Big Money (3 page)

“Well, why shouldn't they be quiet. . . . It's Sunday, ain't it?”

“Oh, sure, I'd forgotten it was Sunday.”

“Sure it's Sunday.”

“I remember now it's Sunday.”

Yankee Doodle that melodee

 

COLONEL HOUSE ARRIVES FROM EUROPE

 

APPARENTLY A VERY SICK MAN

 

Yankee Doodle that melodee

 

TO CONQUER SPACE AND SEE DISTANCES

 

but has not the time come for newspaper proprietors to join in a wholesome movement for the purpose of calming troubled minds, giving all the news but laying less stress on prospective calamitiesd

 

DEADLOCK UNBROKEN AS FIGHT SPREADS

 

they permitted the Steel Trust Government to trample underfoot the democratic rights which they had so often been assured were the heritage of the people of this country

 

SHIPOWNERS DEMAND PROTECTION

 

Yankee doodle that melodee

Yankee doodle that melodee

Makes me stand right up and cheer

 

only survivors of crew of schooner
Onato
are put in jail on arrival in Philadelphia

 

PRESIDENT STRONGER WORKS IN SICKROOM

 

I'm coming U.S.A.

                                            
I'll say

 

MAY GAG PRESS

 

There's no land . . . so grand

 

Charles M. Schwab, who has returned from Europe, was a luncheon guest at the White House. He stated that this country was prosperous but not so prosperous as it should be, because there were so many disturbing investigations on foot

 

                                 
. . . as my land

From California to Manhattan Isle

The ratfaced bellboy put down the bags, tried the faucets of the washbowl, opened the window a little, put the key on the inside of the door and then stood at something like attention and said, “Anything else, lootenant?” This is the life, thought Charley, and fished a quarter out of his pocket. “Thank you, sir, lootenant.” The bellboy shuffled his feet and cleared his throat. “It must have been terrible overseas, lootenant.” Charley laughed. “Oh, it was all right.” “I wish I coulda gone, lootenant.” The boy showed a couple of ratteeth in a grin. “It must be wonderful to be a hero,” he said and backed out the door.

Charley stood looking out the window as he unbuttoned his tunic. He was high up. Through a street of grimy square buildings he could see some columns and the roofs of the new Penn station and beyond, across the trainyards, a blurred sun setting behind high ground the other side of the Hudson. Overhead was purple and pink. An el train clattered raspingly through the empty Sundayevening streets. The wind that streamed through the bottom of the window had a gritty smell of coalashes. Charley put the window down and went to wash his face and hands. The hotel towel felt soft and thick with a little whiff of chloride. He went to the lookingglass and combed his hair. Now what?

He was walking up and down the room fidgeting with a cigarette, watching the sky go dark outside the window, when the jangle of the phone startled him. It was Ollie Taylor's polite fuddled voice. “I thought maybe you wouldn't know where to get a drink. Do you want to come around to the club?” “Gee, that's nice of you, Ollie. I was jus' wonderin' what a feller could do with himself in this man's town.”
“You know it's quite dreadful here,” Ollie's voice went on. “Prohibition and all that, it's worse than the wildest imagination could conceive. I'll come and pick you up with a cab.” “All right, Ollie, I'll be in the lobby.”

Charley put on his tunic, remembered to leave off his Sam Browne belt, straightened his scrubby sandy hair again, and went down into the lobby. He sat down in a deep chair facing the revolving doors.

The lobby was crowded. There was music coming from somewhere in back. He sat there listening to the dancetunes, looking at the silk stockings and the high heels and the furcoats and the pretty girls' faces pinched a little by the wind as they came in off the street. There was an expensive jingle and crinkle to everything. Gosh, it was great. The girls left little trails of perfume and a warm smell of furs as they passed him. He started counting up how much jack he had. He had a draft for three hundred bucks he'd saved out of his pay, four yellowbacked twenties in the wallet in his inside pocket he'd won at poker on the boat, a couple of tens, and let's see how much change. The coins made a little jingle in his pants as he fingered them over.

