Big Money

by John Dos Passos

  When he came back in his bathrobe and slippers he began to feel better. Grace got him some country sausage and hot cornbread. “Well, I’ve heard about these Park Avenue parties before but never one that lasted two days.” “Oh, lay off, Grace.”

  “Say, Charley, did you read that article in the financial section of the Evening Post last night tipping off about a boom in airplane stocks?” “No . . . but I had a talk with Nat Benton, you know he’s a broker I told you about, a friend of Ollie Taylor’s. . . . Well, he said . . .”

  Grace got to her feet. “Now you know if you boys talk shop on Sundays I leave the room.” Joe took his wife’s arm and gently pulled her back into her chair. “Just let me say one thing and then we’ll shut up. . . . I hope we keep out of the hands of the operators for at least five years. I’m sorry the damned stuff’s listed. I wish I trusted Merritt and them as much as I do you and me.” “We’ll talk about that,” said Charley. Joe handed him a cigar. “All right, Gracie,” he said. “How about a selection on the victrola?”

  Charley had been planning all winter to take Doris with him to Washington when he flew down one of the sample planes to show off some of his patents to the experts at the War Department, but she and her mother sailed for Europe the week before. That left him with nothing to do one springy Saturday night, so he called up the Johnsons. He’d met Paul on the subway during the winter and Paul had asked him in a hurt way why he never came down any more. Charley had answered honestly he hadn’t stuck his nose out of the plant in months. Now it made him feel funny calling up, listening to the phone ring and then Eveline’s teasing voice that always seemed to have a little jeer in it: What fun, he must come down at once and stay to supper, she had a lot of funny people there, she said.

  Paul opened the door for him. Paul’s face had a tallowy look Charley hadn’t noticed before. “Welcome, stranger,” he said in a forced boisterous tone and gave him a couple of pats on the back as he went into the crowded room. There were some very pretty girls, and young men of different shapes and sizes, cocktailglasses, trays of little things to eat on crackers, cigarettesmoke. Everybody was talking and screeching like a lot of lathes in a turningplant. At the back of the room Eveline, looking tall and pale and beautiful, sat on a marbletopped table beside a small man with a long yellow nose and pouches under his eyes. “Oh, Charley, how prosperous you look. . . . Meet Charles Edward Holden . . . Holdy, this is Charley Anderson; he’s in flyingmachines. . . . Why, Charley, you look filthy rich.” “Not yet,” said Charley. He was trying to keep from laughing. “Well, what are you looking so pleased about? Everybody is just too dreary about everything this afternoon.”

  “I’m not dreary,” said Holden. “Now don’t tell me I’m dreary.”

  “Of course, Holdy, you’re never dreary but your remarks tend towards murder and suicide.”

  Everybody laughed a great deal. Charley found himself pushed away from Eveline by people trying to listen to what Charles Edward Holden was saying. He found himself talking to a plain young woman in a shiny grey hat that had a big buckle set in it like a headlight. “Do tell me what you do,” she said. “How do you mean?” “Oh, I mean almost everybody here does something, writes or paints or something.” “Me? No, I don’t do anything like that . . . I’m in airplane motors.” “A flyer, oh, my, how thrilling. . . . I always love to come to Eveline’s, you never can tell who you’ll meet. . . . Why, last time I was here Houdini had just left. She’s wonderful on celebrities. But I think it’s hard on Paul, don’t you? . . . Paul’s such a sweet boy. She and Mr. Holden . . . it’s all so public. He writes about her all the time in his column. . . . Of course I’m very oldfashioned. Most people don’t seem to think anything of it. . . . Of course it’s grand to be honest. . . . Of course he’s such a celebrity too. . . . I certainly think people ought to be honest about their sexlife, don’t you? It avoids all those dreadful complexes and things. . . . But it’s too bad about Paul, such a nice cleancut young fellow. . . .”

