When he got down to the street, he found the snow had drifted in over the seat of the car. The motor would barely turn over. No way of getting her to start. He called his garage to send somebody to start the car. Since he was in the phonebooth he might as well call up Mrs. Darling. “What a dreadful night, dearie. Well, since it’s Mr. Charley, maybe we can fix something up but it’s dreadfully short notice and the end of the week too. Well… in about an hour.”
Charley walked up and down in the snow in front of the apartmenthouse waiting for them to come round from the garage. The black angry bile was still rising in him. When they finally came and got her started he let the mechanic take her back to the garage. Then he walked around to a speak he knew.
The streets were empty. Dry snow swished in his face as he went down the steps to the basement door. The bar was full of men and girls halftight and bellowing and tittering. Charley felt like wringing their goddam necks. He drank off four whiskies one after another and went around to Mrs. Darling’s. Going up in the elevator he began to feel tight. He gave the elevatorboy a dollar and caught out of the corner of his eye the black boy’s happy surprised grin when he shoved the bill into his pocket. Once inside he let out a whoop. “Now, Mr. Charley,” said the colored girl in starched cap and apron who had opened the door, “you know the missis don’t like no noise… and you’re such a civilspoken young gentleman.”
“Hello, dearie.” He hardly looked at the girl. “Put out the light,” he said. “Remember your name’s Doris. Go in the bathroom and take your clothes off and don’t forget to put on lipstick, plenty lipstick.” He switched off the light and tore off his clothes. In the dark it was hard to get the studs out of his boiled shirt. He grabbed the boiled shirt with both hands and ripped out the buttonholes. “Now come in here, goddam you. I love you, you bitch Doris.” The girl was trembling. When he grabbed her to him she burst out crying.
He had to get some liquor for the girl to cheer her up and that started him off again. Next day he woke up late feeling too lousy to go out to the plant, he didn’t want to go out, all he wanted to do was drink so he hung around all day drinking gin and bitters in Mrs. Darling’s draperychoked parlor. In the afternoon Mrs. Darling came in and played Russian bank with him and told him about how an opera singer had ruined her life, and wanted to get him to taper off on beer. That evening he got her to call up the same girl again. When she came he tried to explain to her that he wasn’t crazy. He woke up alone in the bed feeling sober and disgusted.
The Askews were at breakfast when he got home Sunday morning. The little girls were lying on the floor reading the funny papers. There were Sunday papers on all the chairs. Joe was sitting in his bathrobe smoking a cigar over his last cup of coffee. “Just in time for a nice cup of fresh coffee,” he said. “That must have been quite a dinnerparty,” said Grace, giggling. “I got in on a little pokergame,” growled Charley. When he sat down his overcoat opened and they saw his torn shirtfront. “I’d say it was quite a pokergame,” said Joe. “Everything was lousy,” said Charley. “I’ll go and wash my face.”
When he came back in his bathrobe and slippers he began to feel better. Grace got him some country sausage and hot cornbread. “Well, I’ve heard about these Park Avenue parties before but never one that lasted two days.” “Oh, lay off, Grace.”
“Say, Charley, did you read that article in the financial section of the Evening Post last night tipping off about a boom in airplane stocks?” “No… but I had a talk with Nat Benton, you know he’s a broker I told you about, a friend of Ollie Taylor’s… Well, he said…”
Grace got to her feet. “Now you know if you boys talk shop on Sundays I leave the room.” Joe took his wife’s arm and gently pulled her back into her chair. “Just let me say one thing and then we’ll shut up… I hope we keep out of the hands of the operators for at least five years. I’m sorry the damned stuff’s listed. I wish I trusted Merritt and them as much as I do you and me.” “We’ll talk about that,” said Charley. Joe handed him a cigar. “All right, Gracie,” he said. “How about a selection on the victrola?”
Charley had been planning all winter to take Doris with him to Washington when he flew down one of the sample planes to show off some of his patents to the experts at the War Department, but she and her mother sailed for Europe the week before. That left him with nothing to do one springy Saturday night, so he called up the Johnsons. He’d met Paul on the subway during the winter and Paul had asked him in a hurt way why he never came down any more. Charley had answered honestly he hadn’t stuck his nose out of the plant in months. Now it made him feel funny calling up, listening to the phone ring and then Eveline’s teasing voice that always seemed to have a little jeer in it: What fun, he must come down at once and stay to supper, she had a lot of funny people there, she said.
Paul opened the door for him. Paul’s face had a tallowy look Charley hadn’t noticed before. “Welcome, stranger,” he said in a forced boisterous tone and gave him a couple of pats on the back as he went into the crowded room. There were some very pretty girls, and young men of different shapes and sizes, cocktailglasses, trays of little things to eat on crackers, cigarettesmoke. Everybody was talking and screeching like a lot of lathes in a turningplant. At the back of the room Eveline, looking tall and pale and beautiful, sat on a marbletopped table beside a small man with a long yellow nose and pouches under his eyes. “Oh, Charley, how prosperous you look… Meet Charles Edward Holden… Holdy, this is Charley Anderson; he’s in flyingmachines… Why, Charley, you look filthy rich.” “Not yet,” said Charley. He was trying to keep from laughing. “Well, what are you looking so pleased about? Everybody is just too dreary about everything this afternoon.”
“I’m not dreary,” said Holden. “Now don’t tell me I’m dreary.”
“Of course, Holdy, you’re never dreary but your remarks tend towards murder and suicide.”
Everybody laughed a great deal. Charley found himself pushed away from Eveline by people trying to listen to what Charles Edward Holden was saying. He found himself talking to a plain young woman in a shiny grey hat that had a big buckle set in it like a headlight. “Do tell me what you do,” she said. “How do you mean?” “Oh, I mean almost everybody here does something, writes or paints or something.” “Me? No, I don’t do anything like that… I’m in airplane motors.” “A flyer, oh, my, how thrilling… I always love to come to Eveline’s, you never can tell who you’ll meet… Why, last time I was here Houdini had just left. She’s wonderful on celebrities. But I think it’s hard on Paul, don’t you?… Paul’s such a sweet boy. She and Mr. Holden… it’s all so public. He writes about her all the time in his column… Of course I’m very oldfashioned. Most people don’t seem to think anything of it… Of course it’s grand to be honest… Of course he’s such a celebrity too… I certainly think people ought to be honest about their sexlife, don’t you? It avoids all those dreadful complexes and things… But it’s too bad about Paul, such a nice cleancut young fellow…”
When the guests had thinned out a little a Frenchspeaking colored maid served a dinner of curry and rice with lots of little fixings. Mr. Holden and Eveline did all the talking. It was all about people Charley hadn’t ever heard of. He tried to break it up by telling about how he’d been taken for Charles Edward Holden in that saloon that time, but nobody listened, and he guessed it was just as well anyway. They had just come to the salad when Holden got up and said, “My dear, my only morals consist in never being late to the theater, we must run.” He and Eveline went out in a hurry leaving Charley and Paul to talk to a quarrelsome middleaged man and his wife that Charley had never been introduced to. It wasn’t much use trying to talk to them because the man was too tight to listen to anything anybody said and the woman was set on some kind of a private row with him and couldn’t be got off it. When they staggered out Charley and Paul were left alone. They went out to a movingpicture house for a while but the film was lousy so Charley went uptown glum and tumbled into bed.