘I suppose you would think it was hard luck.’

‘Myrtle I didn’t mean us.’

‘I bet you did. An anyways have you ever seen the girl?’

‘I bet it aint his.’

‘What?’

‘The kid.’

‘Billy how dreadfully you do talk.’

Fortysecond Street. Union League Club. ‘It was a most amusing gathering… most amusing… Everybody was there. For once the speeches were delightful, made me think of old times,’ croaked a cultivated voice behind her ear. The Waldorf. ‘Aint them flags swell Billy… That funny one is cause the Siamese ambassador is staying there. I read about it in the paper this morning.’

When thou and I my love shall come to part, Then shall I press an ineffable last kiss Upon your lips and go… heart, start, who art… Bliss, this, miss… When thou… When you and I my love…

Eighth Street. She got down from the bus and went into the basement of the Brevoort. George sat waiting with his back to the door snapping and unsnapping the lock of his briefcase. ‘Well Elaine it’s about time you turned up… There aren’t many people I’d sit waiting three quarters of an hour for.’

‘George you mustn’t scold me; I’ve been having the time of my life. I haven’t had such a good time in years. I’ve had the whole day all to myself and I walked all the way down from 105th Street to Fiftyninth through the Park. It was full of the most comical people.’

‘You must be tired.’ His lean face where the bright eyes were caught in a web of fine wrinkles kept pressing forward into hers like the prow of a steamship.

‘I suppose you’ve been at the office all day George.’

‘Yes I’ve been digging out some cases. I cant rely on anyone else to do even routine work thoroughly, so I have to do it myself.’

‘Do you know I had it all decided you’d say that.’

‘What?’

‘About waiting three quarters of an hour.’

‘Oh you know altogether too much Elaine… Have some pastries with your tea?’

‘Oh but I don’t know anything about anything, that’s the trouble… I think I’ll take lemon please.’

Glasses clinked about them; through blue cigarettesmoke faces hats beards wagged, repeated greenish in the mirrors,

‘But my de-e-ar it’s always the same old complex. It may be true of men but it says nothing in regard to women,’ droned a woman’s voice from the next table… ‘Your feminism rises into an insuperable barrier,’ trailed a man’s husky meticulous tones. ‘What if I am an egoist? God knows I’ve suffered for it.’ ‘Fire that purifies, Charley…’ George was speaking, trying to catch her eye. ‘How’s the famous Jojo?’

‘Oh let’s not talk about him.’

‘The less said about him the better eh?’

‘Now George I wont have you sneer at Jojo, for better or worse he is my husband, till divorce do us part… No I wont have you laugh. You’re too crude and simple to understand him anyway. Jojo’s a very complicated rather tragic person.’

‘For God’s sake don’t let’s talk about husbands and wives. The important thing, little Elaine, is that you and I are sitting here together without anyone to bother us… Look when are we going to see each other again, really see each other, really…’

‘We’re not going to be too real about this, are we George?’ She laughed softly into her cup.

‘Oh but I have so many things to say to you. I want to ask you so many things.’

She looked at him laughing, balancing a small cherry tartlet that had one bite out of it between a pink squaretipped finger and thumb. ‘Is that the way you act when you’ve got some miserable sinner on the witnessbox? I thought it was more like: Where were you on the night of February thirtyfirst?’

‘But I’m dead serious, that’s what you cant understand, or wont.’

A young man stood at the table, swaying a little, looking down at them. ‘Hello Stan, where the dickens did you come from?’ Baldwin looked up at him without smiling. ‘Look Mr Baldwin I know it’s awful rude, but may I sit down at your table a second. There’s somebody looking for me who I just cant meet. O God that mirror! Still they’d never look for me if they saw you.’

‘Miss Oglethorpe this is Stanwood Emery, the son of the senior partner in our firm.’

‘Oh it’s so wonderful to meet you Miss Oglethorpe. I saw you last night, but you didn’t see me.’

‘Did you go to the show?’

‘I almost jumped over the foots I thought you were so wonderful.’

He had a ruddy brown skin, anxious eyes rather near the bridge of a sharp fragillycut nose, a big mouth never still, wavy brown hair that stood straight up. Ellen looked from one to the other inwardly giggling. They were all three stiffening in their chairs.

‘I saw the danderine lady this afternoon,’ she said. ‘She impressed me enormously. Just my idea of a great lady on a white horse.’

‘With rings on her finger and bells on her toes, And she shall make mischief wherever she goes.’ Stan rattled it off quickly under his breath.

‘Music, isn’t it?’ put in Ellen laughing. ‘I always say mischief.’

‘Well how’s college?’ asked Baldwin in a dry uncordial voice.

‘I guess it’s still there,’ said Stan blushing. ‘I wish they’d burn it down before I got back.’ He got to his feet. ‘You must excuse me Mr Baldwin… My intrusion was infernally rude.’ As he turned leaning towards Ellen she smelled his grainy whiskey breath. ‘Please forgive it, Miss Oglethorpe.’

She found herself holding out her hand; a dry skinny hand squeezed it hard. He strode out with swinging steps bumping into a waiter as he went.

‘I cant make out that infernal young puppy,’ burst out Baldwin. ‘Poor old Emery’s heartbroken about it. He’s darn clever and has a lot of personality and all that sort of thing, but all he does is drink and raise Cain… I guess all he needs is to go to work and get a sense of values. Too much money’s what’s the matter with most of those collegeboys… Oh but Elaine thank God we’re alone again. I have worked continuously all my life ever since I was fourteen. The time has come when I want to lay aside all that for a while. I want to live and travel and think and be happy. I cant stand the pace of downtown the way I used to. I want to learn to play, to ease off the tension… That’s where you come in.’

‘But I don’t want to be the nigger on anybody’s safetyvalve.’ She laughed and let the lashes fall over her eyes.

‘Let’s go out to the country somewhere this evening. I’ve been stifling in the office all day. I hate Sunday anyway.’

‘But my rehearsal.’

‘You could be sick. I’ll phone for a car.’

‘Golly there’s Jojo… Hello Jojo’; she waved her gloves above her head.

John Oglethorpe, his face powdered, his mouth arranged in a careful smile above his standup collar, advanced between the crowded tables, holding out his hand tightly squeezed into buff gloves with black stripes. ‘Heow deo you deo, my deah, this is indeed a surprise and pleajah.’

‘You know each other, don’t you? This is Mr Baldwin.’

‘Forgive me if I intrude… er… upon a tête à tête.’

‘Nothing of the sort, sit down and we’ll all have a highball… I was just dying to see you really Jojo… By the way if you havent anything else to do this evening you might slip in down front for a few minutes. I want to know what you think about my reading of the part…’

‘Certainly my deah, nothing could give me more pleajah.’

His whole body tense George Baldwin leaned back with his hand clasped behind the back of his chair. ‘Waiter…’ He broke his words off sharp like metal breaking. ‘Three Scotch highballs at once please.’

Oglethorpe rested his chin on the silver ball of his cane. ‘Confidence, Mr Baldwin,’ he began, ‘confidence between husband and wife is a very beautiful thing. Space and time have no effect on it. Were one of us to go to China for a thousand years it would not change our affection one tittle.’

‘You see George, what’s the matter with Jojo is that he read too much Shakespeare in his youth… But I’ve got to go or Merton will be bawling me out again… Talk about industrial slavery. Jojo tell him about Equity.’

Baldwin got to his feet. There was a slight flush on his cheekbones. ‘Wont you let me take you up to the theater,’ he said through clenched teeth.

‘I never let anyone take me anywhere… And Jojo you must stay sober to see me act.’

Fifth Avenue was pink and white under pink and white clouds in a fluttering wind that was fresh after the cloying talk and choke of tobaccosmoke and cocktails. She waved the taxistarter off merrily and smiled at him. Then she found a pair of anxious eyes looking into hers seriously out of a higharched brown face.

‘I waited round to see you come out. Cant I take you somewhere? I’ve got my Ford round the corner… Please.’

‘But I’m just going up to the theater. I’ve got a rehearsal.’

‘All right do let me take you there.’

She began putting a glove on thoughtfully. ‘All right, but it’s an awful imposition on you.’

‘That’s fine. It’s right round here… It was awfully rude of me to butt in that way, wasn’t it? But that’s another story… Anyway I’ve met you. The Ford’s name is Dingo, but that’s another story too…’

‘Still it’s nice to meet somebody humanly young. There’s nobody humanly young round New York.’

His face was scarlet when he leaned to crank the car. ‘Oh I’m too damn young.’

The motor sputtered, started with a roar. He jumped round and cut off the gas with a long hand. ‘We’ll probably get arrested; my muffler’s loose and liable to drop off.’

At Thirtyfourth Street they passed a girl riding slowly through the traffic on a white horse; chestnut hair hung down in even faky waves over the horse’s chalky rump and over the giltedged saddlecloth where in green letters pointed with crimson read DANDERINE.

‘Rings on her fingers,’ chanted Stan pressing his buzzer, ‘And bells on her toes, And she shall cure dandruff wherever it grows.’

2 Longlegged Jack of the Isthmus

Noon on Union Square. Selling out. Must vacate. WE HAVE MADE A TERRIBLE MISTAKE. Kneeling on the dusty asphalt little boys shine shoes lowshoes tans buttonshoes oxfords. The sun shines like a dandelion on the toe of each new-shined shoe. Right this way buddy, mister miss maam at the back of the store our new line of fancy tweeds highest value lowest price… Gents, misses, ladies, cutrate… WE HAVE MADE A TERRIBLE MISTAKE. Must vacate.

Noon sunlight spirals dimly into the chopsuey joint. Muted music spirals Hindustan. He eats fooyong, she eats chowmein. They dance with their mouths full, slim blue jumper squeezed to black slick suit, peroxide curls against black slick hair.

Down Fourteenth Street, Glory Glory comes the Army, striding lasses, Glory Glory four abreast, the rotund shining, navy blue, Salvation Army band.

Highest value, lowest price. Must vacate. WE HAVE MADE A TERRIBLE MISTAKE. Must vacate.

From Liverpool, British steamer Raleigh, Captain Kettlewell; 933 bales, 881 boxes, 10 baskets, 8 packages fabrics: 57 boxes, 89 bales, 18 baskets cotton thread: 156 bales felt: 4 bales asbestos: 100 sacks spools…

Joe Harland stopped typing and looked up at the ceiling. The tips of his fingers were sore. The office smelled stalely of paste and manifests and men in shirtsleeves. Through the open window he could see a piece of the dun wall of an airshaft and a man with a green eyeshade staring vacantly out of a window. The towheaded officeboy set a note on the corner of his desk: Mr Pollock will see you at 5:10. A hard lump caught in his throat; he’s going to fire me. His fingers started tapping again:

From Glasgow, Dutch steamer Delft, Captain Tromp; 200 bales, 123 boxes, 14 kegs…

Joe Harland roamed about the Battery till he found an empty seat on a bench, then he let himself flop into it. The sun was drowning in tumultuous saffron steam behind Jersey. Well that’s over. He sat a long while staring at the sunset like at a picture in a dentist’s waiting room. Great whorls of smoke from a passing tug curled up black and scarlet against it. He sat staring at the sunset, waiting. That’s eighteen dollars and fifty cents I had before, less six dollars for the room, one dollar and eighty-four cents for laundry, and four dollars and fifty cents I owe Charley, makes seven dollars and eighty-four cents, eleven dollars and eighty four cents, twelve dollars and thirty-four cents from eighteen dollars and fifty cents leaves me six dollars and sixteen cents, three days to find another job if I go without drinks. O God wont my luck ever turn; used to have good enough luck in the old days. His knees were trembling, there was a sick burning in the pit of his stomach.

A fine mess you’ve made of your life Joseph Harland. Forty-five and no friends and not a cent to bless yourself with.

The sail of a catboat was a crimson triangle when it luffed a few feet from the concrete walk. A young man and a young girl ducked together as the slender boom swung across. They both were bronzed with the sun and had yellow weather bleached hair. Joe Harland gnawed his lip to keep back the tears as the catboat shrank into the ruddy murk of the bay. By God I need a drink.

‘Aint it a croime? Aint it a croime?’ The man in the seat to the left of him began to say over and over again. Joe Harland turned his head; the man had a red puckered face and silver hair. He held the dramatic section of the paper taut between two grimy flippers. ‘Them young actresses all dressed naked like that… Why can’t they let you alone.’

‘Dont you like to see their pictures in the papers?’

‘Why cant they let you alone I say… If you aint got no work and you aint got no money, what’s the good of em I say?’

‘Well lots of people like to see their pictures in the paper. Used to myself in the old days.’

‘Used to be work in the old days… You aint got no job now?’ he growled savagely. Joe Harland shook his head. ‘Well what the hell? They ought to leave you alone oughtn’t they? Wont be no jobs till snow shoveling begins.’

‘What’ll you do till then?’

The old man didnt answer. He bent over the paper again screwing up his eyes and muttering. ‘All dressed naked, it’s a croime I’m tellin yez.’

Joe Harland got to his feet and walked away.

It was almost dark; his knees were stiff from sitting still so long. As he walked wearily he could feel his potbelly cramped by his tight belt. Poor old warhorse you need a couple of drinks to think about things. A mottled beery smell came out through swinging doors. Inside the barkeep’s face was like a russet apple on a snug mahogany shelf.

‘Gimme a shot of rye.’ The whiskey stung his throat hot and fragrant. Makes a man of me that does. Without drinking the chaser he walked over to the free lunch and ate a ham sandwich and an olive. ‘Let’s have another rye Charley. That’s the stuff to make a man of you. I been laying off it too much, that’s what’s the matter with me. You wouldnt think it to look at me now, would you friend, but they used to call me the Wizard of Wall Street which is only another illustration of the peculiar predominance of luck in human affairs… Yes sir with pleasure. Well, here’s health and long life and to hell with the jinx… Hah makes a man of you… Well I suppose there’s not one of you gentlemen here who hasnt at some time or other taken a plunger, and how many of you hasnt come back sadder and wiser. Another illustration of the peculiar predominance of luck in human affairs. But not so with me; gentlemen for ten years I played the market, for ten years I didn’t have a ticker ribbon out of my hand day or night, and in ten years I only took a cropper three times, till the last time. Gentlemen I’m going to tell you a secret. I’m going to tell you a very important secret… Charley give these very good friends of mine another round, my treat, and have a nip yourself… My, that tickles her in the right place… Gentlemen just another illustration of the peculiar predominance of luck in human affairs. Gentlemen the secret of my luck… this is exact I assure you; you can verify it yourselves in newspaper articles, magazines, speeches, lectures delivered in those days; a man, and a dirty blackguard he turned out to be eventually, even wrote a detective story about me called the Secret of Success, which you can find in the New York Public Library if you care to look the matter up… The secret of my success was… and when you hear it you’ll laugh among yourselves and say Joe Harland’s drunk, Joe Harland’s an old fool… Yes you will… For ten years I’m telling you I traded on margins, I bought outright, I covered on stocks I’d never even heard the name of and every time I cleaned up. I piled up money. I had four banks in the palm of my hand. I began eating my way into sugar and gutta percha, but in that I was before my time… But you’re getting nervous to know my secret, you think you could use it… Well you couldnt… It was a blue silk crocheted necktie that my mother made for me when I was a little boy… Dont you laugh, God damn you… No I’m not starting anything. Just another illustration of the peculiar predominance of luck. The day I chipped in with another fellow to spread a thousand dollars over some Louisville and Nashville on margin I wore that necktie. Soared twentyfive points in twentyfive minutes. That was the beginning. Then gradually I began to notice that the times I didn’t wear that necktie were the times I lost money. It got so old and ragged I tried carrying it in my pocket. Didnt do any good. I had to wear it, do you understand?… The rest is the old old story gentlemen… There was a girl, God damn her and I loved her. I wanted to show her that there was nothing in the world I wouldnt do for her so I gave it to her. I pretended it was a joke and laughed it off, ha ha ha. She said, Why it’s no good, it’s all worn out, and she threw it in the fire… Only another illustration… Friend you wouldn’t set me up to another drink would you? I find myself unexpectedly out of funds this afternoon… I thank you sir . . Ah that puts ginger in you again.’

In the crammed subway car the messenger boy was pressed up against the back of a tall blond woman who smelled of Mary Garden. Elbows, packages, shoulders, buttocks, jiggled closer with every lurch of the screeching express. His sweaty Western Union cap was knocked onto the side of his head. If I could have a dame like dat, a dame like dat’d be wort havin de train stalled, de lights go out, de train wrecked. I could have her if I had de noive an de jack. As the train slowed up she fell against him, he closed his eyes, didnt breathe, his nose was mashed against her neck. The train stopped. He was carried in a rush of people out the door.

Dizzy he staggered up into the air and the blinking blocks of lights. Upper Broadway was full of people. Sailors lounged in twos and threes at the corner of Ninetysixth. He ate a ham and a leberwurst sandwich in a delicatessen store. The woman behind the counter had buttercolored hair like the girl in the subway but she was fatter and older. Still chewing the crust of the last sandwich he went up in the elevator to the Japanese Garden. He sat thinking a while with the flicker of the screen in his eyes. Jeze dey’ll tink it funny to see a messengerboy up here in dis suit. I better get de hell outa here. I’ll go deliver my telegrams.

He tightened his belt as he walked down the stairs. Then he slouched up Broadway to 105th Street and east towards Columbus Avenue, noting doors, fire escapes, windows, cornices, carefully as he went. Dis is de joint. The only lights were on the second floor. He rang the second floor bell. The doorcatch clicked. He ran up the stairs. A woman with weedy hair and a face red from leaning over the stove poked her head out.

‘Telegram for Santiono.’

‘No such name here.’

‘Sorry maam I musta rung de wrong bell.’

Door slammed in his nose. His sallow sagging face tightened up all of a sudden. He ran lightly on tiptoe up the stairs to the top landing then up the little ladder to a trapdoor. The bolt ground as he slid it back. He caught in his breath. Once on the cindergritty roof he let the trapdoor back softly into place. Chimneys stood up in alert ranks all about him, black against the glare from the streets. Crouching he stepped gingerly to the rear edge of the house, let himself down from the gutter to the fire escape. His foot grazed a flowerpot as he landed. Everything dark. Crawled through a window into a stuffy womansmelling room, slid a hand under the pillow of an unmade bed, along a bureau, spilled some facepowder, in tiny jerks pulled open the drawer, a watch, ran a pin into his finger, a brooch, something that crinkled in the back corner; bills, a roll of bills. Getaway, no chances tonight. Down the fire escape to the next floor. No light. Another window open. Takin candy from a baby. Same room, smelling of dogs and incense, some kind of dope. He could see himself faintly, fumbling, in the glass of the bureau, put his hand into a pot of cold cream, wiped it off on his pants. Hell. Something fluffysoft shot with a yell from under his feet. He stood trembling in the middle of the narrow room. The little dog was yapping loud in a corner.

The room swung into light. A girl stood in the open door, pointing a revolver at him. There was a man behind her.

‘What are you doing? Why it’s a Western Union boy…’ The light was a coppery tangle about her hair, picked out her body under the red silk kimono. The young man was wiry and brown in his unbuttoned shirt. ‘Well what are you doing in chat room?’

‘Please maam it was hunger brought me to it, hunger an my poor ole muder starvin.’

‘Isnt that wonderful Stan? He’s a burglar.’ She brandished the revolver. ‘Come on out in the hall.’

‘Yes miss anythin you say miss, but dont give me up to de bulls. Tink o de ole muder starvin her heart out.’

‘All right but if you took anything you must give it back.’

‘Honest I didn’t have a chanct.’

Stan flopped into a chair laughing and laughing. ‘Ellie you take the cake… Wouldnt a thought you could do it.’

‘Well didnt I play this scene in stock all last summer?… Give up your gun.’

‘No miss I wouldn’t carry no gun.’

‘Well I dont believe you but I guess I’ll let you go.’

‘Gawd bless you miss.’

‘But you must make some money as a messengerboy.’

‘I was fired last week miss, it’s only hunger made me take to it.’

Stan got to his feet. ‘Let’s give him a dollar an tell him to get the hell out of here.’

When he was outside the door she held out the dollarbill to him.

‘Jez you’re white,’ he said choking. He grabbed the hand with the bill in it and kissed it; leaning over her hand kissing it wetly he caught a glimpse of her body under the arm in the drooping red silk sleeve. As he walked, still trembling, down the stairs, he looked back and saw the man and the girl standing side by side with their arms around each other watching him. His eyes were full of tears. He stuffed the dollarbill into his pocket.

Kid if you keep on bein a softie about women you’re goin to find yourself in dat lil summer hotel up de river… Pretty soft though. Whistling under his breath he walked to the L and took an uptown train. Now and then he put his hand over his back pocket to feel the roll of bills. He ran up to the third floor of an apartmenthouse that smelled of fried fish and coal gas, and rang three times at a grimy glass door. After a pause he knocked softly.

‘Zat you Moike?’ came faintly the whine of a woman’s voice.

‘No it’s Nicky Schatz.’

A sharpfaced woman with henna hair opened the door. She had on a fur coat over frilly lace underclothes.

‘Howsa boy?’

‘Jeze a swell dame caught me when I was tidying up a little job and whatjer tink she done?’ He followed the woman, talking excitedly, into a dining room with peeling walls. On the table were used glasses and a bottle of Green River whiskey. ‘She gave me a dollar an tole me to be a good little boy.’

‘The hell she did?’

‘Here’s a watch.’

‘It’s an Ingersoll, I dont call ‘at a watch.’

‘Well set yer lamps on dis.’ He pulled out the roll of bills. ‘Aint dat a wad o lettuce?… Got in himmel, dey’s tousands.’

‘Lemme see.’ She grabbed the bills out of his hand, her eyes popping. ‘Hay ye’re cookoo kid.’ She threw the roll on the floor and wrung her hands with a swaying Jewish gesture. ‘Oyoy it’s stage money. It’s stage money ye simple saphead, you goddam…’

Giggling they sat side by side on the edge of the bed. Through the stuffy smell of the room full of little silky bits of clothing falling off chairs a fading freshness came from a bunch of yellow roses on the bureau. Their arms tightened round each other’s shoulders; suddenly he wrenched himself away and leaned over her to kiss her mouth. ‘Some burglar,’ he said breathlessly.

‘Stan…’

‘Ellie.’

‘I thought it might be Jojo;’ she managed to force a whisper through a tight throat. ‘It’ll be just like him to come sneaking around.’

‘Ellie I don’t understand how you can live with him among all these people. You’re so lovely. I just dont see you in all this.’

‘It was easy enough before I met you… And honestly Jojo’s all right. He’s just a peculiar very unhappy person.’

‘But you’re out of another world old kid… You ought to live on top of the Woolworth Building in an apartment made of cutglass and cherry blossoms.’

‘Stan your back’s brown all the way down.’

‘That’s swimming.’

‘So soon?’

‘I guess most of it’s left over from last summer.’

‘You’re the fortunate youth all right. I never learned how to swim properly.’

‘I’ll teach you… Look next Sunday bright and early we’ll hop into Dingo and go down to Long Beach. Way down at the end there’s never anybody… You dont even have to wear a bathingsuit.’

‘I like the way you’re so lean and hard Stan… Jojo’s white and flabby almost like a woman.’

‘For crissake don’t talk about him now.’

Stan stood with his legs apart buttoning his shirt. ‘Look Ellie let’s beat it out an have a drink… God I’d hate to run into somebody now an have to talk lies to ’em… I bet I’d crown ’em with a chair.’

‘We’ve got time. Nobody ever comes home here before twelve… I’m just here myself because I’ve got a sick headache.’

‘Ellie, d’you like your sick headache?’

‘I’m crazy about it Stan.’

‘I guess that Western Union burglar knew that… Gosh… Burglary, adultery, sneaking down fireescapes, cattreading along gutters. Judas it’s a great life.’

