‘It’s on account of her I have to keep my shades drawn all the time…’
‘Why?’
‘Oh you’re much too young to know. You’d be shocked Jimmy.’ Ruth was leaning close to the mirror running a stick of rouge between her lips.
‘So many things shock me, I dont see that it matters much… But come along let’s get out of here. The sun’s shining outside and people are coming out of church and going home to overeat and read at their Sunday papers among the rubberplants…’
‘Oh Jimmy you’re a shriek… Just one minute. Look out you’re hooked onto my best shimmy.’
A girl with short black hair in a yellow jumper was folding the sheets off the cot in the hall. For a second under the ambercolored powder and the rouge Jimmy did not recognize the face he had seen through the crack in the door.
‘Hello Cassie, this is… Beg pardon, Miss Wilkins this is Mr Herf. You tell him about the lady across the airshaft, you know Sappo the Monk.’
Cassandra Wilkins lisped and pouted. ‘Isn’t she dweadful Mr Herf… She says the dweadfullest things.’
‘She merely does it to annoy.’
‘Oh Mr Herf I’m so pleased to meet you at last, Ruth does nothing but talk about you… Oh I’m afwaid I was indiscweet to say that… I’m dweadfully indiscweet.’
The door across the hall opened and Jimmy found himself looking in the white face of a crookednosed man whose red hair rode in two unequal mounds on either side of a straight part. He wore a green satin bathrobe and red morocco slippers.
‘What heow Cassahndrah?’ he said in a careful Oxford drawl. ‘What prophecies today?’
‘Nothing except a wire from Mrs Fitzsimmons Green. She wants me to go to see her at Scarsdale tomorrow to talk about the Gweenery Theater… Excuse me this is Mr Herf, Mr Oglethorpe.’ The redhaired man raised one eyebrow and lowered the other and put a limp hand in Jimmy’s.
‘Herf, Herf… Let me see, it’s not a Georgiah Herf? In Atlahnta there’s an old family of Herfs…’
‘No I dont think so.’
‘Too bad. Once upon a time Josiah Herf and I were boon companions. Today he is the president of the First National Bank and leading citizen of Scranton Pennsylvahnia and I… a mere mountebank, a thing of rags and patches.’ When he shrugged his shoulders the bathrobe fell away exposing a flat smooth hairless chest.
‘You see Mr Oglethorpe and I are going to do the Song of Songs. He weads it and I interpwet it in dancing. You must come up and see us wehearse sometime.’
‘Thy navel is like a round goblet which wanteth not liquor, thy belly is like a heap of wheat set about with lilies…’
‘Oh dont begin now.’ She tittered and pressed her legs together.
‘Jojo close that door,’ came a quiet deep girl’s voice from inside the room.
‘Oh poo-er deah Elaine, she wants to sleep . . So glahd to have met you, Mr Herf.’
‘Jojo!’
‘Yes my deah…’
Through the leaden drowse that cramped him the girl’s voice set Jimmy tingling. He stood beside Cassie constrainedly without speaking in the dingydark hall. A smell of coffee and singeing toast seeped in from somewhere. Ruth came up behind them.
‘All right Jimmy I’m ready… I wonder if I’ve forgotten anything.’
‘I dont care whether you have or not, I’m starving.’ Jimmy took hold of her shoulders and pushed her gently towards the door. ‘It’s two o’clock.’
‘Well goodby Cassie dear, I’ll call you up at about six.’
‘All wight Wuthy… So pleased to have met you Mr Herf.’ The door closed on Cassie’s tittering lisp.
‘Wow, Ruth that place gives me the infernal jimjams.’
‘Now Jimmy dont get peevish because you need food.’
‘But tell me Ruth, what the hell is Mr Oglethorpe? He beats anything I ever saw.’
‘Oh did the Ogle come out of his lair?’ Ruth let out a whoop of laughter. They came out into grimy sunlight. ‘Did he tell you he was of the main brawnch, dontcher know, of the Oglethorpes of Georgiah?’
