‘Our Darleen’s in a brown study! Thinking of the beloved, no doubt!’ Miss Tinkham was the first to break the silence.
Mrs. Feeley pounded Darleen on the back.
‘Snap out of it, girl! I’m a preachin’ ol’ fool! Don’t mind me! We think you’re a good kid, an’ we like you!’
‘You got the prettiest hair I ever seen,’ Mrs. Rasmussen said warmly. ‘Nice form, too!’
‘That lucky Johnny!’ Miss Tinkham said, ‘I hope you’ll pardon the familiarity, but I feel as if I knew the dear boy already! He is certainly to be congratulated on having such a lovely—ah—fiancée! Though not given to betting, I am willing to wager we shall hear the chime of wedding-bells before the year is out!’
Darleen waved a deprecating hand.
‘Johnny’s got ideels! He wouldn’t marry me!’
‘Well, he sure as hell won’t, unless you start actin’ like you thought he would!’ Mrs. Feeley said positively.
‘’Course,’ Mrs. Rasmussen added, ‘you couldn’t just jump into it, an’ go on playin’ the field like you been doin’. Once you was hitched with the bell an’ the book—you’d sure have to cut out all them other guys!’
‘I know that!’ Darleen agreed. ‘Bein’ married is sure a sacred thing, awful big responsibility. I’ve had a few chances, but I knew the guys had their fingers crossed, and expected me to have mine crossed too! But I wouldn’t play the game that way. If I ever give that step, it’ll be for good and always—that’s why I couldn’t give the step unless I felt sure I could make the grade!’
‘An admirable attitude!’ Miss Tinkham said.
‘But you do like this here Johnny better’n them others, don’t you?’ Mrs. Feeley probed.
‘Oh sure! I love Johnny. Him and me get along swell! You wouldn’t guess he was no merchant sailor—no torpedo target, he calls it. He looks almost like a college boy except for a few tattoos and they aren’t noticeable with his clothes on.’ Darleen’s eyes lighted as she described her friend.
‘We sure wanna make his acquaintance the next tune he comes in,’ Mrs. Feeley said cordially.
‘Would it be all right?’ Darleen asked incredulously.
‘I’d like to know why not!’ Mrs. Feeley exclaimed.
‘Well, I just thought—’
‘You know what thought did!’ Mrs. Rasmussen said, and wisely let the matter drop right there.
Gee, I got to go now! I’m almost late for work,’ Darleen said, as she looked at a fancy wrist watch worn nearer to the elbow than the wrist.
‘Johnny give you that?’ Mrs. Feeley asked.
Darleen nodded.
‘My! He sure thinks a lot of you!’ Mrs. Rasmussen said admiringly. Darleen was actually beginning to think he did, at that.
Chapter 5
SATURDAY NIGHT the ladies set out from Noah’s Ark about half-past eight. In honor of the occasion Mrs. Feeley had on a cool dimity dress and her nice canvas pumps that she kept for best. Mrs. Rasmussen wore a neat blue-and-white striped seersucker—a shirtmaker affair. Her sausage curls were arranged with geometrical exactness. Miss Tinkham had gone all out for glamour, and wore her best rayon knit suit. The skirt was a good sixteen inches longer than the current fashion, but everyone knew how knitted fabrics raveled when cut, and besides the material was so handsome! She could always take a reef in the elastic waistband of the skirt if it got too long, as it was prone to do at the end of a large evening. The sweater top was a dazzling affair embroidered in sequins and crystal beads. The bright green of the suit was a trifle marred by large rusty circles under the arms. Miss Tinkham was annoyed at the original owner of the suit for being unfastidious about dress-shields. If she kept her arms close to her sides the stains would not be noticed much. Although Mrs. Feeley and Mrs. Rasmussen were bareheaded, Miss Tinkham could not forego the final touch, the coup de grâce of a handsome picture-hat made of accordion-pleated Kelly-green lace. The crown was shallow and the brim a wide oval. Looking out from under it, Miss Tinkham reminded Mrs. Rasmussen of a frog peeking out from under a lily-pad.
‘Yessir!’ Mrs. Rasmussen said, ‘I got just what that hat’s needin’!’ True to her word she came out of her room with a large wax-coated artificial water-lily in her hand. She used to float it in a flat dish of water when she had company.
‘Perfect!’ Miss Tinkham breathed, and proceeded to anchor the lily with a large safety-pin.
