Manhattan Transfer (43 page)

‘Somebody who thinks there’s no use strugglin, somebody who dont believe in human progress.’

‘Do you think Bouy was like that?’

‘He was a scab anyway… None o these Southerners are class-conscious… Didn’t he make you stop payin your union dues?’

‘I was sick o workin a sewin machine.’

‘But you could be a handworker, do fancy work and make good money. You’re not one o that kind, you’re one of us… I’ll get you back in good standin an you kin get a good job again… God I’d never have let you work in a dancehall the way he did. Anna it hurt me terrible to see a Jewish girl goin round with a feller like that.’

‘Well he’s gone an I aint got no job.’

‘Fellers like that are the greatest enemies of the workers… They dont think of nobody but themselves.’

They are walking slowly up Second Avenue through a foggy evening. He is a rustyhaired thinfaced young Jew with sunken cheeks and livid pale skin. He has the bandy legs of a garment worker. Anna’s shoes are too small for her. She has deep rings under her eyes. The fog is full of strolling groups talking Yiddish, overaccented East Side English, Russian. Warm rifts of light from delicatessen stores and softdrink stands mark off the glistening pavement.

‘If I didn’t feel so tired all the time,’ mutters Anna.

‘Let’s stop here an have a drink… You take a glass o buttermilk Anna, make ye feel good.’

‘I aint got the taste for it Elmer. I’ll take a chocolate soda.’

‘That’ll juss make ye feel sick, but go ahead if you wanter.’ She sat on the slender nickelbound stool. He stood beside her. She let herself lean back a little against him. ‘The trouble with the workers is’… He was talking in a low impersonal voice. ‘The trouble with the workers is we dont know nothin, we dont know how to eat, we dont know how to live, we dont know how to protect our rights… Jez Anna I want to make you think of things like that. Cant you see we’re in the middle of a battle just like in the war?’ With the long sticky spoon Anna was fishing bits of icecream out of the thick foamy liquid in her glass.

George Baldwin looked at himself in the mirror as he washed his hands in the little washroom behind his office. His hair that still grew densely down to a point on his forehead was almost white. There was a deep line at each corner of his mouth and across his
chin. Under his bright gimleteyes the skin was sagging and granulated. When he had wiped his hands slowly and meticulously he took a little box of strychnine pills from the upper pocket of his vest, swallowed one, and feeling the anticipated stimulus tingle through him went back into his office. A longnecked officeboy was fidgeting beside his desk with a card in his hand.

‘A lady wants to speak to you sir.’

‘Has she an appointment? Ask Miss Ranke… Wait a minute. Show the lady right through into this office.’ The card read Nellie Linihan McNiel. She was expensively dressed with a lot of lace in the opening of her big fur coat. Round her neck she had a lorgnette on an amethyst chain.

‘Gus asked me to come to see you,’ she said as he motioned her into a chair beside the desk.

‘What can I do for you?’ His heart for some reason was pounding hard.

She looked at him a moment through her lorgnette. ‘George you stand it better than Gus does.’

‘What?’

‘Oh all this… I’m trying to get Gus to go away with me for a rest abroad… Marianbad or something like that… but he says he’s in too deep to pull up his stakes.’

‘I guess that’s true of all of us,’ said Baldwin with a cold smile.

They were silent a minute, then Nellie McNiel got to her feet. ‘Look here George, Gus is awfully cut up about this… You know he likes to stand by his friends and have his friends stand by him.’

‘Nobody can say that I havent stood by him… It’s simply this, I’m not a politician, and as, probably foolishly, I’ve allowed myself to be nominated for office, I have to run on a nonpartisan basis.’

‘George that’s only half the story and you know it.’

‘Tell him that I’ve always been and always shall be a good friend of his… He knows that perfectly well. In this particular campaign I have pledged myself to oppose certain elements with which Gus has let himself get involved.’

‘You’re a fine talker George Baldwin and you always were.’

Baldwin flushed. They stood stiff side by side at the office door. His hand lay still on the doorknob as if paralyzed. From the outer offices came the sound of typewriters and voices. From outside came the long continuous tapping of riveters at work on a new building.

‘I hope your family’s all well,’ he said at length with an effort.

‘Oh yes they are all well thanks… Goodby.’ She had gone.

Baldwin stood for a moment looking out of the window at the gray blackwindowed building opposite. Silly to let things agitate him so. Need of relaxation. He got his hat and coat from their hook behind the washroom door and went out. ‘Jonas,’ he said to a man with a round bald head shaped like a cantaloupe who sat poring over papers in the highceilinged library that was the central hall of the lawoffice, ‘bring everything up that’s on my desk… I’ll go over it uptown tonight.’