  When the guests had thinned out a little a Frenchspeaking colored maid served a dinner of curry and rice with lots of little fixings. Mr. Holden and Eveline did all the talking. It was all about people Charley hadn’t ever heard of. He tried to break it up by telling about how he’d been taken for Charles Edward Holden in that saloon that time, but nobody listened, and he guessed it was just as well anyway. They had just come to the salad when Holden got up and said, “My dear, my only morals consist in never being late to the theater, we must run.” He and Eveline went out in a hurry leaving Charley and Paul to talk to a quarrelsome middleaged man and his wife that Charley had never been introduced to. It wasn’t much use trying to talk to them because the man was too tight to listen to anything anybody said and the woman was set on some kind of a private row with him and couldn’t be got off it. When they staggered out Charley and Paul were left alone. They went out to a movingpicture house for a while but the film was lousy so Charley went uptown glum and tumbled into bed.

  Next day Charley went by early for Andy Merritt and sat with him in the big antisepticlooking diningroom at the Yale Club while he ate his breakfast. “Will it be bumpy?” was the first thing he asked. “Weather report was fine yesterday.” “What does Joe say?” “He said for us to keep our goddam traps shut an’ let the other guys do the talkin’.”

  Merritt was drinking his last cup of coffee in little sips. “You know Joe’s a little overcautious sometimes. . . . He wants to have a jerkwater plant to run himself and hand down to his grandchildren. Now that was all very well in upstate New York in the old days . . . but now if a business isn’t expanding it’s on the shelf.” “Oh, we’re expandin’ all right,” said Charley, getting to his feet to follow Merritt’s broadshouldered tweed suit to the door of the diningroom. “If we weren’t expandin’, we wouldn’t be at all.”

  While they were washing their hands in the lavatory Merritt asked Charley what he was taking along for clothes. Charley laughed and said he probably had a clean shirt and a toothbrush somewhere. Merritt turned a square serious face to him: “But we might have to go out. . . . I’ve engaged a small suite for us at the Waldman Park. You know in Washington those things count a great deal.” “Well, if the worst comes to the worst I can rent me a soup an’ fish.”

  As the porter was putting Merritt’s big pigskin suitcase and his hatbox into the rumbleseat of the car, Merritt asked with a worried frown if Charley thought it would be too much weight. “Hell, no, we could carry a dozen like that,” said Charley, putting his foot on the starter. They drove fast through the empty streets and out across the bridge and along the wide avenues bordered by low gimcrack houses out towards Jamaica. Bill Cermak had the ship out of the hangar and all tuned up.

  Charley put his hand on the back of Bill’s greasy leather jerkin. “Always on the dot, Bill,” he said. “Meet Mr. Merritt. . . . Say, Andy . . . Bill’s comin’ with us, if you don’t mind . . . he can rebuild this motor out of old hairpins and chewin’gum if anythin’ goes wrong.”

  Bill was already hoisting Merritt’s suitcase into the tail. Merritt was putting on a big leather coat and goggles like Charley had seen in the windows of Abercrombie and Fitch. “Do you think it will be bumpy?” Merritt was asking again. Charley gave him a boost. “May be a little bumpy over Pennsylvania . . . but we ought to be there in time for a good lunch. . . . Well, gents, this is the first time I’ve ever been in the Nation’s Capital.” “Me neither,” said Bill. “Bill ain’t never been outside of Brooklyn,” said Charley, laughing.

  He felt good as he climbed up to the controls. He put on his goggles and yelled back at Merritt, “You’re in the observer’s seat, Andy.”

  The Askew-Merritt starter worked like a dream. The motor sounded smooth and quiet as a sewingmachine. “What do you think of that, Bill?” Charley kept yelling at the mechanic behind him. She taxied smoothly across the soft field in the early spring sunshine, bounced a couple of times, took the air and banked as he turned out across the slatecolored squares of
Brooklyn. The light northwest wind made a million furrows on the opaque green bay. Then they were crossing the gutted factory districts of Bayonne and Elizabeth. Beyond the russet saltmeadows, Jersey stretched in great flat squares, some yellow, some red, some of them misted with the green of new crops.

  There were ranks of big white cumulus clouds catching the sunlight beyond the Delaware. It got to be a little bumpy and Charley rose to seven thousand feet where it was cold and clear with a fifty-mile wind blowing from the northwest. When he came down again it was noon and the Susquehanna shone bright blue in a rift in the clouds. Even at two thousand feet he could feel the warm steam of spring from the plowed land. Flying low over the farms he could see the white fluff of orchards in bloom. He got too far south, avoiding a heavy squall over the head of the Chesapeake, and had to follow the Potomac north up towards the glinting white dome of the Capitol and the shining silver of the Washington Monument. There was no smoke over Washington. He circled around for a half an hour before he found the flyingfield. There was so much green it all looked like flyingfield.