Ellen gripped his hand hard as they came down the stairs stepping together. In front of the letterboxes in the shabby hallway he grabbed her suddenly by the shoulders and pressed her head back and kissed her. Hardly breathing they floated down the street toward Broadway. He had his hand under her arm, she squeezed it tight against her ribs with her elbow. Aloof, as if looking through thick glass into an aquarium, she watched faces, fruit in store-windows, cans of vegetables, jars of olives, redhotpokerplants in a florist’s, newspapers, electric signs drifting by. When they passed cross-streets a puff of air came in her face off the river. Sudden jetbright glances of eyes under straw hats, attitudes of chins, thin lips, pouting lips, Cupid’s bows, hungry shadow under cheekbones, faces of girls and young men nuzzled fluttering against her like moths as she walked with her stride even to his through the tingling yellow night.

Somewhere they sat down at a table. An orchestra throbbed. ‘No Stan I cant drink anything… You go ahead.’

‘But Ellie, arent you feeling swell like I am?’

‘Sweller… I just couldnt stand feeling any better… I couldnt keep my mind on a glass long enough to drink it.’ She winced under the brightness of his eyes.

Stan was bubbling drunk. ‘I wish earth had the body as fruit to eat,’ he kept repeating. Ellen was all the time twisting about bits of rubbery cold Welsh rabbit with her fork. She had started to drop with a lurching drop like a rollercoaster’s into shuddering pits of misery. In a square place in the middle of the floor four couples were dancing the tango. She got to her feet.

‘Stan I’m going home. I’ve got to get up early and rehearse all day. Call me up at twelve at the theater.’

He nodded and poured himself another highball. She stood behind his chair a second looking down at his long head of close ruffled hair. He was spouting verses softly to himself. ‘Saw the white implacable Aphrodite, damn fine, Saw the hair unbound and the feet unsandaled, Jiminy… Shine as fire of sunset on western waters. Saw the reluctant… goddam fine sapphics.’

Once out on Broadway again she felt very merry. She stood in the middle of the street waiting for the uptown car. An occasional taxi whizzed by her. From the river on the warm wind came the long moan of a steamboat whistle. In the pit inside her thousands of gnomes were building tall brittle glittering towers. The car swooped ringing along the rails, stopped. As she climbed in she remembered swooningly the smell of Stan’s body sweating in her arms. She let herself drop into a seat, biting her lips to keep from crying out. God it’s terrible to be in love. Opposite two men with chinless bluefish faces were talking hilariously, slapping fat knees.

‘I’ll tell yer Jim it’s Irene Castle that makes the hit wid me… To see her dance the onestep juss makes me hear angels hummin.’

‘Naw she’s too skinny.’

‘But she’s made the biggest hit ever been made on Broadway.’

Ellen got off the car and walked east along the desolate empty pavements of 105th Street. A fetor of mattresses and sleep seeped out from the blocks of narrow-windowed houses. Along the gutters garbagecans stank sourly. In the shadow of a doorway a man and girl swayed tightly clamped in each other’s arms. Saying good night. Ellen smiled happily. Greatest hit on Broadway. The words were an elevator carrying her up dizzily, up into some stately height where electric light signs crackled scarlet and gold and green, where were bright roofgardens that smelled of orchids, and the slow throb of a tango danced in a goldgreen dress with Stan while handclapping of millions beat in gusts like a hailstorm about them. Greatest hit on Broadway.

She was walking up the scaling white stairs. Before the door marked Sunderland a feeling of sick disgust suddenly choked her. She stood a long time her heart pounding with the key poised before the lock. Then with a jerk she pushed the key in the lock and opened the door.

‘Strange fish, Jimmy, strange fish.’ Herf and Ruth Prynne sat giggling over plates of paté in the innermost corner of a clattery lowceilinged restaurant. ‘All the ham actors in the world seem to eat here.’

‘All the ham actors in the world live up at Mrs Sunderland’s.’

‘What’s the latest news from the Balkans?’

‘Balkans is right…’

Beyond Ruth’s black straw hat with red poppies round the crown Jimmy looked at the packed tables where faces decomposed into a graygreen blur. Two sallow hawkfaced waiters elbowed their way through the seesawing chatter of talk. Ruth was looking at him with dilated laughing eyes while she bit at a stalk of celery.

‘Whee I feel so drunk,’ she was spluttering. ‘It went straight to my head… Isnt it terrible?’

‘Well what were these shocking goingson at 105th Street?’

‘O you missed it. It was a shriek… Everybody was out in the hall, Mrs Sunderland with her hair in curlpapers, and Cassie was crying and Tony Hunter was standing in his door in pink pyjamas…’

‘Who’s he?’

‘Just a juvenile… But Jimmy I must have told you about Tony Hunter. Peculiar poissons Jimmy, peculiar poissons.’

Jimmy felt himself blushing, he bent over his place. ‘Oh is that’s what’s his trouble?’ he said stiffly.

‘Now you’re shocked, Jimmy; admit that you’re shocked.’

‘No I’m not; go ahead, spill the dirt.’

‘Oh Jimmy you’re such a shriek… Well Cassie was sobbing and the little dog was barking, and the invisible Costello was yelling Police and fainting into the arms of an unknown man in a dress suit. And Jojo was brandishing a revolver, a little nickel one, may have been a waterpistol for all I know… The only person who looked in their right senses was Elaine Oglethorpe… You know the titianhaired vision that so impressed your infant mind.’

‘Honestly Ruth my infant mind wasnt as impressed as all that.’

‘Well at last the Ogle got tired of his big scene and cried out in ringing tones, Disarm me or I shall kill this woman. And Tony Hunter grabbed the pistol and took it into his room. Then Elaine Oglethorpe made a little bow as if she were taking a curtaincall, said Well goodnight everybody, and ducked into her room cool as a cucumber… Can you picture it?’ Ruth suddenly lowered her voice, ‘But everybody in the restaurant is listening to us… And really I think its very disgusting. But the worst is yet to come. After the Ogle had banged on the door a couple of times and not gotten any answer he went up to Tony and rolling his eyes like Forbes Robertson in Hamlet put his arm round him and said Tony can a broken man crave asylum in your room for the night… Honestly I was just so shocked.’

‘Is Oglethorpe that way too?’

Ruth nodded several times.

‘Then why did she marry him?’

‘Why that girl’d marry a trolleycar if she thought she could get anything by it.’

‘Ruth honestly I think you’ve got the whole thing sized up wrong.’

‘Jimmy you’re too innocent to live. But let me finish the tragic tale… After those two had disappeared and locked the door behind them the most awful powwow you’ve ever imagined went on in the hall. Of course Cassie had been having hysterics all along just to add to the excitement. When I came back from getting her some sweet spirits of ammonia in the bathroom I found the court in session. It was a shriek. Miss Costello wanted the Oglethorpes thrown out at dawn and said she’d leave if they didn’t and Mrs Sunderland kept moaning that in thirty years of theatrical experience she’d never seen a scene like that, and the man in the dress suit who was Benjamin Arden… you know he played a character part in Honeysuckle Jim… said he thought people like Tony Hunter ought to be in jail. When I went to bed it was still going on. Do you wonder that I slept late after all that and kept you waiting, poor child, an hour in the Times Drug Store?’

Joe Harland stood in his hall bedroom with his hands in his pockets staring at the picture of The Stag at Bay that hung crooked in the middle of the verdegris wall that hemmed in the shaky iron bed. His clawcold fingers moved restlessly in the bottoms of his trousers pockets. He was talking aloud in a low even voice: ‘Oh, it’s all luck you know, but that’s the last time I try the Merivales. Emily’d have given it to me if it hadn’t been for that damned old tightwad. Got a soft spot in her heart Emily has. But none of em seem to realize that these things aren’t always a man’s own fault. It’s luck that’s all it is, and Lord knows they used to eat out of my hand in the old days.’ His rising voice grated on his ears. He pressed his lips together. You’re getting batty old man. He stepped back and forth in the narrow space between the bed and the wall. Three steps. Three steps. He went to the washstand and drank out of the pitcher. The water tasted of rank wood and sloppails. He spat the last mouthful back. I need a good tenderloin steak not water. He pounded his clenched fists together. I got to do something. I got to do something.

He put on his overcoat to hide the rip in the seat of his trousers. The frayed sleeves tickled his wrists. The dark stairs creaked. He was so weak he kept grabbing the rail for fear of falling. The old woman pounced out of a door on him in the lower hall. The rat had squirmed sideways on her head as if trying to escape from under the thin gray pompadour.

‘Meester Harland how about you pay me tree veeks rent?’

‘I’m just on my way out to cash a check now, Mrs Budkowitz. You’ve been so kind about this little matter… And perhaps it will interest you to know that I have the promise, no I may say the certainty of a very good position beginning Monday.’

‘I vait tree veeks… I not vait any more.’

‘But my dear lady I assure you upon my honor as a gentleman…’

Mrs Budkowitz began to jerk her shoulders about. Her voice rose thin and wailing like the sound of a peanut wagon. ‘You pay me tat fifteen dollar or I rent te room to somebody else.’

‘I’ll pay you this very evening.’

‘Vat time?’

‘Six o’clock.’

‘Allright. Plis you give me key.’

‘But I cant do that. Suppose I was late?’

‘Tat’s vy I vant te key. I’m trough vit vaiting.’

‘All right take the key… I hope you understand that after this insulting behavior it will be impossible for me to remain longer under your roof.’

Mrs Budkowitz laughed hoarsely. ‘Allright ven you pay me fifteen dollar you can take avay your grip.’ He put the two keys tied together with string into her gray hand and slammed the door and strode down the street.

At the corner of Third Avenue he stopped and stood shivering in the hot afternoon sunlight, sweat running down behind his ears. He was too weak to swear. Jagged oblongs of harsh sound broke one after another over his head as an elevated past over. Trucks grated by along the avenue raising a dust that smelled of gasoline and trampled horsedung. The dead air stank of stores and lunchrooms. He began walking slowly uptown towards Fourteenth Street. At a corner a crinkly warm smell of cigars stopped him like a hand on his shoulder. He stood a while looking in the little shop watching the slim stained fingers of the cigarroller shuffle the brittle outside leaves of tobacco. Remembering Romeo and Juliet Arguelles Morales he sniffed deeply. The slick tearing of tinfoil, the careful slipping off of the band, the tiny ivory penknife for the end that slit delicately as flesh, the smell of the wax match, the long inhaling of bitter crinkled deep sweet smoke. And now sir about this little matter of the new Northern Pacific bond issue… He clenched his fists in the clammy pockets of his raincoat. Take my key would she the old harridan? I’ll show her, damn it. Joe Harland may be down and out but he’s got his pride yet.

He walked west along Fourteenth and without stopping to think and lose his nerve went down into a small basement stationery store, strode through unsteadily to the back, and stood swaying in the doorway of a little office where sat at a rolltop desk a blueeyed baldheaded fat man.

‘Hello Felsius,’ croaked Harland.

The fat man got to his feet bewildered. ‘God it aint Mr Harland is it?’

‘Joe Harland himself Felsius… er somewhat the worse for wear.’ A titter died in his throat.

‘Well I’ll be… Sit right down Mr Harland.’

‘Thank you Felsius… Felsius I’m down and out.’

‘It must be five years since I’ve seen you Mr Harland.’

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

‘Indeed it was Mr Harland.’

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

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

‘And how’s the wife and kids?’

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

‘That the one you named for me?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Now Morris you promised,’ she whined.

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

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

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

‘If only I wasn’t so goddam broke.’

‘I don’t care Morris.’

‘I do by God.’

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

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

‘You mean you were fired.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘What did he say?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘What Morris?’

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

‘But Morris they’ll all see us.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘It just me,’ came a tearful voice.

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

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

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

‘Aren’t men dweadful?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘But Morris evidently did.’

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

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

‘But you cant go like this.’

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

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

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

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

‘Pretty heavy, miss.’

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

‘Oh I kin carry heavier’n ’at.’

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

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

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

‘Well I am going away somewhere.’

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

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

‘Did he trow you out?’

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

‘My wife trun me out tree weeks ago.’

‘How was that?’

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

‘That’s a funny thing to do.’

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

‘Matrimony isnt much is it?’

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

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

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

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

3 Nine Days’ Wonder

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

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

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

It’s ebbtide on Wall Street, floodtide in the Bronx.

The sun’s gone down in Jersey.

‘Godamighty,’ shouted Phil Sandbourne and pounded with his fist on the desk, ‘I don’t think so… A man’s morals arent anybody’s business. It’s his work that counts.’

‘Well?’

‘Well I think Stanford White has done more for the city of New York than any other man living. Nobody knew there was such a thing as architecture before he came… And to have this Thaw shoot him down in cold blood and then get away with it… By gad if the people of this town had the spirit of guineapigs they’d –’

‘Phil you’re getting all excited over nothing.’ The other man took his cigar out of his mouth and leaned back in his swivel chair and yawned.

‘Oh hell I want a vacation. Golly it’ll be good to get out in those old Maine woods again.’

‘What with Jew lawyers and Irish judges…’ spluttered Phil.

‘Aw pull the chain, old man.’

‘A fine specimen of a public-spirited citizen you are Hartly.’

Hartly laughed and rubbed the palm of his hand over his bald head. ‘Oh that stuff’s all right in winter, but I cant go it in summer… Hell all I live for is three weeks’ vacation anyway. What do I care if all the architects in New York get bumped off as long as it dont raise the price of commutation to New Rochelle… Let’s go eat.’ As they went down in the elevator Phil went on talking: ‘The only other man I ever knew who was really a born in the bone architect was ole Specker, the feller I worked for when I first came north, a fine old Dane he was too. Poor devil died o cancer two years ago. Man, he was an architect. I got a set of plans and specifications home for what he called a communal building… Seventyfive stories high stepped back in terraces with a sort of hanging garden on every floor, hotels, theaters, Turkish baths, swimming pools, department stores, heating plant, refrigerating and market space all in the same buildin.’

‘Did he eat coke?’

‘No siree he didnt.’

They were walking east along Thirtyfourth Street, sparse of people in the sultry midday. ‘Gad,’ burst out Phil Sandbourne, suddenly. ‘The girls in this town get prettier every year. ‘Like these new fashions, do you?’

‘Sure. All I wish is that I was gettin younger every year instead of older.’

‘Yes about all us old fellers can do is watch em go past.’

‘That’s fortunate for us or we’d have our wives out after us with bloodhounds… Man when I think of those mighthavebeens!’

As they crossed Fifth Avenue Phil caught sight of a girl in a taxicab. From under the black brim of a little hat with a red cockade in it two gray eyes flash green black into his. He swallowed his breath. The traffic roars dwindled into distance. She shant take her eyes away. Two steps and open the door and sit beside her, beside her slenderness perched like a bird on the seat. Driver drive to beat hell. Her lips are pouting towards him, her eyes flutter gray caught birds. ‘Hay look out…’ A pouncing iron rumble crashes down on him from behind. Fifth Avenue spins in red blue purple spirals. O Kerist. ‘That’s all right, let me be. I’ll get up myself in a minute.’ ‘Move along there. Git back there.’ Braying voices, blue pillars of policemen. His back, his legs are all warm gummy with blood. Fifth Avenue throbs with loudening pain. A little bell jingle-jangling nearer. As they lift him into the ambulance Fifth Avenue shrieks to throttling agony and bursts. He cranes his neck to see her, weakly, like a terrapin on its back; didnt my eyes snap steel traps on her? He finds himself whimpering. She might have stayed to see if I was killed. The jinglejangling bell dwindles fainter, fainter into the night.

The burglaralarm across the street had rung on steadily. Jimmy’s sleep had been strung on it in hard knobs like beads on a string. Knocking woke him. He sat up in bed with a lurch and found Stan Emery, his face gray with dust, his hands in the pockets of a red leather coat, standing at the foot of the bed. He was laughing swaying back and forth on the balls of his feet.

‘Gosh what time is it?’ Jimmy sat up in bed digging his knuckles into his eyes. He yawned and looked about with bitter dislike, at the wallpaper the dead green of Poland Water bottles, at the split green shade that let in a long trickle of sunlight, at the marble fireplace blocked up by an enameled tin plate painted with scaly roses, at the frayed blue bathrobe on the foot of the bed, at the mashed cigarettebutts in the mauve glass ashtray.

Stan’s face was red and brown and laughing under the chalky mask of dust. ‘Eleven thirty,’ he was saying.

‘Let’s see that’s six hours and a half. I guess that’ll do. But Stan what the hell are you doing here?’

‘You haven’t got a little nip of liquor anywhere have you Herf? Dingo and I are extraordinarily thirsty. We came all the way from Boston and only stopped once for gas and water. I haven’t been to bed for two days. I want to see if I can last out the week.’

‘Kerist I wish I could last out the week in bed.’

‘What you need’s a job on a newspaper to keep you busy Herfy.’

‘What’s going to happen to you Stan…’ Jimmy twisted himself round so that he was sitting on the edge of the bed ‘… is that you’re going to wake up one morning and find yourself on a marble slab at the morgue.’

The bathroom smelled of other people’s toothpaste and of chloride disinfectant. The bathmat was wet and Jimmy folded it into a small square before he stepped gingerly out of his slippers. The cold water set the blood jolting through him. He ducked his head under and jumped out and stood shaking himself like a dog, the water streaming into his eyes and ears. Then he put on his bathrobe and lathered his face.

he hummed off key as he scraped his chin with the safetyrazor. Mr Grover I’m afraid I’m going to have to give up the job after next week. Yes I’m going abroad; I’m going to do foreign correspondent work for the A. P. To Mexico for the U. P. To Jericho more likely, Halifax Correspondent of the Mudturtle Gazette. It was Christmas in the harem and the eunuchs all were there.

He doused his face with listerine, bundled his toilet things into his wet towel and smarting ran back up a flight of greencarpeted cabbagy stairs and down the hall to his bedroom. Halfway he passed the landlady dumpy in a mob cap who stopped her carpet sweeper to give an icy look at his skinny bare legs under the blue bathrobe.

‘Good morning Mrs Maginnis.’

‘It’s goin to be powerful hot today, Mr Herf.’

‘I guess it is all right.’

Stan was lying on the bed reading La Revolte des Anges. ‘Darn it, I wish I knew some languages the way you do Herfy.’

‘Oh I dont know any French any more. I forget em so much quicker than I learn em.’

‘By the way I’m fired from college.’

‘How’s that?’

‘Dean told me he thought it advisable I shouldnt come back next year… felt that there were other fields of activity where my activities could be more actively active. You know the crap.’

‘That’s a darn shame.’

‘No it isnt; I’m tickled to death. I asked him why he hadnt fired me before if he felt that way. Father’ll be sore as a crab… but I’ve got enough cash on me not to go home for a week. I dont give a damn anyway. Honest havent you got any liquor?’

‘Now Stan how’s a poor wageslave like myself going to have a cellar on thirty dollars a week?’

‘This is a pretty lousy room… You ought to have been born a capitalist like me.’

‘Room’s not so bad… What drives me crazy is that paranoiac alarm across the street that rings all night.’

‘That’s a burglar alarm isn’t it?’

‘There cant be any burglars because the place is vacant. The wires must get crossed or something. I dont know when it stopped but it certainly drove me wild when I went to bed this morning.’

‘Now James Herf you dont mean me to infer that you come home sober every night?’

‘A man’d have to be deaf not to hear that damn thing, drunk or sober.’

‘Well in my capacity of bloated bondholder I want you to come out and eat lunch. Do you realize that you’ve been playing round with your toilet for exactly one hour by the clock?’

They went down the stairs that smelled of shavingsoap and then of brasspolish and then of bacon and then of singed hair and then of garbage and coalgas.

‘You’re damn lucky Herfy, never to have gone to college.’

‘Didnt I graduate from Columbia you big cheese, that’s more than you could do?’

The sunlight swooped tingling in Jimmy’s face when he opened the door.

‘That doesnt count.’

‘God I like sun,’ cried Jimmy, I wish it’d been real Colombia…’

‘Do you mean Hail Columbia?’

‘No I mean Bogota and the Orinoco and all that sort of thing.’

‘I knew a darn good feller went down to Bogota. Had to drink himself to death to escape dying of elephantiasis.’

‘I’d be willing to risk elephantiasis and bubonic plague and spotted fever to get out of this hole.’

‘City of orgies walks and joys…’

‘Orgies nutten, as we say at a hun’an toitytoird street… Do you realize that I’ve lived all my life in this goddam town except four years when I was little and that I was born here and that I’m likely to die here?… I’ve a great mind to join the navy and see the world.’

‘How do you like Dingo in her new coat of paint?’

‘Pretty nifty, looks like a regular Mercedes under the dust.’

‘I wanted to paint her red like a fire engine, but the garageman finally persuaded me to paint her blue like a cop… Do you mind going to Mouquin’s and having an absinthe cocktail.’

‘Absinthe for breakfast… Good Lord.’

They drove west along Twenty-third Street that shone with sheets of reflected light off windows, oblong glints off delivery wagons, figureeight-shaped flash of nickel fittings.

‘How’s Ruth, Jimmy?’

‘She’s all right. She hasnt got a job yet.’

‘Look there’s a Daimlier.’

Jimmy grunted vaguely. As they turned up Sixth Avenue a policeman stopped them.

‘Your cut out,’ he yelled.

‘I’m on my way to the garage to get it fixed. Muffler’s coming off.’

‘Better had… Get a ticket another time.’

‘Gee you get away with murder Stan… in everything,’ said Jimmy. ‘I never can get away with a thing even if I am three years older than you.’

‘It’s a gift.’

The restaurant smelled merrily of fried potatoes and cocktails and cigars and cocktails. It was hot and full of talking and sweaty faces.

‘But Stan dont roll your eyes romantically when you ask about Ruth and me… We’re just very good friends.’

‘Honestly I didnt mean anything, but I’m sorry to hear it all the same. I think it’s terrible.’

‘Ruth doesn’t care about anything but her acting. She’s so crazy to succeed, she cuts out everything else.’

‘Why the hell does everybody want to succeed? I’d like to meet somebody who wanted to fail. That’s the only sublime thing.’

‘It’s all right if you have a comfortable income.’

‘That’s all bunk… Golly this is some cocktail. Herfy I think you’re the only sensible person in this town. You have no ambitions.’

‘How do you know I havent?’

‘But what can you do with success when you get it? You cant eat it or drink it. Of course I understand that people who havent enough money to feed their faces and all that should scurry round and get it. But success…’

‘The trouble with me is I cant decide what I want most, so my motion is circular, helpless and confoundedly discouraging.’

‘Oh but God decided that for you. You know all the time, but you wont admit it to yourself.’

‘I imagine what I want most is to get out of this town, preferably first setting off a bomb under the Times Building.’

‘Well, why don’t you do it? It’s just one foot after another.’

‘But you have to know which direction to step.’

‘That’s the last thing that’s of any importance.’

‘Then there’s money.’

‘Why money’s the easiest thing in the world to get.’

‘For the eldest son of Emery and Emery.’

‘Now Herf it’s not fair to cast my father’s iniquities in my face. You know I hate that stuff as much as you do.’

‘I’m not blaming you Stan; you’re a damn lucky kid, that’s all. Of course I’m lucky too, a hell of a lot luckier than most. My mother’s leftover money supported me until I was twentytwo and I still have a few hundreds stowed away for that famous rainy day, and my uncle, curse his soul, gets me new jobs when I get fired.’

‘Baa baa black sheep.’

‘I guess I’m really afraid of my uncles and aunts… You ought to see my cousin James Merivale. Has done everything he was told all his life and flourished like a green bay tree… The perfect wise virgin.’

‘Ah guess youse one o dem dere foolish virgins.’

‘Stan you’re feeling your liquor, you’re beginning to talk nigger-talk.’

‘Baa baa.’ Stan put down his napkin and leaned back laughing in his throat.

The smell of absinthe sickly tingling grew up like the magician’s rosebush out of Jimmy’s glass. He sipped it wrinkling his nose. ‘As a moralist I protest,’ he said. ‘Whee it’s amazing.’

‘What I need is a whiskey and soda to settle those cocktails.’

‘I’ll watch you. I’m a working man. I must be able to tell between the news that’s fit and the news that’s not fit… God I dont want to start talking about that. It’s all so criminally silly… I’ll say that this cocktail sure does knock you for a loop.’