The ladies walked along Island Avenue, well pleased with the world and each other. Soon they were climbing the steps of a building marked ‘Fleet Rooms.’
When the door opened in answer to their ring, the ladies remained speechless at the apparition before them. The woman who opened the door was a fat, red-headed, freckle-faced mulatto with gold teeth.
‘What did you want?’ she asked in a not too cordial voice.
While the ladies were still gasping for air, they heard Darleen’s voice from over the edge of the staircase:
‘It’s all right, Mabel! They’re my company!’
Darleen ran down and escorted the ladies up the stairs. They were still suffering from shock and did not say a word until they were safely inside Darleen’s room.
‘Gawdlemighty!’ Mrs. Feeley gasped, ‘what do you call that? Open the window, quick! I’m gonna let a faint!’
‘You name it an’ you can have it,’ Mrs. Rasmussen giggled, sinking into the nearest chair.
‘That’s Mabel, my landlady,’ Darleen explained.
‘Madame La Zonga!’ Miss Tinkham tittered.
‘Sh-h-h! Go easy on that “madam” stuff! She’s got a awful temper!’
‘Ain’t you scared outa your wits to stay here?’ Mrs. Feeley asked, looking around her.
Darleen shook her head. She pointed to the heavy iron bolt on the door and the Yale lock, her own addition. The only window in the room opened over the street, and Darleen explained that if any funny stuff started she would only have to stick her head out the window and holler for the patrol.
‘You ain’t got a beer handy, have you?’ Mrs. Feeley asked. ‘I feel kinda weak!’
‘Sure have!’ Darleen said, and went behind the screen that concealed the ‘running water in every room.’ The wash-hand basin was full of bottles of beer packed in chunks of ice, the whole thing neatly covered with a towel.
‘Guess I’ll live, after all!’ Mrs. Feeley sighed as she took a long pull at the cold beer. ‘Sure nice o’ you to have this beer for us, ’specially since you don’t touch none yourself!’
The other ladies hoisted their bottles in salute to Darleen’s hospitality. They thought the room was very pleasant. Her boy-friends must have all been hell-on-wheels at carnivals, for her room was filled with feather-dressed Kewpie dolls, bead-fringed lamps, and long, slinky-legged French dolls with cigarettes hanging lewdly from their mouths. Darleen smoothed the lavender taffeta bedspread with pride.
‘Johnny won this for me on the Wheel of Fortune at the Carnival. The man said it didn’t stop on the right number, but Johnny had quite a few of his oilers with him from the ship—and they persuaded him a little. Seems like they can’t argue much with Johnny and the black-gang! Engineers is a masterful bunch!’
Mrs. Feeley and her friends admired the bedspread and the dolls. Suddenly Darleen had an inspiration. She opened the door of her clothes closet and hauled down a huge cardboard box.
‘I knew I had something I wanted to give you!’ she said, turning to Mrs. Rasmussen. ‘Johnny won it and a ham at the same time. He took the ham back to the ship, but we didn’t have no use for this.’
The ladies crowded around as Darleen unpacked something large and gleaming. It was an enormous aluminum pressure-cooker.
Mrs. Rasmussen’s eyes popped out on her face like a sand crab’s.
‘Them costs every bit of twenty dollars—an’ a prior-ority! You ain’t aimin’ to give that away?’
‘Johnny only paid a quarter for the chance—and I wouldn’t never use it in a million years,’ Darleen said. ‘I don’t ev
en know how you use it,’ she confessed. ‘But I’d be proud for you to accept it!’
Mrs. Rasmussen was speechless. All her life she had longed to own a pressure-cooker. Not that she couldn’t cook things tender with a good slow fire! But there was something aristocratic about having your own pressure-cooker. Almost as good as being in Navy society and having your electric washing machine all paid for.
Even Mrs. Feeley couldn’t think of anything to say.
‘A magnificent bit of apparatus!’ Miss Tinkham said.
‘You will take it, won’t you?’ Darleen coaxed.
‘You had oughta let us buy it from you,’ Mrs. Feeley said at length.
‘It isn’t for sale,’ Darleen said firmly. ‘It is a small token of the respect and esteem—’ Darleen’s carefully thought-out speech broke down in the middle. ‘It’s on account of you-all being so good to me and me so proud that you’ll let me associate with you! You got to keep it!’ she finished in a spurt. ‘You can cook stuff for the twins in it!’ She drove the final nail home.
