The Moth

9

It was in the Christmas holidays that Margaret called, and asked me to a party at the hotel New Year’s Eve. I said I’d come if I could, as it was still heavy on my mind about Easton, and I wasn’t much in the humor. But then, the morning of the party, it came out in the Sun, under an Easton date line, about the marriage, and it turned out she was even more prominent than she had said, because it was on the society page, and got some space. So I thought to myself: My young friend, you’re going to the party. So I put on the black tie the Old Man had given me the previous Christmas, and went. I was surprised at the change in her, as I hadn’t seen her in some months. She had slimmed quite a lot, so she wasn’t so corn-fed and had a figure. And her face had lost the blobbiness it had had, so it was reasonably good-looking. She had on a pink dress that went nice with her dark hair, so I shook hands and admired the new shape, and she didn’t seem to mind that kind of talk at all. When the music started I asked her to dance. Denny was there, and he’d got a load of the reconditioned shape, so while the fiddlers were tuning he whispered that by God, he was going to do something about that. But who she danced off with was me.

Then I asked her again, and after that again, and if there was anyone else she danced with I don’t know who it was. Supper was served in the main dining room, where the hotel celebration was going on, and the party orchestra moved in there, hitting it up at one end of the room with the main orchestra at the other, so of course that meant I danced with her all the time. When the bugle blew and then both orchestras started Auld Lang Syne, I danced her out in the hall and around a corner, and as the clock struck twelve I kissed her. Her lips were hot and wet and soft. They said one thing and one thing only, and I let them say it. Then somebody ran by with a horn and we broke. “Jack, I’ll have to go back.”

“This hallway is no good.”

“My studio might be better.”

“Hey, what’s this?”

“If you had come around, I’d have showed it to you.”

“I’ve been away. What kind of a studio?”

“Music.”

“Where?”

“Here. In the hotel. Just a suite, but they fixed it up for me. The piano is a Christmas present. It’s a Steinway.”

“Yeah, that we’d expect.”

“Well, it’s the best make there is.”

“Of course. When do I see this studio?”

“... You want to see it?”

“Sure.”

“When?”

“Why — whenever.”

“Tonight?”

“Why not — this morning?”

She looked at me and I danced her back in the dining room and pulled her up against me so hard I wonder she could breathe. She began to whisper. I was to say good night when the rest did, and get my things from the check room, and go out, and on up the street toward my car. But then in the basement of the hotel, on the Charles Street side, I was to find a door, with steps leading down to it. Over the sill was a key, and I was to let myself in and take a turn to the right and keep on to the freight elevator in the rear, and wait. So I followed instructions. The party began breaking up pretty soon, and I shook hands with her father and mother and asked for little Helen, who was spending the holidays with cousins in Trenton, relatives of the Cartaret the hotel was named after. Mr. Legg, as I’ve said, is a bit on the stuffy side, a slim little man with a white mustache that looked like something in an oil painting, but he patted me on the shoulder and acted friendly. Mrs. Legg was a gray-haired woman, kind of heavy-set, with light china-blue eyes that have the same trick Margaret’s have, of never quite looking at you with a little set smile. She’s a cold dame, but she kept me there five minutes at least, asking me questions about myself, especially whether I sang any more, and seemed to think it was a good idea I had quit. Then she told me all about Margaret’s playing, and how “splendid” it had become, but how, nevertheless, she wanted my “opinion.” What that was worth I couldn’t quite see, but I was to find out. Then I shook hands with Margaret, and made a little speech that everybody could hear, about the wonderful time I’d had, and how I wished her the best for the coming year.

It seemed a year before there was nobody on Charles Street and I could slip down the steps and find the key and let myself in. It was dark down there, but I could see that on my left was a door leading into the barber shop, and on my right a concrete passage that went past furnaces, pumps, and electrical stuff. I turned right, like she said, and came to a cross passage, at the rear of the hotel, that led to the freight elevator, off in a corner. I went over to it, and I could see the car through the glass but she had said wait and I did. I don’t know how long I waited, but it seemed that hell must at least be frozen over and thawed out again before I heard something. There’d be a click, then steps, then another click. All of a sudden I knew it was a watchman with his clock, and that he was down there, in the basement, where I was. I had a panicky two seconds, but then, as easy as I could, I opened the car door, stepped in, and coaxed it shut again. Then I stooped down, below the glass. The steps came on and stopped, then after a click went away. Then the car moved and I was going up.

