‘I made Saint Nazaire a couple o times. Why?’
‘I dunno… It kinder gave me the itch… I was two years in it. Things aint been the same. I used to think all I wanted was to get a good job an marry an settle down, an now I dont give a damn… I can keep a job for six months or so an then I get the almighty itch, see? So I thought I ought to see the orient a bit…’
‘Never you mind,’ says Rooney shaking his head. ‘You’re goin to see it, dont you worry about that.’
‘What’s the damage?’ the young man asks the counterman.
‘They must a caught you young.’
‘I was sixteen when I enlisted.’ He picks up his change and follows Rooney’s broad shambling back into the street. At the end of the street, beyond trucks and the roofs of warehouses, he can see masts and the smoke of steamers and white steam rising into the sunlight.
‘Pull down the shade,’ comes the man’s voice from the bed.
‘I cant, it’s busted… Oh hell, here’s the whole business down.’ Anna almost bursts out crying when the roll hits her in the face, ‘You fix it,’ she says going towards the bed.
‘What do I care, they cant see in,’ says the man catching hold of her laughing.
‘It’s just those lights,’ she moans, wearily letting herself go limp in his arms.
It is a small room the shape of a shoebox with an iron bed in the corner of the wall opposite the window. A roar of streets rises to it rattling up a V shaped recess in the building. On the ceiling she can see the changing glow of electric signs along Broadway, white, red, green, then a jumble like a bubble bursting, and again white, red, green.
‘Oh Dick I wish you’d fix that shade, those lights give me the willies.’
‘The lights are all right Anna, it’s like bein in a theater… It’s the Gay White Way, like they used to say.’
‘That stuff’s all right for you out of town fellers, but it gives me the willies.’
‘So you’re workin for Madame Soubrine now are you Anna?’
‘You mean I’m scabbin… I know it. The old woman trew me out an it was get a job or croak…’
‘A nice girl like you Anna could always find a boyfriend.’
‘God you buyers are a dirty lot… You think that because I’ll go with you, I’d go wid anybody… Well I wouldnt, do you get that?’
‘I didnt mean that Anna… Gee you’re awful quick tonight.’
‘I guess it’s my nerves… This strike an the old woman trowin me out an scabbin up at Soubrine’s… it’d get anybody’s goat. They can all go to hell for all I care. Why wont they leave you alone? I never did nothin to hurt anybody in my life. All I want is for em to leave me alone an let me get my pay an have a good time now and then… God Dick it’s terrible… I dont dare go out on the street for fear of meetin some of the girls of my old local.’
‘Hell Anna, things aint so bad, honest I’d take you West with me if it wasnt for my wife.’
Anna’s voice goes on in an even whimper, ‘An now ’cause I take a shine to you and want to give you a good time you call me a goddam whore.’
‘I didnt say no such thing. I didnt even think it. All I thought was that you was a dead game sport and not a kewpie above the ears like most of ’em… Look if it’ll make ye feel better I’ll try an fix that shade.’
Lying on her side she watches his heavy body move against the milky light of the window. At last his teeth chattering he comes back to her. ‘I cant fix the goddam thing… Kerist it’s cold.’
‘Never mind Dick, come on to bed… It must be late. I got to be up there at eight.’
He pulls his watch from under the pillow. ‘It’s half after two… Hello kitten.’
On the ceiling she can see reflected the changing glare of the electric signs, white, red, green, then a jumble like a bubble bursting, then again white, green, red.
‘An he didn’t even invite me to the wedding… Honestly Florence I could have forgiven him if he’d invited me to the wedding,’ she said to the colored maid when she brought in the coffee. It was a Sunday morning. She was sitting up in bed with the papers spread over her lap. She was looking at a photograph in a rotogravure section labeled Mr and Mrs Jack Cunningham Hop Off for the First Lap of Their Honeymoon on his Sensational Seaplane Albatross VII. ‘He looks handsome dont he?’
‘He su’ is miss… But wasn’t there anything you could do to stop ’em, miss?’
‘Not a thing… You see he said he’d have me committed to an asylum if I tried… He knows perfectly well a Yucatan divorce isn’t legal.’
Florence sighed.
‘Menfolks su’ do dirt to us poor girls.’
‘Oh this wont last long. You can see by her face she’s a nasty selfish spoiled little girl… And I’m his real wife before God and man. Lord knows I tried to warn her. Whom God has joined let no man put asunder… that’s in the Bible isnt it?… Florence this coffee is simply terrible this morning. I cant drink it. You go right out and make me some fresh.’
Frowning and hunching her shoulders Florence went out the door with the tray.
Mrs Cunningham heaved a deep sigh and settled herself among the pillows. Outside churchbells were ringing. ‘Oh Jack you darling I love you just the same,’ she said to the picture. Then she kissed it. ‘Listen, deary the churchbells sounded like that the day we ran away from the High School Prom and got married in Milwaukee… It was a lovely Sunday morning.’ Then she stared in the face of the second Mrs Cunningham. ‘Oh you,’ she said and poked her finger through it.
When she got to her feet she found that the courtroom was very slowly sickeningly going round and round; the white fishfaced judge with noseglasses, faces, cops, uniformed attendants, gray windows, yellow desks, all going round and round in the sickening close smell, her lawyer with his white hawk nose, wiping his bald head, frowning, going round and round until she thought she would throw up. She couldn’t hear a word that was said, she kept blinking to get the blur out of her ears. She could feel Dutch behind her hunched up with his head in his hands. She didnt dare look back. Then after hours everything was sharp and clear, very far away. The judge was shouting at her, from the small end of a funnel his colorless lips moving in and out like the mouth of a fish.
‘… And now as a man and a citizen of this great city I want to say a few words to the defendants. Briefly this sort of thing has got to stop. The unalienable rights of human life and property the great men who founded this republic laid down in the constitootion have got to be reinstated. It is the dooty of every man in office and out of office to combat this wave of lawlessness by every means in his power. Therefore in spite of what those sentimental newspaper writers who corrupt the public mind and put into the head of weaklings and misfits of your sort the idea that you can buck the law of God and man, and private property, that you can wrench by force from peaceful citizens what they have earned by hard work and brains… and get away with it; in spite of what these journalistic hacks and quacks would call extentuating circumstances I am going to impose on you two highwaymen the maximum severity of the law. It is high time an example was made…’
The judge took a drink of water. Francie could see the little beads of sweat standing out from the pores of his nose.
‘It is high time an example was made,’ the judge shouted. ‘Not that I dont feel as a tender and loving father the misfortunes, the lack of education and ideels, the lack of a loving home and tender care of a mother that has led this young woman into a life of immorality and misery, led away by the temptations of cruel and voracious men and the excitement and wickedness of what has been too well named, the jazz age. Yet at the moment when these thoughts are about to temper with mercy the stern anger of the law, the importunate recollection rises of other young girls, perhaps hundreds of them at this moment in this great city about to fall into the clutches of a brutal and unscrupulous tempter like this man Robertson… for him and his ilk there is no punishment sufficiently severe… and I remember that mercy misplaced is often cruelty in the long run. All we can do is shed a tear for erring womanhood and breathe a prayer for the innocent babe that this unfortunate girl has brought into the world as the fruit of her shame…’