Manhattan Transfer (5 page)

‘Say mister you couldnt tell a feller where a good place was to look for a job?’

‘Aint no good place to look for a job, young feller… There’s jobs all right… I’ll be sixty-five years old in a month and four days an I’ve worked since I was five I reckon, an I aint found a good job yet.’

‘Anything that’s a job’ll do me.’

‘Got a union card?’

‘I aint got nothin.’

‘Cant git no job in the buildin trades without a union card,’ said the old man. He rubbed the gray bristles of his chin with the back of his hand and leaned over the lamps again. Bud stood staring into the dustreeking girder forest of the new building until he found the eyes of a man in a derby hat fixed on him through the window of the watchman’s shelter. He shuffled his feet uneasily and walked on. If I could git more into the center of things…

At the next corner a crowd was collecting round a high-slung white automobile. Clouds of steam poured out of its rear end. A policeman was holding up a small boy by the armpits. From the car a redfaced man with white walrus whiskers was talking angrily.

‘I tell you officer he threw a stone… This sort of thing has got to stop. For an officer to countenance hoodlums and rowdies…’

A woman with her hair done up in a tight bunch on top of her head was screaming, shaking her fist at the man in the car, ‘Officer he near run me down he did, he near run me down.’

Bud edged up next to a young man in a butcher’s apron who had a baseball cap on backwards.

‘Wassa matter?’

‘Hell I dunno… One o them automoebile riots I guess. Aint you read the paper? I dont blame em do you? What right have those golblamed automoebiles got racin round the city knocking down wimen an children?’

‘Gosh do they do that?’

‘Sure they do.’

‘Say… er… kin you tell me about where’s a good place to find out about getting a job?’ The butcherboy threw back head and laughed.

‘Kerist I thought you was goin to ask for a handout… I guess you aint a Newyorker… I’ll tell you what to do. You keep right on down Broadway till you get to City Hall…’

‘Is that kinder the center of things?’

‘Sure it is… An then you go upstairs and ask the Mayor… Tell me there are some seats on the board of aldermen…’

‘Like hell they are,’ growled Bud and walked away fast.

‘Roll ye babies… roll ye lobsided sons o bitches.’

‘That’s it talk to em Slats.’

‘Come seven!’ Slats shot the bones out of his hand, brought the thumb along his sweaty fingers with a snap. ‘Aw hell.’

‘You’re some great crapshooter I’ll say, Slats.’

Dirty hands added each a nickel to the pile in the center of the circle of patched knees stuck forward. The five boys were sitting on their heels under a lamp on South Street.

‘Come on girlies we’re waitin for it… Roll ye little bastards, goddam ye, roll.’

‘Cheeze it fellers! There’s Big Leonard an his gang acomin down the block.’

‘I’d knock his block off for a…’

Four of them were already slouching off along the wharf, gradually scattering without looking back. The smallest boy with a chinless face shaped like a beak stayed behind quietly picking up
the coins. Then he ran along the wall and vanished into the dark passageway between two houses. He flattened himself behind a chimney and waited. The confused voices of the gang broke into the passageway; then they had gone on down the street. The boy was counting the nickels in his hand. Ten. ‘Jez, that’s fifty cents… I’ll tell ’em Big Leonard scooped up the dough.’ His pockets had no bottoms, so he tied the nickels into one of his shirt tails.

A goblet for Rhine wine hobnobbed with a champagne glass at each place along the glittering white oval table. On eight glossy white plates eight canapés of caviar were like rounds of black beads on the lettuceleaves, flanked by sections of lemon, sprinkled with a sparse chopping of onion and white of egg. ‘Beaucoup de soing and dont you forget it,’ said the old waiter puckering up his knobbly forehead. He was a short waddling man with a few black strands of hair plastered tight across a domed skull

‘Awright.’ Emile nodded his head gravely. His collar was too tight for him. He was shaking a last bottle of champagne into the nickelbound bucket of ice on the serving-table.

‘Beaucoup de soing, sporca madonna… Thisa guy trows money about lika confetti, see… Gives tips, see. He’s a verra rich gentleman. He dont care how much he spend.’ Emile patted the crease of the tablecloth to flatten it. ‘Fais pas, como, ça… Your hand’s dirty, maybe leava mark.’

Resting first on one foot then on the other they stood waiting, their napkins under their arms. From the restaurant below among the buttery smells of food and the tinkle of knives and forks and plates, came the softly gyrating sound of a waltz.