‘You neednt think you’re going to do anything else but drink this afternoon. There’s somebody I want to introduce you to.’

‘And I was going to sit down righteously and write an article.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Oh a dodaddle called Confessions of a Cub Reporter.’

‘Look is this Thursday?’

‘Yare.’

‘Then I know where she’ll be.’

‘I’m going to light out of it all,’ said Jimmy somberly, ‘and go to Mexico and make my fortune… I’m losing all the best part of my life rotting in New York.’

‘How’ll you make your fortune?’

‘Oil, gold, highway robbery, anything so long as it’s not newspaper work.’

‘Baa baa black sheep baa baa.’

‘You quit baaing at me.’

‘Let’s get the hell out of here and take Dingo to have her muffler fastened.’

Jimmy stood waiting in the door of the reeking garage. The dusty afternoon sunlight squirmed in bright worms of heat on his face and hands. Brownstone, redbrick, asphalt flickering with red and green letters of signs, with bits of paper in the gutter rotated in a slow haze about him. Two carwashers talking behind him:

‘Yep I was making good money until I went after that lousy broad.’

‘I’ll say she’s a goodlooker, Charley. I should worry… Dont make no difference after the first week.’

Stan came up behind him and ran him along the street by the shoulders. ‘Car wont be fixed until five o’clock. Let’s taxi… Hotel Lafayette,’ he shouted at the driver and slapped Jimmy on the knee. ‘Well Herfy old fossil, you know what the Governor of North Carolina said to the Governor of South Carolina.’

‘No.’

‘It’s a long time between drinks.’

‘Baa, baa,’ Stan was bleating under his breath as they stormed into the café. ‘Ellie here are the black sheep,’ he shouted laughing. His face froze suddenly stiff. Opposite Ellen at the table sat her husband, one eyebrow lifted very high and the other almost merging with the eyelashes. A teapot sat impudently between them.

‘Hello Stan, sit down,’ she said quietly. Then she continued smiling into Oglethorpe’s face. ‘Isnt that wonderful Jojo?’

‘Ellie this is Mr Herf,’ said Stan gruffly.

‘Oh I’m so glad to meet you. I used to hear about you up at Mrs Sunderland’s.’

They were silent. Oglethorpe was tapping on the table with his spoon. ‘Why heow deo you deo Mr Herf,’ he said with sudden unction. ‘Dont you remember how we met?’

‘By the way how’s everything up there Jojo?’

‘Just topping thanks. Cassahndrah’s beau has left her and there’s been the most appalling scandal about that Costello creature. It seems that she came home foxed the other night, to the ears my deah, and tried to take the taxi driver into her room with her, and the poor boy protesting all the time that all he wanted was his fare… It was appalling.’

Stan got stiffly to his feet and walked out.

The three of them sat without speaking. Jimmy tried to keep from fidgeting in his chair. He was about to get up, when something velvetsoft in her eyes stopped him.

‘Has Ruth got a job yet, Mr Herf?’ she asked.

‘No she hasnt.’

‘It’s the rottenest luck.’

‘Oh it’s a darn shame. I know she can act. The trouble is she has too much sense of humor to play up to managers and people.’

‘Oh the stage is a nasty dirty game, isn’t it Jojo?’

‘The nawstiest, my deah.’

Jimmy couldn’t keep his eyes off her; her small squarely shaped hands, her neck molded with a gold sheen between the great coil of coppery hair and the bright blue dress.

‘Well my deah…’ Oglethorpe got to his feet.

‘Jojo I’m going to sit here a little longer.’

Jimmy was staring at the thin triangles of patent leather that stuck out from Oglethorpe’s pink buff spats. Cant be feet in them. He stood up suddenly.

‘Now Mr Herf couldnt you keep me company for fifteen minutes? I’ve got to leave here at six and I forgot to bring a book and I cant walk in these shoes.’

Jimmy blushed and sat down again stammering: ‘Why of course I’d be delighted… Suppose we drink something.’

‘I’ll finish my tea, but why dont you have a gin fizz? I love to see people drink gin fizzes. It makes me feel that I’m in the tropics sitting in a jujube grove waiting for the riverboat to take us up some ridiculous melodramatic river all set about with fevertrees.’

‘Waiter I want a gin fizz please.’

Joe Harland had slumped down in his chair until his head rested on his arms. Between his grimestiff hands his eyes followed uneasily the lines in the marbletop table. The gutted lunchroom was silent under the sparse glower of two bulbs hanging over the counter where remained a few pies under a bellglass, and a man in a white coat nodding on a tall stool. Now and then the eyes in his gray doughy face flicked open and he grunted and looked about. At the last table over were the hunched shoulders of men asleep, faces crumpled like old newspapers pillowed on arms. Joe Harland sat up straight and yawned. A woman blobby under a raincoat with a face red and purplish streaked like rancid meat was asking for a cup of coffee at the counter. Carrying the mug carefully between her two hands she brought it over to the table and sat down opposite him. Joe Harland let his head down onto his arms again.

‘Hay yous how about a little soivice?’ The woman’s voice shrilled in Harland’s ears like the screech of chalk on a blackboard.

‘Well what d’ye want?’ snarled the man behind the counter. The woman started sobbing. ‘He asts me what I want… I aint used to bein talked to brutal.’

‘Well if there’s anythin you want you kin juss come an git it… Soivice at this toime o night!’

Harland could smell her whiskey breath as she sobbed. He raised his head and stared at her. She twisted her flabby mouth into a smile and bobbed her head towards him.

‘Mister I aint accustomed to bein treated brutal. If my husband was aloive he wouldn’t have the noive. Who’s the loikes o him to say what toime o night a lady ought to have soivice, the little shriveled up shrimp.’ She threw back her head and laughed so that her hat fell off backwards. ‘That’s what he is, a little shriveled up shrimp, insultin a lady with his toime o night.’

Some strands of gray hair with traces of henna at the tips had fallen down about her face. The man in the white coat walked over to the table.

‘Look here Mother McCree I’ll trow ye out o here if you raise any more distoirbance… What do you want?’

‘A nickel’s woirt o doughnuts,’ she sniveled with a sidelong leer at Harland.

Joe Harland shoved his face into the hollow of his arm again and tried to go to sleep. He heard the plate set down followed by her toothless nibbling and an occasional sucking noise when she drank the coffee. A new customer had come in and was talking across the counter in a low growling voice.

‘Mister, mister aint it terrible to want a drink?’ He raised his head again and found her eyes the blurred blue of watered milk looking into his. ‘What ye goin to do now darlin?’

‘God knows.’

‘Virgin an Saints it’d be noice to have a bed an a pretty lace shimmy and a noice feller loike you darlin… mister.’

‘Is that all?’

‘Oh mister if my poor husband was aloive, he wouldn’t let em treat me loike they do. I lost my husband on the General Slocum might ha been yesterday.’

‘He’s not so unlucky.’

‘But he doid in his sin without a priest, darlin. It’s terrible to die in yer sin…’

‘Oh hell I want to sleep.’

Her voice went on in a faint monotonous screech setting his teeth on edge. ‘The Saints has been agin me ever since I lost my husband on the General Slocum. I aint been an honest woman.’… She began to sob again. ‘The Virgin and Saints an Martyrs is agin me, everybody’s agin me… Oh wont somebody treat me noice.’

‘I want to sleep… Cant you shut up?’

She stooped and fumbled for her hat on the floor. She sat sobbing rubbing her swollen redgrimed knuckles into her eyes.

‘Oh mister dont ye want to treat me noice?’

Joe Harland got to his feet breathing hard. ‘Goddam you cant you shut up?’ His voice broke into a whine. ‘Isnt there anywhere you can get a little peace? There’s nowhere you can get any peace.’ He pulled his cap over his eyes, shoved his hands down into his pockets and shambled out of the lunchroom. Over Chatham Square the sky was brightening redviolet through the latticework of elevated tracks. The lights were two rows of bright brass knobs up the empty Bowery.

A policeman passed swinging his nightstick. Joe Harland felt the policeman’s eyes on him. He tried to walk fast and briskly as if he were going somewhere on business.

‘Well Miss Oglethorpe how do you like it?’

‘Like what?’

‘Oh you know… being a nine days’ wonder.’

‘Why I don’t know at all Mr Goldweiser.’

‘Women know everything but they wont let on.’

Ellen sits in a gown of nilegreen silk in a springy armchair at the end of a long room jingling with talk and twinkle of chandeliers and jewelry, dotted with the bright moving black of evening clothes and silveredged colors of women’s dresses. The curve of Harry Goldweiser’s nose merges directly into the curve of his bald forehead, his big rump bulges over the edges of a triangular gilt stool, his small brown eyes measure her face like antennae as he talks to her. A woman nearby smells of sandalwood. A woman with orange lips and chalk face under an orange turban passes talking to a man with a pointed beard. A hawkbeaked woman with crimson hair puts her hand on a man’s shoulder from behind. ‘Why how do you do, Miss Cruikshank; it’s surprising isn’t it how everybody in the world is always at the same place at the same time.’ Ellen sits in the armchair drowsily listening, coolness of powder on her face and arms, fatness of rouge on her lips, her body just bathed fresh as a violet under the silk dress, under the silk underclothes; she sits dreamily, drowsily listening. A sudden twinge of men’s voices knotting about her. She sits up cold white out of reach like a lighthouse. Men’s hands crawl like bugs on the unbreakable glass. Men’s looks blunder and flutter against it helpless as moths. But in deep pitblackness inside something clangs like a fire engine.

George Baldwin stood beside the breakfast table with a copy of the New York Times folded in his hand. ‘Now Cecily,’ he was saying ‘we must be sensible about these things.’

‘Cant you see that I’m trying to be sensible?’ she said in a jerking snivelly voice. He stood looking at her without sitting down rolling a corner of the paper between his finger and thumb. Mrs Baldwin was a tall woman with a mass of carefully curled chestnut hair piled on top of her head. She sat before the silver coffeeservice fingering the sugarbowl with mushroomwhite fingers that had very sharp pink nails.

‘George I cant stand it any more that’s all.’ She pressed her quaking lips hard together.

‘But my dear you exaggerate…’

‘How exaggerate?… It means our life has been a pack of lies.’

‘But Cecily we’re fond of each other.’

‘You married me for my social position, you know it… I was fool enough to fall in love with you. All right, It’s over.’

‘It’s not true. I really loved you. Dont you remember how terrible you thought it was you couldnt really love me?’

‘You brute to refer to that… Oh it’s horrible!’

The maid came in from the pantry with bacon and eggs on a tray. They sat silent looking at each other. The maid swished out of the room and closed the door. Mrs Baldwin put her forehead down on the edge of the table and began to cry. Baldwin sat staring at the headlines in the paper. ASSASSINATION OF ARCHDUKE WILL HAVE GRAVE CONSEQUENCES. AUSTRIAN ARMY MOBILIZED. He went over and put his hand on her crisp hair.

‘Poor old Cecily,’ he said.

‘Dont touch me.’

She ran out of the room with her handkerchief to her face. He sat down, helped himself to bacon and eggs and toast and began to eat; everything tasted like paper. He stopped eating to scribble a note on a scratchpad he kept in his breast pocket behind his handkerchief: See Collins vs. Arbuthnot, N.Y.S.C. Appel. Div.

The sound of a step in the hall outside caught his ear, the click of a latch. The elevator had just gone down. He ran four flights down the steps. Through the glass and wroughtiron doors of the vestibule downstairs he caught sight of her on the curb, standing tall and stiff, pulling on her gloves. He rushed out and took her by the hand just as a taxi drove up. Sweat beaded on his forehead and was prickly under his collar. He could see himself standing there with the napkin ridiculous in his hand and the colored doorman grinning and saying, ‘Good mornin, Mr Baldwin, looks like it going to be a fine day.’ Gripping her hand tight, he said in a low voice through his teeth:

‘Cecily there’s something I want to talk to you about. Wont you wait a minute and we’ll go downtown together?… Wait about five minutes please,’ he said to the taxidriver. We’ll be right down.’ Squeezing her wrist hard he walked back with her to the elevator. When they stood in the hall of their own apartment, she suddenly looked him straight in the face with dry blazing eyes.

‘Come in here Cecily’ he said gently. He closed their bedroom door and locked it. ‘Now lets talk this over quietly. Sit down dear.’ He put a chair behind her. She sat down suddenly stiffly like a marionette.

‘Now look here Cecily you have no right to talk the way you do about my friends. Mrs Oglethorpe is a friend of mine. We occasionally take tea together in some perfectly public place and that’s all. I would invite her up here but I’ve been afraid you would be rude to her… You cant go on giving away to your insane jealousy like this. I allow you complete liberty and trust you absolutely. I think I have the right to expect the same confidence from you… Cecily do be my sensible little girl again. You’ve been listening to what a lot of old hags fabricate out of whole cloth maliciously to make you miserable.’

‘She’s not the only one.’

‘Cecily I admit frankly there were times soon after we were married… when… But that’s all over years ago… And who’s fault was it?… Oh Cecily a woman like you cant understand the physical urgences of a man like me.’

‘Havent I done my best?’

‘My dear these things arent anybody’s fault… I dont blame you… If you’d really loved me then…’

‘What do you think I stay in this hell for except for you? Oh you’re such a brute.’ She sat dryeyed staring at her feet in their gray buckskin slippers, twisting and untwisting in her fingers the wet string of her handkerchief.

‘Look here Cecily a divorce would be very harmful to my situation downtown just at the moment, but if you really dont want to go on living with me I’ll see what I can arrange… But in any event you must have more confidence in me. You know I’m fond of you. And for God’s sake dont go to see anybody about it without consulting me. You dont want a scandal and headlines in the papers, do you?’

‘All right… leave me alone… I dont care about anything.’

‘All right… I’m pretty late. I’ll go on downtown in that taxi. You don’t want to come shopping or anything?’

She shook her head. He kissed her on the forehead, took his straw hat and stick in the hall and hurried out.

‘Oh I’m the most miserable woman,’ she groaned and got to her feet. Her head ached as if it were bound with hot wire. She went to the window and leaned out into the sunlight. Across Park Avenue the flameblue sky was barred with the red girder cage of a new building. Steam riveters rattled incessantly; now and then a donkey-engine whistled and there was a jingle of chains and a fresh girder soared crosswise in the air. Men in blue overalls moved about the scaffolding. Beyond to the northwest a shining head of clouds soared blooming compactly like a cauliflower. Oh if it would only rain. As the thought came to her there was a low growl of thunder above the din of building and of traffic. Oh if it would only rain.

Ellen had just hung a chintz curtain in the window to hide with its blotchy pattern of red and purple flowers the vista of desert backyards and brick flanks of downtown houses. In the middle of the bare room was a boxcouch cumbered with teacups, a copper chafingdish and percolator; the yellow hardwood floor was littered with snippings of chintz and curtainpins; books, dresses, bedlinen cascaded from a trunk in the corner; from a new mop in the fireplace exuded a smell of cedar oil. Ellen was leaning against the wall in a daffodilcolored kimono looking happily about the big shoebox-shaped room when the buzzer startled her. She pushed a rope of hair up off her forehead and pressed the button that worked the latch. There was a little knock on the door. A woman was standing in the dark of the hall.

‘Why Cassie I couldn’t make out who you were. Come in… What’s the matter?’

‘You are sure I’m not intwuding?’

‘Of course not.’ Ellen leaned to give her a little pecking kiss. Cassandra Wilkins was very pale and there was a nervous quiver about her eyelids. ‘You can give me some advice. I’m just getting my curtains up… Look do you think that purple goes all right with the gray wall? It looks kind of funny to me.’

‘I think it’s beautiful. What a beautiful woom. How happy you’re going to be here.’

‘Put that chafingdish down on the floor and sit down. I’ll make some tea. There’s a kind of bathroom kitchenette in the alcove there.’

‘You’re sure it wouldn’t be too much twouble?’

‘Of course not… But Cassie what’s the matter?’

‘Oh everything… I came down to tell you but I cant. I cant ever tell anybody.’

‘I’m so excited about this apartment. Imagine Cassie it’s the first place of my own I ever had in my life. Daddy wants me to live with him in Passaic, but I just felt I couldn’t.’

‘And what does Mr Oglethorpe… ? Oh but that’s impertinent of me… Do forgive me Elaine. I’m almost cwazy. I don’t know what I’m saying.’

‘Oh Jojo’s a dear. He’s even going to let me divorce him if I want to… Would you if you were me?’ Without waiting for an answer she disappeared between the folding doors. Cassie remained hunched up on the edge of the couch.

Ellen came back with a blue teapot in one hand and a pan of steaming water in the other. ‘Do you mind not having lemon or cream? There’s some sugar on the mantelpiece. These cups are clean because I just washed them. Dont you think they are pretty? Oh you cant imagine how wonderful and domestic it makes you feel to have a place all to yourself. I hate living in a hotel. Honestly this place makes me just so domestic… Of course the ridiculous thing is that I’ll probably have to give it up or sublet as soon as I’ve got it decently fixed up. Show’s going on the road in three weeks. I want to get out of it but Harry Goldweiser wont let me.’ Cassie was taking little sips of tea out of her spoon. She began to cry softly. ‘Why Cassie buck up, what’s the matter?’

‘Oh, you’re so lucky in everything Elaine and I’m so miserable.’

‘Why I always thought it was my jinx that got the beautyprize, but what is the matter?’

Cassie put down her cup and pushed her two clenched hands into her neck. ‘It’s just this,’ she said in a strangled voice… ‘I think I’m going to have a baby.’ She put her head down on her knees and sobbed.

‘Are you sure? Everybody’s always having scares.’

‘I wanted our love to be always pure and beautiful, but he said he’d never see me again if I didn’t… and I hate him.’ She shook the words out one by one between tearing sobs.

‘Why don’t you get married?’

‘I cant. I wont. It would interfere.’

‘How long since you knew?’

‘Oh it must have been ten days ago easily. I know it’s that… I dont want to have anything but my dancing.’ She stopped sobbing and began taking little sips of tea again.

Ellen walked back and forth in front of the fireplace. ‘Look here Cassie there’s no use getting all wrought up over things, is there? I know a woman who’ll help you… Do pull yourself together please.’

‘Oh I couldn’t, I couldn’t.’… The saucer slid off her knees and broke in two on the floor. ‘Tell me Elaine have you ever been through this?… Oh I’m so sowy. I’ll buy you another saucer Elaine.’ She got totteringly to her feet and put the cup and spoon on the mantelpiece.

‘Oh of course I have. When we were first married I had a terrible time…’

‘Oh Elaine isn’t it hideous all this? Life would be so beautiful and free and natural without it… I can feel the howor of it cweeping up on me, killing me.’

‘Things are rather like that,’ said Ellen gruffly.

Cassie was crying again. ‘Men are so bwutal and selfish.’

‘Have another cup of tea, Cassie.’

‘Oh I couldn’t. My dear I feel a deadly nausea… Oh I think I’m going to be sick.’

‘The bathroom is right through the folding doors and to the left.’

Ellen walked up and down the room with clenched teeth. I hate women. I hate women.

After a while Cassie came back into the room, her face greenish white, dabbing her forehead with a washrag.

‘Here lie down here you poor kid,’ said Ellen clearing a space on the couch. ‘… Now you’ll feel much better.’

‘Oh will you ever forgive me for causing all this twouble?’

‘Just lie still a minute and forget everything.’

‘Oh if I could only relax.’

Ellen’s hands were cold. She went to the window and looked out. A little boy in a cowboy suit was running about the yard waving an end of clothesline. He tripped and fell. Ellen could see his face puckered with tears as he got to his feet again. In the yard beyond a stumpy woman with black hair was hanging out clothes. Sparrows were chirping and fighting on the fence.

‘Elaine dear could you let me have a little powder? I’ve lost my vanity case.’

She turned back into the room. ‘I think… Yes there’s some on the mantelpiece… Do you feel better now Cassie?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Cassie in a trembly voice. ‘And have you got a lipstick?’

‘I’m awfully sorry… I’ve never worn any street makeup. I’ll have to soon enough if I keep on acting.’ She went into the alcove to take off her kimono, slipped on a plain green dress, coiled up her hair and pushed a small black hat down over it. ‘Let’s run along Cassie. I want to have something to eat at six… I hate bolting my dinner five minutes before a performance.’

‘Oh I’m so tewified… Pwomise you wont leave me alone.’

‘Oh she wouldnt do anything today… She’ll just look you over and maybe give you something to take… Let’s see, have I got my key?’

‘We’ll have to take a taxi. And my dear I’ve only got six dollars in the world.’

‘I’ll make daddy give me a hundred dollars to buy furniture. That’ll be all right.’

‘Elaine you’re the most angelic cweature in the world… You deserve every bit of your success.’

At the corner of Sixth Avenue they got into a taxi.

Cassie’s teeth were chattering. ‘Please let’s go another time. I’m too fwightened to go now.’

‘My dear child it’s the only thing to do.’

Joe Harland, puffing on his pipe, pulled to and bolted the wide quaking board gates. A last splash of garnetcolored sunlight was fading on the tall housewall across the excavation. Blue arms of cranes stood out dark against it. Harland’s pipe had gone out, he stood puffing at it with his back to the gate looking at the files of empty wheelbarrows, the piles of picks and shovels, the little shed for the donkeyengine and the steam drills that sat perched on a split rock like a mountaineer’s shack. It seemed to him peaceful in spite of the rasp of traffic from the street that seeped through the hoarding. He went into the leanto by the gate where the telephone was, sat down in the chair, knocked out, filled and lit his pipe and spread the newspaper out on his knees. CONTRACTORS PLAN LOCKOUT TO ANSWER BUILDERS’ STRIKE. He yawned and threw back his head. The light was too blue-dim to read. He sat a long time staring at the stub scarred toes of his boots. His mind was a fuzzy comfortable blank. Suddenly he saw himself in a dress-suit wearing a top hat with an orchid in his buttonhole. The Wizard of Wall Street looked at the lined red face and the gray hair under the mangy cap and the big hands with their grimy swollen knuckles and faded with a snicker. He remembered faintly the smell of a Corona-Corona as he reached into the pocket of the peajacket for a can of Prince Albert to refill his pipe. ‘What dif does it make I’d like to know?’ he said aloud. When he lit a match the night went suddenly inky all round. He blew out the match. His pipe was a tiny genial red volcano that made a discreet cluck each time he pulled on it. He smoked very slowly inhaling deep. The tall buildings all round were haloed with ruddy glare from streets and electriclight signs. Looking straight up through glimmering veils of reflected light he could see the blueblack sky and stars. The tobacco was sweet. He was very happy.

A glowing cigarend crossed the door of the shack. Harland grabbed his lantern and went out. He held the lantern up in the face of a blond young man with a thick nose and lips and a cigar in the side of his mouth.

‘How did you get in here?’

‘Side door was open.’

‘The hell it was? Who are you looking for?’

‘You the night watchman round here?’ Harland nodded. ‘Glad to meet yez.… Have a cigar. I jus wanted to have a little talk wid ye, see?… I’m organizer for Local 47, see? Let’s see your card.’

‘I’m not a union man.’

‘Well ye’re goin to be aint ye… Us guys of the buildin trades have got to stick together. We’re tryin to get every bloke from night watchmen to inspectors lined up to make a solid front against this here lockout sitooation.’

Harland lit his cigar. ‘Look here, bo, you’re wasting your breath on me. They’ll always need a watchman, strike or no strike… I’m an old man and I haven’t got much fight left in me. This is the first decent job I’ve had in five years and they’ll have to shoot me to get it away from me… All that stuff’s for kids like you. I’m out of it. You sure are wasting your breath if you’re going round trying to organize night watchmen.’

‘Say you don’t talk like you’d always been in this kind o woik.’

‘Well maybe I aint.’

The young man took off his hat and rubbed his hand over his forehead and up across his dense cropped hair. ‘Hell it’s warm work arguin… Swell night though aint it?’

‘Oh the night’s all right,’ said Harland.

‘Say my name’s O’Keefe, Joe O’Keefe… Gee I bet you could tell a guy a lot o things.’ He held out his hand.

