Big Money

by John Dos Passos

  The sodajerker didn’t pay any attention, he was looking down the other way. Charley felt his face get red. His first idea was, I’ll get him fired. Then he looked where the boy was looking. There was a blonde eating a sandwich at the other end of the counter. She certainly was pretty. She wore a little black hat and a neat bluegrey suit and a little white lace around her neck and at her wrists. She had an amazed look on her face like she’d just heard something extraordinarily funny. Forgetting to favor his game leg Charley slipped up several seats towards her. “Say, bo, how about that limeade?” he shouted cheerfully at the sodajerker.

  The girl was looking at Charley. Her eyes really were a perfectly pure blue. She was speaking to him. “Maybe you know how long the bus takes to Miami, mister. This boy thinks he’s a wit so I can’t get any data.”

  “Suppose we try it out and see,” said Charley.

  “They surely come funny in Florida. . . . Another humorist.”

  “No, I mean it. If you let me drive you down you’ll be doing a sick man a great favor.”

  “Sure it won’t mean a fate worse than death?”

  “You’ll be perfectly safe with me, young lady. I’m almost a cripple. I’ll show you my crutches in the car.”

  “What’s the trouble?”

  “Cracked up in a plane.”

  “You a pilot?”

  Charley nodded. “Not quite skinny enough for Lindbergh,” she said, looking him up and down. Charley turned red. “I am a little overweight. It’s being cooped up with this lousy leg.”

  “Well, I guess I’ll try it. If I step into your car and wake up in Buenos Aires it’ll be my bad luck.”

  Charley tried to pay for her coffee and sandwich but she wouldn’t let him. Something about her manner kept him laughing all the time. When he got up and she saw how he limped she pursed her mouth up. “Gee, that’s too bad.” When she saw the car she stopped in her tracks. “Zowie,” she said, “we’re bloomin’ millionaires.”

  They were laughing as they got into the car. There was something about the way she said things that made him laugh. She wouldn’t say what her name was. “Call me Mme. X,” she said. “Then you’ll have to call me Mr. A,” said Charley.

  They laughed and giggled all the way to Daytona Beach where they stopped off and went into the surf for a dip. Charley felt ashamed of his pot and his pale skin and his limp as he walked across the beach with her looking brown and trim in her blue bathingsuit. She had a pretty figure although her hips were a little big. “Anyway it’s not as if I’d come out of it with one leg shorter than the other. The doc says I’ll be absolutely O.K. if I exercise it right.”

  “Sure, you’ll be great in no time. And me thinkin’ you was an elderly sugardaddy in the drugstore there.”

  “I think you’re a humdinger, Mme X.”

  “Be sure you don’t put anything in writing, Mr. A.”

  Charley’s leg ached like blazes when he came out of the water, but it didn’t keep him from having a whale of a good appetite for the first time in months. After a big fishdinner they started off again. She went to sleep in the car with her neat little head on his shoulder. He felt very happy driving down the straight smooth concrete highway although he felt tired already. When they got into Miami that night she made him take her to a small hotel back near the railroad tracks and wouldn’t let him come in with her. “But gosh, couldn’t we see each other again?”

  “Sure, you can see me any night at the Palms. I’m an entertainer there.”

  “Honest . . . I knew you were an entertainer but I didn’t know you were a professional.”

  “You sure did me a good turn, Mr. A. Now it can be told . . . I was flat broke with exactly the price of that ham sandwich and if you hadn’t brought me down I’d a lost the chance of working here. . . . I’ll tell you about it sometime.”

  “Tell me your name. I’d like to call you up.”

  “You tell me yours.”

  “Charles Anderson. I’ll be staying bored to death at the MiamiBiltmore.”

  “So you really are Mr. A. . . . Well, goodby, Mr. A, and thanks a million times.” She ran into the hotel. Charley was crazy about her already. He was so tired he just barely made his hotel. He went up to his room and tumbled into bed and for the first time in months went to sleep without getting drunk first.

