When they got to her door, he said could he come up and before she could stop herself she’d said yes, if he acted like a gentleman. He said that wasn’t so easy with a girl like her but he’d try and they were laughing and scuffling so in front of her door she dropped her key. They both stooped to pick it up. When she got to her feet flushing from the kiss he’d given her, she noticed that the man sitting all hunched up on the stairs beside the elevator was Tony.
“Well, goodnight, Cliff, thanks for seeing a poor little workinggirl home,” Margo said cheerily.
Tony got to his feet and staggered over towards the open door of the apartment. His face had a green pallor and his clothes looked like he’d lain in the gutter all night.
“This is Tony,” said Margo. “He’s a… a relative of mine… not in very good repair.”
Cliff looked from one to the other, let out a low whistle and walked down the stairs.
“Well, now you can tell me what you mean by hanging around my place… I’ve a great mind to have you arrested for a burglar.”
Tony could hardly talk. His lip was bloody and all puffed up. “No place to go,” he said. “A gang beat me up.” He was teetering so she had to grab the sleeve of his filthy overcoat to keep him from falling. “Oh, Tony,” she said, “you sure are a mess. Come on in, but if you pull any tricks like you did last time… I swear to God I’ll break every bone in your body.”
She put him to bed. Next morning he was so jittery she had to send for a doctor. The sawbones said he was suffering from dope and exposure and suggested a cure in a sanatorium. Tony lay in bed white and trembling. He cried a great deal, but he was as meek as a lamb and said yes, he’d do anything the doctor said. Once he grabbed her hand and kissed it and begged her to forgive him for having stolen her money so that he could die happy. “You won’t die, not you,” said Margo, smoothing the stiff black hair off his forehead with her free hand. “No such luck.” She went out for a little walk on the Drive to try to decide what to do. The dizzysweet clinging smell of the paraldehyde the doctor had given Tony for a sedative had made her feel sick.
At the end of the week when Charley Anderson came back from Detroit and met her at the place on Fiftysecond Street for dinner, he looked worried and haggard. She came out with her sad story and he didn’t take it so well. He said he was hard up for cash, that his wife had everything tied up on him, that he’d had severe losses on the market; he could raise five hundred dollars for her but he’d have to pledge some securities to do that. Then she said she guessed she’d have to go back to her old engagement as entertainer at the Palms at Miami and he said, swell, if she didn’t look out he’d come down there and let her support him. “I don’t know why everybody’s got to thinkin’ I’m a lousy millionaire. All I want is to get out of the whole business with enough jack to let me settle down to work on motors. If it hadn’t been for this sonofabitchin’ divorce I’d been out long ago. This winter I expect to clean up and get out. I’m only a dumb mechanic anyway.”
“You want to get out and I want to get in,” said Margo, looking him straight in the eye. They both laughed together. “Aw, let’s go up to your place, since the folks are away. I’m tired of these lousy speakeasies.” She shook her head, still laughing. “It’s swarming with Spanish relatives,” she said. “We can’t go there.” They got a bag at his hotel and went over to Brooklyn in a taxi, to a hotel where they were wellknown as Mr. and Mrs. Dowling. On the way over in the taxi she managed to get the ante raised to a thousand.
Next day she took Tony to a sanatorium up in the Catskills. He did everything she said like a good little boy and talked about getting a job when he got out and about honor and manhood. When she got back to town she called up the office and found that Mr. A was back in Detroit, but he’d left instructions with his secretary to get her her ticket and a drawingroom and fix up everything about the trip to Miami. She closed up her apartment and the office attended to storing the furniture and the packing and everything.
When she went down to the train there was Cliff waiting to meet her with his wiseguy grin and his hat on the back of his long thin head. “Why, this certainly is sweet of him,” said Margo, pinning some lilies of the valley Cliff had brought her to her furcoat as two redcaps rushed forward to get her bags. “Sweet of who?” Cliff whispered. “Of the boss or of me?”
There were roses in the drawingroom, and Cliff had bought her Theatre and Variety and Zits Weekly and Town Topics and Shadowland. “My, this is grand,” she said.
He winked. “The boss said to send you off in the best possible style.” He brought a bottle out of his overcoat pocket. “That’s Teacher’s Highland Cream… Well, so long.” He made a little bow and went off down the corridor.
Margo settled herself in the drawingroom and almost wished Cliff hadn’t gone so soon. He might at least have taken longer to say goodby. My, that boy was fresh. The train had no sooner started when there he was back, with his hands in his pants pockets, looking anxious and chewing gum at a great rate. “Well,” she said, frowning, “now what?”
“I bought me a ticket to Richmond… I don’t travel enough… freedom from office cares.”
“You’ll get fired.” “Nope… this is Saturday. I’ll be back bright and early Monday morning.”
“But he’ll find out.”
Cliff took his coat off, folded it carefully and laid it on the rack, then he sat down opposite her and pulled the door of the drawingroom to. “Not unless you tell him.”
She started to get to her feet. “Well, of all the fresh kids.” He went on in the same tone of voice. “And you won’t tell him and I won’t tell him about… er…” “But, you damn fool, that’s just my exhusband.” “Well, I’m lookin’ forward to bein’ the exboyfriend… No, honestly, I know you’ll like me… they all like me.” He leaned over to take her hand. His hand was icycold. “No, honest, Margo, why’s it any different from the other night? Nobody’ll know. You just leave it to me.” Margo began to giggle. “Say, Cliff, you ought to have a sign on you.” “Sayin’ what?” “Fresh paint.”
She went over and sat beside him. Through the shaking rumble of the train she could feel him shaking. “Why, you funny kid,” she said. “You were scared to death all the time.”
Newsreel LXI
High high high
Up in the hills
Watching the clouds roll by
genius, hard work, vast resources, and the power and will to achieve something distinctive, something more beautiful, something more appealing to the taste and wise judgment of the better people than are the things which have made the Coral Gables of today, and that tomorrow may be better, bigger, more compellingly beautiful
High high high up in the hills
GIANT AIRSHIP BREAKS IN TWO IN MIDFLIGHT
here young and old will gather to disport themselves in fresh invigorating salt water, or to exchange idle gossip in the loggias which overlook the gleaming pool, and at night the tinkle of music will tempt you to dance the hours away