Second Section (continued 2)

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

“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

“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 donkeyengine 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

“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

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

“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 garnet-colored sunlight was fading on the tall housewall across the excavation. Blue arms of cranes stood out dark against it. 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.

“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 havent 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

“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

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 pink-striped 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 creamandcoffeecolored 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

“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

“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

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

“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

“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?”

IV. 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 pistachiogreen 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

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 tarns. 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

“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 bullnecked 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

“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. McNeil.”

“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

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

“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

“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 verywhite 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

“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.”

“No but I can work it in in that column about aspirations

“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

“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

“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 understand 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.

V. 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.

“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 McNiel 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.

“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

“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

“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 dont 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,

“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

“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

“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 ... god-amighty ... before the blowup comes there’ll be an opportunity.... Well begorry 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 curly 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?

“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 wouldnt 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 encyclopædia.... 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.

Moi monsieur je suis anarchiste.... 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.