‘My name’s Joe too… Harland… Twenty years ago that name meant something to people.’

‘Twenty years from now…’

‘Say you’re a funny fellow for a walking delegate… You take an old man’s advice before I run you off the lot, and quit it… It’s no game for a likely young feller who wants to make his way in the world.’

‘Times are changin you know… There’s big fellers back o this here strike, see? I was talkin over the sitooation with Assemblyman McNiel jus this afternoon in his office.’

‘But I’m telling you straight if there’s one thing that’ll queer you in this town it’s this labor stuff… You’ll remember someday that an old drunken bum told you that and it’ll be too late.’

‘Oh it was drink was it? That’s one thing I’m not afraid of. I don’t touch the stuff, except beer to be sociable.’

‘Look here bo the company detective’ll be makin his rounds soon. You’d better be making tracks.’

‘I ain’t ascared of any goddam company detective… Well so long I’ll come in to see you again someday.’

‘Close that door behind you.’

Joe Harland drew a little water from a tin container, settled himself in his chair and stretched his arms out and yawned. Eleven o’clock. They would just be getting out of the theaters, men in eveningclothes, girls in lowneck dresses; men were going home to their wives and mistresses; the city was going to bed. Taxis honked and rasped outside the hoarding, the sky shimmered with gold powder from electric signs. He dropped the butt of the cigar and crushed it on the floor with his heel. He shuddered and got to his feet, then paced slowly round the edge of the buildinglot swinging his lantern.

The light from the street yellowed faintly a big sign on which was a picture of a skyscraper, white with black windows against blue sky and white clouds. SEGAL AND HAYNES will erect on this site a modern uptodate TWENTYFOUR STORY OFFICE BUILDING open for occupancy January 1915 renting space still available inquire…

Jimmy Herf sat reading on a green couch under a bulb that lit up a corner of a wide bare room. He had come to the death of Olivier in Jean Christophe and read with tightening gullet. In his memory lingered the sound of the Rhine swirling, restlessly gnawing the foot of the garden of the house where Jean Christophe was born. Europe was a green park in his mind full of music and red flags and mobs marching. Occasionally the sound of a steamboat whistle from the river settled breathless snowysoft into the room. From the street came a rattle of taxis and the whining sound of streetcars.

There was a knock at the door. Jimmy got up, his eyes blurred and hot from reading.

‘Hello Stan, where the devil did you come from?’

‘Herfy I’m tight as a drum.’

‘That’s no novelty.’

‘I was just giving you the weather report.’

‘Well perhaps you can tell me why in this country nobody ever does anything. Nobody ever writes any music or starts any revolutions or falls in love. All anybody ever does is to get drunk and tell smutty stories. I think it’s disgusting…’

‘’Ear, ’ear… But speak for yourself. I’m going to stop drinking… No good drinking, liquor just gets monotonous… Say, got a bathtub?’

‘Of course there’s a bathtub. Whose apartment do you think this is, mine?’

‘Well whose is it Herfy?’

‘It belongs to Lester. I’m just caretaker while he’s abroad, the lucky dog.’ Stan started peeling off his clothes letting them drop in a pile about his feet. ‘Gee I’d like to go swimming… Why the hell do people live in cities?’

‘Why do I go on dragging out a miserable existence in this crazy epileptic town… that’s what I want to know.’

‘Lead on Horatius, to the baawth slave,’ bellowed Stan who stood on top of his pile of clothes, brown with tight rounded muscles, swaying a little from his drunkenness.

‘It’s right through that door.’ Jimmy pulled a towel out of the steamertrunk in the corner of the room, threw it after him and went back to reading.

Stan tumbled back into the room, dripping, talking through the towel. ‘What do you think, I forgot to take my hat off. And look Herfy, there’s something I want you to do for me. Do you mind?’

‘Of course not. What is it?’

‘Will you let me use your back room tonight, this room?’

‘Sure you can.’

‘I mean with somebody.’

‘Go as far as you like. You can bring the entire Winter Garden Chorus in here and nobody will see them. And there’s an emergency exit down the fire escape into the alley. I’ll go to bed and close my door so you can have this room and the bath all to yourselves.’

‘It’s a rotten imposition but somebody’s husband is on the rampage and we have to be very careful.’

‘Dont worry about the morning. I’ll sneak out early and you can have the place to yourselves.’

‘Well I’m off so long.’

Jimmy gathered up his book and went into his bedroom and undressed. His watch said fifteen past twelve. The night was sultry. When he had turned out the light he sat a long while on the edge of the bed. The faraway sounds of sirens from the river gave him gooseflesh. From the street he heard footsteps, the sound of men and women’s voices, low youthful laughs of people going home two by two. A phonograph was playing Secondhand Rose. He lay on his back on top of the sheet. There came on the air through the window a sourness of garbage, a smell of burnt gasoline and traffic and dusty pavements, a huddled stuffiness of pigeonhole rooms where men and women’s bodies writhed alone tortured by the night and the young summer. He lay with seared eyeballs staring at the ceiling, his body glowed in a brittle shivering agony like redhot metal.

A woman’s voice whispering eagerly woke him; someone was pushing open the door. ‘I wont see him. I wont see him. Jimmy for Heaven’s sake you go talk to him. I wont see him.’ Elaine Oglethorpe draped in a sheet walked into the room.

Jimmy tumbled out of bed. ‘What on earth?’

‘Isn’t there a closet or something in here… I will not talk to Jojo when he’s in that condition.’

Jimmy straightened his pyjamas. ‘There’s a closet at the head of the bed.’

‘Of course… Now Jimmy do be an angel, talk to him and make him go away.’

Jimmy walked dazedly into the outside room. ‘Slut, slut,’ was yelling a voice from the window. The lights were on. Stan, draped like an Indian in a gray and pinkstriped blanket was squatting in the middle of the two couches made up together into a vast bed. He was staring impassively at John Oglethorpe who leaned in through the upper part of the window screaming and waving his arms and scolding like a Punch and Judy show. His hair was in a tangle over his eyes, in one hand he waved a stick, in the other a cream-andcoffeecolored felt hat. ‘Slut come here… Flagrante delictu that’s what it is… Flagrante delictu. It was not for nothing that inspiration led me up Lester Jones’s fire escape.’ He stopped and stared a minute at Jimmy with wide drunken eyes. ‘So here’s the cub reporter, the yellow journalist is it, looking as if butter wouldnt melt in his mouth is it? Do you know what my opinion of you is, would you like to know what my opinion of you is? Oh I’ve heard about you from Ruth and all that. I know you think you’re one of the dynamiters and aloof from all that… How do you like being a paid prostitute of the public press? How d’you like your yellow ticket? The brass check, that’s the kind of thing… You think that as an actor, an artiste, I dont know about those things. I’ve heard from Ruth your opinion of actors and all that.’

‘Why Mr Oglethorpe I am sure you are mistaken.’

‘I read and keep silent. I am one of the silent watchers. I know that every sentence, every word, every picayune punctuation that appears in the public press is perused and revised and deleted in the interests of advertisers and bondholders. The fountain of national life is poisoned at the source.’

‘Yea, you tell em,’ suddenly shouted Stan from the bed. He got to his feet clapping his hands. ‘I should prefer to be the meanest stagehand. I should prefer to be the old and feeble charwoman who scrubs off the stage… than to sit on velvet in the office of the editor of the greatest daily in the city. Acting is a profession honorable, decent, humble, gentlemanly.’ The oration ended abruptly.

‘Well I dont see what you expect me to do about it,’ said Jimmy crossing his arms.

‘And now it’s starting to rain,’ went on Oglethorpe in a squeaky whining voice.

‘You’d better go home,’ said Jimmy.

‘I shall go I shall go where there are no sluts… no male and female sluts… I shall go into the great night.’

‘Do you think he can get home all right Stan?’

Stan had sat down on the edge of the bed shaking with laughter. He shrugged his shoulders.

‘My blood will be on your head Elaine forever… Forever, do you hear me?… into the night where people dont sit laughing and sneering. Dont you think I dont see you… If the worst happens it will not be my fault.’

‘Go-od night,’ shouted Stan. In a last spasm of laughing he fell off the edge of the bed and rolled on the floor. Jimmy went to the window and looked down the fire escape into the alley. Oglethorpe had gone. It was raining hard. A smell of wet bricks rose from the housewalls.

‘Well if this isnt the darnedest fool business?’ He walked back into his room without looking at Stan. In the door Ellen brushed silkily past him.

‘I’m terribly sorry Jimmy…’ she began.

He closed the door sharply in her face and locked it. ‘The goddam fools they act like crazy people,’ he said through his teeth. ‘What the hell do they think this is?’

His hands were cold and trembling. He pulled a blanket up over him. He lay listening to the steady beat of the rain and the hissing spatter of a gutter. Now and then a puff of wind blew a faint cool spray in his face. There still lingered in the room a frail cedarwood gruff smell of her heavycoiled hair, a silkiness of her body where she had crouched wrapped in the sheet hiding.

Ed Thatcher sat in his bay window among the Sunday papers. His hair was grizzled and there were deep folds in his cheeks. The upper buttons of his pongee trousers were undone to ease his sudden little potbelly. He sat in the open window looking out over the blistering asphalt at the endless stream of automobiles that whirred in either direction past the yellowbrick row of stores and the redbrick station under the eaves of which on a black ground gold letters glinted feebly in the sun: PASSAIC. Apartments round about emitted a querulous Sunday grinding of phonographs playing It’s a Bear. The Sextette from Lucia, selections from The Quaker Girl. On his knees lay the theatrical section of the New York Times. He looked out with bleared eyes into the quivering heat feeling his ribs tighten with a breathless ache. He had just read a paragraph in a marked copy of Town Topics.

Malicious tongues are set wagging by the undeniable fact that young Stanwood Emery’s car is seen standing every night outside the Knickerbocker Theatre and never does it leave they say, without a certain charming young actress whose career is fast approaching stellar magnitude. This same young gentleman, whose father is the head of one of the city’s most respected lawfirms, who recently left Harvard under slightly unfortunate circumstances, has been astonishing the natives for some time with his exploits which we are sure are merely the result of the ebullience of boyish spirits. A word to the wise.

The bell rang three times. Ed Thatcher dropped his papers and hurried quaking to the door. ‘Ellie you’re so late. I was afraid you weren’t coming.’

‘Daddy dont I always come when I say I will?’

‘Of course you do deary.’

‘How are you getting on? How’s everything at the office?’

‘Mr Elbert’s on his vacation… I guess I’ll go when he comes back. I wish you’d come down to Spring Lake with me for a few days. It’d do you good.’

‘But daddy I cant.’… She pulled off her hat and dropped it on the davenport. ‘Look I brought you some roses, daddy.’

‘Think of it; they’re red roses like your mother used to like. That was very thoughtful of you I must say… But I dont like going all alone on my vacation.’

‘Oh you’ll meet lots of cronies daddy, sure you will.’

‘Why couldnt you come just for a week?’

‘In the first place I’ve got to look for a job… show’s going on the road and I’m not going just at present. Harry Goldweiser’s awfully sore about it.’ Thatcher sat down in the bay window again and began piling up the Sunday papers on a chair. ‘Why daddy what on earth are you doing with that copy of Town Topics?’

‘Oh nothing. I’d never read it; I just bought it to see what it was like.’ He flushed and compressed his lips as he shoved it in among the Times.

‘It’s just a blackmail sheet.’ Ellen was walking about the room. She had put the roses in a vase. A spiced coolness was spreading from them through the dustheavy air. ‘Daddy, there’s something I want to tell you about… Jojo and I are going to get divorced.’ Ed Thatcher sat with his hands on his knees nodding with tight lips, saying nothing. His face was gray and dark, almost the speckled gray of his pongee suit. ‘It’s nothing to take on about. We’ve just decided we cant get along together. It’s all going through quietly in the most approved style… George Baldwin, who’s a friend of mine, is going to run it through.’

‘He with Emery and Emery?’

‘Yes.’

‘Hum.’

They were silent. Ellen leaned over to breathe deep of the roses. She watched a little green measuring worm cross a bronzed leaf.

‘Honestly I’m terribly fond of Jojo, but it drives me wild to live with him… I owe him a whole lot, I know that.’

‘I wish you’d never set eyes on him.’

Thatcher cleared his throat and turned his face away from her to look out the window at the two endless bands of automobiles that passed along the road in front of the station. Dust rose from them and angular glitter of glass enamel and nickel. Tires made a swish on the oily macadam. Ellen dropped onto the davenport and let her eyes wander among the faded red roses of the carpet.

The bell rang. ‘I’ll go daddy… How do you do Mrs Culveteer?’

A redfaced broad woman in a black and white chiffon dress came into the room puffing. ‘Oh you must forgive my butting in, I’m just dropping by for a second… How are you Mr Thatcher?… You know my dear your poor father has really been very poorly.’

‘Nonsense; all I had was a little backache.’

‘Lumbago my dear.’

‘Why daddy you ought to have let me know.’

‘The sermon today was most inspiring, Mr Thatcher… Mr Lourton was at his very best.’

‘I guess I ought to rout out and go to church now and then, but you see I like to lay round the house Sundays.’

‘Of course Mr Thatcher it’s the only day you have. My husband was just like that… But I think it’s different with Mr Lourton than with most clergymen. He has such an uptodate commonsense view of things. It’s really more like attending an intensely interesting lecture than going to church… You understand what I mean.’

‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do Mrs Culveteer, next Sunday if it’s not too hot I’ll go… I guess I’m getting too set in my ways.’

‘Oh a little change does us all good… Mrs Oglethorpe you have no idea how closely we follow your career, in the Sunday papers and all… I think it’s simply wonderful… As I was telling Mr Thatcher only yesterday it must take a lot of strength of character and deep Christian living to withstand the temptations of stage life nowadays. It’s inspiring to think of a young girl and wife coming so sweet and unspoiled through all that.’

Ellen kept looking at the floor so as not to catch her father’s eye. He was tapping with two fingers on the arm of his morrischair. Mrs Culveteer beamed from the middle of the davenport. She got to her feet. ‘Well I just must run along. We have a green girl in the kitchen and I’m sure dinner’s all ruined… Wont you drop in this afternoon… ? quite informally. I made some cookies and we’ll have some gingerale out just in case somebody turns up.’

‘I’m sure we’d be delighted Mrs Culveteer,’ said Thatcher getting stiffly to his feet. Mrs Culveteer in her bunchy dress waddled out the door.

‘Well Ellie suppose we go eat… She’s a very nice kindhearted woman. She’s always bringing me pots of jam and marmalade. She lives upstairs with her sister’s family. She’s the widow of a traveling man.’

‘That was quite a line about the temptations of stage life,’ said Ellen with a little laugh in her throat. ‘Come along or the place’ll be crowded. Avoid the rush is my motto.’

Said Thatcher in a peevish crackling voice, ‘Let’s not dawdle around.’

Ellen spread out her sunshade as they stepped out of the door flanked on either side by bells and letterboxes. A blast of gray heat beat in their faces. They passed the stationery store, the red A. and P., the corner drugstore from which a stale coolness of sodawater and icecream freezers drifted out under the green awning, crossed the street, where their feet sank into the sticky melting asphalt, and stopped at the Sagamore Cafeteria. It was twelve exactly by the clock in the window that had round its face in old English lettering, TIME TO EAT. Under it was a large rusty fern and a card announcing Chicken Dinner $1.25. Ellen lingered in the doorway looking up the quivering street. ‘Look daddy we’ll probably have a thunderstorm.’ A cumulus soared in unbelievable snowy contours in the slate sky. ‘Isnt that a fine cloud? Wouldnt it be fine if we had a riproaring thunderstorm?’

Ed Thatcher looked up, shook his head and went in through the swinging screen door. Ellen followed him. Inside it smelled of varnish and waitresses. They sat down at a table near the door under a droning electric fan.

‘How do you do Mr Thatcher? How you been all the week sir? How do you do miss?’ The bonyfaced peroxidehaired waitress hung over them amicably. What’ll it be today sir, roast Long Island duckling or roast Philadelphia milkfed capon?’

4 Fire Engine

Such afternoons the buses are crowded into line like elephants in a circusparade. Morningside Heights to Washington Square, Penn Station to Grant’s Tomb. Parlorsnakes and flappers joggle hugging downtown uptown, hug joggling gray square after gray square, until they see the new moon giggling over Weehawken and feel the gusty wind of a dead Sunday blowing dust in their faces, dust of a typsy twilight.

They are walking up the Mall in Central Park.

‘Looks like he had a boil on his neck,’ says Ellen in front of the statue of Burns.

‘Ah,’ whispers Harry Goldweiser with a fat-throated sigh, ‘but he was a great poet.’

She is walking in her wide hat in her pale loose dress that the wind now and then presses against her legs and arms, silkily, swishily walking in the middle of great rosy and purple and pis-tachiogreen bubbles of twilight that swell out of the grass and trees and ponds, bulge against the tall houses sharp gray as dead teeth round the southern end of the park, melt into the indigo zenith. When he talks, forming sentences roundly with his thick lips, continually measuring her face with his brown eyes, she feels his words press against her body, nudge in the hollows where her dress clings; she can hardly breathe for fear of listening to him.

‘The Zinnia Girl’s going to be an absolute knockout, Elaine, I’m telling you and that part’s just written for you. I’d enjoy working with you again, honest… You’re so different, that’s what it is about you. All these girls round New York here are just the same, they’re monotonous. Of course you could sing swell if you wanted to… I’ve been crazy as a loon since I met you, and that’s a good six months now. I sit down to eat and the food dont have any taste… You cant understand how lonely a man gets when year after year he’s had to crush his feelings down into himself. When I was a young fellow I was different, but what are you to do? I had to make money and make my way in the world. And so I’ve gone on year after year. For the first time I’m glad I did it, that I shoved ahead and made big money, because now I can offer it all to you. Understand what I mean?… All those ideels and beautiful things pushed down into myself when I was making my way in a man’s world were like planting seed and you’re their flower.’

Now and then as they walk the back of his hand brushes against hers; she clenches her fist sullenly drawing it away from the hot determined pudginess of his hand.

The Mall is full of couples, families waiting for the music to begin. It smells of children and dress-shields and talcum powder. A balloonman passes them trailing red and yellow and pink balloons like a great inverted bunch of grapes behind him. ‘Oh buy me a balloon.’ The words are out of her mouth before she can stop them.

‘Hay you gimme one of each color… And how about one of those gold ones? No keep the change.’

Ellen put the strings of the balloons into the dirtsticky hands of three little monkeyfaced girls in red tams. Each balloon caught a crescent of violet glare from the arclight.

‘Aw you like children, Elaine, dont you? I like a woman to like children.’

Ellen sits numb at a table on the terrace of the Casino. A hot gust of foodsmell and the rhythm of a band playing He’s a Ragpicker swirls chokingly about her; now and then she butters a scrap of roll and puts it in her mouth. She feels very helpless, caught like a fly in his sticky trickling sentences.

‘There’s nobody else in New York could have got me to walk that far, I’ll tell you that… I walked too much in the old days, do you understand, used to sell papers when I was a kid and run errands for Schwartz’s Toystore… on my feet all day except when I was in nightschool. I thought I was going to be a lawyer, all us East Side fellers thought we were goin to be lawyers. Then I worked as an usher one summer at the Irving Place and got the theater bug… Not such a bad hunch it turned out to be, but it’s too uncertain. Now I dont care any more, only want to cover my losses. That’s the trouble with me. I’m thirtyfive an I dont care any more. Ten years ago I was still only a kind of clerk in old man Erlanger’s office, and now there’s lots of em whose shoes I used to shine in the old days’d be real glad of the opportunity to sweep my floors on West Forty-eighth… Tonight I can take you anywhere in New York, I dont care how expensive or how chic it is… an in the old days us kids used to think it was paradise if we had five plunks to take a couple of girls down to the Island… I bet all that was different with you Elaine… But what I want to do is get that old feelin back, understand?… Where shall we go?’

‘Why dont we go down to Coney Island then? I’ve never been?

‘It’s a pretty rough crowd… still we can just ride round. Let’s do it. I’ll go phone for the car.’

Ellen sits alone looking down into her coffeecup. She puts a lump of sugar on her spoon, dips it in the coffee and pops it into her mouth where she crunches it slowly, rubbing the grains of sugar against the roof of her mouth with her tongue. The orchestra is playing a tango.

The sun streaming into the office under the drawn shades cut a bright slanting layer like watered silk through the cigarsmoke.

‘Mighty easy,’ George Baldwin was saying dragging out the words. ‘Gus we got to go mighty easy on this.’ Gus McNiel bull-necked redfaced with a heavy watchchain in his vest sat in the armchair nodding silently, pulling on his cigar. ‘As things are now no court would sustain such an injunction… an injunction that seems to me a pure piece of party politics on Judge Connor’s part, but there are certain elements…’

‘You said it… Look here George I’m goin to leave this whole blame thing to you. You pulled me through the East New York dockin space mess and I guess you can pull me through this.’

‘But Gus your position in this whole affair has been entirely within the bounds of legality. If it werent I certainly should not be able to take the case, not even for an old friend like you.’

‘You know me George… I never went back on a guy yet and I dont expect to have anybody go back on me.’ Gus got heavily to his feet and began to limp about the office leaning on a goldknobbed cane. ‘Connor’s a son of a bitch… an honest, you wouldn’t believe it but he was a decent guy before he went up to Albany.’

‘My position will be that your attitude in this whole matter has been willfully misconstrued. Connor has been using his position on the bench to further a political end.’

‘God I wish we could get him. Jez I thought he was one of the boys; he was until he went up an got mixed up with all those lousy upstate Republicans. Albany’s been the ruination of many a good man.’

Baldwin got up from the flat mahogany table where he sat between tall sheaves of foolscap and put his hand on Gus’s shoulder. ‘Dont you lose any sleep over it…’

‘I’d feel all right if it wasn’t for those Interborough bonds.’

‘What bonds? Who’s seen any bonds?… Let’s get this young fellow in here… Joe… And one more thing Gus, for heaven’s sakes keep your mouth shut… If any reporters or anybody comes round to see you tell ’em about your trip to Bermuda… We can get publicity enough when we need it. Just at present we want to keep the papers out of it or you’ll have all the reformers on your heels.’

‘Well aint they friends of yours? You can fix it up with em.’

‘Gus I’m a lawyer and not a politician… I dont meddle in those things at all. They dont interest me.’

Baldwin brought the flat of his hand down on a pushbell. An ivoryskinned young woman with heavy sullen eyes and jetty hair came into the room.

‘How do you do Mr McNiel.’

‘My but you’re looking well Miss Levitsky.’

‘Emily tell em to send that young fellow that’s waiting for Mr McNiel in.’

Joe O’Keefe came in dragging his feet a little, with his straw hat in his hand. ‘Howde do sir.’

‘Look here Joe, what does McCarthy say?’

‘Contractors and Builders Association’s goin to declare a lockout from Monday on.’

‘And how’s the union?’

‘We got a full treasury. We’re goin to fight.’

Baldwin sat down on the edge of the desk. ‘I wish I knew what Mayor Mitchel’s attitude was on all this.’

‘That reform gang’s just treadin water like they always do,’ said Gus savagely biting the end off a cigar. ‘When’s this decision going to be made public?’

‘Saturday.’

‘Well keep in touch with us.’

‘All right gentlemen. And please dont call me on the phone. It dont look exactly right. You see it aint my office.’

‘Might be wiretappin goin on too. Those fellers wont stop at nothin. Well see ye later Joey.’

Joe nodded and walked out. Baldwin turned frowning to Gus.

‘Gus I dont know what I’m goin to do with you if you dont keep out of all this labor stuff. A born politician like you ought to have better sense. You just cant get away with it.’

‘But we got the whole damn town lined up.’

‘I know a whole lot of the town that isnt lined up. But thank Heavens that’s not my business. This bond stuff is all right, but if you get into a mess with this strike business I couldn’t handle your case. The firm wouldnt stand for it,’ he whispered fiercely. Then he said aloud in his usual voice, ‘Well how’s the wife, Gus?’