At the eighth floor I could see her, through the glass. When I got out she began more whispering. I was to give her a head start, then slide around to 819 and go in without buzzing or knocking. When I had that straight she took a long look around and ducked around a corner, with a tiptoe, guilty look. I counted twenty, then followed along, watching the numbers. The door to 819 was open a crack, and I stepped in and closed it after me. Then arms were around me and lips were against mine and she was pressing up against me and trembling. It was dark, but by the light from the street I could see a grand piano, some chairs, and at the far end of the room, a sofa. I carried her to it, held her close, and kissed her some more. She locked her arms around me and kept kissing me and catching her breath in little short gasps. “... You surprised, Jack?”

“At you?”

“That I can be so — demonstrative.”

“Not with the it that you carried around.”

“Really, Jack?”

“You always did get me.”

“You never said anything.”

“Did anything, you really mean.”

“Well, you never did.”

“With pigtails hanging down your back?”

“I’m as old as you.”

“You’re still pretty young.”

“You really liked me?”

“Why, I used to stand in the wings while you were playing Rachmaninoff Prelude and think how I’d like to put my arms around you, from behind, while your hands were there on the keyboard, and—”

“Yes, Jack? And—?”

“Like this.”

With that I made my first grab at something that meant business. She pushed my hand away, but I found a zipper, and slid it and it slid pretty easy. Then she stiffened. “... Somebody’s outside.”

She pulled up the zipper and I snapped on a light. She wiped my face with her handkerchief. There came a knock on the door. “Who’s there?”

“Your milk, darling.”

It was Mrs. Legg’s voice and Margaret let her in. When she saw me she acted surprised, but no more than surprised. “Well, of all things!”

“Had to see the studio, you know.”

“But of course!”

“Pretty.”

“Lovely!... Pet, you mustn’t forget this any more! She’s started skimmed milk, Jack, and it’s done such wonders for her, slendered her down so her figure is divine. One wouldn’t believe it’s one and the same girl!”

“It’s taken weight off her all right.”

“Well, Mother, do sit down.”

“No, it’s getting late — well, just for a minute.”

She talked of the party, and how nicely the boys had knocked off the music, and quite a few things, and you’d have thought that a guy and a girl and a studio at three thirty in the morning were just one of those things that happened. But her eyes were cold, and they meant go, so after a couple of minutes I looked at my watch and gave an imitation of a whistle. Then we were in the hall and then in the elevator, going down.

“Jack, how did she—”

“Don’t blame me. I laid low, even when—”

“I know you did! How could she know we were there? I told the board no calls until noon, then hung the don’t-disturb card on the door, and I know nobody saw me go up—”

“I even ducked the watchman.”

Margaret never paid much attention to what went on in the hotel, but later on, I found out if she had painted a green line from her bedroom to 819 she couldn’t have left a plainer trail than by the don’t-disturb card and the call block through the exchange, two smoke screens the old lady always kept an eye on. And when she pulled the freight car up to the eighth floor, which was reserved for women alone, and left it there, that made it simple. But we didn’t know about any of that then, and all we did was stand there in the lobby and whisper, have a quick kiss good night, and make a date.

So I began going with her. It all turned out bad, and I’ve said mean things about her, and maybe will say more. It seemed to me, and still does, that she was a spoiled, self-centered girl, but of course what I really held against her, and what she held against me, was that while I liked her a little bit I didn’t like her much, and not enough, after that one time, to pull her zippers, though of course I mumbled a lot about how wonderful it would be if we didn’t have to do our courting in the Goldfish Bowl, as we called the studio from then on. If I could have lived my life as I wanted to live it, I don’t think I’d have showed up at the Cartaret once a year. But I had no life to live. My money was gone, so those twenty dollars and thirty dollars every month didn’t come any more. And I couldn’t get any work. I was still an A-1 mechanic, and getting better from what I was getting in college, but there was no work. Even my father had none. In the house was nothing but gloom, whispers, and nerves. The Cartaret was a place to go, where there was something to do, and she was somebody to do it with. When summer came and Mr. Legg offered me a place on the desk I took it and tried learning to be a room clerk. I guess I did, somehow. Anyhow, I got so I could put up the mail in less than an hour, the worst chore a room clerk does. I figured out one thing: alphabetize everything, so all D. P. Jones’s stuff comes together before you start putting it in his box. Then you don’t have to look him up eight different times.

“Jack.”

“Yes, Mr. Legg?”

“Let’s talk about your future.”

“Time somebody did.”

“Have a cigar?”

“Thanks, I don’t smoke.”

“How many summers have you worked for us now?”

“Two.”

“I thought it was more.”

“No, my sophomore summer and last summer.”

