He woke up next morning in a rattletrap hotel in Coney Island. It was nine o’clock, he had a frightful head and Aunt Hartmann was sitting up in bed looking pink, broad and beefy and asking for kaffee und schlagsahne. He took her out to breakfast at a Vienna bakery. She ate a great deal and cried a great deal and said he mustn’t think she was a bad woman, because she was just a poor girl out of work and she’d felt so badly on account of his being a poor homeless boy. He said he’d be a poor homeless boy for fair if he didn’t get back to the office. He gave her all the change he had in his pocket and a fake address and left her crying over a third cup of coffee in the Vienna bakery and headed for Long Island City. About Ozone Park he had to stop to upchuck on the side of the road. He just managed to get into the yard of the plant with his last drop of gas. He slipped into his office. It was ten minutes of twelve.
His desk was full of notes and letters held together with clips and blue papers marked IMMEDIATE ATTENTION. He was scared Miss Robinson or Joe Askew would find out he was back. Then he remembered he had a silver flask of old bourbon in his desk drawer that Doris had given him the night before she sailed, to forget her by she’d said, kidding him. He’d just tipped his head back to take a swig when he saw Joe Askew standing in front of his desk.
Joe stood with his legs apart with a worn frowning look on his face. “Well, for Pete’s sake, where have you been? We been worried as hell about you… Grace waited dinner an hour.”
“Why didn’t you call up the hangar?”
“Everybody had gone home… Stauch’s sick. Everything’s tied up.”
“Haven’t you heard from Merritt?”
“Sure… but that means we’ve got to reorganize production… And frankly, Charley, that’s a hell of an example to set the employees… boozing around the office. Last time I kept my mouth shut, but my god…”
Charley walked over to the cooler and drew himself a couple of papercupfuls of water. “I got to celebratin’ that trip to Washington last night… After all, Joe, these contracts will put us on the map… How about havin’ a little drink?” Joe frowned. “You look like you’d been having plenty… and how about shaving before you come into the office? We expect our employees to do it, we ought to do it too… For craps’ sake, Charley, remember that the war’s over.” Joe turned on his heel and went back to his own office.
Charley took another long pull on the flask. He was mad. “I won’t take it,” he muttered, “not from him or anybody else.” Then the phone rang. The foreman of the assemblyroom was standing in the door. “Please, Mr. Anderson,” he said.
That was the beginning of it. From then everything seemed to go haywire. At eight o’clock that night Charley hadn’t yet had a shave. He was eating a sandwich and drinking coffee out of a carton with the mechanics of the repaircrew over a busted machine. It was midnight and he was all in before he got home to the apartment. He was all ready to give Joe a piece of his mind but there wasn’t an Askew in sight.
Next morning at breakfast Grace’s eyebrows were raised when she poured out the coffee. “Well, if it isn’t the lost battalion,” she said.
Joe Askew cleared his throat. “Charley,” he said nervously, “I didn’t have any call to bawl you out like that… I guess I’m getting cranky in my old age. The plant’s been hell on wheels all week.”
The two little girls began to giggle.
“Aw, let it ride,” said Charley.
“Little pitchers, Joe,” said Grace, rapping on the table for order. “I guess we all need a rest. Now this summer, Joe, you’ll take a vacation. I need a vacation in the worst way myself, especially from entertaining Joe’s dead cats. He hasn’t had anybody to talk to since you’ve been away, Charley, and the house has been full of dead cats.” “That’s just a couple of guys I’ve been trying to fix up with jobs. Grace thinks they’re no good because they haven’t much social smalltalk.” “I don’t think, I know they are dead cats,” said Grace. The little girls started to giggle some more. Charley got to his feet and pushed back his chair.
“Comin’, Joe?” he said. “I’ve got to get back to my wreckin’crew.”
It was a couple of weeks before Charley got away from the plant except to sleep. At the end of that time Stauch was back with his quiet regretful manner like the manner of an assisting physician in a hospital operatingroom, and things began to straighten out. The day Stauch finally came to Charley’s office door saying, “Production is now again smooth, Mr. Anderson,” Charley decided he’d knock off at noon. He called up Nat Benton to wait for him for lunch and slipped out by the employees’ entrance so that he wouldn’t meet Joe in the entry.
In Nat’s office they had a couple of drinks before going out to lunch. At the restaurant after they’d ordered, he said, “Well, Nat, how’s the intelligence service going?”
“How many shares have you got?”
“Five hundred.”
“Any other stock, anything you could put up for margin?”
“A little… I got a couple of grand in cash.”
“Cash,” said Nat scornfully. “For a rainy day… stuff and nonsense… Why not put it to work?”
“That’s what I’m talkin’ about.”
“Suppose you try a little flyer in Auburn just to get your hand in.”
“But how about Merritt?”
“Hold your horses… What I want to do is get you a little capital so you can fight those birds on an equal basis… If you don’t they’ll freeze you out sure as fate.”
“Joe wouldn’t,” said Charley.
“I don’t know the man personally but I do know men and there are darn few who won’t look out for number one first.”
“I guess they’ll all rook you if they can.”
“I wouldn’t put it just that way, Charley. There are some magnificent specimens of American manhood in the business world.” That night Charley got drunk all by himself at a speak in the Fifties
By the time Doris landed from Europe in the fall Charley had made two killings in Auburn and was buying up all the Askew-Merritt stock he could lay his hands on. At the same time he discovered he had credit, for a new car, for suits at Brooks Brothers, for meals at speakeasies. The car was a Packard sport phaeton with a long low custombody upholstered in red leather. He drove down to the dock to meet Doris and Mrs. Humphries when they came in on the Leviathan. The ship had already docked when Charley got to Hoboken. Charley parked his car and hurried through the shabby groups at the thirdclass to the big swirl of welldressed people chattering round piles of pigskin suitcases, patentleather hatboxes, wardrobetrunks with the labels of Ritz hotels on them, in the central part of the wharfbuilding. Under the H he caught sight of old Mrs. Humphries. Above the big furcollar her face looked like a faded edition of Doris’s, he had never before noticed how much.
She didn’t recognize him for a moment. “Why, Charles Anderson, how very nice.” She held her hand out to him without smiling. “This is most trying. Doris of course had to leave her jewelcase in the cabin… You are meeting someone, I presume.” Charley blushed. “I thought I might give you a lift… I got a big car now. I thought it would take your bags better than a taxi.” Mrs. Humphries wasn’t paying much attention.” There she is…” She wave dag loved hand with an alligatorskin bag in it. “Here I am.”
Doris came running through the crowd. She was flushed and her lips were very red. Her little hat and her fur were just the color of her hair. “I’ve got it, Mother… what a silly girl.” “Every time I go through this,” sighed Mrs. Humphries, “I decide I’ll never go abroad again.”