Part 14

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

* * * * *

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

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

“It just me,” came a tearful voice.

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

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

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

“Aren’t men dweadful?”

“No.... They are much nicer than women anyway.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“But Cassie I dont see what fun you get out of it all?”

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

“But Morris evidently did.”

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

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

“But you cant go like this.”

“You just watch me.” Ellen gathered up the bundle of books in one hand and in the other carried the black leather dressingcase. “Look Cassie will you be a dear and show him the trunk when he comes up to get it.... And one other thing, when Stan Emery calls up tell him to call me at the Brevoort or at the Lafayette. Thank goodness I didnt deposit my money last week.... And Cassie if you find any little odds and ends of mine around you just keep em.... Goodby.” She lifted her veil and kissed Cassie quickly on the cheeks.

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

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

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

“Pretty heavy, miss.”

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

“Oh I kin carry heavier’n ’at.”

“I want to go to the Hotel Brevoort, Fifth Avenue at about Eighth Street.”

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

“I thought yous was catchin a train to go away somewhere, miss.”

“Well I am going away somewhere.”

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

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

“Did he trow you out?”

“No I cant say he did that,” she said laughing.

“My wife trun me out tree weeks ago.”

“How was that?”

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

“That’s a funny thing to do.”

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

“Matrimony isnt much is it?”

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

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

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

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

III. Nine Day’s Wonder

_The sun’s moved to Jersey, the sun’s behind Hoboken._

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

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

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

_The sun’s gone down in Jersey._

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

“Well?”

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

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

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

“What with Jew lawyers and Irish judges ...” spluttered Phil.

“Aw pull the chain, old man.”

“A fine specimen of a public-spirited citizen you are Hartly.”

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

“Did he eat coke?”

“No siree he didnt.”

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

“Sure. All I wish is that I was gettin younger every year instead of older.”

“Yes about all us old fellers can do is watch em go past.”

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

“You havent got a little nip of liquor anywhere have you Herf? Dingo and I are extraordinarily thirsty. We came all the way from Boston and only stopped once for gas and water. I havent been to bed for two days. I want to see if I can last out the week.”

“Kerist I wish I could last out the week in bed.”

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

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

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

Flow river flow Down to the sea,

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

... from the banks of the Seine To the banks of the Saskatchewan.

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

“Good morning Mrs. Maginnis.”

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

“I guess it is all right.”

Stan was lying on the bed reading _La Revolte des Anges_. “Darn it, I wish I knew some languages the way you do Herfy.”

“Oh I dont know any French any more. I forget em so much quicker than I learn em.”

“By the way I’m fired from college.”

“How’s that?”

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

“That’s a darn shame.”

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

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

“This is a pretty lousy room.... You ought to have been born a capitalist like me.”

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

“That’s a burglar alarm isn’t it?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“That doesnt count.”

“God I like sun,” cried Jimmy, “I wish it’d been real Colombia....”

“Do you mean Hail Columbia?”

“No I mean Bogota and the Orinoco and all that sort of thing.”

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

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

“City of orgies walks and joys ...”

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

“How do you like Dingo in her new coat of paint?”

“Pretty nifty, looks like a regular Mercedes under the dust.”

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

“Absinthe for breakfast.... Good Lord.”

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

“How’s Ruth, Jimmy?”

“She’s all right. She hasnt got a job yet.”

“Look there’s a Daimlier.”

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

“Your cut out,” he yelled.

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

“Better had.... Get a ticket another time.”

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

“It’s a gift.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“How do you know I havent?”

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

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

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

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

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

“But you have to know which direction to step.”

“That’s the last thing that’s of any importance.”

“Then there’s money.”

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

“For the eldest son of Emery and Emery.”

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