“Do women ever tell you how attractive you are, Charley?”
“Overseas I didn’t have any trouble. . . . You know, Aviaterr, lewtenong, Croix de Guerre, couchay, wee wee. . . . That was all right but in this man’s country no girl you want’ll look at a guy unless he’s loaded up with jack. . . . Sure, they’ll lead you on an’ get you half-crazy.” He was a fool to do it but he went to work and told her all about Doris. “But they’re not all like that,” she said, stroking the back of his hand. “Some women are square.”
She wouldn’t let him do anything but cuddle a little with her under the towel. The sun began to get low. They got up chilly and sandy and with the sunburn starting to tease. As they walked back along the beach he felt sour and blue. She was talking about the evening and the waves and the seagulls and squeezing his arm as she leaned on it. They went into a hotel on the boardwalk to have a little supper and that just about cleaned his last fivespot.
He couldn’t think of much to say going home on the train. He left her at the corner of her street, then walked over to the Third Avenue el and took the train uptown. The train was full of fellows and girls coming home from Sunday excursions. He kept his eye peeled for a pickup but there was nothing doing. When he got up into his little stuffy greenpapered room, he couldn’t stay in it. He went out and roamed up and down Second and Third avenues. One woman accosted him but she was too fat and old. There was a pretty plump little girl he walked along beside for a long time, but she threatened to call a cop when he spoke to her, so he went back to his room and took a hot shower and a cold shower and piled into bed. He didn’t sleep a wink all night.
Eveline called him up so often in the next weeks and left so many messages for him that the clerk at the desk took him aside and warned him that the house was only intended for young men of irreproachable Christian life.
He took to leaving the shop early to go out with her places, and towards the end of July the foreman bounced him. The foreman was getting sore anyway because Charley kept on winning so much money at poker. Charley moved away from the Chatterton House and took a furnished room way east on Fifteenth Street, explaining to the landlady that his wife worked out of town and could only occasionally get in to see him. The landlady added two dollars to the rent and let it go at that. It got so he didn’t do anything all day but wait for Eveline and drink lousy gin he bought in an Italian restaurant. He felt bad about Paul, but after all Paul wasn’t a particular friend of his and if it wasn’t him he reckoned it would be somebody else. Eveline talked so much it made his head spin but she was certainly a stylishlooking rib and in bed she was swell. It was only when she talked about divorcing Paul and marrying him that he began to feel a little chilly. She was a good sport about paying for dinners and lunches when the money he’d saved up working in the shop gave out, but he couldn’t very well let her pay for his rent, so he walked out on the landlady early one morning in September and took his bag up to the Grand Central station. That same day he went by the Chatterton House to get his mail and found a letter from Emiscah.
He sat on a bench in the park behind the Public Library along with the other bums and read it:
CHARLEY BOY,
You always had such a heart of gold I know if you knew about what awful luck I’ve been having you would do something to help me. First I lost my job and things have been so slack around here this summer I haven’t been able to get another; then I was sick and had to pay the doctor fifty dollars and I haven’t been really what you might call well since, and so I had to draw out my savingsaccount and now it’s all gone. The family won’t do anything because they’ve been listening to some horrid lying stories too silly to deny. But now I’ve got to have ten dollars this week or the landlady will put me out and I don’t know what will become of me. I know I’ve never done anything to deserve being so unhappy. Oh, I wish you were here so that you could cuddle me in your big strong arms like you used to do. You used to love your poor little Emiscah. For the sake of your poor mother that’s dead send me ten dollars right away by special delivery so it won’t be too late. Sometimes I think it would be better to turn on the gas. The tears are running down my face so that I can’t see the paper any more. God bless you.
EMISCAH
My girlfriend’s broke too. You make such big money ten dollars won’t mean anything and I promise I won’t ask you again.
Charley, if you can’t make it ten send five.