‘All right sir.’

When he got out on Broadway he felt like a small boy playing hooky. It was a sparkling winter afternoon with hurrying rifts of sun and cloud. He jumped into a taxi. Going uptown he lay back in the seat dozing. At Fortysecond Street he woke up. Everything was a confusion of bright intersecting planes of color, faces, legs, shop windows, trolleycars, automobiles. He sat up with his gloved hands on his knees, fizzling with excitement. Outside of Nevada’s apartmenthouse he paid the taxi. The driver was a negro and showed an ivory mouthful of teeth when he got a fiftycent tip. Neither elevator was there so Baldwin ran lightly up the stairs, half wondering at himself. He knocked on Nevada’s door. No answer. He knocked again. She opened it cautiously. He could see her curly towhead. He brushed into the room before she could stop him. All she had on was a kimono over a pink chemise.

‘My God,’ she said, ‘I thought you were the waiter.’

He grabbed her and kissed her. ‘I dont know why but I feel like a threeyear old.’

‘You look like you was crazy with the heat… I dont like you to come over without telephoning, you know that.’

‘You dont mind just this once I forgot.’

Baldwin caught sight of something on the settee; he found himself staring at a pair of darkblue trousers neatly folded.

‘I was feeling awfully fagged down at the office Nevada. I thought I’d come up to talk to you to cheer myself up a bit.’

‘I was just practicing some dancing with the phonograph.’

‘Yes very interesting…’ He began to walk springily up and down. ‘Now look here Nevada… We’ve got to have a talk. I dont care who it is you’ve got in your bedroom.’ She looked suddenly in
his face and sat down on the settee beside the trousers. ‘In fact I’ve known for some time that you and Tony Hunter were carrying on.’ She compressed her lips and crossed her legs. ‘In fact all this stuff and nonsense about his having to go to a psychoanalyst at twentyfive dollars an hour amused me enormously… But just this minute I’ve decided I had enough. Quite enough.’

‘George you’re crazy,’ she stammered and then suddenly she began to giggle.

‘I tell you what I’ll do,’ went on Baldwin in a clear legal voice, ‘I’ll send you a check for five hundred, because you’re a nice girl and I like you. The apartment’s paid till the first of the month. Does that suit you? And please never communicate with me in any way.’

She was rolling on the settee giggling helplessly beside the neatly folded pair of darkblue trousers. Baldwin waved his hat and gloves at her and left closing the door very gently behind him. Good riddance, he said to himself as he closed the door carefully behind him.

Down in the street again he began to walk briskly uptown. He felt excited and talkative. He wondered who he could go to see. Telling over the names of his friends made him depressed. He began to feel lonely, deserted. He wanted to be talking to a woman, making her sorry for the barrenness of his life. He went into a cigarstore and began looking through the phonebook. There was a faint flutter in him when he found the H’s. At last he found the name Herf, Helena Oglethorpe.

Nevada Jones sat a long while on the settee giggling hysterically. At length Tony Hunter came in in his shirt and drawers with his bow necktie perfectly tied.

‘Has he gone?’

‘Gone? sure he’s gone, gone for good,’ she shrieked. ‘He saw your damn pants.’

He let himself drop on a chair. ‘O God if I’m not the unluckiest fellow in the world.’

‘Why?’ she sat spluttering with laughter with the tears running down her face.

‘Nothing goes right. That means it’s all off about the matinees.’

‘It’s back to three a day for little Nevada… I dont give a damn… I never did like bein a kept woman.’

‘But you’re not thinking of my career… Women are so selfish. If you hadn’t led me on…’

‘Shut up you little fool. Dont you think I dont know all about you?’ She got to her feet with the kimono pulled tight about her.

‘God all I needed was a chance to show what I could do, and now I’ll never get it,’ Tony was groaning.

‘Sure you will if you do what I tell you. I set out to make a man of you kiddo and I’m goin to do it… We’ll get up an act. Old Hirshbein’ll give us a chance, he used to be kinder smitten… Come on now, I’ll punch you in the jaw if you dont. Let’s start thinkin up… We’ll come in with a dance number see… then you’ll pretend to want to pick me up… I’ll be waitin for a streetcar… see… and you’ll say Hello Girlie an I’ll call Officer.’

