The only place he knew where he could bum a meal was the Johnsons’ so he turned into their street from Fifth Avenue. Paul met him at the door and held out his hand. “Hello, Charley,” he said. “I haven’t seen you for a dog’s age.”
“I been movin’,” stammered Charley, feeling like a louse. “Too many bedbugs in that last dump… Say, I just stopped into say hello.”
“Come on in and I’ll shake up a drink. Eveline’ll be back in a minute.”
Charley was shaking his head. “No, I just stopped to say hello. How’s the kid? Give Eveline my best. I got a date.”
He walked to a newsstand at the corner of Eighth Street and bought all the papers. Then he went to a blindtiger he knew and had a session with the helpwanted columns over some glasses of needle beer. He drank the beer slowly and noted down the addresses on a piece of paper he’d lifted off the Hotel Astor. One of them was a usedcar dealer, where the manager was a friend of Jim’s. Charley had met him out home.
The lights went on and the windows got dark with a stuffy late-summer night. When he’d paid for the beer he only had a quarter left in his pocket. “Damn it, this is the last time I let myself get in a jam like this,” he kept muttering as he wandered round the downtown streets. He sat for a long time in Washington Square, thinking about what kind of a salestalk he could give the manager of that usedcar dump.
A light rain began to fall. The streets were empty by this time. He turned up his collar and started to walk. His shoes had holes in them and with each step he could feel the cold water squish between his toes. Under an arclight he took off his straw hat and looked at it. It was already gummy and the rim had a swollen pulpy look. “Now how in Christ’s name am I goin’ to go around to get me a job tomorrow?”
He turned on his heel and walked straight uptown towards the Johnsons’ place. Every minute it rained harder. He rang the bell under the card Paul Johnson — Eveline Hutchins until Paul came to the door in pyjamas looking very sleepy.
“Say, Paul, can I sleep on your couch?” “It’s pretty hard… Come in… I don’t know if we’ve got any clean sheets.” “That’s all right… just for tonight… You see I got cleaned out in a crapgame. I got jack comin’ tomorrow. I thought I’d try the benches but the sonofabitch started to rain on me. I got business to attend to tomorrow an’ I got to keep this suit good, see?” “Sure… Say, you look wet… I’ll lend you a pair of pyjamas and a bathrobe. Better take those things off.”
It was dry and comfortable on the Johnsons’ couch. After Paul had gone back to bed Charley lay there in Paul’s bathrobe looking up at the ceiling. Through the tall window he could see the rain flickering through the streetlights outside and hear its continuous beat on the pavement. The baby woke up and cried, there was a light in the other room. He could hear Paul’s and Eveline’s sleepy voices and the rustle of them stirring around. Then the baby quieted down, the light went out. Everything was quiet in the beating rain again. He went off to sleep.
Getting up and having breakfast with them was no picnic nor was borrowing twentyfive dollars from Paul though Charley knew he could pay it back in a couple of days. He left when Paul left to go to the office without paying attention to Eveline’s sidelong kidding glances. Never get in a jam like this again, he kept saying to himself.
First he went to a tailor’s and sat there behind a curtain reading the American while his suit was pressed. Then he bought himself a new straw hat, went to a barbershop and had a shave, a haircut, a facial massage and a manicure and went to a cobbler’s to get his shoes shined and soled.
By that time it was almost noon. He went uptown on the subway and talked himself into a job as salesman in the secondhand autosales place above Columbus Circle where the manager was a friend of Jim’s. When the guy asked Charley about how the folks out in Minne apolis were getting on, he had to make up a lot of stuff. That evening he got his laundry from the Chinaman and his things out of hock and went back to a room, with brown walls this time, at the Chatterton House. He set himself up to a good feed and went to bed early deadtired.
A few days later a letter came from Joe Askew with the twentyfive bucks and the news that he was getting on his feet and would be down soon to get to work. Meanwhile Charley was earning a small amount on commissions but winning or losing up to a century a night in a pokergame on Sixtythird Street one of the salesmen took him up to. They were mostly automobile salesmen and advertising men in the game and they were free spenders and rolled up some big pots. Charley mailed the twentyfive he owed him down to Paul, and when Eveline called him up on the telephone always said he was terribly busy and would call her soon. No more of that stuff, nosiree. Whenever he won, he put half of his winnings in a savings-bank account he’d opened. He carried the bankbook in his inside pocket. When he noticed it there it always made him feel like a wise guy.
He kept away from Eveline. It was hard for him to get so far downtown and he didn’t need to anyway because one of the other salesmen gave him the phonenumber of an apartment in a kind of hotel on the West Side, where a certain Mrs. Darling would arrange meetings with agreeable young women if she were notified early enough in the day. It cost twentyfive bucks a throw but the girls were clean and young and there were no followups of any kind. The fact that he could raise twentyfive bucks to blow that way made him feel pretty good, but it ate into his poker winnings. After a session with one of Mrs. Darling’s telephone numbers, he’d go back to his room at the Chatterton House feeling blue and disgusted. The girls were all right, but it wasn’t fun like it had been with Eveline or even with Emiscah. He’d think of Doris and say to himself goshdarn it, he had to get him a woman of his own.
He took to selling fewer cars and playing more poker as the weeks went on and by the time he got a wire from Joe Askew saying he was coming to town next day his job had just about petered out. He could tell that it was only because the manager was a friend of Jim’s that he hadn’t fired him already. He’d hit a losing streak and had to draw all the money out of the savingsaccount. When he went down to the sta tion to meet Joe he had a terrible head and only a dime in his pocket. The night before they’d cleaned him out at red dog.
Joe looked the same as ever only he was thinner and his mustache was longer. “Well, how’s tricks?” Charley took Joe’s other bag as they walked up the platform.
“Troubled with low ceilin’s, air full of holes.”
“I bet it is. Say, you look like you’d been hitting it up, Charley. I hope you’re ready to get to work.”
“Sure. All depends on gettin’ the right C.O… Ain’t I been to nightschool every night?”
“I bet you have.”
“How are you feelin’ now, Joe?”
“Oh, I’m all right now. I just about fretted myself into a nuthouse. What a lousy summer I’ve had… What have you been up to, you big bum?”
“Well, I’ve been gatherin’ information about the theory of the straight flush. And women… have I learned about women? Say, how’s the wife and kids?”
“Fine… You’ll meet ’em. I’m goin’ to take an apartment here this winter… Well, boy, it’s a case of up and at ’em. We are goin’ in with Andy Merritt… You’ll meet him this noon. Where can I get a room?” “Well, I’m stayin’ at that kind of glorified Y over on Thirty-eighth Street.” “That’s all right.”
When they got into the taxi, Joe tapped him on the knee and leaned over and asked with a grin, “When are you ready to start to manufacture?” “Tomorrow mornin’ at eight o’clock. Old Bigelow just failed over in Long Island City. I seen his shop. Wouldn’t cost much to get it in shape.”