“You graduate this year, Margaret tells me.”

“In June.”

“What had you thought to do?”

“Well, I’m taking my B.S. in mechanical engineering, and I had thought of going to Detroit and trying to get started there, but the way I hear it, things are pretty shot in the automobile factories, with labor being laid off all the time, and no technical people being taken on, on account of their own men, the ones already laid off, having first call. Of course, until the last couple of months, that hadn’t worried me, because I could have fallen back on football until things get better, but the cracked kneecap I got in the Georgetown game isn’t improving. I don’t limp, it’s nothing that’ll bother me, but it’s taken about two seconds off my speed. I mean it’s stiff. I—”

“That doesn’t upset me at all.”

“Yeah, but I played some pro, if you have to know.”

“I suspected it.”

“And — now that’s out.”

“I’m relieved. I think very little of sport.”

“To me, it was a means to an end.”

“May I stress that word ‘end’?”

“It’s ended, all right.”

“Then we’ll pay no more attention to it. Jack, you’ve impressed me most favorably, the short time you’ve been with me. How would you like the hotel business?”

“Well, what do you think?”

“I think you’d make a go of it.”

“Is this an offer?”

“... It could be. It could very well be. I’ll go so far as to say I’d like it to be. But — you created the situation. It’s you that’s here morning, noon, and night, and it’s you who would continue to create a situation if you came in here permanently. Jack, before we discuss offers, I’d have to know your intentions toward Margaret.”

“Your feelings are inside, and I think you know about them. Your intentions are what you’re going to do about them, and frankly, Mr. Legg, it wouldn’t be fair to Margaret or you or anybody to put on an act that I wanted to do something about them when there’s nothing I can do. My father’s in a bad way. I’ve got no work, and I don’t know of any work. So far as my intentions go, suppose you tell me.”

“But if you had work?”

“Watch me.”

“Then let’s fix things up.”

“O.K., I’d like a chance to get a little money together, say three or four or five months to pay off a few things that have come up in my senior year and bulge the bank balance up a little bit, and then, say around October or November—”

“Fine, Jack. I like your attitude. Ah, before you go, I’d like you to know her mother will be — shall we say? — relieved. Not only pleased, but eased, in her mind. To be perfectly frank, with Margaret having notions of going to New York and concertizing, we’ve been concerned.”

“I don’t think you need be.”

“Why not, Jack?”

“I doubt if she’s got it.”

“... So do we.”

We were in his private office, a small paneled room with pictures of Charles Carroll of Carrollton and Francis Scott Key and some Cartarets in it, and he came over from behind the desk and leaned close to me and let me have it out of the side of the mouth in a way you wouldn’t think a member of the Maryland Club would ever talk. “... We think she’s kidding herself, and badly. Frankly, when Harold Randolph was alive and the piano seemed something for a young lady and one could be proud of her but not alarmed about her, I was all for it. But then when that vaudeville business started, and Randolph died and this new crowd came in at the Peabody — we’ve been growing uneasy, uneasy, uneasy. Jack, am I making myself clear?”

Randolph was an F.F.V. that had run the Peabody Conservatory as long as anybody could remember. But somewhere around the time I entered college he had died, and Margaret had gone with some bozo from Texas that had pumped her full of stuff about temperament, and I knew what Mr. Legg meant. I just winked and he winked back. “Jack, suppose she did have it? It’s no life for a woman. I want her married. She’s crazy about you, so take it over. And Jack, I like that idea of getting a little stake, so you’re your own man. But don’t overdo. I mean, don’t worry about money. Soon as you’re married, get a baby started, so she — you get it, boy, get it?”

He cackled and laughed and shook hands and opened the door on a crack and peeped out and then opened a panel and in there were bottles and glasses and fizz water. So we had a drink and he laughed and clapped me on the back some more. It sounds like one nice guy talking to another nice guy about what had to be settled before they could do something nice for a pretty nice girl, and I wish I could tell it that way. But what I said, which was what I meant, makes no sense unless you know what had happened, over at the college, the week before, on a Friday afternoon that Denny and I had to spend there, on account of a test we both had coming up the next morning. Denny had long since forgotten about engineering, and switched over to psychology and business practice and advertising and some more courses like that, that he could piece together for a degree, but we were in the same calculus class and they were throwing a test at us. We were both good at math, and there was no need to bone the test, so it was just an afternoon to kill. About three o’clock he came in our room carrying a big carton, with a colored fellow behind him carrying another, and he acted pretty mysterious about it. Come to find out it was beer, and where it came from I don’t know, but if you ask me his father had given an order and then asked the bootlegger to stop by, on his way into the District, with a little for Denny. But of course, in a case like that, Denny would have to talk big about his “connections.” That didn’t bother me any. It was a hot day in April and I took the bottles out, then took one of the cartons to the drug store and filled it with cracked ice and came back and put the stopper in the basin and loaded some bottles in and put ice around them and pretty soon we were set.