  A week later when Nat Benton turned up he was surprised to find Charley in such good shape. “Nothin’ like a change,” said Charley, laughing. They drove on down towards the Keys together. Charley had Margo Dowling’s photograph in his pocket, a professional photograph of her dressed in Spanish costume for her act. He’d been to the Palms every night, but he hadn’t managed to get her to go out with him yet. When he’d suggest anything she’d shake her head and make a face and say, “I’ll tell you about it sometime.” But the last night she had given him a number where he could call her up.

  Nat kept trying to talk about the market and the big reorganization of Tern and Askew-Merritt that Merritt was engineering but Charley would shut him up with, “Aw, hell, let’s talk about somethin’ else.” The camp was all right but the mosquitoes were fierce. They spent a good day on the reef fishing for barracuda and grouper. They took a jug of bacardi out in the motorboat and fished and drank and ate sandwiches. Charley told Nat all about the crackup. “Honestly, I don’t think it was my fault. It was one of those damn things you can’t help. . . . Now I feel as if I’d lost the last friend I had on earth. Honest, I’d a given anythin’ I had in the world if that hadn’t happened to Bill.” “After all,” said Nat, “he was only a mechanic.”

  One day when they got in from fishing, drunk and with their hands and pants fishy, and their faces burned by the sun and glare, and dizzy from the sound and smell of the motor and the choppy motion of the boat, they found waiting for them a wire from Benton’s office.

  UNKNOWN UNLOADING TERN STOP DROPS FOUR AND A HALF POINTS STOP WIRE INSTRUCTIONS

  “Instructions hell,” said Benton, jamming his stuff into his suitcase. “We’ll go up and see. Suppose we charter a plane at Miami.” “You take the plane,” said Charley coolly. “I’m going to ride on the train.”

  In New York he sat all day in the back room of Nat Benton’s office smoking too many cigars, watching the ticker, fretting and fuming, riding up and down town in taxicabs, getting the lowdown from various sallowfaced friends of Nat’s and Moe Frank’s. By the end of the week he’d lost four hundred thousand dollars and had let go every airplane stock he had in the world.

  All the time he was sitting there putting on a big show of business he was counting the minutes, the way he had when he was a kid in school, for the market to close so that he could go uptown to a speakeasy on Fiftysecond Street to meet a hennahaired girl named Sally Hogan he’d met when he was out with Nat at the Club Dover. She was the first girl he’d picked up when he got to New York. He didn’t give a damn about her but he had to have some kind of a girl. They were registered at the hotel as Mr. and Mrs. Smith.

  One morning when they were having breakfast in bed there was a light knock on the door. “Come in,” yelled Charley, thinking it was the waiter. Two shabbylooking men rushed into the room, followed by O’Higgins, a shyster lawyer he’d met a couple of times back in Detroit. Sally let out a shriek and covered her head with the pillow.

  “Howdy, Charley,” said O’Higgins. “I’m sorry to do this but it’s all in the line of duty. You don’t deny that you are Charles Anderson, do you? Well, I thought you’d rather hear it from me than just read the legal terms. Mrs. Anderson is suing you for divorce in Michigan. . . . That’s all right, boys.”

  The shabby men bowed meekly and backed out the door.

  “Of all the lousy stinkin’ tricks . . .”

  “Mrs. Anderson’s had the detectives on your trail ever since you fired her chauffeur in Jacksonville.”

  Charley had such a splitting headache and felt so weak from a hangover that he couldn’t lift his head. He wanted to get up and sock that sonofabitc
h O’Higgins but all he could do was lie there and take it. “But she never said anything about it in her letters. She’s been writin’ me right along. There’s never been any trouble between us.”

