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A Room in Dodge City: A Novel-in-Vignettes
David Leo Rice
©2017 Alternating Current Press

All prose and artwork in A Room in Dodge City is the property of its
respective creators and may not be used or reprinted in any manner
without express permission from the artist, author, or publisher,
except for the quotation of short passages used inside of an article,
criticism, or review. Printed in the United States of America. All rights
reserved. All material in A Room in Dodge City is printed with
permission.

Alternating Current
Boulder, Colorado
press.alternatingcurrentarts.com

First Print Edition: February 2017

First Digital Edition: March 2017

For Ingrid and my parents,

with love.
One morning I woke up in a room in the nation’s heart, and couldn’t
think for the life of me what I was doing, or where to start.
—Augie March,
“Addle Brains”

I’m so sorry … my
spirit’s rarely in my
body … it wanders
through the dry
country … looking for a
good place to rest.
—Sparklehorse,
“Hundreds of Sparrows”
 Table of Contents
Prologue: Arrival in Dodge City
Phase I: Spring, Early Days
I Meet Drifter Jim on His Way out of Town
I Meet Big Pharmakos Rehearsing His Comedy Act
Professor Dalton’s Speech: Convocation of Drifters
At the Bar with Big Pharmakos
I Encounter an In-Demand Crucifix in the Bathroom
Along the Highway, toward the Dalton Event
I Meet the Boy Sparklehorse, on Vacation from the Dead
The Spa of the Lamb
In the Bone Room with the Silent Professor
The Lucian Freud Exhibit at Dodge City High
Phase II: Summer, the Night Crusher
Gottfried Benn Ices the Party
Saga of Dead Hand and Industry Ed
Work Camp
Keeping an Eye on Lazy Eye
Enter Night Crusher and Unholy Family
The Night Crusher in Action; My Fairy Godmother
The Pagan Dodge City
An Emergency Stop in the City of Motel 6s
Through the Peephole
A Motel 6 Bible Buffet, a Murderer on Trial, and a Rooftop Journey in
Motel 6 Pajamas
Rooftop Journey past Rows of Rubbery Houses with Masked Men
Inside
Someone’s Stealing Big Pharmakos’ Comedian Persona
Phase III: Autumn, the Inspector
Apportioning the Suicide Cemetery
The Funeral of Harry Crews
Beasts in a Prayer-Meadow and a Litany of Alterna-Faulkners
A Hasty Verschönerung
Another Sacrifice
Phase IV: A Hard Winter
Our Christmas Bullheads Speak Molloy
The Year in Evil
“Would You Like to Go Someplace Else?”
Escape from Red Chamber
A Burnt House
A Crime in the Steam Room
Phase V: The Dodge City Folklore
A Trip to the Library
Entry I: The Baby
Entry II: Diary of a Country Strangler
Entry III: The Amateur Funeral
Summer of Son of Suicide Sam
Phase VI: The Desert
Internethead’s History of The Dodge City Genocide
Into the Desert
A Suicide Note with One Exception
Deeper into Desert, Deeper into Movies
Suicide Same’s Rejects
Phase VII: Back to Town
The Video Market
Big Pharmakos on WTF w/ Marc Maron
The Intestine
A Disturbance in The Dodge City Pornography
At Dead Sir with the Night Crusher: Goodbye to My Material
Blood Drive and Incest Father: Season Premiere of Unholy Family
Epilogue: Roll Call; My Incorporation
About the Author
About the Artist
Author Acknowledgments / Colophon
Advance Praise
 Prologue: Arrival in Dodge City
IT’S 6 A.M. I’m lying on a bench in a Bus Station, the only traveler
to have gotten off here, staring across the concourse at the
shuttered café, imagining it open, myself outfitted with a coffee and
two rubbery muffins alone at one of its tables, waiting for the bus
that’ll take me somewhere else.

