(He did speak to the housekeeper, to have the pleasure of justified wrath, and he discovered, as he had guessed, that Mrs. Koreball never used the biggest hand towel more than once, and that she was, on her best days, able to get through sixteen of them.)
Even before he had noticed the Bronx-Spanish furniture, he had spied and waved to Effie May, sitting over on a couch with a fellow named Harry Burphy, whom Myron knew as a clever, competent, sometimes amusing importer, whose only fault was over-conscientiousness: he would never be content until he had seduced all the wives of all his friends. He watched them while he drank half a glass of punch. He was disturbed. Effie May was giggling helplessly, as though she were a little tipsy, and letting Burphy rub her hand against his lips . . . Myron had never thought so much of the New York husbands who made the glad cause of Freedom synonymous with Gin, and who let their wives crawl around the laps of other men. He stalked over, only the more annoyed at the innocent-eyed haste with which Burphy dropped her hand.
'Hello, Burphy. Effie! I'm afraid it's about time we were beating it. You know we're going out to dinner.'
'Oh . . . ur . . . we?' she said.
They weren't.
She was certainly not drunk, but she was voluble almost to hysteria. When they were back in their own suite, he coaxed her to lie down for a nap.
'Oh, I couldn't sleep! I feel like going somewhere and dancing! Oh, I feel won'erful!' she cried.
But she passed out as soon as she touched the pillow, and she slept heavily, hour on hour, moaning a little. He sat rigid in a straight chair by her bed, staring at her miserably. She was so desirable and young! It was vileness for her to be touched by slimy people like Burphy and the Koreball, and, he decided, it was his fault, not hers. What could she know of hotel life and hotel loafers? And he had planned nothing for her, he snarled at himself, except the beatitude of being with him when he had the time! He longed to touch her cheek with a cautious finger; there would be delight in just that frail contact. No, she must sleep. And afterwards there would be no more Burphys!
So he very sensibly went in and shaved.
When she awoke, toward eleven, he had hot coffee and cold clam juice waiting for her, and he droned, quite placidly:
'Effie, I've just been thinking that . . .'
'Oh, did I get cockeyed at Mrs. Koreball's party?'
'Oh, no, of course not, though I guess that punch had more kick than I realized.'
'She's a great sweetie, isn't she--so pretty and such fun!'
'Yes, yes, a fine woman. Look, Effie, I was just thinking: I guess you've enjoyed living in an hotel--I certainly hope so, anyway. But I wonder if there's quite enough for you to do, to keep you busy. How would it be if we took a flat, or maybe a house in the suburbs?'
'Oh, I . . .'
'Of course we'd have a first-rate maid to do all the dirty work, but still, what with ordering and maybe making up our room and visiting with the neighbours and so on, you'd have something to keep you busy.'
'Oh, but I've had so much of housework, all my life! Even times when dad could afford a hired girl, I had to help with the dishes and so on and so forth, and oh, Myron, you aren't going to send poor lil Effums back to the kitchen are you? She just loves to go to theatres and dances and restaurants and parties and all!'
'Oh, no, no, certainly not! Go to 'em just as much--evenings, the second I can get away from my office. But I mean . . . Daytimes.'
'Oh, I know, but let's wait a while yet. It's sort of fun here. But listen, honest, I didn't fall for that lil chimpanzee--Murphy or Burphy or Brophy or whatever his name was--Mrs. Koreball called him Harry--but I mean: I thought he was just silly!'
He awoke at dawn, thinking coldly.
'No. She's good and honest and kind. She has a real happy nature. But she has nothing in herself, in her mind, to keep her occupied. And she could never, possibly, hold down a job, the way Miss Absolom and the Wild Widow and Tansy Quill could . . . That's darn curious, that the three women that have impressed me should have been a Jewish school-teacher, prob'ly from one of these international Jewish families that are interested in music and painting the way I am in stew-pans, and a grocery-demonstrator old enough to be my aunt, and a quadroon chambermaid! Oh, and then Effie for the fourth--four in all, of course, not three.
'And it was my fault. Effie never for a second pretended to be anything she wasn't. And I am crazy about her! Apparently just wanting to kiss a woman is a bigger bond in marriage than brains or virtue or beauty or any other darn thing! And she is so kind and good. I've got to coax her into a real home, away from these alimony-leeches. I wonder if it will keep me from making my resort inn? Well, if it does. . . .'
The candy and cakes and fruit in syrup, the chocolate with whipped cream and coffee with four lumps of sugar, the hot rolls and fat mutton chops and heaps of hashed brown potatoes, which the healthy Black Thread appetite of Effie relished and for which idleness gave her time, were all in competition with massage, with massage a bad second. Daily Effie May weighed herself in the bathroom and wailed, 'Oh, I'm getting terribly plump! I must diet!' And didn't.
She still saw enough of Bertha Spinney and of Mrs. Koreball, though she was less naive and more suspicious about the innumerable Harry Burphys. And if she was still bored, now and then, she was rewarded for having to be that popular martyr of the era, a Bird in a Gilded Cage, by the admiration of her family when they descended from Black Thread.
Julia, with Willis and young, came, not very much invited, to spend a fortnight with her before Christmas, and Julia, an authority, said that the Weagle suite was 'simply elegant--so much taste'. She treated Effie May almost with respect. Herbert, with wife and young, offered themselves as guests for the following Easter vacation. Herbert insisted that Myron stop shilly-shallying now, and produce that large and well-paid hotel job right away, as he had promised. (Myron did not remember promising it.) He let it be known that he had been ever so generous; he had given Myron his own sister, he had forgiven Myron for not being a Yale Man, and he had made a point of cutting out every reference to hotel affairs in the newspapers and mailing them to Myron.
Myron reflected that there are so many people in the world who are eager to do for you things that you do not wish done, provided only that you will do for them things you don't wish to do. He made a plot, with the not-too-unwilling Alec Monlux, now manager of a large residential hotel in Yonkers. Alec came calling, affected to be awed by Herbert's training and vocabulary, and offered him the position of assistant manager of the hotel. It was, he said unenthusiastically, a hard job. The last three occupants had died of overwork or had committed suicide, and for that reason they needed a man with Herbert's powers of philosophy. Herbert looked anxious but flattered until, after several acts of comedy, Alec led up to the climax, which was that Herbert's salary would be thirty dollars a week.
Herbert did not come to New York again for a year, and when Effie 'ran up' to Black Thread next summer, Myron went with her for only forty-eight hours, of which he spent thirty-two with his mother.
Most of that summer, a year after their marriage, Effie May loafed through at Frigate Haven Manor, a vast wooden pile of an hotel on the South Shore of Long Island. Myron came out only for week-ends, but Bertha Spinney had joined her, and all summer they munched candy, napped on the beach, yawned on the porch, giggled at flattery, and read novels about sheikhs and civil engineers.