  O’Higgins shook his curly red head. “Too bad,” he said. “Maybe if you can see her you can arrange it between you. You know my advice about these things is always keep ’em out of court. Well, I’m heartily sorry, old boy, to have caused you and your charming friend any embarrassment . . . no hard feelings I hope, Charley old man. . . . I thought it would be pleasanter more open and aboveboard if I came along if you saw a friendly face, as you might say. I’m sure this can all be amicably settled.” He stood there a while rubbing his hands and nodding and then tiptoed to the door. Standing there with one hand on the doorknob he waved the other big flipper towards the bed. “Well, solong, Sally. . . . Guess I’ll be seein’ you down at the office.” Then he closed the door softly after him. Sally had jumped out of bed and was running towards the door with a terrified look on her face. Charley began to laugh in spite of his splitting headache. “Aw, never mind, girlie,” he said. “Serves me right for bein’ a sucker. . . . I know we all got our livin’s to make. . . . Come on back to bed.”

  Newsreel LX

  Was Céline to blame? To young Scotty marriage seemed just a lark, a wild time in good standing. But when she began to demand money and the extravagant things he couldn’t afford did Céline meet him halfway? Or did she blind herself to the very meaning of the sacred word: wife?

  CROOK FROZEN OUT OF SHARE IN BONDS

  TELLS MURDER PLOT

  TO REPEAL DECISION ON CAST IRON PIPE

  In a little Spanish town

  ’Twas on a night like this

  speculative sentiment was encouraged at the opening of the week by the clearer outlook. Favorable weather was doing much to eliminate the signs of hesitation lately evinced by several trades

  I’m in love again

  And the Spring

  Is comin’

  I’m in love again

  Hear my heart strings

  Strummin’

  ITCHING GONE IN ONE NIGHT

  thousands of prosperous happy women began to earn double and treble their former wages and sometimes even more immediately

  Yes sir that’s my baby

  That’s my baby na-ow!

  APE TRIAL GOAT TO CONFER WITH ATTORNEYS

  Mysterious Mr. Y to Testify

  an exquisite replica in miniature of a sunlit French country home on the banks of the Rhone boldly built on the crest of Sunset Ridge overlooking the most beautiful lakeland in New Jersey where every window frames a picture of surprising beauty

  And the tune I’m hummin’

  I’ll not go roamin’ like a kid again

  I’ll stay home and be a kid again

  NEIGHBORS ENJOIN NOCTURNAL SHOUTS

  IN TURKISH BATH

  ALL CITY POLICE TURN OUT IN

  BANDIT HUNT

  CONGOLEUM BREAK FEATURES OPENING

  for the sixth week freight car loadings have passed the million mark in this country, indicating that prosperity is general and that records are being established and broken everywhere

  Good-bye east and good-bye west

  Good-bye north and all the rest

  Hello Swan-ee Hello

  Margo Dowling

  When Margo got back to the city after her spring in Miami everybody cried out how handsome she looked with her tan and her blue eyes and her hair bleached out light by the Florida sun. But she sure found her work cut out for her. The Mandevilles were in a bad way. Frank had spent three months in the hospital and had had one kidney removed in an operation. When he got home he was still so sick that Agnes gave up her position to stay home and nurse him; she and Frank had taken up Science and wouldn’t have the doctor any more. They talked all the time about having proper thoughts and about how Frank’s life had been saved by Miss Jenkins, a practitioner Agnes had met at her tearoom. They owed five hundred dollars in doctor’s bills and hospital expenses, and talked about God all the time. It was lucky that Mr. Anderson the new boyfriend was a very rich man.

  Mr. A, as she called him, kept offering to set Margo up in an apartment on Park Avenue, but she always said nothing doing, what did he think she was, a kept woman? She did let him play the stockmarket a little for her, and buy her clothes and jewelry and take her to Atlantic City and Long Beach weekends. He’d been an airplane pilot and decorated in the war and had big investments in airplane companies. He drank more than was good for him; he was a beefy florid guy who looked older than he was, a big talker, and hard to handle when he’d been drinking, but he was openhanded and liked laughing and jokes when he was feeling good. Margo thought he was a pretty good egg. “Anyway, what can you do when a guy picks up a telephone and turns over a thousand dollars for you?” was what she’d tell Agnes when she wanted to tease her. “Margie dear, you mustn’t talk like that,” Agnes would say. “It sounds so mercenary.” Agnes talked an awful lot about Love and right thoughts and being true and good these days. Margo liked better to hear Mr. Anderson blowing about his killings on the stockmarket and the planes he’d designed, and how he was going to organize a net of airways that would make the Pennsylvania Railroad look like a suburban busline.