So of course, nothing draws like beer, so it wasn’t long before we had company. We didn’t have many, not over four or five or six, because on a Friday afternoon nobody sticks around there that doesn’t have to. But we had that many, drinking out of the bottlenecks after Denny used the opener, and getting kind of sociable, that is, all except Morton. Morton was known simply as Salt, and when it rained he poured and at all other times he poured, a thin, do-gooder line that got on everybody’s nerves and of course only got worse with beer. However, nobody got sore at all, until after Cannon began his toasting. Who Cannon started to toast I don’t know, maybe the college or Governor Ritchie or General Pershing, it doesn’t make much difference and one guess is as good as another up to and including the Queen of Sheba. But where Salt began to look thick was on the toast to the class of 1931, that had graduated the year before. Cannon took a little trouble with it and it went something like this:

“To that noble aggregation, which beat us by one year down life’s broad highway, the class of ’31 — may they always be right, but right or left, ’31. Where, my friends, does one find such distinction, such achievement, as in the class of ’31? I pause for a reply, not knowing where to look. Is highway construction our test of solid accomplishment? This outfit has pressed more bricks than Coxey’s Army. Is it architecture? Think of the buildings that are being held up by the class of ’31. Is it philanthropy? This outfit has panhandled more dimes than John D. Rockefeller would be able to give away the whole coming year. Is it agriculture? Think of the apples ’31 has peddled in the streets, and only a year out of school yet. Is it tonsoriology? A blind man could shave himself by the shine on the seat of these bastards’ pants. Is it—”

“I don’t care for that.”

“Salt, what have I said to offend you?”

“It’s not what you say. It’s how you say it.”

“You mean my deep, mellifluous voice?”

“I mean your scoffing tone.”

“Are you by any chance taking up for these sons of bitches that showed not the least fraction of a human soul when we got here four years ago, that razzed us and taunted us and hazed us, that—”

“I don’t take up for ’31 at all. To hell with them! But if they want work, there’s still work to do—”

“Oh, yeah? Pray tell us.”

Then Cannon asked Salt what he was going to do when he got his dip. He said he was going with the Consolidated Engineering Company, but it was quite well known that Consol was owned by his uncle, and had contracts all over, specially wherever the government needed dredges. That got him the raspberry, and Cannon went on: “Here’s to Admiral Byrd!”

“Ray!”

“Babe Ruth!”

“Ray!”

“Jean Harlow!”

“Oh, boy!”

“President Hoover!”

“Hip, hip—”

“Morituri, te salutamus!”

But Salt had stood up when Mr. Hoover’s name was mentioned, and that was when Denny swung. There was quite a roughhouse, and I guess it was five or six o’clock when I got it quieted down and all of them thrown out. But along around ten, when the beer had worn off and we’d had something to eat, I lay down and kept thinking about it. “Denny, what was that he said? That sounded like Latin.”

“May be in the dictionary.”

I thought I remembered the first word of it, and sure enough after a while I found it. “Denny, you know what it means?”

“Not noticeably.”

“‘We who are about to die salute you.’”

“Well?”

“Is that how he feels?”

“Why not? He’s on the end of the plank.”

“Is that how you feel, Denny?”

“... I don’t know.”

“What are you going to do when we graduate, Denny?”

“Point of Rocks.”

Point of Rocks is a place on the Potomac, thirty or forty miles up from the District on the Maryland side, where Mr. Deets had a little farm, but he used it mainly when he felt like fishing. That Denny would hole up there just gave you an idea how far things had gone in the way of jobs. Of course there hadn’t been much out of him about pro football since I cracked my knee. It turned out in a professional game if he didn’t have me to take him through the line he wasn’t going through the line, so after getting the liver, lights, and gizzard knocked out of him a couple of times he didn’t get called any more. “You really going to Point of Rocks?”

“Well, where the hell would I go?”

If it was the beer wearing off, or he’d been worrying, I don’t know, but he was disagreeable and sounded bitter. That was when I got it through my head at last: if it could take the starch out of Denny, it was bad. So that’s why I talked like I did to Mr. Legg. That wasn’t a nice kid talking to a nice father about a nice girl. It was a guy that was losing his nerve making the best of things he could.