I’ve given up on all the people and engagements in the last phase of
my life in order to come here, just as, before that, I gave up on the
previous set of people and engagements in order to go there, and
before that, and before that …

After cashing out of the last situation, I have enough saved to lay
low for a year or two, depending on the cheapness of life in this
Town. Longer if I earn anything, as I sometimes end up doing. I’ve
always lived like this, heading ever Westward, away from whatever
places and people I’ve happened to come in contact with. This has,
so far, seemed the only viable attitude to adopt toward being mortal,
which I’ve been told I am.

So as to keep open the option of return, however, I always scrape

together some Material from the places I used to live, mostly trash—
old files, receipts, envelopes with addresses on them. A sort of
homemade folklore, these documents serve as my way out if I get
too deep into any city or Town I come to. Proof, when I need it, that
there are other places. Or were, anyway.

The announcer rattles on overhead. Coins start falling into vending

machines, candy into hands. People are lining up for the payphone. I
fall asleep on my belly on my suitcase on the bench.

I WAKE UP with two hands in my front pockets, each squeezing

one ball, massaging cancer into them.
It’s sad to abandon the impression of both hands belonging to one
person, though now I can see it isn’t so. It makes me not want to
wake up, back into the common space that dictates how things
really are.

“We did this in order to help you,” one says.

“We had to flip you in order to achieve it,” says the other. “We
almost lost you.”

I thank them as they retract their hands.

It’s past noon. On the TV by the Arrivals Board, they’re getting ready
to execute what looks like a teenager. I hurry out of the Station
before they go through with it.

NOW, to find a Hotel with a weekly rate.

As it turns out, not too surprisingly, there’s only one downtown, and
the Motel 6 way up the Strip doesn’t seem the place to start. So I
cross the Town Square, where a few old people are feeding pigeons,
and climb the stairs to the Hotel Lobby.

THE PORTER HAS SHOWN me to my Room. Check-in went well,

unless I missed its undertones.

The Room, after the porter’s gone, is perfect. Comparatively big and
comfortable, and replete with hiding places for my Material: panels
that peel up, compartments under the rug, safes, deep back sections
of closet.

Planning to take a nap before I parcel out the pieces, a wet, soapy
washcloth draped over my nose and mouth like an ether rag, I
wonder if, at the Front Desk, they could tell exactly what I’d come
here for and assigned me this Room accordingly, or if every Room in
this Hotel is exactly the same, every guest just like me.

I can tell it’s not a question I’m likely to make much headway on or
probably even remember when I wake up.

AT SOME POINT, I wake up and hide my Material. Then I lie back

down and listen as the fact of my arrival begins to seep from my
Blood into my bones.

It sounds like a slow boil, the way a swarm of bees on sugar looks.
Phase I: Spring, Early Days
 I Meet Drifter Jim on His Way out of Town
AFTER HOURS of daytime sleep, I tramp barefoot into the hall for a
pack of gum.

Scraping the vending machine’s money-slot with my outstretched

fingers, I notice a large man coming my way. I turn to meet him. He
towers, a hawk-talon necklace around his neck and green leather
boots sunk into the carpeting.

He introduces himself as Drifter Jim, claims he’s killed one thousand

men and sired one thousand sons here in Dodge City. I ask him if he
feels he’s broken even.

He laughs and shakes his head. “Not even close, young friend.”

I wait for him to continue.

“Headed out,” he continues. “Bus in two hours. Far as Denver and

from there don’t ask.”

A look passes between us like we each understand that a changing

of the guards is taking place, and that to mention it aloud would,
rather than confirm our mutual understanding, leave us both empty-
handed.

So I wish him well and return to my Room, to fall asleep with a

mouthful of gum and the dream that I’ve replaced him.
I Meet Big Pharmakos Rehearsing His Comedy
Act
THE NEXT MORNING I come downstairs after a first shower and
shave—jaw sore from the gum I fell asleep chewing and swallowed
at some point—eager to see about breakfast. The sound of my
Material boiling has already fallen beneath my notice, mixed in with
the pipes and the radiator.

