Once out on Broadway again she felt very merry. She stood in the middle of the street waiting for the uptown car. An occasional taxi whizzed by her. From the river on the warm wind came the long moan of a steamboat whistle. In the pit inside her thousands of gnomes were building tall brittle glittering towers. The car swooped ringing along the rails, stopped. As she climbed in she remembered swooningly the smell of Stan’s body sweating in her arms. She let herself drop into a seat, biting her lips to keep from crying out. God it’s terrible to be in love. Opposite two men with chinless bluefish faces were talking hilariously, slapping fat knees.
‘I’ll tell yer Jim it’s Irene Castle that makes the hit wid me… To see her dance the onestep juss makes me hear angels hummin.’
‘Naw she’s too skinny.’
‘But she’s made the biggest hit ever been made on Broadway.’
Ellen got off the car and walked east along the desolate empty pavements of 105th Street. A fetor of mattresses and sleep seeped out from the blocks of narrow-windowed houses. Along the gutters garbagecans stank sourly. In the shadow of a doorway a man and girl swayed tightly clamped in each other’s arms. Saying good night. Ellen smiled happily. Greatest hit on Broadway. The words were an elevator carrying her up dizzily, up into some stately height where electric light signs crackled scarlet and gold and green, where were bright roofgardens that smelled of orchids, and the slow throb of a tango danced in a goldgreen dress with Stan while handclapping of millions beat in gusts like a hailstorm about them. Greatest hit on Broadway.
She was walking up the scaling white stairs. Before the door marked Sunderland a feeling of sick disgust suddenly choked her. She stood a long time her heart pounding with the key poised before the lock. Then with a jerk she pushed the key in the lock and opened the door.
‘Strange fish, Jimmy, strange fish.’ Herf and Ruth Prynne sat giggling over plates of paté in the innermost corner of a clattery lowceilinged restaurant. ‘All the ham actors in the world seem to eat here.’
‘All the ham actors in the world live up at Mrs Sunderland’s.’
‘What’s the latest news from the Balkans?’
‘Balkans is right…’
Beyond Ruth’s black straw hat with red poppies round the crown Jimmy looked at the packed tables where faces decomposed into a graygreen blur. Two sallow hawkfaced waiters elbowed their way through the seesawing chatter of talk. Ruth was looking at him with dilated laughing eyes while she bit at a stalk of celery.
‘Whee I feel so drunk,’ she was spluttering. ‘It went straight to my head… Isnt it terrible?’
‘Well what were these shocking goingson at 105th Street?’
‘O you missed it. It was a shriek… Everybody was out in the hall, Mrs Sunderland with her hair in curlpapers, and Cassie was crying and Tony Hunter was standing in his door in pink pyjamas…’
‘Who’s he?’
‘Just a juvenile… But Jimmy I must have told you about Tony Hunter. Peculiar poissons Jimmy, peculiar poissons.’
Jimmy felt himself blushing, he bent over his place. ‘Oh is that’s what’s his trouble?’ he said stiffly.
‘Now you’re shocked, Jimmy; admit that you’re shocked.’
‘No I’m not; go ahead, spill the dirt.’
‘Oh Jimmy you’re such a shriek… Well Cassie was sobbing and the little dog was barking, and the invisible Costello was yelling Police and fainting into the arms of an unknown man in a dress suit. And Jojo was brandishing a revolver, a little nickel one, may have been a waterpistol for all I know… The only person who looked in their right senses was Elaine Oglethorpe… You know the titianhaired vision that so impressed your infant mind.’
‘Honestly Ruth my infant mind wasnt as impressed as all that.’
‘Well at last the Ogle got tired of his big scene and cried out in ringing tones, Disarm me or I shall kill this woman. And Tony Hunter grabbed the pistol and took it into his room. Then Elaine Oglethorpe made a little bow as if she were taking a curtaincall, said Well goodnight everybody, and ducked into her room cool as a cucumber… Can you picture it?’ Ruth suddenly lowered her voice, ‘But everybody in the restaurant is listening to us… And really I think its very disgusting. But the worst is yet to come. After the Ogle had banged on the door a couple of times and not gotten any answer he went up to Tony and rolling his eyes like Forbes Robertson in Hamlet put his arm round him and said Tony can a broken man crave asylum in your room for the night… Honestly I was just so shocked.’
‘Is Oglethorpe that way too?’
Ruth nodded several times.
‘Then why did she marry him?’
‘Why that girl’d marry a trolleycar if she thought she could get anything by it.’
‘Ruth honestly I think you’ve got the whole thing sized up wrong.’
‘Jimmy you’re too innocent to live. But let me finish the tragic tale… After those two had disappeared and locked the door behind them the most awful powwow you’ve ever imagined went on in the hall. Of course Cassie had been having hysterics all along just to add to the excitement. When I came back from getting her some sweet spirits of ammonia in the bathroom I found the court in session. It was a shriek. Miss Costello wanted the Oglethorpes thrown out at dawn and said she’d leave if they didn’t and Mrs Sunderland kept moaning that in thirty years of theatrical experience she’d never seen a scene like that, and the man in the dress suit who was Benjamin Arden… you know he played a character part in Honeysuckle Jim… said he thought people like Tony Hunter ought to be in jail. When I went to bed it was still going on. Do you wonder that I slept late after all that and kept you waiting, poor child, an hour in the Times Drug Store?’
Joe Harland stood in his hall bedroom with his hands in his pockets staring at the picture of The Stag at Bay that hung crooked in the middle of the verdegris wall that hemmed in the shaky iron bed. His clawcold fingers moved restlessly in the bottoms of his trousers pockets. He was talking aloud in a low even voice: ‘Oh, it’s all luck you know, but that’s the last time I try the Merivales. Emily’d have given it to me if it hadn’t been for that damned old tightwad. Got a soft spot in her heart Emily has. But none of em seem to realize that these things aren’t always a man’s own fault. It’s luck that’s all it is, and Lord knows they used to eat out of my hand in the old days.’ His rising voice grated on his ears. He pressed his lips together. You’re getting batty old man. He stepped back and forth in the narrow space between the bed and the wall. Three steps. Three steps. He went to the washstand and drank out of the pitcher. The water tasted of rank wood and sloppails. He spat the last mouthful back. I need a good tenderloin steak not water. He pounded his clenched fists together. I got to do something. I got to do something.
He put on his overcoat to hide the rip in the seat of his trousers. The frayed sleeves tickled his wrists. The dark stairs creaked. He was so weak he kept grabbing the rail for fear of falling. The old woman pounced out of a door on him in the lower hall. The rat had squirmed sideways on her head as if trying to escape from under the thin gray pompadour.
‘Meester Harland how about you pay me tree veeks rent?’
‘I’m just on my way out to cash a check now, Mrs Budkowitz. You’ve been so kind about this little matter… And perhaps it will interest you to know that I have the promise, no I may say the certainty of a very good position beginning Monday.’