‘She likes to have me hang around… I’d run the store better than she does.’
‘You’re too easy; got to use rough stuff with women to get anything outa them… Make her jealous.’
‘She’s got me going.’
‘Want to see some postalcards?’ Congo pulled a package, wrapped in newspaper out of his pocket. ‘Look these are Naples; everybody there wants to come to New York… That’s an Arab dancing girl. Nom d’une vache they got slippery bellybuttons…’
‘Say, I know what I’ll do,’ cried Emile suddenly dropping the cards on the bed. ‘I’ll make her jealous…’
‘Who?’
‘Ernestine… Madame Rigaud…’
‘Sure walk up an down Eighth Avenue with a girl a couple of times an I bet she’ll fall like a ton of bricks.’
The alarmclock went off on the chair beside the bed. Emile jumped up to stop it and began splashing water on his face in the washbasin.
‘Merde I got to go to work.’
‘I’ll go over to Hell’s Kitchen an see if I can find May.’
‘Don’t be a fool an spend all your money,’ said Emile who stood at the cracked mirror with his face screwed up, fastening the buttons in the front of a clean boiled shirt.
‘It’s a sure thing I’m tellin yer,’ said the man again and again, bringing his face close to Ed Thatcher’s face and rapping the desk with his flat hand.
‘Maybe it is Viler but I seen so many of em go under, honest I dont see how I can risk it.’
‘Man I’ve hocked the misses’s silver teaset and my diamond ring an the baby’s mug… It’s a sure sure thing… I wouldn’t let you in on it, xept you an me’s been pretty good friends an I owe you money an everythin… You’ll make twentyfive percent on your money by tomorrow noon… Then if you want to hold you can on a gamble, but if you sell three quarters and hold the rest two or three days on a chance you’re as safe as… as the Rock of Gibraltar.’
‘I know Viler, it certainly sounds good…’
‘Hell man you dont want to be in this damned office all your life, do you? Think of your little girl.’
‘I am, that’s the trouble.’
‘But Ed, Gibbons and Swandike had started buying already at three cents when the market closed this evening… Klein got wise an’ll be right there with bells on first thing in the morning. The market’ll go crazy on it…’
‘Unless the fellers doin the dirty work change their minds. I know that stuff through and through, Viler… Sounds like a topnotch proposition… But I’ve examined the books of too many bankrupts.’
Viler got to his feet and threw his cigar into the cuspidor. ‘Well do as you like, damn it all… I guess you must like commuting from Hackensack an working twelve hours a day…’
‘I believe in workin my way up, that’s all.’
‘What’s the use of a few thousands salted away when you’re old and cant get any satisfaction? Man I’m goin in with both feet.’
‘Go to it Viler… You tellem,’ muttered Thatcher as the other man stamped out slamming the office door.
The big office with its series of yellow desks and hooded typewriters was dark except for the tent of light in which Thatcher sat at a desk piled with ledgers. The three windows at the end were not curtained. Through them he could see the steep bulk of buildings scaled with lights and a plankshaped bit of inky sky. He was copying memoranda on a long sheet of legal cap.
Fan Tan Import and Export Company (statement of assets and liabilities up to and including February 29)… Branches New York, Shanghai, Hongkong and Straights Settlements…
Balance carried over $345,789.84
Real Estate $500,087.12
Profit and Loss $399,765.90
‘A bunch of goddam crooks,’ growled Thatcher out loud. ‘Not an item on the whole thing that aint faked. I dont believe they’ve got any branches in Hongkong or anywhere…’
He leaned back in his chair and stared out of the window. The buildings were going dark. He could just make out a star in the patch of sky. Ought to go out an eat, bum for the digestion to eat irregularly like I do. Suppose I’d taken a plunge on Viler’s red hot tip. Ellen, how do you like these American Beauty roses? They have stems eight feet long, and I want you to look over the itinerary of the trip abroad I’ve mapped out to finish your education. Yes it will be a shame to leave our fine new apartment looking out over Central Park… And downtown; The Fiduciary Accounting Institute, Edward C. Thatcher, President… Blobs of steam were drifting up across the patch of sky, hiding the star. Take a plunge, take a plunge… they’re all crooks and gamblers anyway… take a plunge and come up with your hands full, pockets full, bankaccount full, vaults full of money. If I only dared take the risk. Fool to waste your time fuming about it. Get back to the Fan Tan Import. Steam faintly ruddy with light reflected from the streets swarmed swiftly up across the patch of sky, twisting scattering.