I pause to let two guys wheeling a slot machine go by. I decide to

follow them, see where they’re wheeling it. They’re wheeling it into
a Function Room, through some frosted glass doors behind the Front
Desk.

This must be where the breakfast buffet is held, but it looks like I
missed it. I scan the walls for a clock but don’t find one, and
remember that in Casinos there aren’t any.

The guys plug in the slot machine next to two others. It lights up
and starts to warble for cash. Behind me, an amplified voice says,
“And he says, ‘For my third wish, I’d like for half my head to be an
orange.’”

I turn around to see a giant wearing a white satin suit and alligator
loafers standing on a low stage, rocking from one heel to another
like he’s waiting for some furious circus animal to be released and
come running for his crotch.

He’s so big the mic disappears inside his fist, the cord sticking out
like the tail of a crushed rat.

“This a Casino?”

“Yup,” he replies. “Whenever they wheel that shit in. Fine by me. I
get to do my act, since people are in here and they have to listen.
What else can they do, right? Except gamble.”
I look him over. “What’s your act?”

“Comedian. You know. Road-torment, highest of highs and lowest of

lows, unmanning, degradation, dubious and truncated euphoria.
That whole sort of thing.”

He climbs down from the stage, still choking the mic. At the end of
the cord’s reach, he offers me his other hand. “Big Pharmakos. Some
folks call me Big Pharma, but you don’t look like the type.”

I shrug and take his hand, which covers mine so that it disappears
as thoroughly as the mic.

“I was the Main Pimp in this Hotel,” he says. “Before The Dodge City
Gene Pool became fully Porn-based. Still get a few Flesh-lovers once
in a while, like Drifter Jim and …”

Letting my hand go, he pulls out a card, forks it over. It has a photo
of a skeleton with a circle around the pelvic region, his email address
written inside an arrow pointing at that circle.

I put it in my pocket.

As I leave, I hear him clearing his throat back on stage, simpering to

an imaginary crowd: “Okay, okay, now where was I … So anyway,
there’s this other guy in the car, too, next to Orangehead, not the
dead one, and not the living one, either, but the one that …”
 Professor Dalton’s Speech: Convocation of
Drifters
SUPINE IN MY ROOM, Room-Service breakfast polished off, I
sleep through the day and the following night.

After the smoke of a few preliminary dreams has cleared, I see a

body of water and the hooded shapes of Pilgrims.

I fall into step with them, skirting the shoreline, slowly coming to
realize, or believe, that I’m really here, not dreaming. At the very
least, it’s the type of dream that occurs in a genuine dream-place,
shared with others, not in the usual mess of images squirted into me
alone. So that when we wake, we’ll all agree on what happened and
remember it accordingly.

As we process onward, I have the sense that we’re all Drifters,

everyone newly arrived, washed by a tide into Dodge City where
we’ll now be counted present, however tenuously and for however
brief a time.

The air is warm, going on hot. Across the water, I see the lights of a
city that just keeps growing. It becomes a heaving, sweaty Port, a
place of foul and libidinous disembarkation. Ships are pulling into its
harbor, and the path we follow toward it grows ever more crowded
the closer we come.

In a brutish Holy Holy Holy kind of rhythm, they chant the name of
Professor Barry Dalton. It takes a while to notice that I’m chanting
along with them.

WINDING AROUND toward the Port, I am overcome by

exhaustion. I see a bed of leaves and moss by the riverside, under a
willow, and go toward it, thinking, I’ll just sleep for fifteen minutes.
As I’m taking off my shoes in the moss, yawning, I consider the
subject of Time. I’m still young, I reason, and have never known
what it is not to be. As I stretch out on the moss, I picture myself as
an old man, in a building somewhere in Town, in a chair with a
blanket pulled up to my chin and a wool cap down over my ears, a
cup of cool tea beside me, the bag in a little saucer beside it.
Perhaps then, as I spend day after day poring over my life, backing
toward its end, my only regret will be: why did I sleep for fifteen
minutes when I was young?

