“Yes, you ought to, but you don’t always,” said Julian. He was annoyed with her contemptuous manner.
“Now listen here, Mister English—”
“Oh, go boil the eggs, will you, and for Christ’s sake shut up.” There it was again: servants, cops, waiters in restaurants, ushers in theaters—he could hate them more than persons who threatened him with real harm. He hated himself for his outbursts against them, but why in the name of God, when they had so little to do, couldn’t they do it right and move on out of his life?
There was no newspaper on the table, but he did not want to speak to Mrs. Grady, so he sat there without it, not knowing whether the damn paper had come, with nothing to read, no one to talk to, nothing to do but smoke a cigarette. Five minutes of ten, for God’s sake; there ought to be a paper here by this time, and that old cow probably had it out in the kitchen and was just keeping it out there to annoy him. By God, she ought to be—oh, nuts. She got along all right with Caroline. That was it; the old cow, she probably knew from Caroline’s manner that there was something wrong about last night, and her sympathies were, of course, all with Caroline. Well, she wasn’t being paid to take sides in family quarrels, and she certainly wasn’t being paid to—he got up and walked noisily to the kitchen.
“Where’s the paper?” he said.
“Huh?”
“I said, where’s the paper! Don’t you understand English?”
“I understand one English,” she said.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Mrs. Grady, even you ought to know that’s old stuff. Where’s the paper?”
“Your wife took it upstairs with her. She wanted to read it.”
“How do you know? Maybe she wanted to build a fire with it,” he said, on his way out.
“There ain’t no fireplace upstairs, smartie.”
He had to laugh. He had to laugh, and pour himself a drink, and he was putting the top back on the bottle, which had a little chain holding a plate marked Scotch around the neck, when she brought in the large breakfast tray. He wanted to help her with it, but he would be damned if he would.
“Maybe she’s asleep now and I can get the paper,” said Mrs. Grady.
“No, thanks, don’t bother,” said Julian. He had a suspicion that Caroline not only was not asleep, but had heard every move he made from the time he got up. She was sleeping in the guest room again.
“Will you be coming home for lunch?”
“No,” said Julian, although he had not given it any thought.
“Well, then, about the stuff for the party tonight.”
“Oh, God. I forgot about it,” said Julian.
“Well, Mrs. English says to tell you to leave a check for the liquor and champagne wine. It’s to be delivered this afternoon.”
“How much, did she say?”
“She said to make it out to cash and she’d fill in the amount when Grecco brings it.”
Grecco. She would bring that up. And it was strange that Caroline wanted him to make out the check. She had her own money; right now she had more than he had. She had her own money, and always when they gave parties she would pay for the liquor when it was delivered, if she happened to be home, and they would settle it up later. On a party like this, which was as much hers as his, he would buy the liquor and she would pay for everything else. He wished there was going to be no party.
He finished his breakfast and drove downtown to the John Gibb Hotel, where every morning he stopped to have his shoes shined. John, the Negro who had the shine concession, was not there. “He ain’t been in this morning yet,” said one of the barbers. “I guess he had too much Christmas cheer, like a lot of us.” Julian watched the man carefully, but he did not seem to mean anything by the remark; and Julian reflected that his conduct the night before was not something that would be talked about in barber shops. Friends meant something, and they did not talk about that sort of thing in barber shops. Still, on his way out to the car he remembered that last night was only the second of two big nights for him, and it was extremely likely that barbers and everyone else had heard about his performance with Harry Reilly. “Good God,” he said, remembering. This morning he had forgot all about Harry Reilly.
He changed his mind about driving out to the garage right away. Harry Reilly had an office in the bank building and he decided to call on Harry there. It was two blocks from the hotel, and he might get a ticket for parking, but if he couldn’t get the ticket fixed, it was worth the two-dollar fine to have things straightened out with Harry.
Some places the sidewalk was all clean, some places there was only a narrow path cleared away, and the snow got down in his shoes when he stepped out of the way for women. Another minor annoyance. In front of J. J. Gray’s jewelry store he met Irma Fliegler. “Hello, Julian,” she said.
“Hello, Irma,” he said, and stopped.
She was wearing a raccoon coat and she had some packages under her arm. It was still so cold that from a short distance away women did not seem to have any distinctive features, but close up she became Irma Doane, or at least Irma Fliegler, again; still pretty, a bit on the stout side, but stout in a way that did not make her unattractive. You knew that she was not going to get stouter, or definitely fat. She had very pretty legs and hands. You remembered how pretty her hands were when you saw them with gloves on.
“Well, you certainly were a fine example of the young mother last night,” said Julian. He knew it was the wrong thing to say, but some mention had to be made of last night. Better to make some mention of it than to be self-conscious about not bringing it up.
“Me? What did I do? Julian, you’re nuts.”
“Now, now, Irma, you don’t think I don’t remember. Didn’t you know you stole the trombone player’s hat?”
“Oh, you’re kidding. You’re a fine one to talk, you are. What a load you had. Did you get home all right?”
“I guess so,” he said. Then he thought quickly. “I felt a little sick, haven’t felt that way in years, and I was dancing, too, so I had to go out.”
“Oh,” she said. Maybe she believed him.
“I pulled a complete pass-out in the car. I think it was some girl from your party that I was dancing with,” he said. Maybe she might believe him.
“Oh, no it wasn’t. Not that they didn’t want to, but you went out with the singer.”
“What singer?”
“Helene Holman her name is, she sings at the Stage Coach.”
“Oh, it’s worse than I thought. I guess I have to send her flowers. I had some vague idea it was Frannie. I remember talking to her.”
“She was there, but you didn’t dance with her,” said Irma. “She was having her own troubles. Well.”
“See you soon,” said Julian.
“ ’Bye,” she said.
He walked on, a little afraid that he had made a fool of himself, that Irma had not believed a word of his too-ready story that he had gone out with Helene because he was sick. But he knew that whatever he did, Irma would stick up for him. He always had liked Irma; she was the prettiest girl in high school, and a big girl, when he was a kid running around with Butch Doerflinger and Walt Davis and the rest of his kid friends. She had taught him in Sunday School, and did not report him on Sunday afternoons when he “bagged it” to go to a ball game. He wished he could tell her all his troubles, and he knew that if there was one person to whom he would tell them, it would be Irma. But she was Mrs. Lute Fliegler, the wife of one of his employees. He told himself that he must not forget that.
He went up in the elevator to Harry Reilly’s office. “Hello, Betty. Your boss in?” Betty Fenstermacher was a stenographer who also ran the switchboard in Harry’s office. Betty also had given her all to Julian and at least a dozen of his friends when they were all about nineteen or twenty.