‘Is that all right for length sir,’ asked the fitter busily making marks on the trousers with a piece of chalk.

James Merivale looked down at the fitter’s little greenish wizened bald head and at the brown trousers flowing amply about his feet. ‘A little shorter… I think it looks a little old to have trousers too long.’

‘Why hello Merivale I didn’t know you bought your clothes at Brooks’ too. Gee I’m glad to see you.’

Merivale’s blood stood still. He found himself looking straight in the blue alcoholic eyes of Jack Cunningham. He bit his lip and tried to stare at him coldly without speaking.

‘God Almighty, do you know what we’ve done?’ cried out Cunningham. ‘We’ve bought the same suit of clothes… I tell you it’s identically the same.’

Merivale was looking in bewilderment from Cunningham’s brown trousers to his own, the same color, the same tiny stripe of red and faint mottling of green.

‘Good God man two future brothersinlaw cant wear the same suit. People’ll think it’s a uniform… It’s ridiculous.’

‘Well what are we going to do about it?’ Merivale found himself saying in a grumbling tone.

‘We have to toss up and see who gets it that’s all… Will you lend me a quarter please?’ Cunningham turned to his salesman. ‘All right… One toss, you yell.’

‘Heads,’ said Merivale mechanically.

‘The brown suit is yours… Now I’ve got to choose another… God I’m glad we met when we did. Look,’ he shouted out through the curtains of the booth, ‘why dont you have dinner with me tonight at the Salmagundi Club?… I’m going to be dining with the only man in the world who’s crazier about hydroplanes than I am… It’s old man Perkins, you know him, he’s one of the vice-presidents of your bank… And look when you see Maisie tell her I’m coming up to see her tomorrow. An extraordinary series of events has kept me from communicating with her… a most unfortunate series of events that took all my time up to this moment… We’ll talk about it later.’

Merivale cleared his throat. ‘Very well,’ he said dryly.

‘All right sir,’ said the fitter giving Merivale a last tap on the buttocks. He went back into the booth to dress.

‘All right old thing,’ shouted Cunningham, ‘I’ve got to go pick out another suit… I’ll expect you at seven. I’ll have a Jack Rose waiting for you.’

Merivale’s hands were trembling as he fastened his belt. Perkins, Jack Cunningham, the damn blackguard, hydroplanes, Jack Cunningham Salmagundi Perkins. He went to a phone booth in a corner of the store and called up his mother. ‘Hello Mother, I’m afraid I wont be up to dinner… I’m dining with Randolph Perkins at the Salmagundi Club… Yes it is very pleasant… Oh well he and I have always been fairly good friends… Oh yes it’s essential to stand in with the men higher up. And I’ve seen Jack Cunningham. I put it up to him straight from the shoulder man to man and he was very much embarrassed. He promised a full explanation within twentyfour hours… No I kept my temper very well. I felt I owed it to Maisie. I tell you I think the man’s a blackguard but until there’s proof… Well good night dear, in case I’m late. Oh no please dont wait up. Tell Maisie not to worry I’ll be able to give her the fullest details. Good night mother.’

They sat at a small table in the back of a dimly lighted tearoom. The shade on the lamp cut off the upper parts of their faces. Ellen had on a dress of bright peacock blue and a small blue hat with a piece of green in it. Ruth Prynne’s face had a sagging tired look under the street makeup.

‘Elaine, you’ve just got to come,’ she was saying in a whiny
voice. ‘Cassie’ll be there and Oglethorpe and all the old gang… After all now that you’re making such a success of editorial work it’s no reason for completely abandoning your old friends is it? You dont know how much we talk and wonder about you.’

‘No but Ruth it’s just that I’m getting to hate large parties. I guess I must be getting old. All right I’ll come for a little while.’

Ruth put down the sandwich she was nibbling at and reached for Ellen’s hand and patted it. ‘That’s the little trouper… Of course I knew you were coming all along.’

‘But Ruth you never told me what happened to that traveling repertory company last summer…’

‘O my God,’ burst out Ruth. ‘That was terrible. Of course it was a scream, a perfect scream. Well the first thing that happened was that Isabel Clyde’s husband Ralph Nolton who was managing the company was a dipsomaniac… and then the lovely Isabel wouldn’t let anybody on the stage who didn’t act like a dummy for fear the rubes wouldnt know who the star was… Oh I cant tell about it any more… It isnt funny to me any more, it’s just horrible… Oh Elaine I’m so discouraged. My dear I’m getting old.’ She suddenly burst out crying.