Outside in the shiny marble hall, Joe O’Keefe was whistling Sweet Rosy O’Grady waiting for the elevator. Imagine a guy havin a knockout like that for a secretary. He stopped whistling and let the breath out silently through pursed lips. In the elevator he greeted a walleyed man in a check suit. ‘Hullo Buck.’

‘Been on your vacation yet?’

Joe stood with his feet apart and his hands in his pockets. He shook his head. ‘I get off Saturday.’

‘I guess I’ll take in a couple o days at Atlantic City myself.’

‘How do you do it?’

‘Oh the kid’s clever.’

Coming out of the building O’Keefe had to make his way through people crowding into the portal. A slate sky sagging between the tall buildings was spatting the pavements with fiftycent pieces. Men were running to cover with their straw hats under their coats. Two girls had made hoods of newspaper over their summer bonnets. He snatched blue of their eyes, a glint of lips and teeth as he passed. He walked fast to the corner and caught an uptown car on the run. The rain advanced down the street in a solid sheet glimmering, swishing, beating newspapers flat, prancing in silver nipples along the asphalt, striping windows, putting shine on the paint of streetcars and taxicabs. Above Fourteenth there was no rain, the air was sultry.

‘A funny thing weather,’ said an old man next to him. O’Keefe grunted. ‘When I was a boy onct I saw it rain on one side of the street an a house was struck by lightnin an on our side not a drop fell though the old man wanted it bad for some tomatoplants he’d just set out.’

Crossing Twentythird O’Keefe caught sight of the tower of Madison Square Garden. He jumped off the car; the momentum carried him in little running steps to the curb. Turning his coatcollar down again he started across the square. On the end of a bench under a tree drowsed Joe Harland. O’Keefe plunked down in the seat beside him.

‘Hello Joe. Have a cigar.’

‘Hello Joe. I’m glad to see you my boy. Thanks. It’s many a day since I’ve smoked one of these things… What are you up to? Aint this kind of out of your beat?’

‘I felt kinder blue so I thought I’d buy me a ticket to the fight Saturday.’

‘What’s the matter?’

‘Hell I dunno… Things dont seem to go right. Here I’ve got myself all in deep in this political game and there dont seem to be no future in it. God I wish I was educated like you.’

‘A lot of good it’s done me.’

‘I wouldn’t say that… If I could ever git on the track you were on I bet ye I wouldn’t lose out.’

‘You cant tell Joe, funny things get into a man.’

‘There’s women and that sort of stuff.’

‘No I dont mean that… You get kinder disgusted.’

‘But hell I dont see how a guy with enough jack can git disgusted.’

‘Then maybe it was booze, I dont know.’

They sat silent a minute. The afternoon was flushing with sunset. The cigarsmoke was blue and crinkly about their heads.

‘Look at the swell dame… Look at the way she walks. Aint she a peacherino? That’s the way I like ’em, all slick an frilly with their lips made up… Takes jack to go round with dames like that.’

‘They’re no different from anybody else, Joe.’

‘The hell you say.’

‘Say Joe you havent got an extra dollar on you?’

‘Maybe I have.’

‘My stomach’s a little out of order… I’d like to take a little something to steady it, and I’m flat till I get paid Saturday… er … you understand… you’re sure you dont mind? Give me your address and I’ll send it to you first thing Monday morning.’

‘Hell dont worry about it, I’ll see yez around somewheres.’

‘Thank you Joe. And for God’s sake dont buy any more Blue Peter Mines on a margin without asking me about it. I may be a back number but I can still tell a goldbrick with my eyes closed.’

‘Well I got my money back.’

‘It took the devil’s own luck to do it.’

‘Jez it strikes me funny me loanin a dollar to the guy who owned half the Street.’

‘Oh I never had as much as they said I did.’

‘This is a funny place…’

‘Where?’

‘Oh I dunno, I guess everywhere… Well so long Joe, I guess I’ll go along an buy that ticket… Jez it’s goin to be a swell fight.’

Joe Harland watched the young man’s short jerky stride as he went off down the path with his straw hat on the side of his head. Then he got to his feet and walked east along Twentythird Street. The pavements and housewalls still gave off heat although the sun had set. He stopped outside a corner saloon and examined carefully a group of stuffed ermines, gray with dust, that occupied the center of the window. Through the swinging doors a sound of quiet voices and a malty coolness seeped into the street. He suddenly flushed and bit his upper lip and after a furtive glance up and down the street went in through the swinging doors and shambled up to the brassy bottleglittering bar.

After the rain outdoors the plastery backstage smell was pungent in their nostrils. Ellen hung the wet raincoat on the back of the door and put her umbrella in a corner of the dressing room where a little puddle began to spread from it. ‘And all I could think of,’ she was saying in a low voice to Stan who followed her staggering, ‘was a funny song somebody’d told me when I was a little girl about: And the only man who survived the flood was longlegged Jack of the Isthmus.’

‘God I dont see why people have children. It’s an admission of defeat. Procreation is the admission of an incomplete organism. Procreation is an admission of defeat.’

‘Stan for Heaven’s sake dont shout, you’ll shock the stagehands … I oughtnt to have let you come. You know the way people gossip round a theater.’

‘I’ll be quiet just like a lil mouse… Just let me wait till Milly comes to dress you. Seeing you dress is my only remaining pleasure… I admit that as an organism I’m incomplete.’

‘You wont be an organism of any kind if you dont sober up.’

‘I’m going to drink… I’m going to drink till when I cut myself whiskey runs out. What’s the good of blood when you can have whiskey?’

‘Oh Stan.’

‘The only thing an incomplete organism can do is drink… You complete beautiful organisms dont need to drink… I’m going to lie down and go byby.’

‘Dont Stan for Heaven’s sake. If you go and pass out here I’ll never forgive you.’

There was a soft doubleknock at the door. ‘Come in Milly.’ Milly was a small wrinklefaced woman with black eyes. A touch of negro blood made her purplegray lips thick, gave a lividness to her very white skin.

‘It’s eight fifteen dear,’ she said as she bustled in. She gave a quick look at Stan and turned to Ellen with a little wry frown.

‘Stan you’ve got to go away… I’ll meet you at the Beaux Arts or anywhere you like afterwards.’

‘I want to go byby.’

Sitting in front of the mirror at her dressingtable Ellen was wiping cold cream off her face with quick dabs of a little towel. From her makeup box a smell of greasepaint and cocoabutter melted fatly through the room.

‘I dont know what to do with him tonight,’ she whispered to Milly as she slipped off her dress. ‘Oh I wish he would stop drinking.’

‘I’d put him in the shower and turn cold water on him deary.’

‘How’s the house tonight Milly?’

‘Pretty thin Miss Elaine.’

‘I guess it’s the bad weather… I’m going to be terrible.’

‘Dont let him get you worked up deary. Men aint worth it.’

‘I want to go byby.’ Stan was swaying and frowning in the center of the room. ‘Miss Elaine I’ll put him in the bathroom; nobody’ll notice him there.’

‘That’s it, let him go to sleep in the bathtub.’

‘Ellie I’ll go byby in the bathtub.’

The two women pushed him into the bathroom. He flopped limply into the tub, and lay there asleep with his feet in the air and his head on the faucets. Milly was making little rapid clucking noises with her tongue.

‘He’s like a sleepy baby when he’s like this,’ whispered Ellen softly. She stuck the folded bathmat under his head and brushed the sweaty hair off his forehead. He was hardly breathing. She leaned and kissed his eyelids very softly.

‘Miss Elaine you must hurry… curtain’s ringing up.’

‘Look quick am I all right?’

‘Pretty as a picture… Lord love you dear.’

Ellen ran down the stairs and round to the wings, stood there, panting with terror as if she had just missed being run over by an automobile grabbed the musicroll she had to go on with from the property man, got her cue and walked on into the glare.

‘How do you do it Elaine?’ Harry Goldweiser was saying, shaking his calf’s head from the chair behind her. She could see him in the mirror as she took her makeup off. A taller man with gray eyes and eyebrows stood beside him. ‘You remember when they first cast you for the part I said to Mr Fallik, Sol she cant do it, didnt I Sol?’

‘Sure you did Harry.’

‘I thought that no girl so young and beautiful could put, you know… put the passion and terror into it, do you understand?… Sol and I were out front for that scene in the last act.’

‘Wonderful, wonderful,’ groaned Mr Fallik. ‘Tell us how you do it Elaine.’

The makeup came off black and pink on the cloth. Milly moved discreetly about the background hanging up dresses.

‘Do you know who it was who coached me up on that scene? John Oglethorpe. It’s amazing the ideas he has about acting.’

‘Yes it’s a shame he’s so lazy… He’d be a very valuable actor.’

‘It’s not exactly laziness…’ Ellen shook down her hair and twisted it in a coil in her two hands. She saw Harry Goldweiser nudge Mr Fallik.

‘Beautiful isn’t it?’

‘How’s Red Red Rose going?’

‘Oh dont ask me Elaine. Played exclusively to the ushers last week, do you understand? I dont see why it dont go, it’s catchy… Mae Merrill has a pretty figure. Oh, the show business has all gone to hell.’

Ellen put the last bronze pin in the copper coil of her hair. She tossed her chin up. ‘I’d like to try something like that.’

‘But one thing at a time my dear young lady; we’ve just barely got you started as an emotional actress.’

‘I hate it; it’s all false. Sometimes I want to run down to the foots and tell the audience, go home you damn fools. This is a rotten show and a lot of fake acting and you ought to know it. In a musical show you could be sincere.’

‘Didnt I tell ye she was nuts Sol? Didnt I tell ye she was nuts?’

‘I’ll use some of that little speech in my publicity next week… I can work it in fine.’

‘You cant have her crabbin the show.’

‘Not but I can work it in in that column about aspirations of celebrities… You know, this guy is President of the Zozodont Company and would rather have been a fireman and another would rather have been a keeper at the Zoo… Great human interest stuff.’

‘You can tell them Mr Fallik that I think the woman’s place is in the home… for the feebleminded.’

‘Ha ha ha,’ laughed Harry Goldweiser showing the gold teeth in the sides of his mouth. ‘But I know you could dance and sing with the best of em, Elaine.’

‘Wasnt I in the chorus for two years before I married Oglethorpe?’

‘You must have started in the cradle,’ said Mr Fallik leering under his gray lashes.

‘Well I must ask you gentlemen to get out of here a minute while I change. I’m all wringing wet every night after that last act.’

‘We got to get along anyway… do you understand?… Mind if I use your bathroom a sec?’

Milly stood in front of the bathroom door. Ellen caught the jetty glance of her eyes far apart in her blank white face. ‘I’m afraid you cant Harry, it’s out of order.’

‘I’ll go over to Charley’s… I’ll tell Thompson to have a plumber come and look at it… Well good night kid. Be good.’

‘Good night Miss Oglethorpe,’ said Mr Fallik creakily, ‘and if you cant be good be careful.’ Milly closed the door after them.

‘Whee, that’s a relief,’ cried Ellen and stretched out her arms.

‘I tell you I was scared deary… Dont you ever let any feller like that come to the theater with ye. I’ve seen many a good trouper ruined by things like that. I’m tellin ye because I’m fond of you Miss Elaine, an I’m old an I know about the showbusiness.’

‘Of course you are Milly, and you’re quite right too… Lets see if we can wake him up.’

‘My God Milly, look at that.’

Stan was lying as they had left him in the bathtub full of water. The tail of his coat and one hand were floating on top of the water. ‘Get up out of there Stan you idiot… He might catch his death. You fool, you fool.’ Ellen took him by the hair and shook his head from side to side.

‘Ooch that hurts,’ he moaned in a sleepy child’s voice.

‘Get up out of there Stan… You’re soaked.’

He threw back his head and his eyes snapped open. ‘Why so I am.’ He raised himself with his hands on the sides of the tub and stood swaying, dripping into the water that was yellow from his clothes and shoes, braying his loud laugh. Ellen leaned against the bathroom door laughing with her eyes full of tears.

‘You cant get mad at him Milly, that’s what makes him so exasperating. Oh what are we going to do?’

‘Lucky he wasnt drownded… Give me your papers and pocketbook sir. I’ll try and dry em with a towel,’ said Milly.

‘But you cant go past the doorman like that… even if we wring you out… Stan you’ve got to take off all your clothes and put on a dress of mine. Then you can wear my rain cape and we can whisk into a taxicab and take you home… What do you think Milly?’

Milly was rolling her eyes and shaking her head as she wrung out Stan’s coat. In the washbasin she had piled the soppy remains of a pocketbook, a pad, pencils, a jacknife, two rolls of film, a flask.

‘I wanted a bath anyway,’ said Stan.

‘Oh I could beat you. Well you’re sober at least.’

‘Sober as a penguin.’

‘Well you’ve got to dress up in my clothes that’s all…’

‘I cant wear girl’s clothes.’

‘You’ve got to… You havent even got a raincoat to cover that mess. If you dont I’ll lock you up in the bathroom and leave you.’

‘All right Ellie… Honest I’m terribly sorry.’

Milly was wrapping the clothes in newspaper after wringing them out in the bathtub. Stan looked at himself in the mirror. ‘Gosh I’m an indecent sight in this dress… Ish gebibble.’

‘I’ve never seen anything so disgusting looking… No you look very sweet, a little tough perhaps… Now for God’s sake keep your face towards me when you go past old Barney.’

‘My shoes are all squudgy.’

‘It cant be helped… Thank Heaven I had this cape here Milly you’re an angel to clear up all this mess.’

‘Good night deary, and remember what I said… I’m tellin ye that’s all…’

‘Stan take little steps and if we meet anybody go right on and jump in a taxi… You can get away with anything if you do it quick enough.’ Ellen’s hands were trembling as they came down the steps. She tucked one in under Stan’s elbow and began talking in a low chatty voice… ‘You see dear, daddy came round to see the show two or three nights ago and he was shocked to death. He said he thought a girl demeaned herself showing her feelings like that before a lot of people… Isn’t it killing?… Still he was impressed by the writeups the Herald and World gave me Sunday… Goodnight Barney, nasty night… My God… Here’s a taxi, get in. Where are you going?’ Out of the dark of the taxi, out of his long face muffled in the blue hood, his eyes were so bright black they frightened her like coming suddenly on a deep pit in the dark.

‘All right we’ll go to my house. Might as well be hanged for a sheep… Driver please go to Bank Street. The taxi started. They were jolting through the crisscross planes of red light, green light, yellow light beaded with lettering of Broadway. Suddenly Stan leaned over her and kissed her hard very quickly on the mouth.

‘Stan you’ve got to stop drinking. It’s getting beyond a joke.’

‘Why shouldn’t things get beyond a joke? You’re getting beyond a joke and I dont complain.’

‘But darling you’ll kill yourself.’

‘Well?’

‘Oh I dont understand you Stan.’

‘I dont understood you Ellie, but I love you very… exordinately much.’ There was a broken tremor in his very low voice that stunned her with happiness.

Ellen paid the taxi. Siren throbbing in an upward shriek that burst and trailed in a dull wail down the street, a fire engine went by red and gleaming, then a hookandladder with bell clanging.

‘Let’s go to the fire Ellie.’

‘With you in those clothes… We’ll do no such thing.’

He followed her silent into the house and up the stairs. Her long room was cool and fresh smelling.

‘Ellie you’re not sore at me?’

‘Of course not idiot child.’

She undid the sodden bundle of his clothes and took them into the kitchenette to dry beside the gas stove. The sound of the phonograph playing He’s a devil in his own home town called her back. Stan had taken off the dress. He was dancing round with a chair for a partner, her blue padded dressingown flying out from his thin hairy legs.

‘Oh Stan you precious idiot.’

He put down the chair and came towards her brown and male and lean in the silly dressingown. The phonograph came to the end of the tune and the record went on rasping round and round.

5 Went to the Animals’ Fair

Red light. Bell.

A block deep four ranks of cars wait at the grade crossing, fenders in taillights, mudguards scraping mudguards, motors purring hot, exhausts reeking, cars from Babylon and Jamaica, cars from Montauk, Port Jefferson, Patchogue, limousines from Long Beach, Far Rockaway, roadsters from Great Neck… cars full of asters and wet bathingsuits, sunsinged necks, mouths sticky from sodas and hotdawgs… cars dusted with pollen of ragweed and goldenrod.

Green light. Motors race, gears screech into first. The cars space out, flow in a long ribbon along the ghostly cement road, between blackwindowed blocks of concrete factories, between bright slabbed colors of signboards towards the glow over the city that stands up incredibly into the night sky like the glow of a great lit tent, like the yellow tall bulk of a tentshow.

Sarajevo, the word stuck in her throat when she tried to say it…

‘It’s terrible to think of, terrible,’ George Baldwin was groaning. ‘The Street’ll go plumb to hell… They’ll close the Stock Exchange, only thing to do.’

‘And I’ve never been to Europe either… A war must be an extraordinary thing to see.’ Ellen in her blue velvet dress with a buff cloak over it leaned back against the cushions of the taxi that whirred smoothly under them. ‘I always think of history as lithographs in a schoolbook, generals making proclamations, little tiny figures running across fields with their arms spread out, facsimiles of signatures.’ Cones of light cutting into cones of light along the hot humming roadside, headlights splashing trees, houses, billboards, telegraph poles with broad brushes of whitewash. The taxi made a half turn and stopped in front of a roadhouse that oozed pink light and ragtime through every chink.

‘Big crowd tonight,’ said the taximan to Baldwin when he paid him.

‘I wonder why,’ asked Ellen.

‘De Canarsie moider has sumpen to do wid it I guess.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Sumpen terrible. I seen it.’

‘You saw the murder?’

‘I didn’t see him do it. I seen de bodies laid out stiff before dey took em to de morgue. Us kids used to call de guy Santa Claus cause he had white whiskers… Knowed him since I was a little feller.’ The cars behind were honking and rasping their klaxons. ‘I better git a move on… Good night lady.’

The red hallway smelt of lobster and steamed clams and cocktails.

‘Why hello Gus!… Elaine let me introduce Mr and Mrs McNiel… This is Miss Oglethorpe.’ Ellen shook the big hand of a rednecked snubnosed man and the small precisely gloved hand of his wife. ‘Gus I’ll see you before we go…’

Ellen was following the headwaiter’s swallowtails along the edge of the dancefloor. They sat at a table beside the wall. The music was playing Everybody’s Doing It. Baldwin hummed it as he hung over her a second arranging the wrap on the back of her chair.

‘Elaine you are the loveliest person…’ he began as he sat down opposite her. ‘It seems so horrible. I dont see how it’s possible.’

‘What?’

‘This war. I cant think of anything else.’

‘I can…’ She kept her eyes on the menu. ‘Did you notice those two people I introduced to you?’

‘Yes. Is that the NcNiel whose name is in the paper all the time? Some row about a builders’ strike and the Interborough bond issue.’

‘It’s all politics. I bet he’s glad of the war, poor old Gus. It’ll do one thing, it’ll keep that row off the front page… I’ll tell you about him in a minute… I dont suppose you like steamed clams do you? They are very good here.’

‘George I adore steamed clams.’

‘Then we’ll have a regular old fashioned Long Island shore dinner. What do you think of that?’ Laying her gloves away on the edge of the table her hand brushed against the vase of rusty red and yellow roses. A shower of faded petals fluttered onto her hand, her gloves, the table. She shook them off her hands.

‘And do have him take these wretched roses away George… I hate faded flowers.’

Steam from the plated bowl of clams uncoiled in the rosy glow from the lampshade. Baldwin watched her fingers, pink and limber, pulling the clams by their long necks out of their shells, dipping them in melted butter, and popping them dripping in her mouth. She was deep in eating clams. He sighed. ‘Elaine… I’m a very unhappy man… Seeing Gus McNiel’s wife. It’s the first time in years. Think of it I was crazy in love with her and now I cant remember what her first name was… Funny isn’t it? Things had been extremely slow ever since I had set up in practice for myself. It was a rash thing to do, as I was only two years out of lawschool and had no money to run on. I was rash in those days. I’d decided that if I didn’t get a case that day I’d chuck everything and go back to a clerkship. I went out for a walk to clear my head and saw a freightcar shunting down Eleventh Avenue run into a milkwagon. It was a horrid mess and when we’d picked the fellow up I said to myself I’d get him his rightful damages or bankrupt myself in the attempt. I won his case and that brought me to the notice of various people downtown, and that started him on his career and me on mine.’

‘So he drove a milkwagon did he? I think milkmen are the nicest people in the world. Mine’s the cutest thing.’

‘Elaine you wont repeat this to anyone… I feel the completest confidence in you.’

‘That’s very nice of you George. Isn’t it amazing the way girls are getting to look more like Mrs Castle every day? Just look round this room.’

‘She was like a wild rose Elaine, fresh and pink and full of the Irish, and now she’s a rather stumpy businesslike looking little woman.’

‘And you’re as fit as you ever were. That’s the way it goes.’

‘I wonder… You dont know how empty and hollow everything was before I met you. All Cecily and I can do is make each other miserable.’

‘Where is she now?’

‘She’s up at Bar Harbor… I had luck and all sorts of success when I was still a young man… I’m not forty yet.’

‘But I should think it would be fascinating. You must enjoy the law or you wouldn’t be such a success at it.’

‘Oh success… success… what does it mean?’

‘I’d like a little of it.’

‘But my dear girl you have it.’

‘Oh not what I mean.’

‘But it isn’t any fun any more. All I do is sit in the office and let the young fellows do the work. My future’s all cut out for me. I suppose I could get solemn and pompous and practice little private vices… but there’s more in me than that.’

‘Why dont you go into politics?’

‘Why should I go up to Washington into that greasy backwater when I’m right on the spot where they give the orders? The terrible thing about having New York go stale on you is that there’s nowhere else. It’s the top of the world. All we can do is go round and round in a squirrel cage.’

Ellen was watching the people in light summer clothes dancing on the waxed square of floor in the center; she caught sight of Tony Hunter’s oval pink and white face at a table on the far side of the room. Oglethorpe was not with him. Stan’s friend Herf sat with his back to her. She watched him laughing, his long rumpled black head poised a little askew on a scraggly neck. The other two men she didn’t know.

‘Who are you looking at?’

‘Just some friends of Jojo’s… I wonder how on earth they got way out here. It’s not exactly on that gang’s beat.’

‘Always the way when I try to get away with something,’ said Baldwin with a wry smile.

‘I should say you’d done exactly what you wanted to all your life.’

‘Oh Elaine if you’d only let me do what I want to now. I want you to let me make you happy. You’re such a brave little girl making your way all alone the way you do. By gad you are so full of love and mystery and glitter…’ He faltered, took a deep swallow of wine, went on with flushing face. ‘I feel like a schoolboy… I’m making a fool of myself. Elaine I’d do anything in the world for you.’

‘Well all I’m going to ask you to do is to send away this lobster. I dont think it’s terribly good.’

‘The devil… maybe it isn’t… Here waiter!… I was so rattled I didn’t know I was eating it.’

‘You can get me some supreme of chicken instead.’

‘Surely you poor child you must be starved.’

‘… And a little corn on the cob… I understand now why you make such a good lawyer, George. Any jury would have burst out sobbing long ago at such an impassioned plea.’

‘How about you Elaine?’

‘George please don’t ask me.’

At the table where Jimmy Herf sat they were drinking whiskey and soda. A yellowskinned man with light hair and a thin nose standing out crooked between childish blue eyes was talking in a confidential singsong: ‘Honest I had em lashed to the mast. The police department is cookoo, absolutely cookoo treating it as a rape and suicide case. That old man and his lovely innocent daughter were murdered, foully murdered. And do you know who by… ?’ He pointed a chubby cigarettestained finger at Tony Hunter.

‘Dont give me the third degree judge I dont know anything about it’ he said dropping his long lashes over his eyes.

‘By the Black Hand.’

‘You tell em Bullock,’ said Jimmy Herf laughing. Bullock brought his fist down on the table so that the plates and glasses jingled. ‘Canarsie’s full of the Black Hand, full of anarchists and kidnappers and undesirable citizens. It’s our business to ferret em out and vindicate the honor of this poor old man and his beloved daughter. We are going to vindicate the honor of poor old monkeyface, what’s his name?’

