The Moth

by James M. Cain

  “Look, everybody makes mistakes.”

  “—be paid. Now, as to college—”

  “I have a deal. If I want it, there’ll be a job.”

  “What kind of a job?”

  “I don’t know. They’ve got ethics now, though, whatever they are, and I can’t just play football.”

  “But you can finish?”

  “Oh, sure.”

  “Thank God for that.”

  “Don’t worry about me.”

  “Sam Shreve shot himself, if that helps.”

  “I’m sorry to hear it.”

  “He—gave us the benefit of his best judgment, but it wasn’t good enough, let us say.”

  “That often happens.”

  I went back to my room, lay down again, and thought of what she had said, about checking up on my stock. That seemed about all it amounted to: one more thing to remind me of her. As to being broke, that didn’t seem to mean anything, and as for his losing my money for me, I didn’t hold it against him. But it seemed funny to me, from the brush-off I gave it, that he wouldn’t know there was something on my mind, and at least ask me what it was. Well, why couldn’t I tell him what it was? If I knew that, I wouldn’t be writing all this up.

  Almost at once, from a house where things were done in a freehanded way, it turned into a house that needed money, where everybody drew deep breaths, let them out trembly, and went whole days without looking at each other. It was the same up and down the street, all you heard at the drugstore on North Avenue, or anywhere. Denny felt it, and it was the first time I found out what his father did, besides going to Europe all the time. He was an investor. He had inherited property from his father, a cement works somewhere near Catoctin Mountain, where Lee and McClellan tangled just before Antietam, and then branched out into contracting, road-building, bridge-building, and stuff like that. But he let the superintendent attend to construction, and concentrated on backing businesses, or buying into them, or foreclosing on them, as some said, and taking his profit on those that panned out. So that was how he and the Old Man came to be mixed up in the Mt. Royal Avenue thing. Mt. Royal Avenue, in Baltimore, is a continuation of Mt. Royal Terrace and the same street they’ve got in every big city, the center of the automobile trade. The Old Man was a little ahead of his day, but he saw the need for what is now called super-service, with every kind of work done on the spot and none of it sent out, and trouble-shooting on a twenty-four-hour schedule. That kind of location cost money, the equipment cost money, and the stock cost money. But Mr. Deets got hit too, because he was one hundred per cent in the market, with no sidelines for a cushion if something went wrong. One day he was rich, the next day he was a bum, or as near it as a guy like that, with forty-seven connections, ever really gets. Denny took it hard, and that I could have stood, but he also took it big. I mean, he’d drop around, and we’d take a ride, because at least I had the Buick that followed the Chevvie. Then he’d talk about what we were going to do about it. I didn’t know, and I was still mooning about what happened in Easton. And then one day, just after Thanksgiving, when we’d gone back to college, he came in the room and closed the door in his same old hush-hush way. “Jack, I’ve been in town.”

  “Baltimore?”

  “Washington. The Willard. And I ran into the gang from Fall River.”

  He didn’t say Fall River. He said a city not far from Fall River, but I’ve got my reasons for not naming it. “... What do you mean, Denny, you ran into them?”

  “Maybe on purpose.”

  “But not any good purpose, naturally.”

  “Listen, Jack, they need players.”

  “Why?”

  “They had a row. Over a bonus that was supposed to be paid, or that some of them said was supposed to be paid, after their last game. And it wasn’t paid. And the backfield quit.”

  “Sounds like a nice outfit.”

  “I said they need men.”

  “Stop feinting and jabbing around—”

  “We could change our names, Jack.”

  “And our faces?”

  “That’s not so hard... O.K., I talked to the manager and tonight I’m to call. They’re due in New York, the Polo Grounds, Sunday, and I think it’s ours if we want it, fifty bucks and our fare apiece, and me, I’m in. I need fifty bucks.”

  “I’m listening, stupid.”

  So from then on, on Sundays, I played as a pro. Denny called himself Rex Atlas, but I settled for Jake Healy. We gave out that we were Washington “sand lotters,” whatever that meant, but it seemed to get by. Denny worked on my brows with some kind of dye he got, so they’d be brown, instead of yellow. For the pictures, whenever they were taken, he made little pinches of cotton, that we carried up the sleeve of our jerseys, and would stick in our mouths, between the gum and the lip, upper and lower, and it certainly gave us a queer, buck-toothed look all right. Looking back at it now it seems funny. It didn’t then. I felt ashamed, and if we were caught I didn’t know what I’d say to Byrd. From then on I was doing all kinds of things I couldn’t look myself in the eye over. I wasn’t a cocky, tingle-fingered kid any more. I was a guy with muscles for rent, that took no pride in what he did with them, and wanted to talk about something else whenever the subject came up.