Charley scowled and tore up the letter and put the pieces in his pocket. The letter made him feel bad, but what was the use? He walked over to the Hotel Astor and went down to the men’s room to wash up. He looked at himself in one of the mirrors. Grey suit still looked pretty good, his straw hat was new and his shirt was clean. The tie had a frayed place but it didn’t show if you kept the coat buttoned. All right if it didn’t rain; he’d already hocked his other suit and his trenchcoat and his officers’ boots. He still had a couple of dollars in change so he had his shoes shined. Then he went up to the writingroom and wrote to Joe that he was on his uppers and please to send him twentyfive by mail P.D.Q. and for crissake to come to New York. He mailed the letter and walked downtown, walking slowly down Broadway.
The only place he knew where he could bum a meal was the Johnsons’ so he turned into their street from Fifth Avenue. Paul met him at the door and held out his hand. “Hello, Charley,” he said. “I haven’t seen you for a dog’s age.”
“I been movin’,” stammered Charley, feeling like a louse. “Too many bedbugs in that last dump. . . . Say, I just stopped into say hello.”
“Come on in and I’ll shake up a drink. Eveline’ll be back in a minute.”
Charley was shaking his head. “No, I just stopped to say hello. How’s the kid? Give Eveline my best. I got a date.”
He walked to a newsstand at the corner of Eighth Street and bought all the papers. Then he went to a blindtiger he knew and had a session with the helpwanted columns over some glasses of needle beer. He drank the beer slowly and noted down the addresses on a piece of paper he’d lifted off the Hotel Astor. One of them was a usedcar dealer, where the manager was a friend of Jim’s. Charley had met him out home.
The lights went on and the windows got dark with a stuffy late-summer night. When he’d paid for the beer he only had a quarter left in his pocket. “Damn it, this is the last time I let myself get in a jam like this,” he kept muttering as he wandered round the downtown streets. He sat for a long time in Washington Square, thinking about what kind of a salestalk he could give the manager of that usedcar dump.
A light rain began to fall. The streets were empty by this time. He turned up his collar and started to walk. His shoes had holes in them and with each step he could feel the cold water squish between his toes. Under an arclight he took off his straw hat and looked at it. It was already gummy and the rim had a swollen pulpy look. “Now how in Christ’s name am I goin’ to go around to get me a job tomorrow?”
He turned on his heel and walked straight uptown towards the Johnsons’ place. Every minute it rained harder. He rang the bell under the card Paul Johnson—Eveline Hutchins until Paul came to the door in pyjamas looking very sleepy.
“Say, Paul, can I sleep on your couch?” “It’s pretty hard. . . . Come in. . . . I don’t know if we’ve got any clean sheets.” “That’s all right . . . just for tonight. . . . You see I got cleaned out in a crapgame. I got jack comin’ tomorrow. I thought I’d try the benches but the sonofabitch started to rain on me. I got business to attend to tomorrow an’ I got to keep this suit good, see?” “Sure. . . . Say, you look wet . . . I’ll lend you a pair of pyjamas and a bathrobe. Better take those things off.”
It was dry and comfortable on the Johnsons’ couch. After Paul had gone back to bed Charley lay there in Paul’s bathrobe looking up at the ceiling. Through the tall window he could see the rain flickering through the streetlights outside and hear its continuous beat on the pavement. The baby woke up and cried, there was a light in the other room. He coul
d hear Paul’s and Eveline’s sleepy voices and the rustle of them stirring around. Then the baby quieted down, the light went out. Everything was quiet in the beating rain again. He went off to sleep.
Getting up and having breakfast with them was no picnic nor was borrowing twentyfive dollars from Paul though Charley knew he could pay it back in a couple of days. He left when Paul left to go to the office without paying attention to Eveline’s sidelong kidding glances. Never get in a jam like this again, he kept saying to himself.
First he went to a tailor’s and sat there behind a curtain reading the American while his suit was pressed. Then he bought himself a new straw hat, went to a barbershop and had a shave, a haircut, a facial massage and a manicure and went to a cobbler’s to get his shoes shined and soled.
By that time it was almost noon. He went uptown on the subway and talked himself into a job as salesman in the secondhand autosales place above Columbus Circle where the manager was a friend of Jim’s. When the guy asked Charley about how the folks out in Minne apolis were getting on, he had to make up a lot of stuff. That evening he got his laundry from the Chinaman and his things out of hock and went back to a room, with brown walls this time, at the Chatterton House. He set himself up to a good feed and went to bed early deadtired.
