That’s how it was with me. There were no autograph hunters that night. There were feet, running past the door and voices saying “I’ll meet you outside,” and tenors showing their friends they knew “La Donna è Mobile,” and the whistle brigade, but none of them stopped, none of them had a word for me. It got quiet after a while, and the noise outside died away, and I lit a cigarette and sat there. After a long time there was a tap on the door. I never moved. It came again and still again, and then I heard my first name called. It sounded like Doris, and I went to the door and opened it. She was there, in a little green suit, and a brown felt hat, and brown shoes. She came in without looking at me. “What happened?”
“Weren’t you there?”
“I had to take the children home after the second act. I heard some people talking, on my way backstage.”
I remembered Lorentz and his real crime at the Cathedral Theatre that day. I was glad there was one person in the world that hadn’t seen it. Three, because that meant she had taken the kids out before it happened. “...I got the bird.”
“Damn them.”
She walked around, saying what she thought of them. Cecil never talked like that. She might tell you they were a pack of hyenas, but she never got sore at them, never regarded them as anything but so many people to be licked. But Doris had felt their teeth, and besides she had a gift for polishing them off, you might say, on account of her cobra blood. The cobra strain was what I wanted then. She snarled it out, and I wanted all she could give. Down in my heart, I knew Cecil was right, that it’s never anybody’s fault but your own. But I was still bleeding. What Doris had to say, it hit the spot.
But it wasn’t any consolation scene. That wasn’t what she came in there for, I could see that. She seemed to be under some kind of a strain, and kept talking without looking at me. When I started to take the make-up off, she got busy with the towel, and when I was ready for my clothes, she helped me into them. That was funny. Nothing like that had ever happened before. We went out, and got a cab, and I called out the name of my hotel. She didn’t say anything. On the way up I kept thinking there was something I had forgotten, something I had intended to do. Then I remembered. I was to sign the contracts. I sat back and watched the El posts go back. That was one thing I didn’t have to worry about.
When we got into the lobby, I could see something glaring at me from a chair near the elevators, and I didn’t tumble at first to what it was. There had been so many glares coming my way lately that one more didn’t make much impression. But then I came out of the fog. It was Craig, my partner, that I hadn’t seen since we built the gag chicken coop up in Connecticut, and he had dug in at his place up-state. I blinked, and looked at Doris, and thought maybe that was why she had come around, or anyway had something to do with it. But she seemed as surprised as I was. He still sat there, glaring at us, and then he got up and came over. He didn’t shake hands. He started in high, and he was plenty sore. “Where’ve you been?”
“Why... right here.”
“And why here? What’s the idea of hiding out in this goddam dump? I’ve been looking for you all night, and it was just by accident that I found you. Just by accident.”
Doris cut in, meeker than I ever heard her. “Why... one of the children was threatened with measles, and Leonard came down here so he wouldn’t be quarantined.”
“Couldn’t he let somebody know?”
“He... it was only to be for a few days.”
That seemed to cool him off a little, and I tried to be friendly. “When did you get to town? I thought you were up there milking cows.”
“Never mind when I got to town, and never mind the cows. And cut the comedy. Get this.”
“I’m listening.”
“You’ve got just forty minutes to make a train, and you pay attention to what I’m telling you.”
“Shoot.”
“Alabama. You’ve heard of it?”
“Sounds familiar.”
“There’s a big government-aid railroad bridge going up down there, and we build bridges, this here Craig-Borland Company that we’ve got, even if you seem to have forgotten it. You get down there, and you get that contract.”
“Where is this bridge?”
“I got no time for that. It’s all in here, in this briefcase, the whole thing, and you can read it going down. Here’s your tickets for the two of you, and remember, you got thirty-nine minutes. When you get there, I’ll wire you our bid. I’ll put the whole thing on the wire, it’s being figured up now. The main thing now is — get there.”
“O. K. Chief.”
He turned to Doris. “And you—”
“Yes sir.”
“Listen to what I’m telling you. This is a bunch of well-bo’n South’ners dat dey grandaddy had slaves befo’ de wa’, lo’s’n lo’s o’ slaves, and they’ve got to be impressed. You hear that? You take a whole floor in that hotel, and you roll out the liquor, and you step on it. You do all the things that your bum, sassiety, high-toned, good-for-nothing upbringing has taught you how to do, and then you do it twice.”
“Booh. I know you.”
“For once in your life, maybe you can be of some use.”
“Just once?”
“If you don’t put it across, you needn’t come back.”
“We’ll put it across.”
So we put it across. They’ve got a bird in my business too, that rides the trusses while the scows are taking them out, and flies around and flaps its wings and crows whenever one of them falls in the river. But his wings didn’t get much exercise on that job, and neither did his voice. It was my trade. The river got pretty tough once or twice, and we had some close squeaks. But not one of those trusses took a dive.
But I’m ahead of my story. Craig had a paper stuck in his pocket, and after he had laid the law down he began to get sore again and remembered it. He tapped it with his finger. “And you keep in touch with me. If it hadn’t been for this, seeing your name in this paper just by accident, I wouldn’t have known where to look for you.”
He took it out and opened it, and pointed to a great big picture of me in the whiskers, and wig and cap, and bells, on the theatrical page. “Is that you?”
Doris let out a cackle that made everybody in the lobby look up. It was just a silvery peal that came from the heart, and did you good to hear it. She wasn’t laughing at me. She was laughing at Craig, and when I looked at him I had to laugh too. I had to laugh so hard I folded into one of the lobby chairs, and so did she. The look on that old hard-rock man’s face, holding up that picture, was the funniest thing I ever saw in my life, or ever hope to see.
I scrambled up and threw my stuff into a bag, and was so excited over getting back in harness that I kept singing all the time and didn’t even feel bad about it, and down in the lobby Doris called the house and we made the train. We had the drawing room, but I was out of cigarettes, and I went in the club car to get some. I would have sent the porter, but he was still making up berths, and I didn’t want to bother him. When I got back she was already tucked in, in the upper berth, and all you could see was a tousle of red hair. I undressed, got into the lower. I waited, and she didn’t say anything. I turned out my light, and still nothing from her. All you could hear was the wheels, going clickety click: They kind of beat time, and I started to sing the opening of a duet: