‘Suppose he really did it?’
‘I’d hate to see him… I like him very much. We named our kid after him,’ said Jimmy gloomily. ‘But if he really feels so terribly unhappy what right have we to stop him?’
‘Oh Jimmy,’ sighed Alice, ‘do order some coffee.’
Outside a fire engine moaned throbbed roared down the street. Their hands were cold. They sipped the coffee without speaking.
Francie came out of the side door of the Five and Ten into the six o’clock goinghome end of the day crowd. Dutch Robertson was waiting for her. He was smiling; there was color in his face.
‘Why Dutch what’s…’ The words stuck in her throat.
‘Dont you like it…?’ They walked on down Fourteenth, a blur of faces streamed by on either side of them. ‘Everything’s jake Francie,’ he was saying quietly. He wore a light gray spring overcoat and a light felt hat to match. New red pointed Oxfords glowed on his feet. ‘How do you like the outfit? I said to myself it wasnt no use tryin to do anythin without a tony outside.’
‘But Dutch how did you get it?’
‘Stuck up a guy in a cigar store. Jez it was a cinch.’
‘Ssh dont talk so loud; somebody might hear ye.’
‘They wouldnt know what I was talkin about.’
Mr Densch sat in the corner of Mrs Densch’s Louis XIV boudoir. He sat all hunched up on a little gilt pinkbacked chair with his potbelly resting on his knees. In his green sagging face the pudgy nose and the folds that led from the flanges of the nostrils to the corners of the wide mouth made two triangles. He had a pile of telegrams in his hand, on top a decoded message on a blue slip that read: Deficit Hamburg branch approximately $500,000; signed Heintz. Everywhere he looked about the little room crowded with fluffy glittery objects he saw the purple letters of approximately jiggling in the air. Then he noticed that the maid, a pale mulatto in a ruffled cap, had come into the room and was staring at him. His eye lit on a large flat cardboard box she held in her hand.
‘What’s that?’
‘Somethin for the misses sir.’
‘Bring it here… Hickson’s… and what does she want to be buying more dresses for will you tell me that… Hickson’s… Open it up. If it looks expensive I’ll send it back.’
The maid gingerly pulled off a layer of tissuepaper, uncovering a peach and peagreen evening dress.
Mr Densch got to his feet spluttering, ‘She must think the war’s still on… Tell em we will not receive it. Tell em there’s no such party livin here.’
The maid picked up the box with a toss of the head and went out with her nose in the air. Mr Densch sat down in the little chair and began looking over the telegrams again.
‘Ann-ee, Ann-ee,’ came a shrill voice from the inner room; this was followed by a head in a lace cap shaped like a libertycap and a big body in a shapeless ruffled negligée. ‘Why J. D. what are you doing here at this time of the morning? I’m waiting for my hair-dresser.’
‘It’s very important… I just had a cable from Heintz. Serena my dear, Blackhead and Densch is in a very bad way on both sides of the water.’
‘Yes ma’am,’ came the maid’s voice from behind him.
He gave his shoulders a shrug and walked to the window. He felt tired and sick and heavy with flesh. An errand boy on a bicycle passed along the street; he was laughing and his cheeks were pink. Densch saw himself, felt himself for a second hot and slender running bareheaded down Pine Street years ago catching the girls’ ankles in the corner of his eye. He turned back into the room. The maid had gone.
‘Serena,’ he began, ‘cant you understand the seriousness…? It’s this slump. And on top of it all the bean market has gone to hell. It’s ruin I tell you…’
‘Well my dear I dont see what you expect me to do about it.’
‘Economize… economize. Look where the price of rubber’s gone to… That dress from Hickson’s…’
‘Well you wouldnt have me going to the Blackhead’s party looking like a country schoolteacher, would you?’
Mr Densch groaned and shook his head. ‘O you wont understand; probably there wont be any party… Look Serena there’s no nonsense about this… I want you to have a trunk packed so that we can sail any day… I need a rest. I’m thinking of going to Marienbad for the cure… It’ll do you good too.’
Her eye suddenly caught his. All the little wrinkles on her face deepened; the skin under her eyes was like the skin of a shrunken toy balloon. He went over to her and put his hand on her shoulder and was puckering his lips to kiss her when suddenly she flared up.
‘I wont have you meddling between me and my dressmakers… I wont have it… I wont have it…’
‘Oh have it your own way.’ He left the room with his head hunched between his thick sloping shoulders.
‘Ann-ee!’
‘Yes ma’am.’ The maid came back into the room.
Mrs Densch had sunk down in the middle of a little spindlelegged sofa. Her face was green. ‘Annie please get me that bottle of sweet spirits of ammonia and a little water… And Annie you can call up Hickson’s and tell them that that dress was sent back through a mistake of… of the butler’s and please to send it right back as I’ve got to wear it tonight.’
Pursuit of happiness, unalienable pursuit… right to life liberty and… A black moonless night; Jimmy Herf is walking alone up South Street. Behind the wharfhouses ships raise shadowy skeletons against the night. ‘By Jesus I admit that I’m stumped,’ he says aloud. All these April nights combing the streets alone a skyscraper has obsessed him, a grooved building jutting up with uncountable bright windows falling onto him out of a scudding sky. Typewriters rain continual nickelplated confetti in his ears. Faces of Follies girls, glorified by Ziegfeld, smile and beckon to him from the windows. Ellie in a gold dress, Ellie made of thin gold foil absolutely lifelike beckoning from every window. And he walks round blocks and blocks looking for the door of the humming tinselwindowed skyscraper, round blocks and blocks and still no door. Every time he closes his eyes the dream has hold of him, every time he stops arguing audibly with himself in pompous reasonable phrases the dream has hold of him. Young man to save your sanity you’ve got to do one of two things… Please mister where’s the door to this building? Round the block? Just round the block… one of two unalienable alternatives: go away in a dirty soft shirt or stay in a clean Arrow collar. But what’s the use of spending your whole life fleeing the City of Destruction? What about your unalienable right, Thirteen Provinces? His mind unreeling phrases, he walks on doggedly. There’s nowhere in particular he wants to go. If only I still had faith in words.
‘How do you do Mr Goldstein?’ the reporter breezily chanted as he squeezed the thick flipper held out to him over the counter of the cigar store. ‘My name’s Brewster… I’m writing up the crime wave for the News.’
Mr Goldstein was a larvashaped man with a hooked nose a little crooked in a gray face, behind which pink attentive ears stood out unexpectedly. He looked at the reporter out of suspicious screwedup eyes.
‘If you’d be so good I’d like to have your story of last night’s little… misadventure…’
‘Vont get no story from me young man. Vat vill you do but print it so that other boys and goils vill get the same idear.’
‘It’s too bad you feel that way Mr Goldstein… Will you give me a Robert Burns please…? Publicity it seems to me is as necessary as ventilation… It lets in fresh air.’ The reporter bit off the end of the cigar, lit it, and stood looking thoughtfully at Mr Goldstein through a swirling ring of blue smoke. ‘You see Mr Goldstein it’s this way,’ he began impressively. ‘We are handling this matter from the human interest angle… pity and tears… you understand. A photographer was on his way out here to get your photograph… I bet you it would increase your volume of business for the next couple of weeks… I suppose I’ll have to phone him not to come now.’