  “Well, Andy,” said Charley when they were stretching their legs on the turf, “when those experts see that starter their eyes’ll pop out of their heads.”

  Merritt’s face looked pale and he tottered a little as he walked. “Can’t hear,” he shouted. “I got to take a leak.”

  Charley followed him to the hangar, leaving Bill to go over the motor. Merritt was phoning for a taxi. “Christ amighty, am I hungry?” roared Charley. Merritt winced. “I got to get a drink to settle my stomach first.”

  When they got into the taxi with their feet on Merritt’s enormous pigskin suitcase, “I’ll tell you one thing, Charley,” Merritt said, “we’ve got to have a separate corporation for that starter . . . might need a separate productionplant and everything. Standard Airparts would list well.”

  They had two rooms and a large parlor with pink easychairs in it at the huge new hotel. From the windows you could look down into the fresh green of Rock Creek Park. Merritt looked around with considerable satisfaction. “I like to get into a place on Sunday,” he said. “It gives you a chance to get settled before beginning work.” He added that he didn’t think there’d be anybody in the diningroom he knew, not on a Sunday, but as it turned out it took them quite a while to get to their table. Charley was introduced on the way to a senator, a corporation lawyer, the youngest member of the House of Representatives and a nephew of the Secretary of the Navy. “You see,” explained Merritt, “my old man was a senator once.”

  After lunch Charley went out to the field again to take a look at the ship. Bill Cermak had everything bright as a jeweler’s window. Charley brought Bill back to the hotel to give him a drink. There were waiters in the hall outside the suite and cigarsmoke and a great sound of social voices pouring out the open door. Bill laid a thick finger against his crooked nose and said maybe he’d better blow. “Gee, it does sound like the socialregister. Here, I’ll let you in my bedroom an’ I’ll bring you a drink if you don’t mind waiting a sec.” “Sure, it’s all right by me, boss.” Charley washed his hands and straightened his necktie and went into the sittingroom all in a rush like a man diving into a cold pool.

  Andy Merritt was giving a cocktailparty with dry martinis, chickensalad, sandwiches, a bowl of caviar, strips of smoked fish, two old silverhaired gentlemen, three huskyvoiced southern belles with too much makeup on, a fat senator and a very thin senator in a high collar, a sprinkling of pale young men with Harvard accents and a sallow man with a gold tooth who wrote a syndicated column called Capitol Small Talk. There was a young publicityman named Savage he’d met at Eveline’s. Charley was introduced all around and stood first on one foot and then on the other until he got a chance to sneak into the bedroom with two halftumblers of rye and a plate of sandwiches. “Gosh, it’s terrible in there. I don’t dare open my mouth for fear of puttin’ my foot in it.”

  Charley and Bill sat on the bed eating the sandwiches and listening to the jingly babble that came in from the other room. When he’d drunk his whiskey Bill got to his feet, wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and asked what time Charley wanted him to report in the morning. “Nine o’clock will do. You sure you don’t want to stick around? . . . I don’t know what to say to those birds . . . we might fix you up with a southern belle.” Bill said he was a quiet family man and would get him a flop and go to bed. When he left it meant Charley had to go back to the cocktailparty.

  When Charley went back into Merritt’s room he found the black eyes of the fat senator fixed on him from between the two cute bobbing hats of two pretty girls. Charley found himself saying goodby to them. The browneyed one was a blonde and the blueeyed one had very black hair. A little tang of perfume and kid gloves lingered after them when they left. “Now which would you say was the prettiest, young man?” The fat senator was standing beside him looking up at him with a tooconfidential smile. Charley felt his throat stiffen, he didn’t know why. “They’re a couple of beauties,” he said. “They leave you like the ass between two bundles of hay,” said the fat senator with a soft chuckle that played smoothly in and out of the folds of his chin.

