I said good-night to Joe and the others, poured myself a beer. Henderson said, “Beer and food cost me nearly five dollars, so I made a net of eleven dollars. Not bad for an old man. You know the other day I was in the subway and some young snip of a girl stood up to give me her seat. I ignored her and then she had the gall to say, 'Sit down, pop,' I said to her, 'Young lady, it's true I am older than you, but that isn't any reason to offer me your seat. Why did you do it?' She said, 'Well, you're less able to stand than I am.' I shut her up with, 'And since when in our society do the weak and the aged, the less able, get any special consideration?' And as if to prove my point, while we were arguing, a husky young boy slipped into the seat. Nerve of that girl!” Henderson chuckled.
I waited. He hadn't asked me to stay for the sake of small talk. He said, “When are you coming back, George?”
“I don't know. Anything happening downstairs?”
“Quiet as usual. Are you done with her, or what? It isn't any of my business, but it has spoiled my window watching some... the waiting for your return.”
“We had a fight and I left, walked out. Does she ever leave the house?” I said before I realized it was a stupid question—she had to go out for food.
“Oh, yes, leaves the house every third day, for about twenty minutes. Buys groceries. There's no other man coming around, if that's what you want to know.”
I grinned—God how I wished there was another man!
“How does she look?”
“Same as usual.”
“I have to see her Monday. By the way, if you want me for anything, something goes wrong with the house, call me at the office. Meantime, I'd better have the oil tank filled.”
On Monday I arranged with Joe to send one of his men around with some oil. Since this was piped in through an opening in the sidewalk, it wouldn't disturb Lee. That night, after supper, I took a cab up to the house, rang the bell. There wasn't any answer. I rang again and called her name. There were a few seconds of silence, then she opened the door.
Lee was wearing a simple print I remembered buying her a long time ago, and both she and the house had a slightly hot, bad odor. The place was a mess, ashes and cigarette butts all over, and I could see unwashed dishes on the kitchen table and in the sink.
She said rather abruptly, George, you have my money?
I gave her twenty five-dollar bills, which she immediately crumpled and shoved down between her breasts. I asked, “Lee, would you like a whole lot of money?” I went through the motions of piling up a lot of bills.
She didn't answer and I said, “Much money for Lee. You give me the note, the paper, and I will give you lots of money. Okay?”
“Papers?” she repeated.
“You know what paper,” I said, motioning toward the wall panel.
She looked at me blankly and I wondered how much of that blankness was a poker face. I dug a dollar bill out of my pocket, went through the pantomime of making a big pile of ones. “All this money for the paper. Understand? Everything be fine.”
She didn't say anything and I said, “Give me the note and I'll give you a lot of money. Okay?”
“Yes.”
I held out my hand. “Now give me the paper.”
“Nein.”
I thought she smiled as she said it. I put the dollar down as I picked up my hat and turned to leave. She quickly snatched up the buck, deposited it in her bosom savings bank, said, “You like, you stay.”
I said no and for one frightful moment I thought she was going to come over and make me. But she merely shrugged and I went out, saying I'd see her the following Monday.
For the next month or so, I saw her each Monday night, to give her the money, and nothing much happened. Once she had cleaned up the place thoroughly, in one of her rare bursts of energy. Sometimes she was fairly talkative, and once she blocked the doorway, so I handed her the money and left without stepping inside my own house. I tried several times to bribe her to give me the note, but she refused. She understood that, all right.
I didn't care for living in a hotel room and I missed my dancing terribly, but all in all, there wasn't much of a change from my old manner of living—before I “outsmarted” Lee. Things went along on an even level, but even that came to an end: I ran out of money, or rather I should say I ran out of Lee's money.
It certainly was more than a rude shock to realize that if I went on giving her a hundred a week—and I didn't see any way of getting out of it at the time—I'd have exactly twenty-five dollars of my salary to live on per week.
The first thing I did was to move out of the hotel. After much tramping of the streets and reading want ads, I learned it was impossible to get even a crummy room for less than ten a week, and of course a private bath was out. Most of the rooms smelled of insecticide and I expected bedbugs to open the door for me—although I never did see a bug in any of the rooms I had. And I moved around quite a bit, going to a cheaper room each time, borrowing a few bucks from Joe on and off, and once, for the first time in my life, I hocked a suit. (All I received was ten dollars for it.) I finally found a small room on 31st Street, east of 3rd Avenue. The house, an old brownstone, looked like hell from the outside but my room was neat, if tiny, and if the bathroom wasn't any place to linger and read, at least it was clean, or a reasonable facsimile thereof.
I spent much of my time alone. I was not only upset, but I couldn't afford dollar lunches and five-dollar suppers and cocktails with Joe, nor poker games with Mr. Henderson. I only bet on the horses once.
I knew I'd have to have some money damn soon, and thinking back upon it, my luck with the horses had been excellent the past six months—playing my daily two-buck hunch bets. The night I hocked my suit I noticed a horse called Outsmarted running the next day, at 10 to 1. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed like a sure hunch. I took out my last fifty dollars from the bank, and with what I raised on my suit and some dough I borrowed, I had a hundred to bet.
The following morning I stopped in for my orange juice, which had become my entire breakfast—along with a hooker of cheap whiskey. When the counterman asked, “Anything else, Mr. Jackson? You haven't been ordering much these days,” I put the money under the menu on the counter before me, said, “A hundred to win on Outsmarted.”
“That's a big order, Mr. Jackson,” he said, his face deadpan. “Tell me true, Mr. Jackson, you know something?”
“You know me—a hunch player. Merely a hunch.”
“Sure I know you, but that's a lot of folding money to pay off, Mr. Jackson. I'm a small joker in this racket. I can't take the bet, but I can place it for you. Only if this is a sure thing, don't give it to me.”
“Only a hunch.”
“Yeah?” He hesitated for a moment, staring at me with sad eyes. Then he went over to one of the phone booths. He talked to somebody for a few seconds, then came back and took my money, said, “Okay. That's to win. Correct?”