Finkie lighting up a Havana cigar at Rosala gazed through the flame of his five-dollar lighter. “What about you, baby? For you also out the shiny office on West End Avenue? You like so much changing the crappy diapers on East Broadway?”
“Come, Rosala.”
Julius pulled but he could not move her. Paralyzed by that snake was she? “Finkie was no good from the first day he was born; Papa he drove into an early grave. We don’t need his dirty money. What’s the matter with you today, Rosala? Don’t you hear me? This is your Julius talking to you.”
She heard him all right and if only God would wipe out what happens at the hospital, if only she never leaves Woolworth’s, if only they never come here; if only if only if only. Loyalty! now there was a word to press between her breasts where in the movies always the heroine hiding the secret letter she must deliver from her sweetheart to the king without the jealous cardinal suspecting. Loyalty! You make your bed you better sleep in it. But when she turned to follow Julius out Finkie’s laughter might have frozen the blood of the dybbuk himself.
“Do you suppose you could walk out just like that to tell the whole goddamn whirl that Finkie fixes the Whirl Series? I tell you because who else in the whole whirl could I trust?”
Julius, who had damaged his fist banging on the desk, suffered even more grievously wrestling with the knob of the door to the outer office. “We don’t know nothing from baseball. What kind of gibberish is that?”
Finkie walked out from behind his desk in his twenty-five-dollar nonsqueak oxford shoes with elevated heels and put his arm around Rosala who in her mind entertained hot thoughts about Julius who looked back at her like already she was working in the kind of flat on East Broadway that more and more Mama predicting Rosala sure to wind up, so sick was Mama of the Rosala-Julius engagement.
“You! You take your lousy hands off her. How dare you touch her?” Julius meant to stamp his feet, clinch his eyes, clench fists all at one and the same time but only succeeded in crying because in shoes cost two dollars second-hand and so long ago how could you even on such an expensive carpet stamp? If bunions and corns is all your feet are made of? In spite of which he circled Finkie, his fists up before his face. “You know so much about the Middle Ages? Did you ever hear of single combat? So one-on-one I challenge you, with fists, not guns or swords. If I lick you Rosala and I walk out, OK?”
“Oh, Julius!” marveled Rosala, for surely God must protect him. Just to be on the safe side she put her hands over her eyes not to see with just one hand Finkie squash brave Julius. No, Sir Walter Scott never let might decide; always things were otherwise with Quentin Durward.
Thus had Julius retrieved the shining armor that in her eyes he had heretofore worn; then was once more stripped of it when he screamed he had a bellyache and ran around the room, his face so contorted that Finkie tossed him the key to the hall toilet and pressed the door release on the leg of his desk, Julius bolting out like one of Finkie’s sure things at Belmont.
“We didn’t want your fy-nancy dropping dead right on my good carpet, did we, baby? Should I really fight him, whatdya think, baby?”
What did she think? How could she know when all that was in her stupid head were sparks from the trains falling down from the Third Avenue Elevated by the Bowery, fire horses breathing out like poor Julius’s mother Moscow winter clouds; ambulances screaming, clanging? “Never once in my life I have before such a headache,” she said, by which time Julius was back with two policemen who Finkie, pulling up his trousers not to spoil the crease and to show off his clock socks when, after sitting down, he put his feet up on the desk, laughed he knew better than the back of his favorite whore’s toches.
“What cooks, Murph? How goes it, Isaac? To what do I owe the honor? Christmas ain’t for three months yet, so early you got cause to worry? Does Finkie ever forget?”
“Dis guy swears he your kid brother, Finkie.” Murphy licked his lips. A beat cop should push a man aroun’ got so much influence?
“Duh pisher cryin’, Fix! Fix! cock ’n bull story, am I right, Finkie?” Isaac regarded Julius like he was something shouldn’t stick to your shoes, especially you buy your own uniform.
“He told us! He told us!” Julius danced here, there, everywhere, as though he were all the snakes of the fakirs in all of Bombay’s bazaars. “Five hundred dollars he was giving us to bet with; fat envelopes I should deliver. You tell them, Rosala.”
“ ’at’s right, Rosala, go ahead tell them,” Finkie laughed. “Tell them how Finkie got so soft in the head he uses skirts, collich kids to fix duh whole Whirl Series, can you imagine, Murph? Isaac?”
A whole Whirl Series! No, Murphy making the sign of the cross couldn’t imagine. A Whirl Series! Ain’t nothin’ sacred? gasped Isaac, making wheels at his temple. “Meshugeh, tsedrait, your kid brother, Finkie?”
“How could you, Julius?” Rosala demanded. “Your very own brother! Oh, Julius, how could you!”
Isaac nodded. “Rat on your own flesh and blood, imagine!”
“Flesh and blood,” echoed Murphy. “No Irishman’d do such a stinking thing.”
“How could I? You ask how could I?” Julius demanded of Rosala, his screech that of a turkey has its head on the block. “Rosala, you’re ripping from me the heart. You want I should drop dead at your feet?”
Rosala felt for Julius. That she could not lift a finger to help him, no more than she could for herself, did not mean that her heart had turned to stone. But to rat on your own brother!
Julius flinched. Did Rosala turn away to hide her loathing? He couldn’t breathe, he could only gasp; his eyes so awash with despair that he was all but legally blind; like the wings of a hen about her brood in a storm his pitiful shoulders enfolding even more pitiful chest, he tripped over his own feet crossing the threshold.
“All right, guys. I’m sorry about me kid brother’s imagination. I am always telling him he should write stories, you remember, Rosala? No? You was too young, maybe.”
They never believed for a second, Isaac swore. They shut him up right away, Murphy added. “By my mother’s sou), may she rest in peace, ’at’s the God’s honest truth, Finkie. Would we kid you?”
Confident that they wouldn’t, Finkie, passing out cigars and walking them to the door, said, sure, sure, see you guys, and shut the door behind them.
“Do me a favor, Rosala, just sit down, ha, baby? By the soul of Murph’s old lady, ha ha, I ain’t ever gonna rape you, baby. ’Atsa good girl. Now what we have to talk over is you should go to business school, learn shorthand, typewriter. Because you’re so good with arithmetic we better keep you in the fambly; and like Mama always saying, ’bout time I should marry and settle down. What are you jumping for? Am I going to eat you? I know, I know, if I’m the last guy on earth yuh wouldn’t marry me? ’at’s a beaut too,” Finkie laughed.
If he was the last man on earth, just what Rosala would have said as she left, only something, someone holding her tongue, making her so weak that she cannot even lift herself out of the chair. Oh, dear God, she wept, for surely the dybbuk, the creepy-crawly thing is inside her.