“Maybe he’ll get a fight too,” Slug snarled. “I don’t like guys like him.”
Rose arched her eyebrows. “I could hardly imagine you would,” she said coldly.
There was a long pause, then Slug, feeling that he was not gaining ground, said: “I’ll have a nice roll of dough after tonight, suppose you an’ me go somewhere an’ spend it?”
“Where should we go?” Rose asked cautiously, still intent on his nails.
Slug thought rapidly. “Aw, I guess you could fix that yourself,” he said generously. “Just say where you’d like to go.”
“Well…” She paused, then she shook her head. “No, I guess that place isn’t quite what you’re used to.”
Slug scowled. “Come on,” he said, “where is it?”
“I’ve always wanted to go to the Miami Club, but that’s where all the swells go. You couldn’t rise to that, could you?”
With a sinking heart, Slug said fiercely: “Who says? Let me tell you, baby, there ain’t no place that I can’t go. If you want to go to that joint it’s O.K. with me.”
Rose sat back and looked at him. Her big eyes regarded him almost with admiration. “Gee!” she said. “Why, even Harry won’t go there. Do you really mean it?”
Conscious of a great victory, Slug committed himself, regardless of the cost. “Sure,” he said, “you wantta line up with the big-timers. A baby like you don’t want to run around with a lotta dopes. I tell you that sortta dump is just canary seed to me.”
“Why, Mr. Moynihan, I didn’t realize that you were such a big-shot. Look, let’s not go to Miami Club, let’s go to the ‘Ambassadors’. That’s a place I’ve really wanted to go to.”
Slug gulped. He saw too late where his boasting had led him. Miami Club was bad enough, but the ‘Ambassadors’ was one of the most expensive night-clubs in town. Not only that, but it was a stiff-shirt joint, and Slug hadn’t got a tuxedo. He felt the sweat coming out from his body at the very thought of what the evening was going to cost him.
Rose went on brightly. “Let’s make it tomorrow,” she said, “I haven’t a date then. Suppose you pick me up here at nine o’clock. Gee! I am looking forward to that. Do make yourself smart. I must get Mr. Brownrigg to give you a haircut.”
Before he could protest she had called Brownrigg, who whipped a snowy white towel round him and, with a cold gleam in his eye, proceeded to give him the works. He had a haircut, a shampoo and a face massage and Brownrigg kept up such an incessant flow of chatter that he had no further opportunity of talking to Rose. After enduring what seemed to him a series of undignified tortures, he found himself in the street, three dollars poorer in pocket, and committed to the most expensive evening of his life.
However, he was grimly determined to see it through. With a furtive step he went into Izzy’s dress shop and spent a long time haggling over the renting of a tuxedo. By his usual threatening attitude he managed to obtain the complete outfit at a not too ruinous figure. Gingerly, he tried on an opera hat which Izzy insisted was the thing to wear. He stood before the long mirror and stared at his reflection. He couldn’t make up his mind whether or not he liked himself in the hat until he noticed Izzy hiding a grin behind a grimy hand, then he realized just how awful he looked in it. He took the hat off hurriedly and gave it back to Izzy. “Gimme a black felt,” he said, “an’ take that grin off your mug before I wipe it off.”
The clothes were carefully packed in a large cardboard box and, having paid a substantial deposit, Slug made his way home. He spent the rest of the day at the gymnasium loosening up for the evening’s fight, his mind more intent on Rose and the evening he had to face at the ‘Ambassadors’.
He took Pug O’Malley, one of his sparring partners, into his confidence. “Listen, Pug,” he said, offering a cigarette, “I gotta take a dame to the ‘Ambassadors’ tomorrow night.”
Pug looked at him suspiciously, suspecting that Slug was just blowing off hot air. “Huh,” he said, “so what?”
Slug scratched his chin uneasily. “You ever been there?” he asked hopefully.
Pug shook his head. “I ain’t a sucker,” he said. “That joint charges you every time you breathe.”
“This dame wants to go,” Slug explained.
“I’d tell her where she got off. Jeeze, that joint is so expensive F.D.R. won’t go there. I tell you when the dame takes your hat she charges you so much that you think she’ll give you your hat and herself when you leave—only she just gives you the hat.”
Slug became more worried. “What’ll it cost me?” he asked. “Think twenty bucks will cover it?”
Pug pursed his lips. “Yeah,” he said, “I guess so. This dame must be mighty good. Why not give her the twenty bucks and save yourself the trouble of goin’. You could make her for that, couldn’t you?”
Slug shook his head. “She ain’t that sort of a dame,” he said. “She’s class, see? When she’s had a nice time, then we’ll go back to her joint an’ have a little tumble, but she likes a nice time first.”
Pug shook his head. “Looks like you’re goin’ to ride high, buddy,” he said. “The ‘Ambassadors’ ain’t your style.”
Nothing further was said about it after that, and Slug went through with his fight in rather an abstract manner. He was a good enough fighter, and didn’t have to exert himself to beat his opponent. The shouts of appreciation from the crowd did a lot to bolster up his confidence, and when the manager paid him fifty dollars, he did not hesitate to demand another twenty-five advance. This he got after some unpleasantness, and he immediately went back to his lodgings, refusing any attempt to persuade him to join in the celebrations that were in progress. He knew that he’d want every dollar he could lay hands on for tomorrow evening, and he was not spending anything until then.
When he got home he searched in the back of one of the three chest of drawers and brought out a further twenty-five dollars, which he always kept handy for emergencies such as this. He now had a hundred dollars and some small change, and he felt confident that he would get by with that amount of money. All the same, it was all the dough he had in the world, and he had got to keep something to live on for the next week or so until he fought again.
“Aw, to hell with it,” he said, and put the small roll in his pocket. He couldn’t spend all that in an evening. It was enough for him to live on for a month.
The next evening came round and found Slug struggling with his stiff shirt. With the aid of the landlady and her daughter, who were quite immune to his somewhat obscene ravings, he got his collar and tie fixed at last. When he finally took stock of himself in the glass he was agreeably surprised. The stiff black-and-white effect of the evening clothes softened the brutal coarseness of his features and his great bulk assumed a sharper outline in the carefully cut suit, making him look big and well built.
The landlady’s daughter, a monkey-like little creature with a bad squint, declared that he was as handsome as Dempsey, which pleased his vanity.
He pulled on his slouch hat, put his small roll in his trouser pocket and left the house. He stopped at the nearest saloon and had three stiff whiskies, noting with a mixture of pride and irritated embarrassment the nudging that went on amongst his acquaintances.
By the time he reached the barber’s shop he was feeling pleasantly tight, and had got fairly used to the collar and shirt which had threatened to strangle him. He found Brownrigg closing up, and he entered the shop with a swagger that was plainly to impress.
Brownrigg looked him over not without a certain admiration. “Say, Mr. Moynihan, you’re looking swell tonight,” he said, “that’s a grand suit you’ve got there.”