A few days later a letter came from Joe Askew with the twentyfive bucks and the news that he was getting on his feet and would be down soon to get to work. Meanwhile Charley was earning a small amount on commissions but winning or losing up to a century a night in a pokergame on Sixtythird Street one of the salesmen took him up to. They were mostly automobile salesmen and advertising men in the game and they were free spenders and rolled up some big pots. Charley mailed the twentyfive he owed him down to Paul, and when Eveline called him up on the telephone always said he was terribly busy and would call her soon. No more of that stuff, nosiree. Whenever he won, he put half of his winnings in a savings-bank account he’d opened. He carried the bankbook in his inside pocket. When he noticed it there it always made him feel like a wise guy.
He kept away from Eveline. It was hard for him to get so far downtown and he didn’t need to anyway because one of the other salesmen gave him the phonenumber of an apartment in a kind of hotel on the West Side, where a certain Mrs. Darling would arrange meetings with agreeable young women if she were notified early enough in the day. It cost twentyfive bucks a throw but the girls were clean and young and there were no followups of any kind. The fact that he could raise twentyfive bucks to blow that way made him feel pretty good, but it ate into his poker winnings. After a session with one of Mrs. Darling’s telephone numbers, he’d go back to his room at the Chatterton House feeling blue and disgusted. The girls were all right, but it wasn’t fun like it had been with Eveline or even with Emiscah. He’d think of Doris and say to himself goshdarn it, he had to get him a woman of his own.
He took to selling fewer cars and playing more poker as the weeks went on and by the time he got a wire from Joe Askew saying he was coming to town next day his job had just about petered out. He could tell that it was only because the manager was a friend of Jim’s that he hadn’t fired him already. He’d hit a losing streak and had to draw all the money out of the savingsaccount. When he went down to the sta tion to meet Joe he had a terrible head and only a dime in his pocket. The night before they’d cleaned him out at red dog.
Joe looked the same as ever only he was thinner and his mustache was longer. “Well, how’s tricks?” Charley took Joe’s other bag as they walked up the platform.
“Troubled with low ceilin’s, air full of holes.”
“I bet it is. Say, you look like you’d been hitting it up, Charley. I hope you’re ready to get to work.”
“Sure. All depends on gettin’ the right C.O. . . . Ain’t I been to nightschool every night?”
“I bet you have.”
“How are you feelin’ now, Joe?”
“Oh, I’m all right now. I just about fretted myself into a nuthouse. What a lousy summer I’ve had. . . . What have you been up to, you big bum?”
“Well, I’ve been gatherin’ information about the theory of the straight flush. And women . . . have I learned about women? Say, how’s the wife and kids?”
“Fine. . . . You’ll meet ’em. I’m goin’ to take an apartment here this winter. . . . Well, boy, it’s a case of up and at ’em. We are goin’ in with Andy Merritt. . . . You’ll meet him this noon. Where can I get a room?” “Well, I’m stayin’ at that kind of glorified Y over on Thirty-eighth Street.” “That’s all right.”
When they got into the taxi, Joe tapped him on the knee and leaned over and asked with a grin, “When are you ready to start to manufacture?” “Tomorrow mornin’ at eight o’clock. Old Bigelow just failed over in Long Island City. I seen his shop. Wouldn’t cost much to get it in shape.”
“We’ll go over there this afternoon. He might take a little stock.”
Charley shook his head. “That stock’s goin’ to be worth money, Joe . . . give him cash or notes or anythin’. He’s a halfwit anyway. Last time I went over there it was to try to get a job as a mechanic. . . . Jeez, I hope those days are over. . . . The trouble with me is, Joe, I want to get married and to get married like I want I got to have beaucoup kale. . . . Believe it or not, I’m in love.”
“With the entire chorus at the Follies, I’ll bet. . . . That’s a hot one . . . you want to get married.” Joe laughed like he’d split. While Joe went up to his room to clean up, Charley went round to the corner drugstore to get himself a bromoseltzer.
They had lunch with Merritt, who turned out to be a grey-faced young man with a square jaw, at the Yale Club. Charley still had a pounding headache and felt groggily that he wasn’t making much of an impression. He kept his mouth shut and let Joe do the talking. Joe and Merritt talked Washington and War Department and Navy Department and figures that made Charley feel he ought to be pinching himself to see if he was awake.