SO I CATCH UP with the Pilgrims and follow them into the Port in
the distance, resolving first into the Port of Dodge City and then just
Dodge City itself, no longer a Port once we’ve arrived.

“Looks bigger from far away,” I hear someone mutter, and I nod.

In the Town Square, we form a crowd beneath the platform upon

which Professor Dalton stands.

“Welcome, Nameless Ones,” he begins.

His voice is such that no one can be anywhere near it and maintain
a single private thought. Not even packed in ice for later. All
distraction, all inner randomness and diaspora, dries up. We’re
riveted, listening in arctic stasis.

I feel him excavating the Subterranean Architecture of Dodge City,

revealing it for a moment so that we might know, even if we’ll soon
forget, the true nature of where we are. At the same time, I feel the
structures of my former life, from all the places I passed through on
my way here, being ground down to stock material and pushed into
an expanse of unlit oily water on the Edge of Town.

I’m reduced to two ears glued to the sides of a bowl as he informs

us that we are most welcome here, so long as we banish the
thought of ever leaving.
 At the Bar with Big Pharmakos
DALTON’S VOICE DRONES monotonously like cold waves against
a Scottish coastline. All the heat is gone from the air, so when a
trickle of consciousness spills back into me, I use it to wish that I
had a thick traveler’s coat, or that I’d never come here.

The thought that the opposite is truer—that I’ll never leave—is so

discomfiting that I hurry away from the Town Square, faster than the
dispersing Drifters. The feeling of the shared dream carries with it a
sense of violation, like we all got too close too quickly, so, for the
rest of tonight at least, I’m hoping to avoid them.

I take the first backstreet I can find, running with my eyes almost
closed until I dead-end with my face against a door. A strong arm
grabs my wrist and pulls me back just as Big Pharmakos appears out
of the darkness to say, “He’s with me.”

SEEN FROM A FEW FEET AWAY, the Bar is just a nail-stuck box
on a stretch of Strip with nothing around it except a defunct Honda
dealership and an insurance storefront. The Motel 6 sign lights the
horizon like its name is VACANCY.

The Bouncer that strong-armed me is a heavyset older man in

sweatpants and a sweatshirt, a shock of white hair drooped over his
eyes. He sits on a stool with a fistful of what looks like lotto tickets
with cash mixed in, mushing everything around in a bad pantomime
of counting it.

Big Pharmakos whispers, “That’s Gibbering Pete, Chief Bouncer.

Likes to charge an entrance fee. Don’t mind him. Unless I’m doing a
set here …”
INSIDE, we take our seats and order drinks with a hand signal. I
try to ignore the obvious presence of other Drifters all around us,
trusting they’ll sink into the background as soon as I let them.

So here we are. I have a $20 bill in my shirt pocket, which I figure

I’ll lay on my coaster at the end of the night and hope for change. A
basket of peanuts with the shells on comes our way. Up on the
bandstand is a guy with an acoustic guitar and a harmonica that
keeps slipping out of its neck holder and into his shirt. I never see
him replace it, but it slips out several times.

He’s playing either an extremely slow or an extremely long cover of

John Prine’s “Sabu Visits the Twin Cities Alone.”

“Cheers,” I say, looking at the dim liquid in my glass, yawning like

I’ve already had a few.

Big Pharmakos is trying out a new joke, but I barely hear it because
my attention is tied up in a man hunched over the bar in a sleek
black jacket with silver hair down to his shoulders. I can’t take my
eyes off him. His head gets larger and smaller, like he’s pumping out
used thoughts and sucking in fresh ones in a kind of dialysis.

I begin to sweat, wondering how much thought he’s liable to move

in the course of a night, and how much his head can hold. I picture
it seeping out of him like nerve gas and wonder how long we’re
going to be here, how far my $20 will go.

