They were sitting at the table and the waiter was putting different-colored horsd’œuvres on Charley’s plate. “Take it away… I’ll eat a piece of steak, nothing else.” Eddy was eating busily. He looked up at Charley and his face began to wrinkle into a wisecrack. “I guess it’s another case of the woman always pays.”
Charley didn’t laugh. “Gladys never paid for anythin’ in her life. You know just as well as I do what Gladys was like. All of those Wheatleys are skinflints. She takes after the old man… Well, I’ve learned my lesson… No more rich bitches… Why, a goddam whore wouldn’t have acted the way that bitch has acted… Well, you can just tell ’em, when you get back to your employers in Detroit… I know what they sent you for… To see if the old boy could still take his liquor… Drinkin’ himself to death, so that’s the story, is it? Well, I can still drink you under the table, good old Eddy, ain’t that so? You just tell ’em, Eddy, that the old boy’s as good as ever, a hell of a lot wiser… They thought they had him out on his can after the divorce, did they, well, you tell ’em to wait an’ see. An’ you tell Gladys the first time she makes a misstep… just once, she needn’t think I haven’t got my operatives watchin’ her… Tell her I’m out to get the kids back, an’ strip her of every goddam thing she’s got… Let her go out on the streets, I don’t give a damn.”
Eddy was slapping him on the back. “Well, oldtimer, I’ve got to run along… Sure good to see you still riding high, wide and handsome.”
“Higher than a kite,” shouted Charley, bursting out laughing. Eddy had gone. Old Maurice was trying to make him eat the piece of steak he’d taken out to heat up. Charley couldn’t eat. “Take it home to the wife and kiddies,” he told Maurice. The speak had cleared for the theatertime lull. “Bring me a bottle of champagne, Maurice old man, and then maybe I can get the steak down. That’s how they do it in the old country, eh? Don’t tell me I been drinkin’ too much… I know it… When everybody you had any confidence in has rooked you all down the line you don’t give a damn, do you, Maurice?”
A man with closecropped black hair and a closecropped black mustache was looking at Charley, leaning over a cocktailglass on the bar. “I say you don’t give a damn,” Charley shouted at the man when he caught his eye. “Do you?”
“Hell, no, got anything to say about it?” said the man, squaring off towards the table.
“Maurice, bring this gentleman a glass.” Charley got to his feet and swayed back and forth bowing politely across the table. The bouncer, who’d come out from a little door in back wiping his red hands on his apron, backed out of the room again. “Anderson my name is… Glad to meet you, Mr…” “Budkiewitz,” said the blackhaired man who advanced scowling and swaying a little to the other side of the table.
Charley pointed to a chair. “I’m drunk… beaucoup champagny water… have a glass.”
“With pleasure if you put it that way… Always rather drink than fight… Here’s to the old days of the Rainbow Division.”
“Was you over there?”
“Sure. Put it there, buddy.”
“Those were the days.”
“And now you come back and over here there’s nothin’ but a lot of doublecrossin’ bastards.”
“Businessmen… to hell wid ’em… doublecrossin’ bastards I call ’em.”
Mr. Budkiewitz got to his feet, scowling again. “To what kind of business do you refer?”
“Nobody’s business. Take it easy, buddy.” Mr. Budkiewitz sat down again. “Oh, hell, bring out another bottle, Maurice, and have it cold. Ever drunk that wine in Saumur, Mr. Budkibbitzer?”
“Have I drunk Saumur? Why shouldn’t I drink it? Trained there for three months.”
“That’s what I said to myself. That boy was overseas,” said Charley.
“I’ll tell the cockeyed world.”
“What’s your business, Mr. Buchanan?”
“I’m an inventor.”
“Just up my street. Ever heard of the Askew-Merritt starter?”
He’d never heard of the Askew-Merritt starter and Charley had never heard of the Autorinse washingmachine but soon they were calling each other Charley and Paul. Paul had had trouble with his wife too, said he was going to jail before he’d pay her any more alimony. Charley said he’d go to jail too.
Instead they went to a nightclub where they met two charming girls. Charley was telling the charming girls how he was going to set Paul, good old Paul, up in business, in the washingmachine business. They went places in taxicabs under the el with the girls. They went to a place in the Village. Charley was going to get all the girls the sweet pretty little girls jobs in the chorus. Charley was explaining how he was going to take the shirts off those bastards in Detroit. He’d get the girls jobs in the chorus so that they could take their shirts off. It was all very funny.
In the morning light he was sitting alone in a place with torn windowshades. Good old Paul had gone and the girls had gone and he was sitting at a table covered with cigarettestubs and spilt dago red looking at the stinging brightness coming through the worn places in the windowshade. It wasn’t a hotel or a callhouse, it was some kind of a dump with tables and it stank of old cigarsmoke and last night’s spaghetti and tomatosauce and dago red. Somebody was shaking him. “What time is it?” A fat wop and a young slickhaired wop in their dirty shirtsleeves were shaking him. “Time to pay up and get out. Here’s your bill.”
A lot of things were scrawled on a card. Charley could only read it with one eye at a time. The total was seventyfive dollars. The wops looked threatening.
“You tell us give them girls twentyfive dollar each on account.”
Charley reached for his billroll. Only a dollar. Where the hell had his wallet gone? The young wop was playing with a small leather blackjack he’d taken out of his back pocket. “A century ain’t high for what you spent an’ the girls an’ all… If you f — k around it’ll cost you more… You got your watch, ain’t you? This ain’t no clipjoint.”
“What time is it?”
“What time is it, Joe?”
“Let me call up the office. I’ll get my secretary to come up.” “What’s the number? What’s his name?” The young wop tossed up the blackjack and caught it. “I’ll talk to him. We’re lettin’ you out of this cheap. We don’t want no hard feelin’s.”
After they’d called up the office and left word that Mr. Anderson was sick and to come at once, they gave him some coffee with rum in it that made him feel sicker than ever. At last Cliff was standing over him looking neat and wellshaved. “Well, Cliff, I’m not the drinker I used to be.”