  9

  IT WAS IN THE Christmas holidays that Margaret called, and asked me to a party at the hotel New Year’s Eve. I said I’d come if I could, as it was still heavy on my mind about Easton, and I wasn’t much in the humor. But then, the morning of the party, it came out in the Sun, under an Easton date line, about the marriage, and it turned out she was even more prominent than she had said, because it was on the society page, and got some space. So I thought to myself: My young friend, you’re going to the party. So I put on the black tie the Old Man had given me the previous Christmas, and went. I was surprised at the change in her, as I hadn’t seen her in some months. She had slimmed quite a lot, so she wasn’t so corn-fed and had a figure. And her face had lost the blobbiness it had had, so it was reasonably good-looking. She had on a pink dress that went nice with her dark hair, so I shook hands and admired the new shape, and she didn’t seem to mind that kind of talk at all. When the music started I asked her to dance. Denny was there, and he’d got a load of the reconditioned shape, so while the fiddlers were tuning he whispered that by God, he was going to do something about that. But who she danced off with was me.

  Then I asked her again, and after that again, and if there was anyone else she danced with I don’t know who it was. Supper was served in the main dining room, where the hotel celebration was going on, and the party orchestra moved in there, hitting it up at one end of the room with the main orchestra at the other, so of course that meant I danced with her all the time. When the bugle blew and then both orchestras started Auld Lang Syne, I danced her out in the hall and around a corner, and as the clock struck twelve I kissed her. Her lips were hot and wet and soft. They said one thing and one thing only, and I let them say it. Then somebody ran by with a horn and we broke. “Jack, I’ll have to go back.”

  “This hallway is no good.”

  “My studio might be better.”

  “Hey, what’s this?”

  “If you had come around, I’d have showed it to you.”

  “I’ve been away. What kind of a studio?”

  “Music.”

  “Where?”

  “Here. In the hotel. Just a suite, but they fixed it up for me. The piano is a Christmas present. It’s a Steinway.”

  “Yeah, that we’d expect.”

  “Well, it’s the best make there is.”

  “Of course. When do I see this studio?”

  “... You want to see it?”

  “Sure.”

  “When?”

  “Why—whenever.”

  “Tonight?”

  “Why not—this morning?”

  She looked at me and I danced her back in the dining room and pulled her up against me so hard I wonder she could breathe. She began to wh
isper. I was to say good night when the rest did, and get my things from the check room, and go out, and on up the street toward my car. But then in the basement of the hotel, on the Charles Street side, I was to find a door, with steps leading down to it. Over the sill was a key, and I was to let myself in and take a turn to the right and keep on to the freight elevator in the rear, and wait. So I followed instructions. The party began breaking up pretty soon, and I shook hands with her father and mother and asked for little Helen, who was spending the holidays with cousins in Trenton, relatives of the Cartaret the hotel was named after. Mr. Legg, as I’ve said, is a bit on the stuffy side, a slim little man with a white mustache that looked like something in an oil painting, but he patted me on the shoulder and acted friendly. Mrs. Legg was a gray-haired woman, kind of heavy-set, with light china-blue eyes that have the same trick Margaret’s have, of never quite looking at you with a little set smile. She’s a cold dame, but she kept me there five minutes at least, asking me questions about myself, especially whether I sang any more, and seemed to think it was a good idea I had quit. Then she told me all about Margaret’s playing, and how “splendid” it had become, but how, nevertheless, she wanted my “opinion.” What that was worth I couldn’t quite see, but I was to find out. Then I shook hands with Margaret, and made a little speech that everybody could hear, about the wonderful time I’d had, and how I wished her the best for the coming year.

  It seemed a year before there was nobody on Charles Street and I could slip down the steps and find the key and let myself in. It was dark down there, but I could see that on my left was a door leading into the barber shop, and on my right a concrete passage that went past furnaces, pumps, and electrical stuff. I turned right, like she said, and came to a cross passage, at the rear of the hotel, that led to the freight elevator, off in a corner. I went over to it, and I could see the car through the glass but she had said wait and I did. I don’t know how long I waited, but it seemed that hell must at least be frozen over and thawed out again before I heard something. There’d be a click, then steps, then another click. All of a sudden I knew it was a watchman with his clock, and that he was down there, in the basement, where I was. I had a panicky two seconds, but then, as easy as I could, I opened the car door, stepped in, and coaxed it shut again. Then I stooped down, below the glass. The steps came on and stopped, then after a click went away. Then the car moved and I was going up.

  At the eighth floor I could see her, through the glass. When I got out she began more whispering. I was to give her a head start, then slide around to 819 and go in without buzzing or knocking. When I had that straight she took a long look around and ducked around a corner, with a tiptoe, guilty look. I counted twenty, then followed along, watching the numbers. The door to 819 was open a crack, and I stepped in and closed it after me. Then arms were around me and lips were against mine and she was pressing up against me and trembling. It was dark, but by the light from the street I could see a grand piano, some chairs, and at the far end of the room, a sofa. I carried her to it, held her close, and kissed her some more. She locked her arms around me and kept kissing me and catching her breath in little short gasps. “... You surprised, Jack?”

  “At you?”

  “That I can be so—demonstrative.”

  “Not with the it that you carried around.”

  “Really, Jack?”

  “You always did get me.”

  “You never said anything.”

  “Did anything, you really mean.”

