Captain McAvoy of the tugboat Prudence stood in the pilothouse with one hand on the wheel. In the other he held a piece of biscuit he had just dipped into a cup of coffee that stood on the shelf beside the binnacle. He was a wellset man with bushy eyebrows and a bushy black mustache waxed at the tips. He was about to put the piece of coffeesoaked biscuit into his mouth when something black dropped and hit the water with a thudding splash a few yards off the bow. At the same moment a man leaning out of the engineroom door shouted, ‘A guy juss jumped offn de bridge.’
‘God damn it to hell,’ said Captain McAvoy dropping his piece of biscuit and spinning the wheel. The strong ebbtide whisked the boat round like a straw. Three bells jangled in the engineroom. A negro ran forward to the bow with a boathook.
‘Give a hand there Red,’ shouted Captain McAvoy.
After a tussle they landed a long black limp thing on the deck. One bell. Two bells, Captain McAvoy frowning and haggard spun the tug’s nose into the current again.
‘Any life in him Red?’ he asked hoarsely. The negro’s face was green, his teeth were chattering.
‘Naw sir,’ said the redhaired man slowly. ‘His neck’s broke clear off.’
Captain McAvoy sucked a good half of his mustache into his mouth. ‘God damn it to hell,’ he groaned. ‘A pretty thing to happen on a man’s wedding day.’
SECOND SECTION
1 Great Lady on a White Horse
Morning clatters with the first L train down Allen Street. Daylight rattles through the windows, shaking the old brick houses, splatters the girders of the L structure with bright confetti.
The cats are leaving the garbage cans, the chinches are going back into the walls, leaving sweaty limbs, leaving the grimetender necks of little children asleep. Men and women stir under blankets and bedquilts on mattresses in the corners of rooms, clots of kids begin to untangle to scream and kick.
At the corner of Riverton the old man with the hempen beard who sleeps where nobody knows is putting out his picklestand. Tubs of gherkins, pimentos, melonrind, piccalilli give out twining vines and cold tendrils of dank pepperyfragrance that grow like a marshgarden out of the musky bedsmells and the rancid clangor of the cobbled awakening street.
The old man with the hempen beard who sleeps where nobody knows sits in the midst of it like Jonah under his gourd.
Jimmy Herf walked up four creaky flights and knocked at a white door fingermarked above the knob where the name Sunderland appeared in old English characters on a card neatly held in place by brass thumbtacks. He waited a long while beside a milkbottle, two creambottles, and a copy of the Sunday Times. There was a rustle behind the door and the creak of a step, then no more sound. He pushed a white button in the doorjamb.
‘An he said, Margie I’ve got a crush on you so bad, an she said, Come in outa the rain, you’re all wet…’ Voices coming down the stairs, a man’s feet in button shoes, a girl’s feet in sandals, pink silk legs; the girl in a fluffy dress and a Spring Maid hat; the young man had white edging on his vest and a green, blue, and purple striped necktie.
‘But you’re not that kind of a girl.’
‘How do you know what kind of a girl I am?’
The voices trailed out down the stairs.
Jimmy Herf gave the bell another jab.
‘Who is it?’ came a lisping female voice through a crack in the door.
‘I want to see Miss Prynne please.’
Glimpse of a blue kimono held up to the chin of a fluffy face. ‘Oh I don’t know if she’s up yet.’
‘She said she would be.’
‘Look will you please wait a second to let me make my getaway,’ she tittered behind the door. ‘And then come in. Excuse us but Mrs Sunderland thought you were the rent collector. They sometimes come on Sunday just to fool you.’ A smile coyly bridged the crack in the door.
‘Shall I bring in the milk?’
‘Oh do and sit down in the hall and I’ll call Ruth.’ The hall was very dark; smelled of sleep and toothpaste and massagecream; across one corner a cot still bore the imprint of a body on its rumpled sheets. Straw hats, silk eveningwraps, and a couple of men’s dress overcoats hung in a jostling tangle from the staghorns of the hatrack. Jimmy picked a corsetcover off a rockingchair and sat down. Women’s voices, a subdued rustling of people dressing, Sunday newspaper noises seeped out through the partitions of the different rooms.
The bathroom door opened; a stream of sunlight reflected out of a pierglass cut the murky hall in half, out of it came a head of hair like copper wire, bluedark eyes in a brittle-white eggshaped face. Then the hair was brown down the hall above a slim back in a tangerine-colored slip, nonchalant pink heels standing up out of the bathslippers at every step.
‘Ou-ou, Jimmee…’ Ruth was yodling at him from behind her door. ‘But you mustn’t look at me or at my room.’ A head in curlpapers stuck out like a turtle’s.
‘Hullo Ruth.’
‘You can come in if you promise not to look… I’m a sight and my room’s a pigeon… I’ve just got to do my hair. Then I’ll be ready.’ The little gray room was stuffed with clothes and photographs of stage people. Jimmy stood with his back to the door, some sort of silky stuff that dangled from the hook tickling his ears.
‘Well how’s the cub reporter?’
‘I’m on Hell’s Kitchen… It’s swell. Got a job yet Ruth?’
‘Um-um… A couple of things may materialize during the week. But they wont. Oh Jimmy I’m getting desperate.’ She shook her hair loose of the crimpers and combed out the new mousybrown waves. She had a pale startled face with a big mouth and blue underlids. ‘This morning I knew I ought to be up and ready, but I just couldn’t. It’s so discouraging to get up when you haven’t got a job… Sometimes I think I’ll go to bed and just stay there till the end of the world.’
‘Poor old Ruth.’
She threw a powderpuff at him that covered his necktie and the lapels of his blue serge suit with powder. ‘Dont you poor old me you little rat.’
‘That’s a nice thing to do after all the trouble I took to make myself look respectable… Darn your hide Ruth. And the smell of the carbona not off me yet.’
Ruth threw back her head with a shrieking laugh. ‘Oh you’re so comical Jimmy. Try the whisk-broom.’
Blushing he blew down his chin at his tie. ‘Who’s the funny-looking girl opened the halldoor?’
‘Shush you can hear everything through the partition… that’s Cassie,’ she whispered giggling. ‘Cassah-ndrah Wilkins… used to be with the Morgan Dancers. But we oughtnt to laugh at her, she’s very nice. I’m very fond of her.’ She let out a whoop of laughter. ‘You nut Jimmy.’ She got to her feet and punched him in the muscle of his arm. ‘You always make me act like I was crazy.’
‘God did that… No but look, I’m awfully hungry. I walked up.’
‘What time is it?’
‘It’s after one.’
‘Oh Jimmy I don’t know what to do about time… Like this hat?… Oh I forgot to tell you. I went to see Al Harrison yesterday. It was simply dreadful… If I hadnt got to the phone in time and threatened to call the police…’
‘Look at that funny woman opposite. She’s got a face exactly like a llama.’