Since it was offered in the name of the twins, the ladies saw no way to refuse the gift gracefully. Especially since they were dying to accept it.
‘We sure thank you!’ was the best Mrs. Rasmussen could do. But she made a silent vow to teach Darleen all there was to know about cookery from artichokes to zucchini.
‘Let’s have some music,’ Darleen said brightly, and turned on her record-player. The ladies listened blissfully to ‘Why Don’t You Do Right?’ and Darleen set up more beer. She simply could not do enough to entertain her distinguished guests. She opened a bag of salted peanuts and passed them around. Mrs. Feeley took a handful and grinned up at Darleen.
‘I ain’t got no teeth, but I can sure gum hell out of ‘em!’
Miss Tinkham breathed deeply and voluptuously when Darleen lit the incense burner. This was really a lovely soirée—the beers were beginning to take effect.
‘The blessing of friends!’ she cried. ‘We have received nothing better from the Immortal Gods, nothing more delightful!’
The phonograph was automatic and the ladies admired it enormously; you didn’t have to hop up and down every minute to change it. And nobody whanging away at you every two minutes, like those fool announcers on the radio.
The four women were sitting in blissful enjoyment when a sharp bell rang. Darleen went to her bedside and removed an ornate doll from the telephone. The ladies looked at one another in amazement: her own telephone right by her bed! They tried politely not to hear the conversation, but the room was not large.
‘No, the ship isn’t in,’ Darleen said.
‘I’m not at home,’ she said to her invisible vis-à-vis.
‘I don’t care! I’m not at home!’ she said in a sharper tone.
Miss Tinkham got up stiffly and marched over to Darleen; she put her arm around her shoulders and said:
‘Pardon me, dear! Might I interrupt you a second?’
‘Sure,’ Darleen said, holding the mouthpiece of the telephone against her chest.
‘Are you in earnest? Seize this very minute!
What you can do, or think you can, begin it!’
Miss Tinkham recited with élan and strode back to her chair.
‘No—it won’t do you no good to call back later,’ Darleen said calmly into the telephone and hung up. ‘Honestly, these men won’t hardly give a lady no peace!’ Darleen was so annoyed that she snapped the cap off a bottle of Seven-Up.
‘No couth! They ain’t got no couth at all!’ Mrs. Feeley said. ‘You sure got him told, though!’
Darleen basked in the approving smiles of her guests. She glanced at her watch—they would have to hurry to carry out all that she had planned for their entertainment. It was funny how the hours flew when you were with congenial people. Her feet would have been awfully sore by this time if she had been at work.
‘Now see,’ she explained to her guests, ‘on account of me not knowing how to cook, or having no kitchen privileges if I did, I can’t reciprocate your hospitality the way I had ought to. So I done the best I knew how, and ordered us all a nice shore dinner for ten o’clock down to the Red Sails in The Sunset Inn. It’s a classy joint! The taxi will be here in a few minutes. In case you’d like to fix your face or anything, it’s right down the hall.’ And she led the way.
The ladies were stupefied. Darleen certainly went whole-hog when she did anything.
‘I can see you entertain royally when you do entertain,’ Miss Tinkham beamed as she went out the door.
‘Shore dinner!’ Mrs. Rasmussen gloated.
‘Ersters! Good for the verse! That’s how they talk in Brooklyn!’ Mrs. Feeley quipped.
Darleen came back and fixed her hair before the mirror and the ladies stood around admiring her. Mrs. Rasmussen took notice of just how she did it.
Suddenly a terrific uproar came from the next room. Glasses or bottles crashed and dishes smashed on the floor. Hair-raising shrieks and yells nearly shook the walls down.
The residents of Noah’s Ark looked questioningly at Darleen.
‘It’s Pierpont and Myrna!’ she sighed.
‘It’s which?’ Mrs. Feeley asked.
‘C’mon! I’ll show you,’ Darleen said wearily and led the ladies into the hall. She opened the door next to her own and the ladies saw a small wizened face appear. It belonged to a boy four or possibly five years old. His bullet head was covered with a shaggy black thatch. His eyes were green and slanty, and his sharp, peaked features were spattered with big jagged freckles as though someone had coughed bran in his face.
‘What’s the matter with Myrna?’ Darleen demanded, shoving her foot in the door. The ladies stayed right behind her and they all went in.