‘Is that lovely girl with copper hair his wife?’
‘Elaine Oglethorpe has reddish hair. She’s not so darn lovely either… She’s just a kid and she’s upstage as the deuce already. All because she made a kind of a hit in Peach Blossoms. You know one of these tiny exquisite bits everybody makes such a fuss over. She can act all right.’
‘It’s a shame she’s got that for a husband.’
‘Ogle’s done everything in the world for her. If it hadnt been for him she’d still be in the chorus…’
‘Beauty and the beast.’
‘You’d better look out if he sets his lamps on you Jimmy.’
‘Why?’
‘Strange fish, Jimmy, strange fish.’
An Elevated train shattered the barred sunlight overhead. He could see Ruth’s mouth forming words.
‘Look,’ he shouted above the diminishing clatter. ‘Let’s go have brunch at the Campus and then go for a walk on the Palisades.’
‘You nut Jimmy what’s brunch?’
‘You’ll eat breakfast and I’ll eat lunch.’
‘It’ll be a scream.’ Whooping with laughter she put her arm in his. Her silvernet bag knocked against his elbow as they walked.
‘And what about Cassie, the mysterious Cassandra?’
‘You mustn’t laugh at her, she’s a peach… If only she wouldn’t keep that horrid little white poodle. She keeps it in her room and it never gets any exercise and it smells something terrible. She has that little room next to mine… Then she’s got a steady…’ Ruth giggled. ‘He’s worse than the poodle. They’re engaged and he borrows all her money away from her. For Heaven’s sake dont tell anybody.’
‘I don’t know anybody to tell.’
‘Then there’s Mrs Sunderland…’
‘Oh yes I got a glimpse of her going into the bathroom - an old lady in a wadded dressing gown with a pink boudoir cap on.’
‘Jimmy you shock me… She keeps losing her false teeth,’ began Ruth; an L train drowned out the rest. The restaurant door closing behind them choked off the roar of wheels on rails.
An orchestra was playing When It’s Appleblossom Time in Normandee. The place was full of smokewrithing slants of sunlight, paper festoons, signs announcing LOBSTERS ARRIVE DAILY, EAT CLAMS NOW, TRY OUR DELICIOUS FRENCH STYLE STEAMED MUSSLES (Recommended by the Department of Agriculture). They sat down under a redlettered placard BEEFSTEAK PARTIES UPSTAIRS and Ruth made a pass at him with a breadstick. ‘Jimmy do you think it’d be immoral to eat scallops for breakfast? But first I’ve got to have coffee coffee coffee…’
‘I’m going to eat a small steak and onions.’
‘Not if you’re intending to spend the afternoon with me, Mr Herf.’
‘Oh all right. Ruth I lay my onions at your feet.’
‘That doesn’t mean I’m going to let you kiss me.’
‘What… on the Palisades?’ Ruth’s giggle broke into a whoop of laughter. Jimmy blushed crimson. ‘I never axed you maam, he sayed.’
Sunlight dripped in her face through the little holes in the brim of her straw hat. She was walking with brisk steps too short on account of her narrow skirt; through the thin china silk the sunlight tingled like a hand stroking her back. In the heavy heat streets, stores, people in Sunday clothes, strawhats, sunshades, surfacecars, taxis, broke and crinkled brightly about her grazing her with sharp cutting glints as if she were walking through piles of metalshavings. She was groping continually through a tangle of gritty sawedged brittle noise.
At Lincoln Square a girl rode slowly through the traffic on a white horse; chestnut hair hung down in even faky waves over the horse’s chalky rump and over the giltedged saddlecloth where in green letters pointed with crimson, read DANDERINE. She had on a green Dolly Varden hat with a crimson plume; one hand in a white gauntlet nonchalantly jiggled at the reins, in the other wabbled a goldknobbed riding crop.