‘Mackintosh,’ said Jimmy. ‘And the people round here used to call him Santa Claus. Of course everybody admits he’s been crazy for years.’

‘We admit nothing but the majesty of American citizenhood… But hell’s bells what’s the use when this goddam war takes the whole front page? I was going to have a fullpage spread and they’ve cut me down to half a column. Aint it the life?’

‘You might work up something about how he was a lost heir to the Austrian throne and had been murdered for political reasons.’

‘Not such a bad idear Jimmy.’

‘But it’s such a horrible thing,’ said Tony Hunter.

‘You think we’re a lot of callous brutes, dont you Tony?’

‘No I just dont see the pleasure people get out of reading about it.’

‘Oh it’s all in the day’s work,’ said Jimmy. ‘What gives me gooseflesh is the armies mobilizing, Belgrade bombarded, Belgium invaded… all that stuff. I just cant imagine it… They’ve killed Jaures.’ ‘Who’s he?’

‘A French Socialist.’

‘Those goddam French are so goddam degenerate all they can do is fight duels and sleep with each other’s wives. I bet the Germans are in Paris in two weeks.’

‘It couldn’t last long,’ said Framingham, a tall ceremonious man with a whispy blond moustache who sat beside Hunter.

‘Well I’d like to get an assignment as warcorrespondent.’

‘Say Jimmy do you know this French guy who’s barkeep here?’

‘Congo Jake? Sure I know him.’

‘Is he a good guy?’

‘He’s swell.’

‘Let’s go out and talk to him. He might give us some dope about this here murder. God I’d like it if I could hitch it on to the World Conflict.’

‘I have the greatest confidence,’ had begun Framingham, ‘that the British will patch it up somehow.’ Jimmy followed Bullock towards the bar.

Crossing the room he caught sight of Ellen. Her hair was very red in the glow from the lamp beside her. Baldwin was leaning towards her across the table with moist lips and bright eyes. Jimmy felt something glittering go off in his chest like a released spring. He turned his head away suddenly for fear she should see him.

Bullock turned and nudged him in the ribs. ‘Say Jimmy who the hell are those two guys came out with us?’

‘They are friends of Ruth’s. I dont know them particularly well. Framingham’s an interior decorator I think.’

At the bar under a picture of the Lusitania stood a dark man in a white coat distended by a deep gorilla chest. He was vibrating a shaker between his very hairy hands. A waiter stood in front of the bar with a tray of cocktail glasses. The cocktail foamed into them greenishwhite.

‘Hello Congo,’ said Jimmy.

‘Ah bonsoir monsieur ’Erf, ça biche?’

‘Pretty good… Say Congo I want you to meet a friend of mine. This is Grant Bullock of the American.’

‘Very please. You an Mr ’Erf ave someting on the ’ouse sir.’

The waiter raised the clinking tray of glasses to shoulder height and carried them out on the flat of his hand.

‘I suppose a gin fizz’ll ruin all that whiskey but I’d like one… Drink something with us wont you Congo?’ Bullock put a foot up on the brass rail and took a sip. ‘I was wondering,’ he said slowly, ‘if there was any dope going round about this murder down the road.’

‘Everybody ave his teyorie…’

Jimmy caught a faint wink from one of Congo’s deepset black eyes. ‘Do you live out here?’ he asked to keep from giggling.

‘In the middle of the night I hear an automobile go by very fast wid de cutout open. I tink maybe it run into someting because it stopped very quick and come back much faster, licketysplit.’

‘Did you hear a shot?’

Congo shook his head mysteriously. ‘I ear voices, very angree voices.’

‘Gosh I’m going to look into this,’ said Bullock tossing off the end of his drink. ‘Let’s go back to the girls.’

Ellen was looking at the face wrinkled like a walnut and the dead codfish eyes of the waiter pouring coffee. Baldwin was leaning back in his chair staring at her through his eyelashes. He was talking in a low monotone:

‘Cant you see that I’ll go mad if I cant have you. You are the only thing in the world I ever wanted.’

‘George I dont want to be had by anybody… Cant you understand that a woman wants some freedom? Do be a sport about it. I’ll have to go home if you talk like that.’

‘Why have you kept me dangling then? I’m not the sort of man you can play like a trout. You know that perfectly well.’

She looked straight at him with wide gray eyes; the light gave a sheen of gold to the little brown specks in the iris.

‘It’s not so easy never to be able to have friends.’ She looked down at her fingers on the edge of the table. His eyes were on the glint of copper along her eyelashes. Suddenly he snapped the silence that was tightening between them.

‘Anyway let’s dance.’

hummed Congo Jake as the big shining shaker quivered between his hairy hands. The narrow greenpapered bar was swelled and warped with bubbling voices, spiral exhalations of drinks, sharp clink of ice and glasses, an occasional strain of music from the other room. Jimmy Herf stood alone in the corner sipping a gin fizz. Next him Gus McNiel was slapping Bullock on the back and roaring in his ear:

‘Why if they dont close the Stock Exchange… godamighty… before the blowup comes there’ll be an opportunity… Well be-gorry dont you forget it. A panic’s the time for a man with a cool head to make money.’

‘There have been some big failures already and this is just the first whiff…’

‘Opportunity knocks but once at a young man’s door… You listen to me when there’s a big failure of one o them brokerage firms honest men can bless themselves… But you’re not putting everythin I’m tellin ye in the paper, are you? There’s a good guy… Most of you fellers go around puttin words in a man’s mouth. Cant trust one of you. I’ll tell you one thing though the lockout is a wonderful thing for the contractors. Wont be no housebuildin with a war on anyway.’ ‘It wont last more’n two weeks and I dont see what it has to do with us anyway.’

‘But conditions’ll be affected all over the world… Conditions… Hello Joey what the hell do you want?’

‘I’d like to talk to you private for a minute sir. There’s some big news…’

The bar emptied gradually. Jimmy Herf was still standing at the end against the wall.

‘You never get drunk, Mr ’Erf.’ Congo Jake sat down back of the bar to drink a cup of coffee.

‘I’d rather watch the other fellows.’

‘Very good. No use spend a lot o money ave a eadache next day.’

‘That’s no way for a barkeep to talk.’

‘I say what I tink.’

‘Say I’ve always wanted to ask you… Do you mind telling me?… How did you get the name of Congo Jake?’

Congo laughed deep in his chest. ‘I dunno… When I very leetle I first go to sea dey call me Congo because I have cuily hair an dark like a nigger. Den when I work in America, on American ship an all zat, guy ask me How you feel Congo? and I say Jake… so dey call me Congo Jake.’

‘It’s some nickname… I thought you’d followed the sea.’

‘It’s a ‘ard life… I tell you Mr ’Erf, there’s someting about me unlucky. When I first remember on a peniche, you know what I mean… in canal, a big man not my fader beat me up every day. Then I run away and work on sailboats in and out of Bordeaux, you know?’

‘I was there when I was a kid I think…’

‘Sure… You understand them things Mr ’Erf. But a feller like you, good education, all ‘at, you dont know what life is. When I was seventeen I come to New York… no good. I tink of notten but raising Cain. Den I shipped out again and went everywhere to hell an gone. In Shanghai I learned spik American an tend bar. I come back to Frisco an got married. Now I want to be American. But unlucky again see? Before I marry zat girl her and me lived togedder a year sweet as pie, but when we get married no good. She make fun of me and call me Frenchy because I no spik American good and den she kick no out of the house an I tell her go to hell. Funny ting a man’s life.’

he started in his growling baritone.

There was a hand on Jimmy’s arm. He turned. ‘Why Ellie what’s the matter?’

‘I’m with a crazy man you’ve got to help me get away.’

‘Look this is Congo Jake… You ought to know him Ellie, he’s a fine man… This is une tres grande artiste, Congo.’

‘Wont the lady have a leetle anizette?’

‘Have a little drink with us… It’s awfully cozy in here now that everybody’s gone.’

‘No thanks I’m going home.’

‘But it’s just the neck of the evening.’

‘Well you’ll have to take the consequences of my crazy man… Look Herf, have you seen Stan today?’

‘No I haven’t.’

‘He didn’t turn up when I expected him.’

‘I wish you’d keep him from drinking so much, Ellie. I’m getting worried about him.’

‘I’m not his keeper.’

‘I know, but you know what I mean.’

‘What does our friend here think about all this wartalk?’

‘I wont go… A workingman has no country. I’m going to be American citizen… I was in the marine once but…’ He slapped his jerking bent forearm with one hand, and a deep laugh rattled in his throat… ‘Twentee tree. Moi je suis anarchiste vous comprennez monsieur.’

‘But then you cant be an American citizen.’

Congo shrugged his shoulders.

‘Oh I love him, he’s wonderful,’ whispered Ellen in Jimmy’s ear.

‘You know why they have this here war… So that workingmen all over wont make big revolution… Too busy fighting. So Guillaume and Viviani and l’Empereur d’Autriche and Krupp and Rothschild and Morgan they say let’s have a war… You know the first thing they do? They shoot Jaures, because he socialiste. The socialists are traitors to the International but all de samee…’

‘But how can they make people fight if they dont want to?’

‘In Europe people are slaves for thousands of years. Not like ’ere… But I ’ve seen war. Very funny. I tended bar in Port Arthur, nutten but a kid den. It was very funny.’

‘Gee I wish I could get a job as warcorrespondent.’

‘I might go as a Red Cross nurse.’

‘Correspondent very good ting… Always drunk in American bar very far from battlefield.’

They laughed.

‘But arent we rather far from the battlefield, Herf?’

‘All right let’s dance. You must forgive me if I dance very badly.’

‘I’ll kick you if you do anything wrong.’

His arm was like plaster when he put it round her to dance with her. High ashy walls broke and crackled within him. He was soaring like a fireballoon on the smell of her hair.

‘Get up on your toes and walk in time to the music… Move in straight lines that’s the whole trick.’ Her voice cut the quick coldly like a tiny flexible sharp metalsaw. Elbows joggling, faces set, gollywog eyes, fat men and thin women, thin women and fat men rotated densely about them. He was crumbling plaster with something that rattled achingly in his chest, she was an intricate machine of sawtooth steel whitebright bluebright copperbright in his arms. When they stopped her breast and the side of her body and her thigh came against him. He was suddenly full of blood steaming with sweat like a runaway horse. A breeze through an open door hustled the tobaccosmoke and the clotted pink air of the restaurant.

‘Herf I want to go down to see the murder cottage; please take me.’

‘As if I hadn’t seen enough of X’s marking the spot where the crime was committed.’

In the hall George Baldwin stepped in front of them. He was pale as chalk, his black tie was crooked, the nostrils of his thin nose were dilated and marked with little veins of red.

‘Hello George.’

His voice croaked tartly like a klaxon. ‘Elaine I’ve been looking for you. I must speak to you… Maybe you think I’m joking. I never joke.’

‘Herf excuse me a minute… Now what is the matter George? Come back to the table.’

‘George I was not joking either… Herf do you mind ordering me a taxi?’

Baldwin grabbed hold of her wrist. ‘You’ve been playing with me long enough, do you hear me? Some day some man’s going to take a gun and shoot you. You think you can play me like all the other little sniveling fools… You’re no better than a common prostitute.’

‘Herf I told you to go get me a taxi.’

Jimmy bit his lip and went out the front door.

‘Elaine what are you going to do?’

‘George I will not be bullied.’

Something nickel flashed in Baldwin’s hand. Gus McNiel stepped forward and gripped his wrist with a big red hand.

‘Gimme that George… For God’s sake man pull yourself together.’ He shoved the revolver into his pocket. Baldwin tottered to the wall in front of him. The trigger finger of his right hand was bleeding.

‘Here’s a taxi,’ said Herf looking from one to another of the taut white faces.

‘All right you take the girl home… No harm done, just a little nervous attack, see? No cause for alarm,’ McNiel was shouting in the voice of a man speaking from a soapbox. The headwaiter and the coatgirl were looking at each other uneasily. ‘Didn’t nutten happen… Gentleman’s a little nervous… overwork you understand,’ McNiel brought his voice down to a reassuring purr. ‘You just forget it.’

As they were getting into the taxi Ellen suddenly said in a little child’s voice: ‘I forgot we were going down to see the murder cottage… Let’s make him wait. I’d like to walk up and down in the air for a minute.’ There was a smell of saltmarshes. The night was marbled with clouds and moonlight. The toads in the ditches sounded like sleighbells.

‘Is it far?’ she asked.

‘No it’s right down at the corner.’

Their feet crackled on gravel then ground softly on macadam. A headlight blinded them, they stopped to let the car whir by; the exhaust filled their nostrils, faded into the smell of saltmarshes again.

It was a peaked gray house with a small porch facing the road screened with broken lattice. A big locust shaded it from behind. A policeman walked to and fro in front of it whistling gently to himself. A mildewed scrap of moon came out from behind the clouds for a minute, made tinfoil of a bit of broken glass in a gaping window, picked out the little rounded leaves of the locust and rolled like a lost dime into a crack in the clouds.

Neither of them said anything. They walked back towards the roadhouse.

‘Honestly Herf havent you seen Stan?’

‘No I havent an idea where he could be hiding himself.’

‘If you see him tell him I want him to call me up at once… Herf what were those women called who followed the armies in the French Revolution?’

‘Let’s think. Was it cantonnières?’

‘Something like that… I’d like to do that.’

An electric train whistled far to the right of them, rattled nearer and faded into whining distance.

Dripping with a tango the roadhouse melted pink like a block of icecream. Jimmy was following her into the taxicab.

‘No I want to be alone, Herf.’

‘But I’d like very much to take you home… I dont like the idea of letting you go all alone.’

‘Please as a friend I ask you.’

They didnt shake hands. The taxi kicked dust and a rasp of burnt gasoline in his face. He stood on the steps reluctant to go back into the noise and fume.

Nellie McNiel was alone at the table. In front of her was the chair pushed back with his napkin on the back of it where her husband had sat. She was staring straight ahead of her; the dancers passed like shadows across her eyes. At the other end of the room she saw George Baldwin, pale and lean, walk slowly like a sick man to his table. He stood beside the table examining his check carefully, paid it and stood looking distractedly round the room. He was going to look at her. The waiter brought the change on a plate and bowed low. Baldwin swept the faces of the dancers with a black glance, turned his back square and walked out. Remembering the insupportable sweetness of Chinese lilies, she felt her eyes filling with tears. She took her engagement book out of her silver mesh bag and went through it hurriedly, marking carets with a silver pencil. She looked up after a little while, the tired skin of her face in a pucker of spite, and beckoned to a waiter. ‘Will you please tell Mr McNiel that Mrs McNiel wants to speak to him? He’s in the bar.’

‘Sarajevo, Sarajevo; that’s the place that set the wires on fire,’ Bullock was shouting at the frieze of faces and glasses along the bar.

‘Say bo,’ said Joe O’Keefe confidentially to no one in particular, ‘a guy works in a telegraph office told me there’d been a big seabattle off St John’s, Newfoundland and the Britishers had sunk the German fleet of forty battleships.’

‘Jiminy that’d stop the war right there.’

‘But they aint declared war yet.’

‘How do you know? The cables are so choked up you cant get any news through.’

‘Did you see there were four more failures on Wall Street?’

‘Tell me Chicago wheat pit’s gone crazy.’

‘They ought to close all the exchanges till this blows over.’

‘Well maybe when the Germans have licked the pants off her England’ll give Ireland her freedom.’

‘But they are… Stock market wont be open tomorrow.’

‘If a man’s got the capital to cover and could keep his head this here would be the time to clean up.’

‘Well Bullock old man I’m going home,’ said Jimmy. ‘This is my night of rest and I ought to be getting after it.’

Bullock winked one eye and waved a drunken hand. The voices in Jimmy’s ears were throbbing elastic roar, near, far, near, far. Dies like a dog, march on he said. He’d spent all his money but a quarter. Shot at sunrise. Declaration of war. Commencement of hostilities. And they left him alone in his glory. Leipzig, the Wilderness, Waterloo, where the embattled farmers stood and fired the shot heard round… Cant take a taxi, want to walk anyway. Ultimatum. Trooptrains singing to the shambles with flowers on their ears. And shame on the false Etruscan who lingers in his home when…

As he was walking down the gravel drive to the road an arm hooked in his.

‘Do you mind if I come along? I dont want to stay here.’

‘Sure come ahead Tony I’m going to walk.’

Herf walked with a long stride, looking straight ahead of him. Clouds had darkened the sky where remained the faintest milkiness of moonlight. To the right and left there was outside of the violetgray cones of occasional arclights black pricked by few lights, ahead the glare of streets rose in blurred cliffs yellow and ruddy.

‘You dont like me do you?’ said Tony Hunter breathlessly after a few minutes.

Herf slowed his pace. ‘Why I dont know you very well. You seem to me a very pleasant person…’

‘Dont lie; there’s no reason why you should… I think I’m going to kill myself tonight.’

‘Heavens! dont do that… What’s the matter?’

‘You have no right to tell me not to kill myself. You dont know anything about me. If I was a woman you wouldn’t be so indifferent.’

‘What’s eating you anyway?’

‘I’m going crazy that’s all, everything’s so horrible. When I first met you with Ruth one evening I thought we were going to be friends, Herf. You seemed so sympathetic and understanding… I thought you were like me, but now you’re getting so callous.’

‘I guess it’s the Times… I’ll get fired soon, don’t worry.’

‘I’m tired of being poor; I want to make a hit.’

‘Well you’re young yet; you must be younger than I am.’ Tony didnt answer.

They were walking down a broad avenue between two rows of blackened frame houses. A streetcar long and yellow hissed rasping past.

‘Why we must be in Flatbush.’

‘Herf I used to think you were like me, but now I never see you except with some woman.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I’ve never told anybody in the world… By God if you tell anybody… When I was a child I was horribly oversexed, when I was about ten or eleven or thirteen.’ He was sobbing. As they passed under an arclight, Jimmy caught the glisten of the tears on his cheeks. ‘I wouldn’t tell you this if I wasnt drunk.’

‘But things like that happened to almost everybody when they were kids… You oughtnt to worry about that.’

‘But I’m that way now, that’s what’s so horrible. I cant like women. I’ve tried and tried… You see I was caught. I was so ashamed I wouldn’t go to school for weeks. My mother cried and cried. I’m so ashamed. I’m so afraid people will find out about it. I’m always fighting to keep it hidden, to hide my feelings.’

‘But it all may be an idea. You may be able to get over it. Go to a psychoanalyist.’

‘I cant talk to anybody. It’s just that tonight I’m drunk. I’ve tried to look it up in the encyclopaedia… It’s not even in the dictionary.’ He stopped and leaned against a lamppost with his face in his hands. ‘It’s not even in the dictionary.’

Jimmy Herf patted him on the back. ‘Buck up for Heaven’s sake. They’re lots of people in the same boat. The stage is full of them.’

‘I hate them all… It’s not people like that I fall in love with. I hate myself. I suppose you’ll hate me after tonight.’

‘What nonsense. It’s no business of mine.’

‘Now you know why I want to kill myself… Oh it’s not fair Herf, it’s not fair… I’ve had no luck in my life. I started earning my living as soon as I got out of highschool. I used to be bellhop in summer hotels. My mother lived in Lakewood and I used to send her everything I earned. I’ve worked so hard to get where I am. If it were known, if there were a scandal and it all came out I’d be ruined.’

‘But everybody says that of all juveniles and nobody lets it worry them.’

‘Whenever I fail to get a part I think it’s on account of that. I hate and despise all that kind of men… I dont want to be a juvenile. I want to act. Oh it’s hell… It’s hell.’

‘But you’re rehearsing now aren’t you?’

‘A fool show that’ll never get beyond Stamford. Now when you hear that I’ve done it you wont be surprised.’

‘Done what?’

‘Killed myself.’

They walked without speaking. It had started to rain. Down the street behind the low greenblack shoebox houses there was an occasional mothpink flutter of lightning. A wet dusty smell came up from the asphalt beaten by the big plunking drops.

‘There ought to be a subway station near… Isn’t that a blue light down there? Let’s hurry or we’ll get soaked.’

‘Oh hell Tony I’d just as soon get soaked as not.’ Jimmy took off his felt hat and swung it in one hand. The raindrops were cool on his forehead, the smell of the rain, of roofs and mud and asphalt, took the biting taste of whiskey and cigarettes out of his mouth.

‘Gosh it’s horrible,’ he shouted suddenly.

‘What?’

‘All the hushdope about sex. I’d never realized it before tonight, the full extent of the agony. God you must have a rotten time… We all of us have a rotten time. In your case it’s just luck, hellish bad luck. Martin used to say: Everything would be so much better if suddenly a bell rang and everybody told everybody else honestly what they did about it, how they lived, how they loved. It’s hiding things makes them putrefy. By God it’s horrible. As if life wasn’t difficult enough without that.’

‘Well I’m going down into this subway station.’

‘You’ll have to wait hours for a train.’

‘I cant help it I’m tired and I dont want to get wet.’

‘Well good night.’

‘Good night Herf.’

There was a long rolling thunderclap. It began to rain hard. Jimmy rammed his hat down on his head and yanked his coatcollar up. He wanted to run along yelling sonsobitches at the top of his lungs. Lightning flickered along the staring rows of dead windows. The rain seethed along the pavements, against storewindows, on brownstone steps. His knees were wet, a slow trickle started down his back, there were chilly cascades off his sleeves onto his wrists, his whole body itched and tingled. He walked on through Brooklyn. Obsession of all the beds in all the pigeonhole bedrooms, tangled sleepers twisted and strangled like the roots of potbound plants. Obsession of feet creaking on the stairs of lodginghouses, hands fumbling at doorknobs. Obsession of pounding temples and solitary bodies rigid on their beds

And three times round went our gallant ship, and three times round went… goddam it between that and money… and she sank to the bottom of the sea… we’re in a treadmill for fair.

Declaration of war… rumble of drums… beefeaters march in red after the flashing baton of a drummajor in a hat like a longhaired muff, silver knob spins flashing grump, grump, grump… in the face of revolution mondiale. Commencement of hostilities in a long parade through the empty rainlashed streets. Extra, extra, extra. Santa Claus shoots daughter he has tried to attack. SLAYS SELF WITH SHOTGUN… put the gun under his chin and pulled the trigger with his big toe. The stars look down on Fredericktown. Workers of the world, unite. Vive le sang, vive le sang.

‘Golly I’m wet,’ Jimmy Herf said aloud. As far as he could see the street stretched empty in the rain between ranks of dead windows studded here and there with violet knobs of arclights. Desperately he walked on.

6 Five Statutory Questions

They pair off hurriedly. STANDING UP IN CARS STRICTLY FORBIDDEN. The climbing chain grates, grips the cogs; jerkily the car climbs the incline out of the whirring lights, out of the smell of crowds and steamed corn and peanuts, up jerkily grating up through the tall night of September meteors.

Sea, marshsmell, the lights of an Iron Steamboat leaving the dock. Across wide violet indigo a lighthouse blinks. Then the swoop. The sea does a flipflop, the lights soar. Her hair in his mouth, his hand in her ribs, thighs grind together.

The wind of their falling has snatched their yells, they jerk rattling upwards through the tangled girderstructure. Swoop. Soar. Bubbling lights in a sandwich of darkness and sea. Swoop. KEEP YOUR SEATS FOR THE NEXT RIDE.

‘Come on in Joe, I’ll see if the old lady kin git us some grub.’

‘Very kind of you… er… I’m not… er… exactly dressed to meet a lady you see.’

‘Oh she wont care. She’s just my mother; sit down, I’ll git her.’

Harland sat down on a chair beside the door in the dark kitchen and put his hands on his knees. He sat staring at his hands; they were red and dirtgrained and trembling, his tongue was like a nutmeg grater from the cheap whiskey he had been drinking the last week, his whole body felt numb and sodden and sour. He stared at his hands.