Ollie Taylor's red face was nodding at Charley above a big camels-hair coat. “My dear boy, New York's a wreck. . . . They are pouring icecream sodas in the Knickerbocker bar. . . .” When they got into the cab together he blew a reek of highgrade rye whiskey in Charley's face. “Charley, I've promised to take you along to dinner with me. . . . Just up to ole Nat Benton's. You won't mind . . . he's a good scout. The ladies want to see a real flying aviator with palms.” “You're sure I won't be buttin' in, Ollie?” “My dear boy, say no more about it.”

At the club everybody seemed to know Ollie Taylor. He and Charley stood a long time drinking Manhattans at a dark-paneled bar in a group of whitehaired old gents with a barroom tan on their faces. It was Major this and Major that and Lieutenant every time anybody spoke to Charley. Charley was getting to be afraid Ollie would get too much of a load on to go to dinner at anybody's house.

At last it turned out to be seventhirty, and leaving the final round of cocktails, they got into a cab again, each of them munching a clove, and started uptown. “I don't know what to say to 'em,” Ollie said. “I tell them I've just spent the most delightful two years of my life, and they make funny mouths at me, but I can't help it.”

There was a terrible lot of marble, and doormen in green, at the
apartmenthouse where they went out to dinner and the elevator was inlaid in different kinds of wood. Nat Benton, Ollie whispered while they were waiting for the door to open, was a Wall Street broker.

They were all in eveningdress waiting for them for dinner in a pinkishcolored drawingroom. They were evidently old friends of Ollie's because they made a great fuss over him and they were very cordial to Charley and brought out cocktails right away, and Charley felt like the cock of the walk.

There was a girl named Miss Humphries who was as pretty as a picture. The minute Charley set eyes on her Charley decided that was who he was going to talk to. Her eyes and her fluffy palegreen dress and the powder in the little hollow between her shoulderblades made him feel a little dizzy so that he didn't dare stand too close to her. Ollie saw the two of them together and came up and pinched her ear. “Doris, you've grown up to be a raving beauty.” He stood beaming teetering a little on his short legs. “Hum . . . only the brave deserve the fair. . . . It's not every day we come home from the wars, is it, Charley me boy?”

“Isn't he a darling?” she said when Ollie turned away. “We used to be great sweethearts when I was about six and he was a collegeboy.” When they were all ready to go into dinner Ollie, who'd had a couple more cocktails, spread out his arms and made a speech. “Look at them, lovely, intelligent, lively American women. . . . There was nothing like that on the other side, was there, Charley? Three things you can't get anywhere else in the world, a good cocktail, a decent breakfast, and an American girl, God bless 'em.” “Oh, he's such a darling,” whispered Miss Humphries in Charley's ear.

There was silverware in rows and rows on the table and a Chinese bowl with roses in the middle of it, and a group of giltstemmed wineglasses at each place. Charley was relieved when he found he was sitting next to Miss Humphries. She was smiling up at him. “Gosh,” he said, grinning into her face, “I hardly know how to act.” “It must be a change . . . from over there. But just act natural. That's what I do.”

“Oh, no, a feller always gets into trouble when he acts natural.”

She laughed. “Maybe you're right. . . . Oh, do tell me what it was really like over there. . . . Nobody'll ever tell me everything.” She pointed to the palms on his Croix de Guerre. “Oh, Lieutenant Anderson, you must tell me about those.”

They had white wine with the fish and red wine with the roastbeef
and a dessert all full of whippedcream. Charley kept telling himself he mustn't drink too much so that he'd be sure to behave right.