Though I’ve so far only seen him from a distance, I’m pretty sure the
man is Professor Dalton, and I don’t know if I want to be around
when he opens his mouth.

I feel traumatized by his speech, cursed by it, like the extent of its
impact on my nervous system will only become clear years down the
line.
“Excuse me,” I say to Big Pharmakos, getting down from my seat to
look for the bathroom, finding I can barely walk as I pass the
Dalton-figure.
 I Encounter an In-Demand Crucifix in the
Bathroom
WHEN I GET to the bathroom, unisex, I hear a low whimpering
through the door. I wait, with some fascination, by the coat rack.

A poster hangs at eye-level that says, simply, ‘Professor Barry

Dalton.’ The bottom is frayed with tabs that read either ‘Barry’ or
‘Dalton,’ in a smaller size of the same font.

Cautiously, I tear one off, a ‘Dalton.’ I put it in my pocket, but then

take it back out. I feel better with it in my hand, where I can see it.

I EVENTUALLY NOTICE that the bathroom door has been ajar all
this time, so I push my way in.

Inside, I encounter a woman sitting on the lowered toilet seat

drenched in sweat, panting and crossing herself in a frenzy with a
gnarled Crucifix made of wire, nails, and what looks like hair,
mingling with her hair, which gets caught in its crevices as she
brings it fast and hard across her face, completing the motion time
after time.

Some of her hair comes away easily, woven into the Crucifix, as if
part of it were a wig, but only part. There appears to be some
aquatic component to this Crucifix, as well, bits of reef and seaweed.

She stops crossing herself and looks at me, exasperatedly, holding

the object between us. “There’s a sign-up list at the bar,” she says.
“You put your name down with the bartender; then you get a turn to
borrow it, fair and square.”

For some reason, I tell her the bartender’s gone home.

She looks incredulous, but then sighs and says, “Don’t matter much,
I suppose. You’d have to wait at least a year until your name came
up. Everyone’s in line.” She hefts the Crucifix proudly, closing one
eye to keep a sharp tendril from poking it out. “What’s that you got
there?” she asks, pointing to the strip of paper dangling between my
fingers.

I’d forgotten I had it. I hold it up to her now, like the fortune from a
fortune cookie.

“Dalton,” she reads. “That’s your ticket.”

I stand there mute to see what she’ll do next. She holds the Crucifix
away from me, like she thinks I’m going to make a move for it. Then
she gets up, with a squishy sweat sound as she peels herself off the
plastic toilet seat, and opens a panel in the back wall, revealing a
hallway.

“It’s going on down there,” she says. “Make sure you take the door
marked ‘Dalton,’ not the one marked ‘Barry.’ You don’t want a
Bouncer situation.”

She waits until I’m gone. I can hear her taking up the Crucifix again,
worrying over lost time and blessing my limp, which starts to feel a
little better.
 Along the Highway, toward the Dalton Event
I LEAVE the Bar, carrying my ‘Dalton.’

Bouncers in jeans and black T-shirts come out from under lit torches
recessed in the walls and glide beside me in silence. I wonder if
Gibbering Pete is their master. Perhaps he’s gibbering at them now,
through their earpieces.

Behind them, off to the sides, I hear water lapping and dripping. It’s
too dark, despite the torchlight, to tell if the Bouncers are wet or dry.

After ten or fifteen minutes, a hand grabs me between the shoulder

blades and compels me into a side-chamber, a kind of nave. “You
wait here,” its voice grumbles, and is gone, sliding some rough-
sounding panel shut, penning me in.

A DIM LIGHT buzzes on from somewhere in the ceiling. There’s a

small box on a tripod at one edge of the space, like a nickelodeon or
a Peep Show. I put my eye to the viewfinder, adjusting my lashes.