When he saw the headwaiter bow outside the door Emile compressed his lips into a deferential smile. There was a long-toothed blond woman in a salmon operacloak swishing on the arm of a moonfaced man who carried his top hat ahead of him like a bumper; there was a little curlyhaired girl in blue who was showing her teeth and laughing, a stout woman in a tiara with a black velvet ribbon round her neck, a bottlenose, a long cigarcolored face… shirtfronts, hands straightening white ties, black gleams on top hats and patent leather shoes; there was a weazlish man with gold teeth who kept waving his arms spitting out greetings in a voice like a crow’s and wore a diamond the size of a nickel in his shirtfront.
The redhaired cloakroom girl was collecting the wraps. The old waiter nudged Emile. ‘He’s de big boss,’ he said out of the corner of his mouth as he bowed. Emile flattened himself against the wall as they shuffled rustled into the room. A whiff of patchouli when he drew his breath made him go suddenly hot to the roots of his hair.

‘But where’s Fifi Waters?’ shouted the man with the diamond stud.

‘She said she couldnt get here for half an hour. I guess the Johnnies wont let her get by the stage door.’

‘Well we cant wait for her even if it is her birthday; never waited for anyone in my life.’ He stood a second running a roving eye over the women round the table, then shot his cuffs out a little further from the sleeves of his swallowtail coat, and abruptly sat down. The caviar vanished in a twinkling. ‘And waiter what about that Rhine wine coupe?’ he croaked huskily. ‘De suite monsieur…’ Emile holding his breath and sucking in his cheeks, was taking away the plates. A frost came on the goblets as the old waiter poured out the coupe from a cut glass pitcher where floated mint and ice and lemon rind and long slivvers of cucumber.

‘Aha, this’ll do the trick.’ The man with the diamond stud raised his glass to his lips, smacked them and set it down with a slanting look at the woman next him. She was putting dabs of butter on bits of bread and popping them into her mouth, muttering all the while:

‘I can only eat the merest snack, only the merest snack.’

‘That dont keep you from drinkin Mary does it?’

She let out a cackling laugh and tapped him on the shoulder with her closed fan. ‘O Lord, you’re a card, you are.’

‘Allume moi ça, sporca madonna,’ hissed the old waiter in Emile’s ear.

When he lit the lamps under the two chafing dishes on the serving table a smell of hot sherry and cream and lobster began to seep into the room. The air was hot, full of tinkle and perfume and smoke. After he had helped serve the lobster Newburg and refilled the glasses Emile leaned against the wall and ran his hand over his wet hair. His eyes slid along the plump shoulders of the woman in front of him and down the powdered back to where a tiny silver hook had come undone under the lace rushing. The baldheaded man next to her had his leg locked with hers. She was young,
Emile’s age, and kept looking up into the man’s face with moist parted lips. It made Emile dizzy, but he couldn’t stop looking.

‘But what’s happened to the fair Fifi?’ creaked the man with the diamond stud through a mouthful of lobster. ‘I suppose that she made such a hit again this evening that our simple little party dont appeal to her.’

‘It’s enough to turn any girl’s head.’

‘Well she’ll get the surprise of her young life if she expected us to wait. Haw, haw, haw,’ laughed the man with the diamond stud. ‘I never waited for anybody in my life and I’m not going to begin now.’

Down the table the moonfaced man had pushed back his plate and was playing with the bracelet on the wrist of the woman beside him. ‘You’re the perfect Gibson girl tonight, Olga.’

‘I’m sitting for my portrait now,’ she said holding up her goblet against the light.

‘To Gibson?’

‘No to a real painter.’

‘By Gad I’ll buy it.’

‘Maybe you wont have a chance.’

She nodded her blond pompadour at him.

‘You’re a wicked little tease, Olga.’

She laughed keeping her lips tight over her long teeth.

A man was leaning towards the man with the diamond stud, tapping with a stubby finger on the table.

‘No sir as a real estate proposition, Twentythird Street has crashed… That’s generally admitted… But what I want to talk to you about privately sometime Mr Godalming, is this… How’s all the big money in New York been made? Astor, Vanderbilt, Fish… In real estate of course. Now it’s up to us to get in on the next great clean-up… It’s almost here… Buy Forty…’

The man with the diamond stud raised one eyebrow and shook his head. ‘For one night on Beauty’s lap, O put gross care away… or something of the sort… Waiter why in holy hell are you so long with the champagne?’ He got to his feet, coughed in his hand and began to sing in his croaking voice:

O would the Atlantic were all champagne
Bright billows of champagne.

