‘Hullo Emile!’ Emile nodded without turning his head. The girl ran after him and grabbed his coatsleeve. ‘That’s the way you treat your old friends is it? Now that you’re keepin company with that delicatessen queen…’
Emile yanked his hand away. ‘I am in a ‘urree zat’s all.’
‘How’d ye like it if I went an told her how you an me framed it up to stand in front of the window on Eighth Avenue huggin an kissin juss to make her fall for yez.’
‘Zat was Congo’s idea.’
‘Well didn’t it woik?’
‘Sure.’
‘Well aint there sumpen due me?’
‘May you’re a veree nice leetle girl. Next week my night off is Wednesday… I’ll come by an take you to a show… ‘Ow’s ‘ustlin?’
‘Worse’n hell… I’m tryin out for a dancin job up at the Campus… That’s where you meet guys wid jack… No more of dese sailor boys and shorefront stiffs… I’m gettin respectable.’
‘May ’ave you ’eard from Congo?’
‘Got a postalcard from some goddam place I couldn’t read the name of… Aint it funny when you write for money an all ye git’s a postal ca-ard… That’s the kid gits me for the askin any night… An he’s the only one, savvy, Frogslegs?’
‘Goodby May.’ He suddenly pushed the straw bonnet trimmed with forgetmenots back on her head and kissed her.
‘Hey quit dat Frogslegs… Eighth Avenue aint no place to kiss a girl,’ she whined pushing a yellow curl back under her hat. ‘I could git you run in an I’ve half a mind to.’
Emile walked off.
A fire engine, a hosewagon, and a hookandladder passed him, shattering the street with clattering roar. Three blocks down smoke and an occasional gasp of flame came from the roof of a house. A crowd was jammed up against the policelines. Beyond backs and serried hats Emile caught a glimpse of firemen on the roof of the next house and of three silently glittering streams of water playing into the upper windows. Must be right opposite the delicatessen. He was making his way through the jam on the sidewalk when the crowd suddenly opened. Two policemen were dragging out a negro whose arms snapped back and forth like broken cables. A third cop came behind cracking the negro first on one side of the head, then on the other with his billy.
‘It’s a shine ‘at set the fire.’
‘They caught the firebug.’
‘’At’s ’e incendiary.’
‘God he’s a meanlookin smoke.’
The crowd closed in. Emile was standing beside Madame Rigaud in front of the door of her store.
‘Cheri que ça me fait une emotiong… J’ai horriblemong peu du feu.’
Emile was standing a little behind her. He let one arm crawl slowly round her waist and patted her arm with his other hand, ‘Everyting awright. Look no more fire, only smoke… But you are insured, aint you?’
‘Oh yes for fifteen tousand.’ He squeezed her hand and then took his arms away. ‘Viens ma petite on va rentrer.’
Once inside the shop he took both her plump hands. ‘Ernestine when we get married?’
‘Next month.’
‘I no wait zat long, imposseeble… Why not next Wednesday? Then I can help you make inventory of stock… I tink maybe we can sell this place and move uptown, make bigger money.’
She patted him on the cheek. ‘P’tit ambitieux,’ she said through her hollow inside laugh that made her shoulders and her big bust shake.
They had to change at Manhattan Transfer. The thumb of Ellen’s new kid glove had split and she kept rubbing it nervously with her forefinger. John wore a belted raincoat and a pinkishgray felt hat. When he turned to her and smiled she couldn’t help pulling her eyes away and staring out at the long rain that shimmered over the tracks.
‘Here we are Elaine dear. Oh prince’s daughter, you see we get the train that comes from the Penn station… It’s funny this waiting in the wilds of New Jersey this way.’ They got into the parlorcar. John made a little clucking sound in his mouth at the raindrops that made dark dimes on his pale hat. ‘Well we’re off, little girl… Behold thou art fair my love, thou art fair, thou hast dove’s eyes within thy locks.’
Ellen’s new tailored suit was tight at the elbows. She wanted to feel very gay and listen to his purring whisper in her ears, but something had set her face in a tight frown; she could only look out at the brown marshes and the million black windows of factories and the puddly streets of towns and a rusty steamboat in a canal and barns and Bull Durham signs and roundfaced Spearmint gnomes all barred and crisscrossed with bright flaws of rain. The jeweled stripes on the window ran straight down when the train stopped and got more and more oblique as it speeded up. The wheels rumbled in her head, saying Man-hattan Tran-sfer. Manhattan Tran-sfer. Anyway it was a long time before Atlantic City. By the time we get to Atlantic City… Oh it rained forty days… I’ll be feeling gay… And it rained forty nights… I’ve got to be feeling gay.
‘Elaine Thatcher Oglethorpe, that’s a very fine name, isn’t it, darling? Oh stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples for I am sick of love…’
It was so comfortable in the empty parlorcar in the green velvet chair with John leaning towards her reciting nonsense with the brown marshlands slipping by behind the rainstriped window and a smell like clams seeping into the car. She looked into his face and laughed. A blush ran all over his face to the roots of his redblond hair. He put his hand in its yellow glove over her hand in its white glove. ‘You’re my wife now Elaine.’
‘You’re my husband now John.’ And laughing they looked at each other in the coziness of the empty parlorcar.
White letters, ATLANTIC CITY, spelled doom over the rainpitted water.
Rain lashed down the glaring boardwalk and crashed in gusts against the window like water thrown out of a bucket. Beyond the rain she could hear the intermittent rumble of the surf along the beach between the illuminated piers. She lay on her back staring at the ceiling. Beside her in the big bed John lay asleep breathing quietly like a child with a pillow doubled up under his head. She was icy cold. She slid out of bed very carefully not to wake him, and stood looking out the window down the very long V of lights of the boardwalk. She pushed up the window. The rain lashed in her face spitefully stinging her flesh, wetting her nightdress. She pushed her forehead against the frame. Oh I want to die. I want to die. All the tight coldness of her body was clenching in her stomach. Oh I’m going to be sick. She went into the bathroom and closed the door. When she had vomited she felt better. Then she climbed into bed again careful not to touch John. If she touched him she would die. She lay on her back with her hands tight against her sides and her feet together. The parlorcar rumbled cozily in her head; she fell asleep.