Inside, an altercation transpires between two pale men in faintly

striped shirts, almost like mimes, but neither their costumes nor
their mannerisms is quite polished enough. The film is silent, but
one man is clearly shouting at the other, spittle turning to steam on
his lips. The other has more of a slow-burning quality, staring in
silence as his enemy yells on and on, in a fit.

When he’s had enough, the slow-burning man points an unhurried

but very deliberate finger at his enemy, drawing it from left to right,
aiming at the man’s lips, as if to mime zipping them shut. But he
aims too low, and his arm’s too long: with that horizontal motion, he
slits the other man’s throat with the tip of his finger.

The slit man sputters and shakes like a protestor under a fire hose
until he’s so drenched in Blood his feet struggle to stay on the floor,
and then he topples, and, for a moment, floats like there’s a rope
around his neck.

His murderer regards his fingertip curiously, then breathes a

luxurious sigh of relief.

THE FILM REPEATS. I watch it one more time, then move on to

another, this one with subtitles:

A girl goes into a hip neighborhood café early in the morning and,
after waiting in line, is asked what she’d like for breakfast. “Warm
beer, please,” she says, to which the barista replies, “Certainly,” and
pours her a boiling coffee.

The girl takes a gigantic gulp, and her face is burned to a nub.
Slowly, as she daubs it with a napkin, a hyena face grows out of the
wreckage, like it was deemed, by the film’s Director or by some
trans-human force within the film itself, ‘the best that could be
salvaged.’

She dries the hyena face with the rest of the napkin, clutching it
inexpertly with hyena paws. “How’s your warm beer?” the barista
asks, coyly, to which the hyena replies, “A bit chilly,” and, cackling
(The subtitles say ‘cackling.’), departs.

IN THE BACK CORNER of this chamber, I find a commode stuffed

with letters addressed to “Doctor” or “Professor” Dalton. Many look
like they’ve been steamed open. I pick one up and slide out the
letter inside. It’s written in a handsome, modestly italicized cursive.
It reads:

9/19/99

Dear Professor Dalton,

I regret the length of time that has passed since last we’ve
corresponded. I can only assume that a great deal has
transpired in your life, most of it, I hope, of a salubrious
and optimistic nature. I can mostly report the same for
myself, although, as you may perhaps not know, I
committed Suicide in the summer of 1990.

It was no tremendous thing, simply a task that had to be

attended to and that I did not want hanging over me any
longer. I would have written sooner, were I not such an
inveterate procrastination-artist. Anyway, since my Suicide,
I have resided in a space that is not altogether
uncomfortable, though one could hardly call it grand. “One
ought better not expect too much from these sorts of
things,” as they say, after all.

The space, which I think of as ‘my flat’ just for the fun of it,
looks to have once been a station of some sort, a bus or
train station, although there are no tracks to be seen.
Whether it is some rendition of Heaven or Hell I cannot say.
I have the impression that it is neither, but perhaps some
decorator is still en route, and will see to it that the place is
hung with more evocative decorations soon enough.

There is a newsstand with a rack of belletristic paperbacks,

the majority of which I have by this point read. A few I was
unable to complete, while others took me by surprise with
their directness and intensity of expression. There is a food
stall in one corner that serves items such as calzones and
Hot Pockets. The women who work there wear hairnets and
call me ‘Joven.’ They have at long last agreed to serve me
coffee. There is a chronic shortage of paper napkins, but,
with patience, we persevere.

I look forward to your reply.

The signature has been redacted. I put it back in its steamed-open
envelope and feel guilty, like I’m the one who steamed it open. Then
the guilt subsides.
I Meet the Boy Sparklehorse, on Vacation from
the Dead
I PRESS further in, through an opening that leads to another
hallway, following the smell of ice cream.

On the way, a kind of sadness at the immensity of Time overtakes

me. I find that I can no longer remember how I came to Dodge City,
nor why. Any story I generate, and I try a few, feels provisional, like
I’m trying to convince a listener who long ago decided to believe
nothing I say.

