That week old Mulloy really worked the hell out of us, and he kept talking about what a tough game it was coming up on Saturday, and how we’d have to be a hell of a lot better than we’d been yet to win this one, because this team was really a sharp one that could beat half the colleges in the country, and altogether he laid it on so God-damn thick you knew it was a pack of damn lies and just a trick to scare us into working all the harder. Old Tizzy and I were getting our business down better all the time, and we got so we could tell by the blink of an eyelash just which way the other one was going to jump, and old Mulloy puffed and blew about what a classy combination he’d made out of us, just like it was all due to nothing but his crummy coaching, and the truth is, whatever caused it, we were slicker than grease.
Along about Tuesday evening I was walking home late, and I was still trying to think of a way to get my hands on at least a fin for Saturday, and who should I meet over on my own side of town but old Mopsy on her way home from the grocery store. I hadn’t seen her to talk to since that night when her old man and old lady had gone to the movies, and she said, “Hi, Skimmer. How come you haven’t been around to see me lately?”
I had a good reason, of course, namely that you don’t eat hash when you’ve got roast beef, but I tried to make it easy on her and said, “Oh, I’ve been pretty busy with basketball and all,” and she said, “You’re really getting to be a big star, and I’m proud of you,” and I said, “Well I guess I’ve just got a knack for it,” which, like I’ve said before, was the way it was.
We kept walking along, and pretty soon she said, “How would you like to come over to my house Saturday night after the game? We could pop some popcorn and listen to music and have some fun.”
“Your old man and old lady going to be home?” I said, and she said they were, and I said, “Then how the hell we going to have any fun?”
She said, “You oughtn’t to say things like that, Skimmer. You sound like you never thought about anything else,” and I said, “Is there something else to think about?” and she said, “Do you want to come, or don’t you?” and I said, “No, as a matter of fact I don’t, because I’ve got a date to take Marsha Davis to a party at the Country Club.”
You could see it knocked her for a loop, me just tossing it off that way, and she got sulky and said, “I guess now that you’re a basketball star and running around with someone like Marsha Davis, you won’t have any more time for me,” and I said, “I guess maybe I won’t.”
“Well,” she said, “you don’t need to think I care,” and I said, “I don’t give a damn whether you care or not, and besides, you ought to be glad I don’t come because you’re so damn determined to save it, and if I was hanging around you might be tempted to spend it.”
That really fixed things up swell, that made everything just fine, and at the next corner she turned and went over a block just to get away from me, and damned if she didn’t go home and tell her old man what I’d said, just like she’d told on old Bugs when he tried to sneak a feel. The first I knew about it was when I got home the next evening, which was Wednesday. The old man was in the living room when I got there, and he said, “What the hell’s this I hear about you talking filthy to Mopsy Beacon?”
He sort of took me off guard, to tell the truth, and my damn tongue wouldn’t work right, and all I could say was, “Filthy? What the hell you mean, filthy? Who says I been talking filthy?”
“You know damn well what I mean,” he said, “and you know damn well who says so. Mopsy’s old man says so, that’s who, so don’t bother to tell any damn lies about it, and I can tell you I’m getting damn tired of having someone like old man Beacon jump me every time I turn around about some damn dirty thing you’ve been up to.”
“That’s just a crying God-damn shame about you,” I said. “Besides, old Mopsy’s just got her nose hard because I won’t have anything to do with her any more, and all I told her was that if she was so damn anxious to save it, I’d just stay away and not tempt her to spend it,” and the old man got quiet then and looked at me and said, “You mean that’s really all you said to her?” and I said yes, and he said, “Well, that don’t sound so God-damn filthy to me.”
That set the old lady off, and she said to the old man, “That’s right. Support him in his wickedness. How the hell can you expect him to be anything but a bum with no respect for womanhood when you say it’s not filthy to say something like that to a nice girl like Mopsy?” and the old man said, “Who the hell asked you to horn in, and how the hell do you know who’s a nice girl and who’s not? You never had any experience at it.”
The old lady began to bawl and cuss the old man and threaten to leave him for talking to his own wife like she was no more than a street-walker, and the old man said any time she wanted to leave he’d be glad to help her pack, and they got going so good that they forgot all about me and Mopsy and how the whole thing had started, and I went in the kitchen and had some cold supper and left. I was still trying to figure out a way to get hold of a fin, because here it was Wednesday already and Saturday would be the day I’d have to have it, and I even thought about going uptown and trying to find a drunk to roll in an alley, but that’s sucker stuff, that’s really taking a big chance for peanuts, and I’d never done anything like that before, and I didn’t do it now. I finally went over to Bugs’s house and told him how I was working on that classy doll for him, and how I thought I might get the job done if only I could scrape up a fin for this brawl at the Country Club, and then I asked him if he thought his grandmother would be good for that much. He said, Jesus, no, it was a long time from last pension day, almost the end of the month, and he’d already got to his grandmother for all she could stand, so I said sure, thanks for nothing, and went away.
Walking along, I got to thinking, What if all of a sudden I’d just see a fin lying on the sidewalk in front of me, just see it lying there as big and green as a God-damn corn field, and I actually got to thinking about it so hard I got the idea that maybe I could make it happen just by thinking of it that way, so I closed my eyes and walked along a way with them closed, and then I opened them and looked down at the sidewalk, but there wasn’t any fin there, of course, and nothing like that ever happens except in some God-damn corny story where some jerk finds some money, a nickel or something, and runs it into a fortune and then spends the rest of his life telling other people what a hell of a guy he is and what bums they are for not doing the same thing.
Just to show you how things go sometimes, though, I finally got the fin with hardly any trouble at all, and that was because Thursday was the old man’s payday, and he got drunk at the tavern on the way home from work and passed out on the sofa in the living room in his clothes. As luck would have it, the old lady had gone over next door for a few minutes just before he came home, and I helped myself to a fin from his stinking pocket while he was flopped on the sofa, and that’s all there was to it. He was a pretty shrewd old bastard, though, and the next morning he missed the fin and accused the old lady of taking it. She said he was a damn liar, of course, which he was, and then she looked at me and said, “Wasn’t you home when your old man came in?” and I said, “Don’t go accusing me of swiping the God-damn lousy fin,” and she looked back at the old man and said, “You lost it, you drunken bum. What the hell you want to accuse us of stealing your money for?” You could see the old man wasn’t convinced of it, but there was always the chance it was true, so he let the matter drop and probably took the fin out of the grocery money later.