He lay on his bed, smoking one Camel after another, thank God in heaven he wasn’t the sort of a man with a filthy pipe stuck in his gob all day and his teeth black as the ace of spades. Ah Christ, she wouldn’t have dared do this if Bridget were alive, that one would have marched right up to the little cock of the walk and told him where to get off and make no mistake about it. But with him … it was his softness that let her wipe her feet all over him, telling him that she’d been the maid of all work long enough and now she wanted to have some life, and what about him, didn’t he have a right to some life? Hadn’t it been John do this and John do that and John do the other thing and what do you need with an extra quarter for years and years and years? Was he denying her her goddamn life? It was that oily little mongrel he wanted her to hold at arm’s length, didn’t she know what he wanted from her? And there she was buying a pair of chippy shoes with a heel on them that was an invitation to any man with a pair of eyes in his head, and you can bet your last red cent that they wouldn’t be lost on the likes of Mr. Thebus, oh no. And she’s even beginning to lose all respect for anything decent, the nerve of her talking that way about Helga Schmidt! She was a good respectable woman, lonely like he was lonely, it wasn’t as if they were gallivanting around in cars going to roadhouses and God knows where else.
When he woke from a short doze he heard voices from the lawn and got up to stand behind the curtain and look down. As he thought, it was Thebus and Billy, thick as thieves. You had to give the man credit for his gall. It was as clear as day that the boy — look at him now running around with that cheap tin toy in his hand — bored him to death. Ah, but what a perfect foot in the door he was, you could see that the man had the brain of your true salesman, he’d probably sell goldbricks to some starving widow if the truth were known. John had always hated salesmen, something good for the kikes to do but no job for a man. But who said that this article was a man anyway? Oho, and there he was, crossing the lawn to go and get himself all dolled up like Astor’s pet horse, ah, not yet. John craned his neck to watch Tom and saw him walk across the road to his car and begin to wipe it down with a rag. That’s right, you little mutt, make everything all spic and span for the goddamn fool of a woman who’s probably admiring her feet and watching the clock. God help us all. She’s so ga-ga she may not even be seen at the supper table, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if nobody saw hide nor hair of her until the great moment. The old man pursed his lips in contempt.
But Marie did come down to supper, as cool as a cucumber if you please, and bejesus, she didn’t take her eyes off that little bastard’s face from the minute she sat down. She’d lost all sense of modesty and shame, even that little chippy at the next table wasn’t so bold with the way she made eyes at that big gawm of a lifeguard she was making a horse’s ass out of. And his nibs looked back at her as bold as brass himself, but what else could you expect of a man who had no breeding whatsoever? John was so upset and annoyed that he didn’t really follow the conversation, but Thebus was doing his best, that was easy to tell, to annoy everybody with ears to hear his ranting and raving about what the Germans were doing to get us into another war, the man was nothing more than a Mongolian idiot! Anybody with half an eye could see that what Helga said, and the Stellkamps too, was as plain as the nose on your face — it was the Jews who started everything, and by God, if there was another war who would profit from it but the Jews? Maybe Thebus was really Thebowitz just like Roosevelt was Rosenfeld. He even looked a little like a goddamn mocky with his little shyster lawyer moustache. Helga caught his eye and smiled at him, oh, she knew what kind of shenanigans were going on, this little mongrel was trying to get him into an argument so that he’d wind up looking like he was defending Helga, the poor son of a bitch thinks I was born yesterday! Ha! He’ll have to get up pretty early in the morning to fool me with his little tricks. But the gall of his daughter! She was grinning away at her great hero so that you’d think her face would crack, and no attempt to hide it either. Oh, John was soft all right, too goddamn soft, and that was the trouble. If Bridget were alive, God rest her soul, she’d put a stop to this in a minute, even if she had to drag Marie away from the table by the ear like she’d done a thousand times when she was a little girl. Finally the patch on a man’s ass stopped running off at the mouth and contented himself with mooning at Marie with his greaseball Valentino face on him, by God it was enough to turn your stomach to see it. As soon as John finished his tea he excused himself and went up to his room. He couldn’t stand another minute of this vaudeville as God was his judge.
Oh, there they were on the porch, the great hero dressed to the nines, with that great ugly lump of a pipe in his face like some nance of a professor, well, maybe John would go down and maybe he wouldn’t, but he’d be damned, whatever else he did, if he’d give them a goodbye, he wouldn’t, for that matter, give them the sweat off an ice pitcher. Then he heard the screen door open and there she was, by God, dressed up like a little slip of a girl all in white with her new tart shoes and silk stockings on her. Ah, I’ve got to go down there and show my face, I’ll not have it said that the damn fool’s own father sneaked around like a rat in the dark while she paraded around like Cleopatra. When John got out on the porch they were about to start down the steps and Marie turned to look at him but he stood there without moving a muscle with his hands in his back pockets, she’ll get no satisfaction from me! It looked to him like she was so embarrassed that she was blushing, well, she’s got something to blush about, if truth be told, it was a wonder she hadn’t gone around the past two weeks with her face as red as a beet. He watched them go down the path to the gate and then cross the road to the car, two damn fools all dolled up to go and spend their time in a dump that you wouldn’t even let a dog die in. Thebus helped her into the car and closed the door, then got in the other side, Marie was looking out her window as the car started, and then she waved, and all the other goddamn fools on the porch waved too, well it would be a cold day in hell before John took his hands out of his pockets to wave to her after she had flown in his face and as much as told him straight up and down that he could take his opinion and put it in his pipe and smoke it. Well, we’ll see, we’ll just see how far she can go with this damn fool idea before I cut the legs out from under her. She was still waving as the car moved out of sight. John went upstairs to clean his false teeth and change into his spectators. He thought of that ten-cent Casanova holding Marie in his arms and brushed at his plate furiously. She’ll soon find out the class of bozo he is!