After lunch Merritt drove them out to Long Island City in an open Pierce Arrow touringcar. When they actually got to the plant, walking through the long littered rooms looking at lathes and electric motors and stamping and dyemaking machines, Charley felt he knew his way around better. He took out a piece of paper and started making notes. As that seemed to go big with Merritt he made a lot more notes. Then Joe started making notes too. When Merritt took out a little book and started making notes himself, Charley knew he’d done the right thing.
They had dinner with Merritt and spent the evening with him. It was heavy sledding because Merritt was one of those people who could size a man up at a glance, and he was trying to size up Charley. They ate at an expensive French speakeasy and sat there a long time afterwards drinking cognac and soda. Merritt was a great one for writing lists of officers and salaries and words like capitalization, depreciation, amortization down on pieces of paper, all of them followed by big figures with plenty of zeros. The upshot of it seemed to be that Charley Anderson would be earning two hundred and fifty a week (payable in preferred stock) starting last Monday as supervising engineer and that the question of the percentage of capital stock he and Joe would have for their patents would be decided at a meeting of the board of directors next day. The top of Charley’s head was floating. His tongue was a little thick from the cognac. All he could think of saying, and he kept saying it, was, “Boys, we mustn’t go off halfcocked.”
When he and Joe finally got Merritt and his Pierce Arrow back to the Yale Club they heaved a deep breath. “Say, Joe, is that bird a financial wizard or is he a nut? He talks like greenbacks grew on trees.”
“He makes ’em grow there. Honestly . . .” Joe Askew took his arm and his voice sunk to a whisper, “that bird is going to be the Durant of aviation financing.” “He don’t seem to know a Liberty motor from the hind end of a blimp.” “He knows the Secretary of the Interior, which is a hell of a lot more important.”
Charley got to laughing so he couldn’t stop. All the way back to the Chatterto
n House he kept bumping into people walking along the street. His eyes were full of tears. He laughed and laughed. When they went to the desk to ask for their mail and saw the long pale face of the clerk Charley nudged Joe. “Well, it’s our last night in this funeral parlor.”
The hallway to their rooms smelt of old sneakers and showers and lockerrooms. Charley got to laughing again. He sat on his bed a long time giggling to himself. “Jesus, this is more like it; this is better than Paree.” After Joe had gone to bed Charley stuck his head in the door still giggling. “Rub me, Joe,” he yelled. “I’m lucky.”
Next morning they went and ate their breakfast at the Belmont. Then Joe made Charley go to Knox’s and buy him a derby before they went downtown. Charley’s hair was a little too wiry for the derby to set well, but the band had an expensive englishleathery smell. He kept taking it off and sniffing it on the way downtown in the subway. “Say, Joe, when my first paycheck comes I want you to take me round and get me outfitted in a soup an’ fish. . . . This girl, she likes a feller to dress up.” “You won’t be out of overalls, boy,” growled Joe Askew, “night or day for six months if I have anything to say about it. We’ll have to live in that plant if we expect the product to be halfway decent, don’t fool yourself about that.” “Sure, Joe, sure, I was only kiddin’.”
They met at the office of a lawyer named Lilienthal. From the minute they gave their names to the elegantlyupholstered blonde at the desk Charley could feel the excitement of a deal in the air. The blonde smiled and bowed into the receiver. “Oh, yes, of course. . . . Mr. Anderson and Mr. Askew.” A scrawny officeboy showed them at once into the library, a dark long room filled with calfbound lawbooks. They hadn’t had time to sit down before Mr. Lilienthal himself appeared through a groundglass door. He was a dark oval neckless man with a jaunty manner. “Well, here’s our pair of aces right on time.” When Joe introduced them he held Charley’s hand for a moment in the smooth fat palm of his small hand. “Andy Merritt has just been singing your praises, young fellah, he says you are the coming contactman.” “And here I was just telling him I wouldn’t let him out of the factory for six months. He’s the bird who’s got the feel for the motors.” “Well, maybe he meant you birdmen’s kind of contact,” said Mr. Lilienthal, lifting one thin black eyebrow.
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