“That was from downstairs,” she said. “Come on. If I don’t go now, I won’t get out all evening.” And she edged me aside and closed the door behind us.
“Wait a minute,” I said surlily, “are you giving me the bum’s rush, or what?” But looking at her face, I wondered if it really was paler than it had been a little while ago, or did I just imagine it?
“Don’t fight with me now, Wade,” she pleaded huskily. “Come downstairs with me; it’ll be all right.”
“Yeah, but you’re going to a party; why couldn’t I have waited in the place for you until you got back?” I insisted.
“You come with me,” she said then. “Anything, anything — only don’t stand here!” Suddenly the little white light had gone out.
I suppose that, all unwittingly, I had just practiced a form of blackmail on her; I don’t imagine she had intended me to go to the party with her at all. She crossed the corridor a little to the left of the elevator shaft and flung open the door to the emergency staircase.
“Aren’t you going to wait for the elevator?” I asked.
“Get it from the floor below,” she answered, and started down the cement steps. The staircase door began to drift back after her on its heavy hinges. “Don’t stand there, Wade, don’t stand there!” she called back hollowly. I went after her and down the first five or six steps and then, at shoulder-level to the floor, stopped to glance back over my shoulder. The elevator door, to the right and now hidden from me, shot open and slapped a big gob of honey-colored light across the checkered tiled flooring to the base of the wall, and all the way up it. And set right in the middle of this light, like a design in a stained-glass window, was a shadow that looked like a hydra or centipede or octopus, with many legs, one thick body, and then on top of that, numerous heads. Or in other words, a group of people standing so closely together in the car as to be indistinguishable. Before they could move or separate, the lazy staircase door finally reached the end of its arc and fitted noiselessly back into place, wiping the corridor out. I turned again and went on down and joined Bernice on the floor below. She had been holding the door down there open for me, but more out of anxiety than politeness, I could tell.
“I told you not to stand there,” she said. “People don’t use the emergency staircase — they’d know right away—”
And giving the door into my keeping, she went over and pushed the button, summoning the elevator. It came at once, having only to descend from the floor above, and when we stepped in there were still layers of haze in it and an odor of rancid cigars. I looked down at the floor, but all there was there was a celluloid toothpick some one had dropped.
“I moved down to the floor below,” Bernice explained derisively to the car operator. “Sure; cut a hole in the floor and dropped through with my chum here. And I went out hours ago, get that straight.” And then, turning to me, she said quite audibly, “Give him something.”
I felt like saying, “Why should Harlem fatten on the peccadilloes of Fifty-Fifth Street?” But I gave him a one-dollar bill folded over many times to look like a whole lot more. By the time he got through disentangling it, we would be far away.
“It’s on Fifty-Fourth,” she said to me as we left the door.
“Let’s walk it,” I suggested affably.
She looked at me thunderstruck. “You’re with Bernice, Wade,” she reminded me.
So we got in a taxi and it started west, that being the kind of a street Fifty-Fifth was. And came to Sixth Avenue and couldn’t turn left on account of an opening (or maybe it was a closing) at the Ziegfeld Theater. Then when we came to Seventh, the driver ignored it for reasons best known to himself, and proceeded blithely on to Broadway. “What was the matter with Seventh?” I inquired through the glass shutter.
“If you coulda made a turn there, you’re a wizard,” he informed me.
“Why, I coulda swung a Mack truck and three coal barges around in the room you had,” I said.
“Oh, let him alone,” Bernice said irritably. “What difference does one block more make?”
I could’ve answered that easily, knowing just what amount I had in my pocket, but preferred not to.
When we came to Broadway, no left turns were allowed. We stood there helplessly, while the whole of New York north of Fifty-Ninth Street filed by in conveyances of one sort or another. When the migration had been thoroughly completed, and not until then, we were allowed through. By the time we reached Eighth Avenue, I was fully prepared to lean out and swerve the wheel left with my own hands, even if it caused a collision, but the driver finally turned it himself. He then turned his head, bestowed a glance of approbation on Bernice’s legs, and inquired of them, “What number did you say, lady?”
“Here I am, up here, not down there,” she instructed him, and gave him the address a second time.
“That’s over by Third,” he commented philosophically.
So that to reach Third Avenue from Sixth, we had to go as far as Eighth and then double back. It’s incredible, but then it’s New York.
My money had dropped behind the meter before we had even got as far as Sixth a second time. When we finally got out in front of the place we were going to, I was a dollar and a half short. So I told him to wait, and I went in to find the doorman, because it was one of those new buildings that have their doormen engaged before the steel beams are even up. But none was in sight. Meanwhile Bernice was powdering her face in front of a glass hanging on the wall. So I went out again to the driver and explained matters to him. I did this merely as a matter of form, expecting momentarily to have to repeat the story to a policeman. To my, not only surprise but almost consternation, he didn’t even suggest such a thing. “I know the lady you got with you pretty well by sight,” he explained, “I often pick her up in front of her house.” There was a camaraderie about this that I didn’t exactly like, but my hands were tied, so to speak. “I mean, as a fare,” he assured me. “My stand’s on her corner.” I had to ignore the unintentional impudence of his attempting to reassure me as to Bernice’s loyalty, or whatever you want to call it. I gave him my name and address, and corroborated it by producing a number of envelopes and papers from my inside pocket. He wrote it down and said he would stop by for the balance of the fare the next time he was “out that way.”
“No, no,” I interposed, “this is just to show you who I am; so you’ll know I’m on the level. I’ll give it to you at your stand, on the corner.”
“Yeah, but suppose I’m not there?” he objected.
But I was sick of him by now, so I said, “I’ll find you, don’t worry,” and went in to Bernice. She was doing a tap dance on one leg, holding her dress up to her thighs.
We went up in an automatic elevator to the roof, passed under the open sky for an instant, and then were indoors again in a one-story stucco bungalow. No one came forward to greet us. Bernice suddenly left my side, opened a door revealing a bedroom with white furniture and pink hangings, and went in with the remark, “You go in there.” I couldn’t make out where there might be, so I stayed where I was and waited for her.
Shortly afterward, a beautiful, unprepossessing, black-haired person passed beyond an open doorway at the back of the dwelling and glanced casually out. My presence didn’t register in time to halt her progress at the moment, but a second later she was back again for another look, had turned, and was coming toward me. She bore a length of white stuff sewn with glass along with her, but it didn’t hide anything of much importance. “Didn’t Jerry give you your money yet?” she remarked irritably.