Joe O’Keefe came back into the kitchen. ‘She’s loin down. She says there’s some soup on the back of the stove… Here ye are. That’ll make a man of ye… Joe you ought to been where I was last night. Went out to this here Seaside Inn to take a message to the chief about somebody tippin him off that they was going to close the market… It was the goddamnedest thing you ever saw in your life. This guy who’s a wellknown lawyer down town was out in the hall bawlin out his gash about something. Jez he looked hard. And then he had a gun out an was goin to shoot her or some goddam thing when the chief comes up cool as you make em limpin on his stick like he does and took the gun away from him an put it in his pocket before anybody’d half seen what happened… This guy Baldwin’s a frien o his see? It was the goddamnedest thing I ever saw. Then he all crumpled up like…’

‘I tell you kid,’ said Joe Harland, ‘it gets em all sooner or later…’

‘Hay there eat up strong. You aint eaten enough.’

‘I can’t eat very well.’

‘Sure you can… Say Joe what’s the dope about this war business?’

‘I guess they are in for it this time… I’ve known it was coming ever since the Agadir incident.’

‘Jez I like to see somebody wallop the pants off England after the way they wont give home rule to Ireland.’

‘We’d have to help em… Anyway I dont see how this can last long. The men who control international finance wont allow it. After all it’s the banker who holds the purse strings.’

‘We wouldn’t come to the help of England, no sir, not after the way they acted in Ireland and in the Revolution and in the Civil War…’

‘Joey you’re getting all choked up with that history you’re reading up in the public library every night… You follow the stock quotations and keep on your toes and dont let em fool you with all this newspaper talk about strikes and upheavals and socialism… I’d like to see you make good Joey… Well I guess I’d better be going.’

‘Naw stick around awhile, we’ll open a bottle of glue.’ They heard a heavy stumbling in the passage outside the kitchen.

‘Whossat?’

‘Zat you Joe?’ A big towheaded boy with lumpy shoulders and a square red face and thickset neck lurched into the room.

‘What the hell do you think this is?… This is my kid brother Mike.’

‘Well what about it?’ Mike stood swaying with his chin on his chest. His shoulders bulged against the low ceiling of the kitchen.

‘Aint he a whale? But for crissake Mike aint I told you not to come home when you was drinkin?… He’s loible to tear the house down.’

‘I got to come home sometime aint I? Since you got to be a wardheeler Joey you been pickin on me worsen the old man. I’m glad I aint going to stay round this goddam town long. It’s enough to drive a feller cookoo. If I can get on some kind of a tub that puts to sea before the Golden Gate by God I’m going to do it.’

‘Hell I dont mind you stayin here. It’s just that I dont like you raisin hell all the time, see?’

‘I’m goin to do what I please, git me?’

‘You get outa here, Mike… Come back home when you’re sober.’

‘I’d like to see you put me outa here, git me? I’d like to see you put me outa here.’

Harland got to his feet. ‘Well I’m going,’ he said. ‘Got to see if I can get that job.’

Mike was advancing across the kitchen with his fists clenched. Joey’s jaw set; he picked up a chair.

‘I’ll crown you with it.’

‘O saints and martyrs cant a woman have no peace in her own house?’ A small grayhaired woman ran screaming between them; she had lustrous black eyes set far apart in a face shrunken like a last year’s apple; she beat the air with worktwisted hands. ‘Shut yer traps both of ye, always cursing an fightin round the house like there warnt no God… Mike you go upstairs an lay down on your bed till yer sober.’

‘I was jus tellin him that,’ said Joey.

She turned on Harland, her voice like the screech of chalk on a blackboard. ‘An you git along outa here. I dont allow no drunken bums in my house. Git along outa here. I dont care who brought you.’

Harland looked at Joey with a little sour smile, shrugged his shoulders and went out. ‘Charwoman,’ he muttered as he stumbled with stiff aching legs along the dusty street of darkfaced brick houses.

The sultry afternoon sun was like a blow on his back. Voices in his ears of maids, charwomen, cooks, stenographers, secretaries: Yes sir, Mr Harland, Thank you sir Mr Harland. Oh sir thank you sir so much sir Mr Harland sir…

Red buzzing in her eyelids the sunlight wakes her, she sinks back into purpling cottonwool corridors of sleep, wakes again, turns over yawning, pulls her knees up to her chin to pull the drowsysweet cocoon tighter about her. A truck jangles shatteringly along the street, the sun lays hot stripes on her back. She yawns desperately and twists herself over and lies wide awake with her hands under her head staring at the ceiling. From far away through streets and housewalls the long moan of a steamboat whistle penetrates to her like a blunt sprout of crabgrass nudging through gravel. Ellen sits up shaking her head to get rid of a fly blundering about her face. The fly flashes and vanishes in the sunlight, but somewhere in her there lingers a droning pang, unaccountable, something left over from last night’s bitter thoughts. But she is happy and wide awake and it’s early. She gets up and wanders round the room in her nightgown.

Where the sun hits it the hardwood floor is warm to the soles of her feet. Sparrows chirp on the windowledge. From upstairs comes the sound of a sewingmachine. When she gets out of the bath her body feels smoothwhittled and tense; she rubs herself with a towel, telling off the hours of the long day ahead; take a walk through junky littered downtown streets to that pier on the East River where they pile the great beams of mahogany, breakfast all alone at the Lafayette, coffee and crescent rolls and sweet butter, go shopping at Lord & Taylor’s early before everything is stuffy and the salesgirls wilted, have lunch with… Then the pain that has been teasing all night wells up and bursts. ‘Stan, Stan for God’s sake,’ she says aloud. She sits before her mirror staring in the black of her own dilating pupils.

She dresses in a hurry and goes out, walks down Fifth Avenue and east along Eighth Street without looking to the right or left. The sun already hot simmers slatily on the pavements, on plate-glass, on dustmarbled enameled signs. Men’s and women’s faces as they pass her are rumpled and gray like pillows that have been too much slept on. After crossing Lafayette Street roaring with trucks and delivery wagons there is a taste of dust in her mouth, particles of grit crunch between her teeth. Further east she passes pushcarts; men are wiping off the marble counters of softdrink stands, a grindorgan fills the street with shiny jostling coils of the Blue Danube, acrid pungence spreads from a picklestand. In Tompkins Square yelling children mill about the soggy asphalt. At her feet a squirming heap of small boys, dirty torn shirts, slobbering mouths, punching, biting, scratching; a squalid smell like moldy bread comes from them. Ellen all of a sudden feels her knees weak under her. She turns and walks back the way she came.

The sun is heavy like his arm across her back, strokes her bare forearm the way his fingers stroke her, it’s his breath against her cheek.

‘Nothing but the five statutory questions,’ said Ellen to the rawboned man with big sagging eyes like oysters into whose long shirtfront she was talking.

‘And so the decree is granted?’ he asked solemnly.

‘Surely in an uncontested…’

‘Well I’m very sorry to hear it as an old family friend of both parties.’

‘Look here Dick, honestly I’m very fond of Jojo. I owe him a great deal… He’s a very fine person in many ways, but it absolutely had to be.’

‘You mean there is somebody else?’

She looked up at him with bright eyes and half nodded.

‘Oh but divorce is a very serious step my dear young lady.’

‘Oh not so serious as all that.’

They saw Harry Goldweiser coming towards them across the big walnut paneled room. She suddenly raised her voice. ‘They say that this battle of the Marne is going to end the war.’

Harry Goldweiser took her hand between his two pudgy-palmed hands and bowed over it. ‘It’s very charming of you Elaine to come and keep a lot of old midsummer bachelors from boring each other to death. Hello Snow old man, how’s things?’

‘Yes how is it we have the pleasure of still finding you here?’

‘Oh various things have held me… Anyway I hate summer resorts.’ ‘Nowhere prettier than Long Beach anyway… Why Bar Harbor, I wouldnt go to Bar Harbor if you gave me a million… a cool million.’

Mr Snow let out a gruff sniff. ‘Seems to me I’ve heard you been going into the realestate game down there, Goldweiser.’

‘I bought myself a cottage that’s all. It’s amazing you cant even buy yourself a cottage without every newsboy on Times Square knowing about it. Let’s go in and eat; my sister’ll be right here.’ A dumpy woman in a spangled dress came in after they had sat down to table in the big antlerhung diningroom; she was pigeonbreasted and had a sallow skin.

‘Oh Miss Oglethorpe I’m so glad to see you,’ she twittered in a little voice like a parrakeet’s. ‘I’ve often seen you and thought you were the loveliest thing… I did my best to get Harry to bring you up to see me.’

‘This is my sister Rachel,’ said Goldweiser to Ellen without getting up. ‘She keeps house for me.’

‘I wish you’d help me, Snow, to induce Miss Oglethorpe to take that part in The Zinnia Girl… Honest it was just written for you.’

‘But it’s such a small part…’

‘It’s not a lead exactly, but from the point of view of your reputation as a versatile and exquisite artist, it’s the best thing in the show.’

‘Will you have a little more fish, Miss Oglethorpe?’ piped Miss Goldweiser.

Mr Snow sniffed. ‘There’s no great acting any more: Booth, Jefferson, Mansfield… all gone. Nowadays it’s all advertising; actors and actresses are put on the market like patent medicines. Isn’t it the truth Elaine?… Advertising, advertising.’

‘But that isn’t what makes success… If you could do it with advertising every producer in New York’d be a millionaire,’ burst in Goldweiser. ‘It’s the mysterious occult force that grips the crowds on the street and makes them turn in at a particular theater that makes the receipts go up at a particular boxoffice, do you understand me? Advertising wont do it, good criticism wont do it, maybe it’s genius maybe it’s luck but if you can give the public what it wants at that time and at that place you have a hit. Now that’s what Elaine gave us in this last show… She established contact with the audience. It might have been the greatest play in the world acted by the greatest actors in the world and fallen a flat failure… And I dont know how you do it, nobody dont know how you do it… You go to bed one night with your house full of paper and you wake up the next morning with a howling success. The producer cant control it any more than the weather man can control the weather. Aint I tellin the truth?’

‘Ah the taste of the New York public has sadly degenerated since the old days of Wallack’s.’

‘But there have been some beautiful plays,’ chirped Miss Goldweiser.

The long day love was crisp in the curls… the dark curls… broken in the dark steel light… hurls… high O God high into the bright… She was cutting with her fork in the crisp white heart of a lettuce. She was saying words while quite other words spilled confusedly inside her like a broken package of beads. She sat looking at a picture of two women and two men eating at a table in a high paneled room under a shivering crystal chandelier. She looked up from her plate to find Miss Goldweiser’s little birdeyes kindly querulous fixed hard on her face.

‘Oh yes New York is really pleasanter in midsummer than any other time; there’s less hurry and bustle.’

‘Oh yes that’s quite true Miss Goldweiser.’ Ellen flashed a sudden smile round the table… All the long day love Was crisp in the curls of his high thin brow, Flashed in his eyes in dark steel light…

In the taxi Goldweiser’s broad short knees pressed against hers; his eyes were full of furtive spiderlike industry weaving a warm sweet choking net about her face and neck. Miss Goldweiser had relapsed pudgily into the seat beside her. Dick Snow was holding an unlighted cigar in his mouth, rolling it with his tongue. Ellen tried to remember exactly how Stan looked, his polevaulter’s tight slenderness; she couldn’t remember his face entire, she saw his eyes, lips, an ear.

Times Square was full of juggled colored lights, crisscrossed corrugations of glare. They went up in the elevator at the Astor. Ellen followed Miss Goldweiser across the roofgarden among the tables. Men and women in evening dress, in summer muslins and light suits turned and looked after her, like sticky tendrils of vines glances caught at her as she passed. The orchestra was playing In My Harem. They arranged themselves at a table.

‘Shall we dance?’ asked Goldweiser.

She smiled a wry broken smile in his face as she let him put his arm round her back. His big ear with solemn lonely hairs on it was on the level of her eyes.

‘Elaine,’ he was breathing into her ear, ‘honest I thought I was a wise guy.’ He caught his breath… ‘but I aint… You’ve got me goin little girl and I hate to admit it… Why cant you like me a little bit? I’d like… us to get married as soon as you get your decree… Wouldn’t you be kinder nice to me once in a while… ? I’d do anything for you, you know that… There are lots of things in New York I could do for you…’ The music stopped. They stood apart under a palm. ‘Elaine come over to my office and sign that contract. I had Ferrari wait… We can be back in fifteen minutes.’

‘I’ve got to think it over… I never do anything without sleeping on it.’

‘Gosh you drive a feller wild.’

Suddenly she remembered Stan’s face altogether, he was standing in front of her with a bow tie crooked in his soft shirt, his hair rumpled, drinking again.

‘Oh Ellie I’m so glad to see you…’

‘This is Mr Emery, Mr Goldweiser…’

‘I’ve been on the most exordinately spectacular trip, honestly you should have come… We went to Montreal and Quebec and came back through Niagara Falls and we never drew a sober breath from the time we left little old New York till they arrested us for speeding on the Boston Post Road, did we Pearline?’ Ellen was staring at a girl who stood groggily behind Stan with a small flowered straw hat pulled down over a pair of eyes the blue of watered milk. ‘Ellie this is Pearline… Isn’t it a fine name? I almost split when she told me what it was… But you dont know the joke… We got so tight in Niagara Falls that when we came to we found we were married… And we have pansies on our marriage license…’

Ellen couldnt see his face. The orchestra, the jangle of voices, the clatter of plates spouted spiraling louder and louder about her…

‘Good night Stan.’ Her voice was gritty in her mouth, she heard the words very clearly when she spoke them.

‘Oh Ellie I wish you’d come partying with us…’

‘Thanks… thanks.’

She started to dance again with Harry Goldweiser. The roofgarden was spinning fast, then less fast. The noise ebbed sickeningly. ‘Excuse me a minute Harry,’ she said. ‘I’ll come back to the table.’ In the ladies’ room she let herself down carefully on the plush sofa. She looked at her face in the round mirror of her vanitycase. From black pinholes her pupils spread blurring till everything was black.

Jimmy Herf’s legs were tired; he had been walking all afternoon. He sat down on a bench beside the Aquarium and looked out over the water. The fresh September wind gave a glint of steel to the little crisp waves of the harbor and to the slateblue smutted sky. A big white steamer with a yellow funnel was passing in front of the statue of Liberty. The smoke from the tug at the bow came out sharply scalloped like paper. In spite of the encumbering wharf-houses the end of Manhattan seemed to him like the prow of a barge pushing slowly and evenly down the harbor. Gulls wheeled and cried. He got to his feet with a jerk. ‘Oh hell I’ve got to do something.’

He stood a second with tense muscles balanced on the balls of his feet. The ragged man looking at the photogravures of a Sunday paper had a face he had seen before. ‘Hello,’ he said vaguely. ‘I knew who you were all along,’ said the man without holding out his hand. ‘You’re Lily Herf’s boy… I thought you werent going to speak to me… No reason why you should.’

‘Oh of course you must be Cousin Joe Harland… I’m awfully glad to see you… I’ve often wondered about you.’

‘Wondered what?’

‘Oh I dunno… funny you never think of your relatives as being people like yourself, do you?’ Herf sat down in the seat again. ‘Will you have a cigarette… It’s only a Camel.’

‘Well I dont mind if I do… What’s your business Jimmy? You dont mind if I call you that do you?’ Jimmy Herf lit a match; it went out, lit another and held it for Harland. ‘That’s the first tobacco I’ve had in a week… Thank you.’

Jimmy glanced at the man beside him. The long hollow of his gray cheek made a caret with the deep crease that came from the end of his mouth. ‘You think I’m pretty much of a wreck dont you?’ spat Harland. ‘You’re sorry you sat down aint you? You’re sorry you had a mother who brought you up a gentleman instead of a cad like the rest of ’em…’

‘Why I’ve got a job as a reporter on the Times… a hellish rotten job and I’m sick of it,’ said Jimmy, drawling out his words.

‘Dont talk like that Jimmy, you’re too young… You’ll never get anywhere with that attitude.’

‘Well suppose I don’t want to get anywhere.’

‘Poor dear Lily was so proud of you… She wanted you to be a great man, she was so ambitious for you… You dont want to forget your mother Jimmy. She was the only friend I had in the whole damn family.’

Jimmy laughed. ‘I didnt say I wasnt ambitious.’

‘For God’s sake, for your dear mother’s sake be careful what you do. You’re just starting out in life… everything’ll depend on the next couple of years. Look at me.’

‘Well the Wizard of Wall Street made a pretty good thing of it I’ll say… No it’s just that I dont like to take all the stuff you have to take from people in this goddam town. I’m sick of playing up to a lot of desk men I dont respect… What are you doing Cousin Joe?’

‘Don’t ask me…’

‘Look, do you see that boat with the red funnels? She’s French. Look, they are pulling the canvas off the gun on her stern… I want to go to the war… The only trouble is I’m very poor at wrangling things.’

Harland was gnawing his upper lip; after a silence he burst out in a hoarse broken voice. ‘Jimmy I’m going to ask you to do something for Lily’s sake… Er… have you any… er… any change with you? By a rather unfortunate… coincidence I have not eaten very well for the last two or three days… I’m a little weak, do you understand?’

‘Why yes I was just going to suggest that we go have a cup of coffee or tea or something… I know a fine Syrian restaurant on Washington street.’

‘Come along then,’ said Harland, getting up stiffly. ‘You’re sure you don’t mind being seen with a scarecrow like this?’

The newspaper fell out of his hand. Jimmy stooped to pick it up. A face made out of modulated brown blurs gave him a twinge as if something had touched a nerve in a tooth. No it wasnt, she doesnt look like that, yes TALENTED YOUNG ACTRESS SCORES HIT IN THE ZINNIA GIRL…

‘Thanks, dont bother, I found it there,’ said Harland. Jimmy dropped the paper; she fell face down.

‘Pretty rotten photographs they have dont they?’

‘It passes the time to look at them, I like to keep up with what’s going on in New York a little bit… A cat may look at a king you know, a cat may look at a king.’

‘Oh I just meant that they were badly taken.’

7 Rollercoaster

The leaden twilight weighs on the dry limbs of an old man walking towards Broadway. Round the Nedick’s stand at the corner something clicks in his eyes. Broken doll in the ranks of varnished articulated dolls he plods up with drooping head into the seethe and throb into the furnace of beaded lettercut light. ‘I remember when it was all meadows,’ he grumbles to the little boy.

Louis Expresso Association, the red letters on the placard jig before Stan’s eyes. ANNUAL DANCE. Young men and girls going in. Two by two the elephant And the kangaroo. The boom and jangle of an orchestra seeping out through the swinging doors of the hall. Outside it is raining. One more river, O there’s one more river to cross. He straightens the lapels of his coat, arranges his mouth soberly, pays two dollars and goes into a big resounding hall hung with red white and blue bunting. Reeling, so he leans for a while against the wall. One more river… The dancefloor full of jogging couples rolls like the deck of a ship. The bar is more stable. ‘Gus McNiel’s here,’ everybody’s saying ‘Good old Gus.’ Big hands slap broad backs, mouths roar black in red faces. Glasses rise and tip glinting, rise and tip in a dance. A husky beetfaced man with deepset eyes and curly hair limps through the bar leaning on a stick. ‘How’s a boy Gus?’

‘Yay dere’s de chief.’

‘Good for old man McNiel come at last.’

‘Howde do Mr McNiel?’ The bar quiets down.

Gus McNiel waves his stick in the air. ‘Attaboy fellers, have a good time… Burke ole man set the company up to a drink on me.’ ‘Dere’s Father Mulvaney wid him too. Good for Father Mulvaney… He’s a prince that feller is.’

Broad backs deferentially hunched follow the slowly pacing group out among the dancers. O the big baboon by the light of the moon is combing his auburn hair. ‘Wont you dance, please?’ The girl turns a white shoulder and walks off.

Stan finds himself singing at his own face in a mirror. One of his eyebrows is joining his hair, the other’s an eyelash… ‘No I’m not bejases I’m a married man… Fight any man who says I’m not a married man and a citizen of City of New York, County of New York, State of New York…’ He’s standing on a chair making a speech, banging his fist into his hand. ‘Friends Roooomans and countrymen, lend me five bucks… We come to muzzle Caesar not to shaaaave him… According to the Constitution of the City of New York, County of New York, State of New York and duly attested and subscribed before a district attorney according to the provisions of the act of July 13th 1888… To hell with the Pope.’

‘Hey quit dat.’ ‘Fellers lets trow dis guy out… He aint one o de boys… Dunno how he got in here. He’s drunk as a pissant.’ Stan jumps with his eyes closed into a thicket of fists. He’s slammed in the eye, in the jaw, shoots like out of a gun out into the drizzling cool silent street. Ha ha ha.

It was blowing cold in his face and he was sitting on the front of a ferryboat when he came to. His teeth were chattering. He was shivering… ‘I’m having DT’s. Who am I? Where am I? City of New York, State of New York… Stanwood Emery age twentytwo occupation student… Pearline Anderson twentyone occupation actress. To hell with her. Gosh I’ve got fortynine dollars and eight cents and where the hell have I been? And nobody rolled me. Why I havent got the DT’s at all. I feel fine, only a little delicate. All I need’s a little drink, dont you? Hello, I thought there was somebody here. I guess I’d better shut up.’

Across the zinc water the tall walls, the birchlike cluster of downtown buildings shimmered up the rosy morning like a sound of horns through a chocolatebrown haze. As the boat drew near the buildings densened to a granite mountain split with knifecut canyons. The ferry passed close to a tubby steamer that rode at anchor listing towards Stan so that he could see all the decks. An Ellis Island tug was alongside. A stale smell came from the decks packed with upturned faces like a load of melons. Three gulls wheeled complaining. A gull soared in a spiral, white wings caught the sun, the gull skimmed motionless in whitegold light. The rim of the sun had risen above the plumcolored band of clouds behind East New York. A million windows flashed with light. A rasp and a humming came from the city.

In the whitening light tinfoil gulls wheeled above broken boxes, spoiled cabbageheads, orangerinds heaving slowly between the splintered plank walls, the green spumed under the round bow as the ferry skidding on the tide, gulped the broken water, crashed, slid, settled slowly into the slip. Handwinches whirled with jingle of chains, gates folded upward. Stan stepped across the crack, staggered up the manuresmelling wooden tunnel of the ferryhouse out into the sunny glass and benches of the Battery. He sat down on a bench, clasped his hands round his knees to keep them from shaking so. His mind went on jingling like a mechanical piano.

There was Babylon and Nineveh, they were built of brick. Athens was goldmarble columns. Rome was held up on broad arches of rubble. In Constantinople the minarets flame like great candles round the Golden Horn… O there’s one more river to cross. Steel glass, tile, concrete will be the materials of the skyscrapers. Crammed on the narrow island the millionwindowed buildings will jut, glittering pyramid on pyramid, white cloudsheads piled above a thunderstorm…

Kerist I wish I was a skyscraper.

The lock spun round in a circle to keep out the key. Dexterously Stan bided his time and caught it. He shot headlong through the open door and down the long hall shouting Pearline into the livingroom. It smelled funny, Pearline’s smell, to hell with it. He picked up a chair; the chair wanted to fly, it swung round his head and crashed into the window, the glass shivered and tinkled. He looked out through the window. The street stood up on end. A hookandladder and a fire engine were climbing it licketysplit trailing a droning sirenshriek. Fire fire, pour on water, Scotland’s burning. A thousand dollar fire, a hundredthousand dollar fire, a million dollar fire. Skyscrapers go up like flames, in flames, flames. He spun back into the room. The table turned a somersault. The chinacloset jumped on the table. Oak chairs climbed on top to the gas jet. Pour on water, Scotland’s burning. Don’t like the smell in this place in the City of New York, County of New York, State of New York. He lay on his back on the floor of the revolving kitchen and laughed and laughed. The only man who survived the flood rode a great lady on a white horse. Up in flames, up, up. Kerosene whispered a greasyfaced can in the corner of the kitchen. Pour on water. He stood swaying on the crackling upside down chairs on the upside down table. The kerosene licked him with a white cold tongue. He pitched, grabbed the gasjet, the gasjet gave way, he lay in a puddle on his back striking matches, wet wouldn’t light. A match spluttered, lit; he held the flame carefully between his hands.

‘Oh yes but my husband’s awfully ambitious.’ Pearline was telling the blue gingham lady in the grocery-store. ‘Likes to have a good time an all that but he’s much more ambitious than anybody I ever knew. He’s goin to get his old man to send us abroad so he can study architecture. He wants to be an architect.’

‘My that’ll be nice for you wont it? A trip like that… Anything else miss?’ ‘No I guess I didn’t forget anythin… If it was anybody else I’d be worryin about him. I haven’t seen him for two days. Had to go and see his dad I guess.’

‘And you just newly wed too.’

‘I wouldnt be tellin ye if I thought there was anythin wrong, would I? No he’s playin straight all right… Well goodby Mrs Robinson.’ She tucked her packages under one arm and swinging her bead bag in the free hand walked down the street. The sun was still warm although there was a tang of fall in the wind. She gave a penny to a blind man cranking the Merry Widow waltz out of a grindorgan. Still she’d better bawl him out a little when he came home, might get to doing it often. She turned into 200th Street. People were looking out of windows, there was a crowd gathering. It was a fire. She sniffed the singed air. It gave her gooseflesh; she loved seeing fires. She hurried. Why it’s outside our building. Outside our apartmenthouse. Smoke dense as gunnysacks rolled out of the fifthstory window. She suddenly found herself all atremble. The colored elevatorboy ran up to her. His face was green. ‘Oh it’s in our apartment’ she shrieked, ‘and the furniture just came a week ago. Let me get by.’ The packages fell from her, a bottle of cream broke on the sidewalk. A policeman stood in her way, she threw herself at him and pounded on the broad blue chest. She couldnt stop shrieking. ‘That’s all right little lady, that’s all right,’ he kept booming in a deep voice. As she beat her head against it she could feel his voice rumbling in his chest. ‘They’re bringing him down, just overcome by smoke that’s all, just overcome by smoke.’

‘O Stanwood my husband,’ she shrieked. Everything was blacking out. She grabbed at two bright buttons on the policeman’s coat and fainted.

8 One More River to Jordan

A man is shouting from a soapbox at Second Avenue and Houston in front of the Cosmopolitan Café: ‘… these fellers, men… wageslaves like I was… are stitin on your chest… they’re takin the food outen your mouths. Where’s all the pretty girls I used to see walkin up and down the bullevard? Look for em in the uptown cabarets… They squeeze us dry friends… feller workers, slaves I’d oughter say… they take our work and our ideers and our women… They build their Plaza Hotels and their millionaire’s clubs and their million dollar theayters and their battleships and what do they leave us?… They leave us shopsickness an the rickets and a lot of dirty streets full of garbage cans… You look pale you fellers… You need blood… Why dont you get some blood in your veins?… Back in Russia the poor people… not so much poorer’n we are… believe in wampires, things come suck your blood at night… That’s what Capitalism is, a wampire that sucks your blood… day… and… night.’

It is beginning to snow. The flakes are giltedged where they pass the streetlamp. Through the plate glass the Cosmopolitan Café full of blue and green opal rifts of smoke looks like a muddy aquarium; faces blob whitely round the tables like illassorted fishes. Umbrellas begin to bob in clusters up the snowmottled street. The orator turns up his collar and walks briskly east along Houston, holding the muddy soapbox away from his trousers.

Faces, hats, hands, newspapers jiggled in the fetid roaring subway car like corn in a popper. The downtown express passed clattering in yellow light, window telescoping window till they overlapped like scales.

‘Look George,’ said Sandbourne to George Baldwin who hung on a strap beside him, ‘you can see Fitzgerald’s contraction.’

‘I’ll be seeing the inside of an undertaking parlor if I dont get out of this subway soon.’

‘It does you plutocrats good now and then to see how the other half travels… Maybe it’ll make you induce some of your little playmates down at Tammany Hall to stop squabbling and give us wageslaves a little transportation… cristamighty I could tell em a thing or two… My idea’s for a series of endless moving platforms under Fifth Avenue.’

‘Did you cook that up when you were in hospital Phil?’

‘I cooked a whole lot of things up while I was in hospital.’

‘Look here lets get out at Grand Central and walk. I cant stand this… I’m not used to it.’

‘Sure… I’ll phone Elsie I’ll be a little late to dinner… Not often I get to see you nowadays George… Gee it’s like the old days.’

In a tangled clot of men and women, arms, legs, hats aslant on perspiring necks, they were pushed out on the platform. They walked up Lexington Avenue quiet in the claretmisted afterglow.

‘But Phil how did you come to step out in front of a truck that way?’

‘Honestly George I dunno… The last I remember is craning my neck to look at a terribly pretty girl went by in a taxicab and there I was drinking icewater out of a teapot in the hospital.’

‘Shame on you Phil at your age.’

‘Cristamighty dont I know it? But I’m not the only one.’

‘It is funny the way a thing like that comes over you… Why what have you heard about me?’

‘Gosh George dont get nervous, it’s all right… I’ve seen her in The Zinnia Girl… She walks away with it. That other girl who’s the star dont have a show.’

‘Look here Phil if you hear any rumors about Miss Oglethorpe for Heaven’s sake shut them up. It’s so damn silly you cant go out to tea with a woman without everybody starting their dirty gabble all over town… By God I will not have a scandal, I dont care what happens.’

‘Say hold your horses George.’

‘I’m in a very delicate position downtown just at the moment that’s all… And then Cecily and I have at last reached a modus vivendi… I wont have it disturbed.’

They walked along in silence.

Sandbourne walked with his hat in his hand. His hair was almost white but his eyebrows were still dark and bushy. Every few steps he changed the length of his stride as if it hurt him to walk. He cleared his throat. ‘George you were asking me if I’d cooked up any schemes when I was in hospital… Do you remember years ago old man Specker used to talk about vitreous and superenameled tile? Well I’ve been workin on his formula out at Hollis… A friend of mine there has a two thousand degree oven he bakes pottery in. I think it can be put on a commercial basis… Man it would revolutionize the whole industry. Combined with concrete it would enormously increase the flexibility of the materials at the architects’ disposal. We could make tile any color, size or finish… Imagine this city when all the buildins instead of bein dirty gray were ornamented with vivid colors. Imagine bands of scarlet round the entablatures of skyscrapers. Colored tile would revolutionize the whole life of the city… Instead of fallin back on the orders or on gothic or romanesque decorations we could evolve new designs, new colors, new forms. If there was a little color in the town all this hardshell inhibited life’d break down… There’d be more love an less divorce…’

Baldwin burst out laughing. ‘You tell em Phil… I’ll talk to you about that sometime. You must come up to dinner when Cecily’s there and tell us about it… Why wont Parkhurst do anything?’

‘I wouldnt let him in on it. He’d cotton on to the proposition and leave me out in the cold once he had the formula. I wouldn’t trust him with a rubber nickel.’

‘Why doesnt he take you into partnership Phil?’

‘He’s got me where he wants me anyway… He knows I do all the work in his goddamned office. He knows too that I’m too cranky to make out with most people. He’s a slick article.’

‘Still I should think you could put it up to him.’

‘He’s got me where he wants me and he knows it, so I continue doin the work while he amasses the coin… I guess it’s logical. If I had more money I’d just spend it. I’m just shiftless.’

‘But look here man you’re not so much older than I am… You’ve still got a career ahead of you.’

‘Sure nine hours a day draftin… Gosh I wish you’d go into this tile business with me.’

Baldwin stopped at a corner and slapped his hand on the briefcase he was carrying. ‘Now Phil you know I’d be very glad to give you a hand in any way I could… But just at the moment my financial situation is terribly involved. I’ve gotten into some rather rash entanglements and Heaven knows how I’m going to get out of them… That’s why I cant have a scandal or a divorce or anything. You dont understand how complicatedly things interact… I couldnt take up anything new, not for a year at least. This war in Europe has made things very unsettled downtown. Anything’s liable to happen.’

‘All right. Good night George.’

Sandbourne turned abruptly on his heel and walked down the avenue again. He was tired and his legs ached. It was almost dark. On the way back to the station the grimy brick and brownstone blocks dragged past monotonously like the days of his life.

Under the skin of her temples iron clamps tighten till her head will mash like an egg; she begins to walk with long strides up and down the room that bristles with itching stuffiness; spotty colors of pictures, carpets, chairs wrap about her like a choking hot blanket. Outside the window the backyards are striped with blue and lilac and topaz of a rainy twilight. She opens the window. No time to get tight like the twilight, Stan said. The telephone reached out shivering beady tentacles of sound. She slams the window down. O hell cant they give you any peace?

‘Why Harry I didnt know you were back… Oh I wonder if I can… Oh yes I guess I can. Come along by after the theater… Isnt that wonderful? You must tell me all about it.’ She no sooner puts the receiver down than the bell clutches at her again. ‘Hello… No I dont… Oh yes maybe I do… When did you get back?’ She laughed a tinkling telephone laugh. ‘But Howard I’m terribly busy… Yes I am honestly… Have you been to the show? Well sometime come round after a performance… I’m so anxious to hear about your trip… you know… Goodby Howard.’

A walk’ll make me feel better. She sits at her dressingtable and shakes her hair down about her shoulders. ‘It’s such a hellish nuisance, I’d like to cut it all off… spreads apace. The shadow of white Death… Oughtnt to stay up so late, those dark circles under my eyes… And at the door, Invisible Corruption… If I could only cry; there are people who can cry their eyes out, really cry themselves blind… Anyway the divorce’ll go through…

Gosh it’s six o’clock already. She starts walking up and down the room again. I am borne darkly fearfully afar… The phone rings. ‘Hello… Yes this is Miss Oglethorpe… Why hello Ruth, why I haven’t seen you for ages, since Mrs Sunderland’s… Oh, do I’d love to see you. Come by and we’ll have a bite to eat on the way to the theater… It’s the third floor.’

She rings off and gets a raincape out of a closet. The smell of furs and mothballs and dresses clings in her nostrils. She throws up the window again and breathes deep of the wet air full of the cold rot of autumn. She hears the burring boom of a big steamer from the river. Darkly, fearfully afar from this nonsensical life, from this fuzzy idiocy and strife; a man can take a ship for his wife, but a girl. The telephone is shiveringly beadily ringing, ringing.

The buzzer burrs at the same time. Ellen presses the button to click the latch. ‘Hello… No, I’m very sorry I’m afraid you’ll have to tell me who it is. Why Larry Hopkins I thought you were in Tokyo… They havent moved you again have they? Why of course we must see each other… My dear it’s simply horrible but I’m all dated up for two weeks… Look I’m sort of crazy tonight. You call up tomorrow at twelve and I’ll try to shift things around… Why of course I’ve got to see you immediately you funny old thing.’… Ruth Prynne and Cassandra Wilkins come in shaking the water off their umbrellas. ‘Well goodby Larry… Why it’s so so sweet of both of you… Do take your things off for a second… Cassie wont you have dinner with us?’

‘I felt I just had to see you… It’s so wonderful about your wonderful success,’ says Cassie in a shaky voice. ‘And my dear I felt so terribly when I heard about Mr Emery. I cried and cried, didnt I Ruth?’

‘Oh what a beautiful apartment you have,’ Ruth is exclaiming at the same moment. Ellen’s ears ring sickeningly. ‘We all have to die sometime,’ gruffly she blurts out.

Ruth’s rubberclad foot is tapping the floor; she catches Cassie’s eye and makes her stammer into silence. ‘Hadnt we better go along? It’s getting rather late,’ she says.

‘Excuse me a minute Ruth.’ Ellen runs into the bathroom and slams the door. She sits on the edge of the bathtub pounding on her knees with her clenched fists. Those women’ll drive me mad. Then the tension in her snaps, she feels something draining out of her like water out of a washbasin. She quietly puts a dab of rouge on her lips.

When she goes back she says in her usual voice: ‘Well let’s get along… Got a part yet Ruth?’

‘I had a chance to go out to Detroit with a stock company. I turned it down… I wont go out of New York whatever happens.’

‘What wouldnt I give for a chance to get away from New York… Honestly if I was offered a job singing in a movie in Medicine Hat I think I’d take it.’

Ellen picks up her umbrella and the three women file down the stairs and out into the street. ‘Taxi,’ calls Ellen.

The passing car grinds to a stop. The red hawk face of the taxidriver craning into the light of the street lamp. ‘Go to Eugenie’s on Fortyeighth Street,’ says Ellen as the others climb in. Greenish lights and darks flicker past the lightbeaded windows.

She stood with her arm in the arm of Harry Goldweiser’s dinner jacket looking out over the parapet of the roofgarden. Below them the Park lay twinkling with occasional lights, streaked with nebular blur like a fallen sky. From behind them came gusts of a tango, inklings of voices, shuffle of feet on a dancefloor. Ellen felt a stiff castiron figure in her metalgreen evening dress.

‘Ah but Boirnhardt, Rachel, Duse, Mrs Siddons… No Elaine I’m tellin you, d’you understand? There’s no art like the stage that soars so high moldin the passions of men… If I could only do what I wanted we’d be the greatest people in the world. You’d be the greatest actress… I’d be the great producer, the unseen builder, d’you understand? But the public dont want art, the people of this country wont let you do anythin for em. All they want’s a detective melodrama or a rotten French farce with the kick left out or a lot of pretty girls and music. Well a showman’s business is to give the public what they want.’

‘I think that this city is full of people wanting inconceivable things… Look at it.’

‘It’s all right at night when you cant see it. There’s no artistic sense, no beautiful buildins, no old-time air, that’s what’s the matter with it.’

They stood a while without speaking. The orchestra began playing the waltz from The Lilac Domino. Suddenly Ellen turned to Goldweiser and said in a curt tone. ‘Can you understand a woman who wants to be a harlot, a common tart, sometimes?’

‘My dear young lady what a strange thing for a sweet lovely girl to suddenly come out and say.’

‘I suppose you’re shocked.’ She didnt hear his answer. She felt she was going to cry. She pressed her sharp nails into the palms of her hands, she held her breath until she had counted twenty. Then she said in a choking little girl’s voice, ‘Harry let’s go and dance a little.’

The sky above the cardboard buildings is a vault of beaten lead. It would be less raw if it would snow. Ellen finds a taxi on the corner of Seventh Avenue and lets herself sink back in the seat rubbing the numb gloved fingers of one hand against the palm of the other. ‘West Fiftyseventh, please.’ Out of a sick mask of fatigue she watches fruitstores, signs, buildings being built, trucks, girls, messengerboys, policemen through the jolting window. If I have my child, Stan’s child, it will grow up to jolt up Seventh Avenue under a sky of beaten lead that never snows watching fruitstores, signs, buildings being built, trucks, girls, messengerboys, policemen… She presses her knees together, sits up straight on the edge of the seat with her hands clasped over her slender belly. O God the rotten joke they’ve played on me, taking Stan away, burning him up, leaving me nothing but this growing in me that’s going to kill me. She’s whimpering into her numb hands. O God why wont it snow?

As she stands on the gray pavement fumbling in her purse for a bill, a dusteddy swirling scraps of paper along the gutter fills her mouth with grit. The elevatorman’s face is round ebony with ivory inlay. ‘Mrs Staunton Wells?’ ‘Yas ma’am eighth floor.’

The elevator hums as it soars. She stands looking at herself in the narrow mirror. Suddenly something recklessly gay goes through her. She rubs the dust off her face with a screwedup handkerchief, smiles at the elevatorman’s smile that’s wide as the full keyboard of a piano, and briskly rustles to the door of the apartment that a frilled maid opens. Inside it smells of tea and furs and flowers, women’s voices chirp to the clinking of cups like birds in an aviary. Glances flicker about her head as she goes into the room.

There was wine spilled on the tablecloth and bits of tomatosauce from the spaghetti. The restaurant was a steamy place with views of the Bay of Naples painted in soupy blues and greens on the walls. Ellen sat back in her chair from the round tableful of young men, watching the smoke from her cigarette crinkle spirally round the fat Chiantibottle in front of her. In her plate a slab of tricolor icecream melted forlornly. ‘But good God hasnt a man some rights? No, this industrial civilization forces us to seek a complete readjustment of government and social life…’

‘Doesnt he use long words?’ Ellen whispered to Herf who sat beside her.

‘He’s right all the same,’ he growled back at her… ‘The result has been to put more power in the hands of a few men than there has been in the history of the world since the horrible slave civilizations of Egypt and Mesopotamia…’

‘Hear hear.’

‘No but I’m serious… The only way of bucking the interests is for working people, the proletariat, producers and consumers, anything you want to call them, to form unions and finally get so well organized that they can take over the whole government.’

‘I think you’re entirely wrong, Martin, it’s the interests as you call em, these horrible capitalists, that have built up this country as we have it today.’

‘Well look at it for God’s sake… That’s what I’m saying. I wouldnt kennel a dog in it.’

‘I dont think so. I admire this country… It’s the only fatherland I’ve got… And I think that all these downtrodden masses really want to be downtrodden, they’re not fit for anything else… If they werent they’d be flourishing businessmen… Those that are any good are getting to be.’

‘But I don’t think a flourishing businessman is the highest ideal of human endeavor.’

‘A whole lot higher than a rotten fiddleheaded anarchist agitator… Those that arent crooks are crazy.’

‘Look here Mead, you’ve just insulted something that you dont understand, that you know nothing about… I cant allow you to do that… You should try to understand things before you go round insulting them.’

‘An insult to the intelligence that’s what it is all this socialistic drivel.’

Ellen tapped Herf on the sleeve. ‘Jimmy I’ve got to go home. Do you want to walk a little way with me?’

‘Martin, will you settle for us? We’ve got to go… Ellie you look terribly pale.’

‘It’s just a little hot in here… Whee, what a relief… I hate arguments anyway. I never can think of anything to say.’

‘That bunch does nothing but chew the rag night after night.’

Eighth Avenue was full of fog that caught at their throats. Lights bloomed dimly through it, faces loomed, glinted in silhouette and faded like a fish in a muddy aquarium.

‘Feel better Ellie?’

‘Lots.’

‘I’m awfully glad.’

‘Do you know you’re the only person around here who calls me Ellie. I like it… Everybody tries to make me seem so grown up since I’ve been on the stage.’

‘Stan used to.’

‘Maybe that’s why I like it,’ she said in a little trailing voice like a cry heard at night from far away along a beach.

Jimmy felt something clamping his throat. ‘Oh gosh things are rotten,’ he said. ‘God I wish I could blame it all on capitalism the way Martin does.’

‘It’s pleasant walking like this… I love a fog.’

They walked on without speaking. Wheels rumbled through the muffling fog underlaid with the groping distant lowing of sirens and steamboatwhistles on the river.

‘But at least you have a career… You like your work, you’re enormously successful,’ said Herf at the corner of Fourteenth Street, and caught her arm as they crossed.

‘Dont say that… You really dont believe it. I dont kid myself as much as you think I do.’

‘No but it’s so.’

‘It used to be before I met Stan, before I loved him… You see I was a crazy little stagestruck kid who got launched out in a lot of things I didnt understand before I had time to learn anything about life… Married at eighteen and divorced at twentytwo’s a pretty good record… But Stan was so wonderful…’

‘I know.’

‘Without ever saying anything he made me feel there were other things… unbelievable things…’

‘God I resent his craziness though… It’s such a waste.’

‘I cant talk about it.’

‘Let’s not.’

‘Jimmy you’re the only person left I can really talk to.’

‘Dont want to trust me. I might go berserk on you too some day.’

They laughed.

‘God I’m glad I’m not dead, arent you Ellie?’

‘I dont know. Look here’s my place. I dont want you to come up… I’m going right to bed. I feel miserably…’ Jimmy stood with his hat off looking at her. She was fumbling in her purse for her key. ‘Look Jimmy I might as well tell you…’ She went up to him and spoke fast with her face turned away pointing at him with the latchkey that caught the light of the streetlamp. The fog was like a tent round about them. ‘I’m going to have a baby… Stan’s baby. I’m going to give up all this silly life and raise it. I dont care what happens.’

‘O God that’s the bravest thing I ever heard of a woman doing… Oh Ellie you’re so wonderful. God if I could only tell you what I…’

‘Oh no.’ Her voice broke and her eyes filled with tears. ‘I’m a silly fool, that’s all.’ She screwed up her face like a little child and ran up the steps with the tears streaming down her face.

‘Oh Ellie I want to say something to you…’

The door closed behind her.

Jimmy Herf stood stockstill at the foot of the brownstone steps. His temples throbbed. He wanted to break the door down after her. He dropped on his knees and kissed the step where she had stood. The fog swirled and flickered with colors in confetti about him. Then the trumpet feeling ebbed and he was falling through a black manhole. He stood stockstill. A policeman’s ballbearing eyes searched his face as he passed, a stout blue column waving a nightstick. Then suddenly he clenched his fists and walked off. ‘O God everything is hellish,’ he said aloud. He wiped the grit off his lips with his coatsleeve.

She puts her hand in his to jump out of the roadster as the ferry starts, ‘Thanks Larry,’ and follows his tall ambling body out on the bow. A faint riverwind blows the dust and gasoline out of their nostrils. Through the pearly night the square frames of houses along the Drive opposite flicker like burnedout fireworks. The waves slap tinily against the shoving bow of the ferry. A hunchback with a violin is scratching Marianela.

‘Nothing succeeds like success,’ Larry is saying in a deep droning voice.

‘Of if you knew how little I cared about anything just now you wouldnt go on teasing me with all these words… You know, marriage, success, love, they’re just words.’

‘But they mean everything in the world to me… I think you’d like it in Lima Elaine… I waited until you were free, didnt I? And now here I am.’

‘We’re none of us that ever… But I’m just numb.’ The riverwind is brackish. Along the viaduct above 125th Street cars crawl like beetles. As the ferry enters the slip they hear the squudge and rumble of wheels on asphalt.

‘Well we’d better get back into the car, you wonderful creature Elaine.’

‘After all day it’s exciting isnt it Larry, getting back into the center of things.’

Beside the smudged white door are two pushbuttons marked NIGHT BELL and DAY BELL. She rings with a shaky finger. A short broad man with a face like a rat and sleek black hair brushed straight back opens. Short dollhands the color of the flesh of a mushroom hang at his sides. He hunches his shoulders in a bow.

‘Are you the lady? Come in.’

‘Is this Dr Abrahms?’

‘Yes… You are the lady my friend phoned me about. Sit down my dear lady.’ The office smells of something like arnica. Her heart joggles desperately between her ribs.

‘You understand…’ She hates the quaver in her voice; she’s going to faint. ‘You understand, Dr Abrahms that it is absolutely necessary. I am getting a divorce from my husband and have to make my own living.’

‘Very young, unhappily married… I am sorry.’ The doctor purrs softly as if to himself. He heaves a hissing sigh and suddenly looks in her eyes with black steel eyes like gimlets. ‘Do not be afraid, dear lady, it is a very simple operation… Are you ready now?’

‘Yes. It wont take very long will it? If I can pull myself together I have an engagement for tea at five.’

‘You are a brave young lady. In an hour it will be forgotten… I am sorry… It is very sad such a thing is necessary… Dear lady you should have a home and many children and a loving husband… Will you go in the operating room and prepare yourself… I work without an assistant.’

The bright searing bud of light swells in the center of the ceiling, sprays razorsharp nickel, enamel, a dazzling sharp glass case of sharp instruments. She takes off her hat and lets herself sink shuddering sick on a little enamel chair. Then she gets stiffly to her feet and undoes the band of her skirt.

The roar of the streets breaks like surf about a shell of throbbing agony. She watches the tilt of her leather hat, the powder, the rosed cheeks, the crimson lips that are a mask on her face. All the buttons of her gloves are buttoned. She raises her hand. ‘Taxi!’ A fire engine roars past, a hosewagon with sweatyfaced men pulling on rubber coats, a clanging hookandladder. All the feeling in her fades with the dizzy fade of the siren. A wooden Indian, painted, with a hand raised at the streetcorner.

‘Taxi!’

‘Yes ma’am.’

‘Drive to the Ritz.’