  Evening after evening she’d have to sit with him in speakeasies in the Fifties drinking whiskey and listening to him talk about this business and that and big deals in stocks down on the Street, and about how he was out to get that Detroit crowd that was trying to ease him out of Standard Airparts and about his divorce and how much it was costing him. One night at the Stork Club, when he was showing her pictures of his kids, he broke down and started to blubber. The court had just awarded the custody of the children to his wife.

  Mr. A had his troubles all right. One of the worst was a redheaded girl he’d been caught with in a hotel by his wife’s detectives who was all the time blackmailing him, and threatening to sue for breach of promise and give the whole story to the Hearst papers. “Oh, how awful,” Agnes would keep saying, when Margo would tell her about it over a cup of coffee at noon. “If he only had the right thoughts. . . . You must talk to him and make him try and see. . . . If he only understood I know everything would be different. . . . A successful man like that should be full of right thoughts.”

  “Full of Canadian Club, that’s what’s the matter with him. . . . You ought to see the trouble I have getting him home nights.” “You’re the only friend he has,” Agnes would say, rolling up her eyes. “I think it’s noble of you to stick by him.”

  Margo was paying all the back bills up at the apartment and had started a small account at the Bowery Savings Bank just to be on the safe side. She felt she was getting the hang of the stockmarket a little. Still it made her feel trashy not working and it gave her the creeps sitting around in the apartment summer afternoons while Agnes read Frank Science and Health in a singsong voice, so she started going around the dress shops to see if she could get herself a job as a model. “I want to learn some more about clothes . . . mine always look like they were made of old floursacks,” she explained to Agnes. “Are you sure Mr. Anderson won’t mind?” “If he don’t like it he can lump it,” said Margo, tossing her head.

  In the fall they finally took her on at Piquot’s new French gown-shop on Fiftyseventh Street. It was tiresome work but it left her evenings free. She confided to Agnes that if she ever let Mr. A out of her sight in the evening some little floosey or other would get hold of him sure as fate. Agnes was delighted that Margo was out of the show business. “I never felt it was right for you to do that sort of thing and now I feel you can be a real power for good with poor Mr. Anderson,” Agnes said. Whenever Margo told them about a new plunger he had taken on the market, Agnes and Frank would hold the thought for Mr. Anderson.

  Jules Piquot was a middleaged roundfaced Frenchman with a funny waddle like a duck who thought all the girls were crazy about him. He took a great fancy to Margo, or maybe it was that he�
��d found out somewhere that her protector, as he called it, was a millionaire. He said she must always keep that beautiful golden tan and made her wear her hair smooth on her head instead of in the curls she’d worn it in since she had been a Follies girl. “Vat is te use to make beautiful clothes for American women if tey look so healty like from milkin’ a cow?” he said. “Vat you need to make interestin’ a dress is ’ere,” and he struck himself with a pudgy ringed fist on the bosom of his silk pleated shirt. “It is drama. . . . In America all you care about is te perfect tirtysix.”

  “Oh, I guess you think we’re very unrefined,” said Margo. “If I only ’ad some capital,” groaned Piquot, shaking his head as he went back to his office on the mezzanine that was all glass and eggshellwhite with aluminum fittings. “I could make New York te most stylish city in te vorld.”

  Margo liked it parading around in the Paris models and in Piquot’s own slinky contraptions over the deep puttycolored rugs. It was better than shaking her fanny in the chorus all right. She didn’t have to get down to the showrooms till late. The showrooms were warm and spotless, with a faint bitter smell on the air of new materials and dyes and mothballs, shot through with a whiff of scented Egyptian cigarettes. The models had a little room in the back where they could sit and read magazines and talk about beauty treatments and the theaters and the football season, when there were no customers. There were only two other girls who came regularly and there weren’t too many customers either. The girls said that Piquot was going broke.