He stuck his head in Joe’s office for a moment but Joe was busy talking to a guy in a coonskin coat who looked like a bond salesman. So he ran down the hall to his own office, said, “Hello, Ella, get me Mr. Stauch,” and sat down at his desk which was covered with notes on blue and yellow sheets. “A hell of a note,” he was thinking, “for a guy to be glued to a desk all his life.”
Stauch’s serious square pale face topped by a brush of colorless hair sprouting from a green eyeshade was leaning over him. “Sit down, Julius,” he said. “How’s tricks?… Burnishin’ room all right?” “Ach, yes, but we haf two stampingmachines broken in one day.” “The hell you say. Let’s go look at them.”
When Charley got back to his office he had a streak of grease on his nose. He still had an oily micrometer in his hand. It was six o’clock. He called up Joe. “Hello, Joe, goin’ home?” “Sure, I was waiting for you; what was the trouble?” “I was crawlin’ around on my belly in the grease as usual.”
Charley washed his hands and face in the lavatory and ran down the rubbertreaded steps. Joe was waiting for him in the entry. “My wife’s got my car, Charley, let’s take yours,” said Joe. “It’ll be a bit drafty, Joe.” “We can stand it.” “Goodnight, Mr. Askew, goodnight, Mr. Anderson,” said the old watchman in his blue cap with earflaps, who was closing up behind them.
“Say, Charley,” Joe said when they’d turned into the stream of traffic at the end of the alley. “Why don’t you let Stauch do more of the routine work? He seems pretty efficient.” “Knows a hell of a lot more than I do,” said Charley, squinting through the frosted windshield. The headlights coming the other way made big sparkling blooms of light in the driving snow. On the bridge the girders were already all marked out with neat streaks of white. All you could see of the river and the city was a shadowy swirl, now dark, now glowing. Charley had all he could do to keep the car from skidding on the icy places on the bridge. “Attaboy, Charley,” said Joe as they slewed down the ramp into the crosstown street full of golden light.
Across Fiftyninth they had to go at a snail’s pace. They were stiff with cold and it was seven thirty before they drove up to the door of the apartmenthouse on Riverside Drive where Charley had been living all winter with the Askews. Mrs. Askew and two yellowhaired little girls met them at their door.
Grace Askew was a bleachedlooking woman with pale hair and faint crowsfeet back of her eyes and on the sides of her neck that gave her a sweet crumpled complaining look. “I was worried,” she said, “about your not having the car in this blizzard.”
Jean, the oldest girl, was jumping up and down singing, “Snowy snowy snowy, it’s going to be snowy.”
“And, Charles,” said Grace in a teasing voice as they went into the parlor, that smelt warm of dinner cooking, to spread their hands before the gaslogs, “if she called up once she called up twenty times. She must think I’m trying to keep you away from her.”
“Who… Doris?”
Grace pursed up her lips and nodded. “But, Charles, you’d better stay home to dinner. I’ve got a wonderful leg of lamb and sweetpotatoes. You know you like our dinners better here than all those fancy fixin’s over there…”
Charley was already at the phone. “Oh, Charley,” came Doris’s sweet lisping voice, “I was afraid you’d been snowed in over on Long Island. I called there but nobody answered… I’ve got an extra place… I’ve got some people to dinner you’d love to meet… He was an engineer under the Czar. We’re all waiting for you.” “But honestly, Doris, I’m all in.” “This’ll be a change. Mother’s gone south and we’ll have the house to ourselves. We’ll wait…”
“It’s those lousy Russians again,” muttered Charley as he ran to his room and hopped into his dinnerclothes. “Why, look at the loungelizard,” kidded Joe from the easychair where he was reading the evening paper with his legs stretched out towards the gaslogs. “Daddy, what’s a loungelizard?” intoned Jean. “Grace, would you mind?” Charley went up to Mrs. Askew blushing, with the two ends of his black tie hanging from his collar.
“Well, it’s certainly devotion,” Grace said, getting up out of her chair — to tie the bow she had to stick the tip of her tongue out of the corner of her mouth—“on a night like this.” “I’d call it dementia if you asked me,” said Joe. “Daddy, what’s dementia?” echoed Jean, but Charley was already putting on his overcoat as he waited for the elevator in the fakemarble hall full of sample whiffs of all the dinners in all the apartments on the floor.
He pulled on his woolly gloves as he got into the car. In the park the snow hissed under his wheels. Turning out of the driveway at Fiftyninth he went into a skid, out of it, into it again. His wheels gripped the pavement just beside a cop who stood at the corner beating his arms against his chest. The cop glared. Charley brought his hand up to his forehead in a snappy salute. The cop laughed. “Naughty naughty,” he said and went on thrashing his arms.
When the door of the Humphries’ apartment opened Charley’s feet sank right away into the deep nap of a Beluchistan rug. Doris came out to meet him. “Oh, you were a darling to come in this dreadful weather,” she cooed. He kissed her. He wished she didn’t have so much greasy lipstick on. He hugged her to him so slender in the palegreen eveninggown. “You’re the darling,” he whispered.
From the drawingroom he could hear voices, foreign accents, and the clink of ice in a shaker. “I wish we were goin’ to be alone,” he said huskily. “Oh, I know, Charley, but they were some people I just had to have. Maybe they’ll go home early.” She straightened his necktie and patted down his hair and pushed him before her into the drawingroom.
When the last of Doris’s dinnerguests had gone the two of them stood in the hall facing each other. Charley drew a deep breath. He had drunk a lot of cocktails and champagne. He was crazy for her. “Jesus, Doris, they were pretty hard to take.” “It was sweet of you to come, Charley.” Charley felt bitter smoldering anger swelling inside him. “Look here, Doris, let’s have a talk…” “Oh, now we’re going to be serious.” She made a face as she let herself drop on the settee. “Now look here, Doris… I’m crazy about you, you know that…”
“Oh, but, Charley, we’ve had such fun together… we don’t want to spoil it yet… You know marriage isn’t always so funny… Most of my friends who’ve gotten married have had a horrid time.”
“If it’s a question of jack, don’t worry. The concern’s goin’ to go big… I wouldn’t lie to you. Ask Nat Benton. Just this after’ he was explainin’ to me how I could start gettin’ in the money right away.”
Doris got up and went over to him and kissed him. “Yes, he was a poor old silly… You must think I’m a horrid mercenary little bitch. I don’t see why you’d want to marry me if you thought I was like that. Honestly, Charley, what I’d love more than anything in the world would be to get out and make my own living. I hate this plushhorse existence.” He grabbed her to him. She pushed him away. “It’s my dress, darling, yes, that costs money, not me… Now you go home and go to bed like a good boy. You look all tired out.”