‘All that noise come outa them two mites?’ Mrs. Rasmussen gasped, pointing at Pierpont and Myrna—aged three. Pierpont’s sister was microscopic—with short, wiry red curls all over her head. She had a long upper lip and an outthrust lower lip. Her eyes were like two blueberries in a muffin.
‘Damn if they can’t make the most noise of any two I ever seen! For their size!’ Mrs. Feeley exclaimed.
‘Such lovely curls,’ Miss Tinkham said, and put out her hand to touch them. Myrna promptly sunk her teeth in Miss Tinkham’s wrist.
‘What was you yelling for?’ Darleen insisted, as the ladies looked at the filth and squalor of the room and Miss Tinkham nursed her wrist.
‘Myrna won’t eat her cherry oats!’ Pierpont snarled. ‘She wants sweet milk! ’Cause the milk was sour she got mad an’ broke the bottle! Now we won’t get the nickel!’
‘Wanna hot-dog! Wanna hot-dog!’ Myrna chanted.
‘Hot-dog! My—’ Pierpont wriggled as Darleen clapped her hand over his mouth.
‘Jeez! Wanna hot-dog!’ Myrna insisted, jumping up and down.
‘Where’s your mom?’ Darleen demanded. ‘You mean it’s ten o’clock and you haven’t ate yet?’
Pierpont shook his head.
‘Mrs. Feeley, will you ladies wait in my room just a minute while I run down to the comer for a bottle of milk? I sure hate this inconvenience to arise, but I’ll tell the taxicab to wait!’
The ladies followed Darleen back to her room, looking over their shoulders nervously at the occupants of the next room.
‘There’s a couple of beers left. You split ’em till I get back,’ Darleen said as she left the room.
A few sips of beer restored the equilibrium of the Noah’s Arkies.
‘I’ll bet my bottom dollar that boy ain’t five years old, an’ already as tough a mug as I ever seen!’ Mrs. Feeley said.
‘And that dreadful little girl,’ Miss Tinkham moaned, unwrapping her handkerchief to look at the bite on her wrist.
‘Regular varmints, them two,’ Mrs. Rasmussen agreed. ‘Wonder how come the Children’s Society ain’t got ’em?’
‘I wonder!’ Mrs. feeley mused. ‘Sure can’t have much of a mother! Wasn’t that ol’ clabbered milk awful spattered all over that way?’
‘An’ that crib! Smelled like a badger’s nest! Foo!’ Mrs. Rasmussen held her nose.
Darleen returned with the milk before the discussion could go further. The ladies followed her into the next room to watch.
Pierpont took two dishes and climbed up on a chair and washed them in the wash-basin. Then he brought them back to the rickety card-table, filled the bowls with dry cereal and poured some milk on it. He sprinkled sugar on top from a torn paper bag. Myrna had already climbed up on a chair and was spooning away greedily. Pierpont dived in, too.
‘Now, you all go right to bed the minute you finish, you hear?’ Darleen admonished. ‘Don’t try to wait up for your mom! C’mon, ladies; our taxi is waiting!’ she said, and they all went downstairs.
The three ladies and Darleen sailed wing and wing into the cozy, rose-lighted Inn. Mrs. Feeley looked at her friends and moved her eyebrows up and down several times in anticipation of a big time. Darleen certainly knew her way around: she had even had a nice table reserved. The waiters bowed deferentially, and when one of them pulled Mrs. Feeley’s chair out for her, she turned to him in the most friendly fashion and asked: ‘Don’t I know you from somewhere?’
When he had gone away the ladies agreed he was sure a nice feller.
‘We’ll have beer,’ Darleen ordered. ‘And some clam-juice for me!’
The Noah’s Arkies enjoyed their beer out of the nice tall Pilsener glasses. Mrs. Rasmussen inquired in subtle pantomime whether or not she should take some of the glasses home by way of souvenir. Mrs. Feeley shook her head because Darleen was evidently well known here, and it might come back on her. Miss Tinkham loved the little red silk shades on the electric candles at each table. She was stowing away oyster crackers at a fine clip. Soon the oysters on the half-shell arrived. Darleen swallowed hers whole, but the ladies chewed away in moist appreciation. Mrs. Feeley told the joke, ending: ‘I try heem once, I try heem twice, I try heem three times, but he no stay down!’ Truly a festive occasion.
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