  “Buridan’s ass died of longing, senator,” said the thin senator putting the envelope back in his pocket on which he and Andy Merritt had been doping out figures of some kind. “And so do I, senator,” said the fat one, pushing back the streak of black hair from his forehead, his loose jowls shaking. “I die daily. . . . Senator, will you dine with me and these young men? I believe old Horace is getting us up a little terrapin.” He put a small plump hand on the thin senator’s shoulder and another on Charley’s. “Sorry, senator, the missis is having some friends out at the Chevy Chase Club.” “Then I’m afraid these youngsters will have to put up with eating dinner with a pair of old fogies. I’d hoped you’d bridge the gap between the generations. . . . General Hicks is coming.” Charley saw a faint pleased look come over Andy Merritt’s serious wellbred face. The fat senator went on with his smooth ponderous courtroom voice. “Perhaps we had better be on ourway. . . . He’s coming at seven and those old warhorses tend to be punctual.”

  A great black Lincoln was just coming to a soundless stop at the hotel entry when the four of them, Charley and Andy Merritt and Savage and the fat senator, came out into the Washington night that smelt of oil on asphalt and the exhausts of cars and of young leaves and of wisteriablossoms. The senator’s house was a continuation of his car, big and dark and faintly gleaming and soundless. They sprawled in big blackleather chairs and an old whitehaired mulatto brought around manhattans on an engraved silver tray.

  The senator took each of the men separately to show them where to wash up. Charley didn’t much like the little pats on the back he got from the senator’s small padded hands as he was ushered into a big oldfashioned bathroom with a setin marble tub. When he came back from washing his hands the folding doors were open to the diningroom and a halelooking old gentleman with a white mustache and a slight limp was walking up and down in front of them impatiently. “I can smell that terrapin, Bowie,” he was saying. “Ole Horace is still up to his tricks.”

  With the soup and the sherry the general began to talk from the head of the table. “Of course all this work with flyin’machines is very interestin’ for the advancement of science . . . I tell you, Bowie, you’re one of the last people in this town who sets a decent table . . . perhaps it points to vast possibilities in the distant future. . . . But speakin’ as a military man, gentlemen, you know some of us don’t feel that they have proved their worth. . . . The terrapin is remarkable, Bowie. . . . I mean we don’t put the confidence in the flyin’machine that they seem to have over at the Navy Department. . . . A good glass of burgundy, Bowie, nothin’ I like so much. . . . Experiment is a great thing, gentlemen, and I don’t deny that perhaps in the distant future . . .”

  “In the distant future,” echoed Savage, laughing, as he followed Merritt and Charley out from under the stone portico of Senator Pla
net’s house. A taxi was waiting for him. “Where can I drop you, gentlemen? . . . The trouble with us is we are in the distant future and don’t know it.”

  “They certainly don’t know it in Washington,” said Merritt as they got into the cab. Savage giggled. “The senator and the general were pricelessly archaic . . . like something dug up. . . . But don’t worry about the general . . . once he know she’s dealing with . . . you know . . . presentable people, he’s gentle as Santa Claus. . . . He believes in a government of gentlemen, for gentlemen and by gentlemen.”

  “Well, don’t we all?” said Merritt sternly.

  Savage let out a hooting laugh. “Nature’s gentlemen . . . been looking for one for years.” Then he turned his bulging alcoholic eyes and his laughing pugface to Charley. “The senator thinks you’re the whiteheaded boy. . . . He asked me to bring you around to see him . . . the senator is very susceptible, you know.” He let out another laugh.

  The guy must be pretty tight, thought Charley. He was a little woozy himself from the Napoleon brandy drunk out of balloon-shaped glasses they’d finished off the dinner with. Savage let them out at the Waldman Park and his taxi went on. “Say, who is that guy, Andy?” “He’s a wild man,” said Merritt. “He is one of Moorehouse’s bright young men. He’s bright enough, but I don’t like the stories I hear about him. He wants the Askew-Merritt contract but we’re not in that class yet. Those publicrelations people will eat you out of house and home.”

  As they were going up in the elevator Charley said, yawning, “Gee, I hoped those pretty girls were comin’ to dinner.” “Senator Planet never has women to dinner. . . . He’s gota funny reputation. . . . There are some funny people in this town.” “I guess there are,” said Charley. He was all in, he’d hardly got his clothes off before he was asleep.