Goods on hand in U. S. bonded warehouses… $325,666.00
Take a plunge and come up with three hundred and twentyfive thousand, six hundred and sixtysix dollars. Dollars swarming up like steam, twisting scattering against the stars. Millionaire Thatcher leaned out of the window of the bright patchouliscented room to look at the darkjutting city steaming with laughter, voices, tinkling and lights; behind him orchestras played among the azaleas, private wires click click clickclicked dollars from Singapore, Valparaiso, Mukden, Hongkong, Chicago. Susie leaned over him in a dress made of orchids, breathed in his ear.
Ed Thatcher got to his feet with clenched fists sniveling; You poor fool whats the use now she’s gone. I’d better go eat or Ellen’ll scold me.
5 Steamroller
Dusk gently smooths crispangled streets. Dark presses tight the steaming asphalt city, crushes the fretwork of windows and lettered signs and chimneys and watertanks and ventilators and fireescapes and moldings and patterns and corrugations and eyes and hands and neckties into blue chunks, into black enormous blocks. Under the rolling heavier heavier pressure windows blurt light. Night crushes bright milk out of arclights, squeezes the sullen blocks until they drip red, yellow, green into streets resounding with feet. All the asphalt oozes light. Light spurts from lettering on roofs, mills dizzily among wheels, stains rolling tons of sky.
A steamroller was clattering back and forth over the freshly tarred metaling of the road at the cemetery gate. A smell of scorched grease and steam and hot paint came from it. Jimmy Herf picked his way along the edge of the road; the stones were sharp against his feet through the worn soles of his shoes. He brushed past swarthy-necked workmen and walked on over the new road with a whiff of garlic and sweat from them in his nostrils. After a hundred yards he stopped over the gray suburban road, laced tight on both sides with telegraph poles and wires, over the gray paperbox houses and the gray jagged lots of monumentmakers, the sky was the color of a robin’s egg. Little worms of May were writhing in his blood. He yanked off his black necktie and put it in his pocket. A tune was grinding crazily through his head:
There is one glory of the sun and another glory of the moon and another glory of the stars: for one star differeth from another star in glory. So also is the resurrection of the dead… He walked on fast splashing through puddles full of sky, trying to shake the droning welloiled words out of his ears, to get the feeling of black crêpe off his fingers, to forget the smell of lilies.
He walked faster. The road climbed a hill. There was a bright runnel of water in the ditch, flowing through patches of grass and dandelions. There were fewer houses; on the sides of barns peeling letters spelled out LYDIA PINKHAM’S VEGETABLE COMPOUND, BUDWEISER, RED HEN, BARKING DOG… And muddy had had a stroke and now she was buried. He couldn’t think how she used to look; she was dead that was all. From a fencepost came the moist whistling of a songsparrow. The minute rusty bird flew ahead, perched on a telegraph wire and sang, and flew ahead to the rim of an abandoned boiler and sang, and flew ahead and sang. The sky was getting a darker blue, filling with flaked motherofpearl clouds. For a last moment he felt the rustle of silk beside him, felt a hand in a trailing lacefrilled sleeve close gently over his hand. Lying in his crib with his feet pulled up cold under the menace of the shaggy crouching shadows; and the shadows scuttled melting into corners when she leaned over him with curls round her forehead, in silkpuffed sleeves, with a tiny black patch at the corner of the mouth that kissed his mouth. He walked faster. The blood flowed full and hot in his veins. The flaked clouds were melting into rosecolored foam. He could hear his steps on the worn macadam. At a crossroad the sun glinted on the sticky pointed buds of a beechsapling. Opposite a sign read YONKERS. In the middle of the road teetered a dented tomatocan. Kicking it hard in front of him he walked on. One glory of the sun and another glory of the moon and another glory of the stars… He walked on.