Miss Humphries' first name was Doris. Mrs. Benton called her that. She'd spent a year in a convent in Paris before the war and asked him about places she'd known, the church of the Madeleine and Rumpelmayers and the pastryshop opposite the Comédie Française. After dinner she and Charley took their coffeecups into a windowbay behind a big pink begonia in a brass pot and she asked him if he didn't think New York was awful. She sat on the windowseat and he stood over her looking past her white shoulder through the window down at the traffic in the street below. It had come on to rain and the lights of the cars made long rippling streaks on the black pavement of Park Avenue. He said something about how he thought home would look pretty good to him all the same. He was wondering if it would be all right if he told her she had beautiful shoulders. He'd just about gotten around to it when he heard Ollie Taylor getting everybody together to go out to a cabaret. “I know it's a chore,” Ollie was saying, “but you children must remember it's my first night in New York and humor my weakness.”

They stood in a group under the marquee while the doorman called taxicabs. Doris Humphries in her long eveningwrap with fur at the bottom of it stood so close to Charley her shoulder touched his arm. In the lashing rainy wind off the street he could smell the warm perfume she wore and her furs and her hair. They stood back while the older people got into the cabs. For a second her hand was in his, very little and cool as he helped her into the cab. He handed out a half a dollar to the doorman who had whispered “Shanley's” to the taxidriver in a serious careful flunkey's voice.

The taxi was purring smoothly downtown between the tall square buildings. Charley was a little dizzy. He didn't dare look at her for a moment but looked out at faces, cars, trafficcops, people in raincoats and umbrellas passing against drugstore windows.

“Now tell me how you got the palms.”

“Oh, the frogs just threw those in now and then to keep the boys cheerful.”

“How many Huns did you bring down?”

“Why bring that up?”

She stamped her foot on the floor of the taxi. “Oh, nobody'll ever tell me anything. . . . I don't believe you were ever at the front, any of
you.” Charley laughed. His throat was a little dry. “Well, I was over it a couple of times.”

Suddenly she turned to him. There were flecks of light in her eyes in the dark of the cab. “Oh, I understand. . . . Lieutenant Anderson, I think you flyers are the finest people there are.” “Miss Humphries, I think you're a . . . humdinger. . . . I hope this taxi never gets to this dump . . . wherever it is we're goin'.” She leaned her shoulder against his for a second. He found he was holding her hand. “After all, my name is Doris,” she said in a tiny babytalk voice.

“Doris,” he said. “Mine's Charley.”

“Charley, do you like to dance?” she asked in the same tiny voice. “Sure,” Charley said, giving her hand a quick squeeze. Her voice melted like a little tiny piece of candy. “Me too. . . . Oh, so much.”

When they went in the orchestra was playing
Dardanella.
Charley left his trenchcoat and his hat in the checkroom. The headwaiter's heavy grizzled eyebrows bowed over a white shirtfront. Charley was following Doris's slender back, the hollow between the shoulderblades where his hand would like to be, across the red carpet, between the white tables, the men's starched shirts, the women's shoulders, through the sizzly smell of champagne and welshrabbit and hot chafing-dishes, across a corner of the dancefloor among the swaying couples to the round white table where the rest of them were already settled. The knives and forks shone among the stiff creases of the fresh tablecloth.

Mrs. Benton was pulling off her white kid gloves looking at Ollie Taylor's purple face as he told a funny story. “Let's dance,” Charley whispered to Doris. “Let's dance all the time.”

Charley was scared of dancing too tough so he held her a little away from him. She had a way of dancing with her eyes closed. “Gee, Doris, you are a wonderful dancer.” When the music stopped the tables and the cigarsmoke and the people went on reeling a little round their heads. Doris was looking up at him out of the corners of her eyes. “I bet you miss the French girls, Charley. How did you like the way the French girls danced, Charley?”

“Terrible.”

At the table they were drinking champagne out of breakfast coffee-cups. Ollie had had two bottles sent up from the club by a messenger. When the music started again Charley had to dance with Mrs. Benton, and then with the other lady, the one with the diamonds and
the spare tire round her waist. He and Doris only had two more dances together. Charley could see the others wanted to go home because Ollie was getting too tight. He had a flask of rye on his hip and a couple of times had beckoned Charley out to have a swig in the cloakroom with him. Charley tongued the bottle each time because he was hoping he'd get a chance to take Doris home.