Everybody clapped. The old waiter had just divided a baked Alaska and, his face like a beet, was prying out a stiff champagnecork. When the cork popped the lady in the tiara let out a yell. They toasted the man in the diamond stud.

For he’s a jolly good fellow…

‘Now what kind of a dish d’ye call this?’ the man with the bottlenose leaned over and asked the girl next to him. Her black hair parted in the middle; she wore a palegreen dress with puffy sleeves. He winked slowly and then stared hard into her black eyes.

‘This here’s the fanciest cookin I ever put in my mouth… D’ye know young leddy, I dont come to this town often… He gulped down the rest of his glass. An when I do I usually go away kinder disgusted…’ His look bright and feverish from the champagne explored the contours of her neck and shoulders and roamed down a bare arm. ‘But this time I kinder think…’

‘It must be a great life prospecting,’ she interrupted flushing.

‘It was a great life in the old days, a rough life but a man’s life… I’m glad I made my pile in the old days… Wouldnt have the same luck now.’

She looked up at him. ‘How modest you are to call it luck.’

Emile was standing outside the door of the private room. There was nothing more to serve. The redhaired girl from the cloakroom walked by with a big flounced cape on her arm. He smiled, tried to catch her eye. She sniffed and tossed her nose in the air. Wont look at me because I’m a waiter. When I make some money I’ll show ’em.

‘Dis; tella Charlie two more bottle Moet and Chandon, Gout Americain,’ came the old waiter’s hissing voice in his ear.

The moonfaced man was on his feet. ‘Ladies and Gentlemen…’

‘Silence in the pigsty…’ piped up a voice.

‘The big sow wants to talk,’ said Olga under her breath.

‘Ladies and gentlemen owing to the unfortunate absence of our star of Bethlehem and fulltime act…’

‘Gilly dont blaspheme,’ said the lady with the tiara.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, unaccustomed as I am…’

‘Gilly you’re drunk.’

‘… Whether the tide… I mean whether the waters be with us or against us…’

Somebody yanked at his coat-tails and the moonfaced man sat down suddenly in his chair.

‘It’s terrible,’ said the lady in the tiara addressing herself to a man with a long face the color of tobacco who sat at the end of the table… ‘It’s terrible, Colonel, the way Gilly gets blasphemous when he’s been drinking…’

The Colonel was meticulously rolling the tinfoil off a cigar. ‘Dear me, you dont say?’ he drawled. Above the bristly gray mustache his face was expressionless. ‘There’s a most dreadful story about poor old Atkins, Elliott Atkins who used to be with Mansfield…’

‘Indeed?’ said the Colonel icily as he slit the end of the cigar with a small pearlhandled penknife.

‘Say Chester did you hear that Mabie Evans was making a hit?’

‘Honestly Olga I dont see how she does it. She has no figure…’

‘Well he made a speech, drunk as a lord you understand, one night when they were barnstorming in Kansas…’

‘She cant sing…’

‘The poor fellow never did go very strong in the bright lights…’

‘She hasnt the slightest particle of figure…’

‘And made a sort of Bob Ingersoll speech . .’

‘The dear old feller… Ah I knew him well out in Chicago in the old days…’

‘You dont say.’ The Colonel held a lighted match carefully to the end of his cigar…

‘And there was a terrible flash of lightning and a ball of fire came in one window and went out the other.’

‘Was he… er… killed?’ The Colonel sent a blue puff of smoke towards the ceiling.

‘What, did you say Bob Ingersoll had been struck by lightning?’ cried Olga shrilly. ‘Serve him right the horrid atheist.’

‘No not exactly, but it scared him into a realization of the important things of life and now he’s joined the Methodist church.’

‘Funny how many actors get to be ministers.’

‘Cant get an audience any other way,’ creaked the man with the diamond stud.

The two waiters hovered outside the door listening to the racket
inside. ‘Tas de sacrés cochons… sporca madonna!’ hissed the old waiter. Emile shrugged his shoulders. ‘That brunette girl make eyes at you all night…’ He brought his face near Emile’s and winked. ‘Sure, maybe you pick up somethin good.’

‘I dont want any of them or their dirty diseases either.’

The old waiter slapped his thigh. ‘No young men nowadays… When I was young man I take heap o chances.’

‘They dont even look at you…’ said Emile through clenched teeth. ‘An animated dress suit that’s all.’