  “Well, you never did.”

  “With pigtails hanging down your back?”

  “I’m as old as you.”

  “You’re still pretty young.”

  “You really liked me?”

  “Why, I used to stand in the wings while you were playing Rachmaninoff Prelude and think how I’d like to put my arms around you, from behind, while your hands were there on the keyboard, and—”

  “Yes, Jack? And—?”

  “Like this.”

  With that I made my first grab at something that meant business. She pushed my hand away, but I found a zipper, and slid it and it slid pretty easy. Then she stiffened. “... Somebody’s outside.”

  She pulled up the zipper and I snapped on a light. She wiped my face with her handkerchief. There came a knock on the door. “Who’s there?”

  “Your milk, darling.”

  It was Mrs. Legg’s voice and Margaret let her in. When she saw me she acted surprised, but no more than surprised. “Well, of all things!”

  “Had to see the studio, you know.”

  “But of course!”

  “Pretty.”

  “Lovely! ... Pet, you mustn’t forget this any more! She’s started skimmed milk, Jack, and it’s done such wonders for her, slendered her down so her figure is divine. One wouldn’t believe it’s one and the same girl!”

  “It’s taken weight off her all right.”

  “Well, Mother, do sit down.”

  “No, it’s getting late—well, just for a minute.”

  She talked of the party, and how nicely the boys had knocked off the music, and quite a few things, and you’d have thought that a guy and a girl and a studio at three thirty in the morning were just one of those things that happened. But her eyes were cold, and they meant go, so after a couple of minutes I looked at my watch and gave an imitation of a whistle. Then we were in the hall and then in the elevator, going down.

  “Jack, how did she—”

  “Don’t blame me. I laid low, even when—”

  “I know you did! How could she know we were there? I told the board no calls until noon, then hung the don’t-disturb card on the door, and I know nobody saw me go up—”

  “I even ducked the watchman.”

  Margaret never paid much attention to what went on in the hotel, but later on, I found out if she had painted a green line from her bedroom to 819 she couldn’t have left a plainer trail than by the don’t-disturb card and the call block through the exchange, two smoke screens the old lady always kept an eye on. And when she pulled the freight car up to the eighth floor, which was reserved for women alone, and left it there, that made it simple. But we didn’t know about any of that then, and all we did was stand there in the lobby and whisper, have a quick kiss good night, and make a date.

  So I began going with her. It all turned out bad, and I’ve said mean things about her, and maybe will say more. It seemed to me, and still does, that she was a spoiled, self-centered girl, but of course what I really held against her, and what she held against me, was that while I liked her a little bit I didn’t like her much, and not enough, after that one time, to pull her zippers, though of course I mumbled a lot about how wonderful it would be if we didn’t have to do our courting in the Goldfish Bowl, as we called the studio from then on. If I could have lived my life as I wanted to live it, I don’t think I’d have showed up at the Cartaret once a year. But I had no life to live. My money was gone, so those twenty dollars and thirty dollars every month didn’t come any more. And I couldn’t get any work. I was still an A-1 mechanic, and getting better from what I was getting in college, but there was no work. Even my father had none. In the house was nothing but gloom, whispers, and nerves. The Cartaret was a place to go, where there was something to do, and she was somebody to do it with. When summer came and Mr. Legg offered me a place on the desk I took it and tried learning to be a room clerk. I guess I did, somehow. Anyhow, I got so I could put up the mail in less than an hour, the worst chore a room clerk does. I figured out one thing: alphabetize everything, so all D. P. Jones’s stuff comes together before you start putting it in his box. Then you don’t have to look him up eight different times.

  “Jack.”

  “Yes, Mr. Legg?”

  “Let’s talk about your future.”

  “Time somebody did.”

  “Have a cigar?”

  “Thanks, I don’t smoke.”

  “How many summers have you worked for us now?”

&nb
sp; “Two.”

  “I thought it was more.”

  “No, my sophomore summer and last summer.”

  “You graduate this year, Margaret tells me.”

  “In June.”

  “What had you thought to do?”

  “Well, I’m taking my B.S. in mechanical engineering, and I had thought of going to Detroit and trying to get started there, but the way I hear it, things are pretty shot in the automobile factories, with labor being laid off all the time, and no technical people being taken on, on account of their own men, the ones already laid off, having first call. Of course, until the last couple of months, that hadn’t worried me, because I could have fallen back on football until things get better, but the cracked kneecap I got in the Georgetown game isn’t improving. I don’t limp, it’s nothing that’ll bother me, but it’s taken about two seconds off my speed. I mean it’s stiff. I—”

  “That doesn’t upset me at all.”

  “Yeah, but I played some pro, if you have to know.”

  “I suspected it.”

  “And—now that’s out.”

  “I’m relieved. I think very little of sport.”

  “To me, it was a means to an end.”

  “May I stress that word ‘end’?”

  “It’s ended, all right.”

  “Then we’ll pay no more attention to it. Jack, you’ve impressed me most favorably, the short time you’ve been with me. How would you like the hotel business?”