He had finished the rum. Occasionally the room would start going round him solemnly and methodically. Suddenly he said aloud: ‘I’ve got to talk to her… I’ve got to talk to her.’ He shoved his hat down on his head and pulled on his coat. Outside the cold was balmy. Six milkwagons in a row passed jingling.
On West Twelfth two black cats were chasing each other. Everywhere was full of their crazy yowling. He felt that something would snap in his head, that he himself would scuttle off suddenly down the frozen street eerily caterwauling.
He stood shivering in the dark passage, ringing the bell marked Herf again and again. Then he knocked as loud as he could. Ellen came to the door in a green wrapper. ‘What’s the matter Jimps? Havent you got a key?’ Her face was soft with sleep; there was a happy cozy suave smell of sleep about her. He talked through clenched teeth breathlessly.
‘Ellie I’ve got to talk to you.’
‘Are you lit, Jimps?’
‘Well I know what I’m saying.’
‘I’m terribly sleepy.’
He followed her into her bedroom. She kicked off her slippers and got back into bed, sat up looking at him with sleepweighted eyes.
‘Dont talk too loud on account of Martin.’
‘Ellie I dont know why it’s always so difficult for me to speak out about anything… I always have to get drunk to speak out… Look here do you like me any more?’
‘You know I’m awfully fond of you and always shall be.’
‘I mean love, you know what I mean, whatever it is…’ he broke in harshly.
‘I guess I dont love anybody for long unless they’re dead… I’m a terrible sort of person. It’s no use talking about it.’
‘I knew it. You knew I knew it. O God things are pretty rotten for me Ellie.’
She sat with her knees hunched up and her hands clasped round them looking at him with wide eyes. ‘Are you really so crazy about me Jimps?’
‘Look here lets get a divorce and be done with it.’
‘Dont be in such a hurry, Jimps… And there’s Martin. What about him?’
‘I can scrape up enough money for him occasionally, poor little kid.’
‘I make more than you do, Jimps… You shouldnt do that yet.’
‘I know. I know. Dont I know it?’
They sat looking at each other without speaking. Their eyes burned from looking at each other. Suddenly Jimmy wanted terribly to be asleep, not to remember anything, to let his head sink into blackness, as into his mother’s lap when he was a kid.
‘Well I’m going home.’ He gave a little dry laugh. ‘We didn’t think it’d all go pop like this, did we?’
‘Goodnight Jimps,’ she whined in the middle of a yawn. ‘But things dont end… If only I weren’ so terribly sleepy… Will you put out the light?’
He groped his way in the dark to the door. Outside the arctic morning was growing gray with dawn. He hurried back to his room. He wanted to get into bed and be asleep before it was light.
A long low room with long tables down the middle piled with silk and crêpe fabrics, brown, salmonpink, emeraldgreen. A smell of snipped thread and dress materials. All down the tables bowed heads auburn, blond, black, brown of girls sewing. Errandboys pushing rolling stands of hung dresses up and down the aisles. A bell rings and the room breaks out with noise and talk shrill as a birdhouse.
Anna gets up and stretches out her arms. ‘My I’ve got a head,’ she says to the girl next her.
‘Up last night?’
She nods.
‘Ought to quit it dearie, it’ll spoil your looks. A girl cant burn the candle at both ends like a feller can.’ The other girl is thin and blond and has a crooked nose. She puts her arm round Anna’s waist. ‘My I wish I could put on a little of your weight.’
‘I wish you could,’ says Anna. ‘Dont matter what I eat it turns to fat.’
‘Still you aint too fat… You’re juss plump so’s they like to squeeze ye. You try wearing boyishform like I told an you’ll look fine.’
‘My boyfriend says he likes a girl to have shape.’
On the stairs they push their way through a group of girls listening to a little girl with red hair who talks fast, opening her mouth wide and rolling her eyes. ’…She lived just on the next block at 2230 Cameron Avenue an she’d been to the Hippodrome with some girlfriends and when they got home it was late an they let her go home alone, up Cameron Avenue, see? An the next morning when her folks began looking for her they found her behind a Spearmint sign in a back lot.’
‘Was she dead?’
‘Sure she was… A negro had done somethin terrible to her and then he’d strangled her… I felt terrible. I used to go to school with her. An there aint a girl on Cameron Avenue been out after dark they’re so scared.’
‘Sure I saw all about it in the paper last night. Imagine livin right on the next block.’
‘Did you see me touch that hump back?’ cried Rosie as he settled down beside her in the taxi. ‘In the lobby of the theater?’ He pulled at the trousers that were tight over his knees. ‘That’s goin to give us luck Jake. I never seen a hump back to fail… if you touch him on the hump… Ou it makes me sick how fast these taxis go.’ They were thrown forward by the taxi’s sudden stop. ‘My God we almost ran over a boy.’ Jake Silverman patted her knee. ‘Poor ikle kid, was it all worked up?’ As they drove up to the hotel she shivered and buried her face in her coatcollar. When they went to the desk to get the key, the clerk said to Silverman, ‘There’s a gentleman waiting to see you sir.’ A thickset man came up to him taking a cigar out of his mouth. ‘Will you step this way a minute please Mr Silverman.’ Rosie thought she was going to faint. She stood perfectly still, frozen, with her cheeks deep in the fur collar of her coat.
They sat in two deep armchairs and whispered with their heads together. Step by step, she got nearer, listening. ‘Warrant… Department of Justice… using the mails to defraud…’ She couldnt hear what Jake said in between. He kept nodding his head as if agreeing. Then suddenly he spoke out smoothly, smiling.
‘Well I’ve heard your side Mr Rogers… Here’s mine. If you arrest me now I shall be ruined and a great many people who have put their money in this enterprise will be ruined… In a week I can liquidate the whole concern with a profit… Mr Rogers I am a man who has been deeply wronged through foolishness in misplacing confidence in others.’
‘I cant help that… My duty is to execute the warrant… I’m afraid I’ll have to search your room… You see we have several little items…’ The man flicked the ash off his cigar and began to read in a monotonous voice. ‘Jacob Silverman, alias Edward Faversham, Simeon J. Arbuthnot, Jack Hinkley, J. J. Gold… Oh we’ve got a pretty little list… We’ve done some very pretty work on your case, if I do say it what shouldnt.’
They got to their feet. The man with the cigar jerked his head at a lean man in a cap who sat reading a paper on the opposite side of the lobby.
Silverman walked over to the desk. ‘I’m called away on business,’ he said to the clerk. ‘Will you please have my bill prepared? Mrs Silverman will keep the room for a few days.’