I MAKE IT to the ice cream shop. I think of it as the Indoor Ice

Cream Shop, meaning that it’s inside the same complex everything’s
been in since I came to the Bar with Big Pharmakos.

I bungle my order when my turn comes. Scanning the cramped

interior for a place to sit and poking at the dish of ice cream I no
longer want, my eyes come to rest on the only table with a free
seat, a boy of eleven or twelve sitting on the other side.

I make my way over and ask the boy, who’s humming quietly and
dripping ice cream from a cracked sugar cone onto his lap, if I may
share the table with him. He nods distractedly, looking me over with
one big eye, the other turned away.

I don’t say anything until the pressure of keeping silent grows

unbearable. I break it by asking his name.

He hesitates, then replies, “Mark Linkous, of Sparklehorse fame. In

Town on break from the Dead.”

He says it like he’s on summer vacation, staying with a fun uncle. I

could be that fun uncle, I think.
Then I think of the Suicide Student who wrote to Professor Dalton,
filing this interaction away in that category. And I think of
Sparklehorse, the legendary surrealist folk singer who shot himself
through the heart in Knoxville in the spring of 2010. Arguably my
favorite musician of all time, and a large part of the reason I’m here,
wandering the country rather than living stably in any one part of it.

“Sparklehorse is gone,” he says, before I can formulate any of what

I’m thinking into anything I might say. “But, for good behavior, he’s
allowed to come back sometimes. His grown-up body is, as you
might imagine, hardly seaworthy at this point, if you’ll pardon the
metaphor, so they outfitted him back into his child one. They had to
make do.”

There’s something canned-sounding about not only his voice but his
use of words, as if they’re all fixed phrases from which he cannot
deviate, on penalty of being sent back early.

I picture the bodies of Suicides in a garage, lined up like rental cars,

an agent walking up and down the rows to see which ones are
available, and at what price.

“If you really are Sparklehorse,” I say to him, “can I ask you about
…”

But when I look up, he’s gone. I look around for a napkin dispenser
to mop up the leavings of the two ice creams, his and mine, both
now dripping from the table onto the floor. When I’ve finished
mopping, I see him through the window, waving to me from the
street.

Waving back, I wonder how much vacation time he gets. Probably

not much, I think, and then I wonder how much I’ll get, when the
time comes, if any.
Another random document with
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head; the man had a red puckered face and silver hair. He held the
dramatic section of the paper taut between two grimy flippers. “Them
young actresses all dressed naked like that.... Why cant they let you
alone.”
“Dont you like to see their pictures in the papers?”
“Why cant they let you alone I say.... If you aint got no work and
you aint got no money, what’s the good of em I say?”
“Well lots of people like to see their pictures in the paper. Used to
myself in the old days.”
“Used to be work in the old days.... You aint got no job now?” he
growled savagely. Joe Harland shook his head. “Well what the hell?
They ought to leave you alone oughtn’t they? Wont be no jobs till
snow shoveling begins.”
“What’ll you do till then?”
The old man didnt answer. He bent over the paper again screwing
up his eyes and muttering. “All dressed naked, it’s a croime I’m tellin
yez.”
Joe Harland got to his feet and walked away.
It was almost dark; his knees were stiff from sitting still so long. As
he walked wearily he could feel his potbelly cramped by his tight belt.
Poor old warhorse you need a couple of drinks to think about things.
A mottled beery smell came out through swinging doors. Inside the
barkeep’s face was like a russet apple on a snug mahogany shelf.
“Gimme a shot of rye.” The whiskey stung his throat hot and
fragrant. Makes a man of me that does. Without drinking the chaser
he walked over to the free lunch and ate a ham sandwich and an
olive. “Let’s have another rye Charley. That’s the stuff to make a man
of you. I been laying off it too much, that’s what’s the matter with me.
You wouldnt think it to look at me now, would you friend, but they
used to call me the Wizard of Wall Street which is only another
illustration of the peculiar predominance of luck in human affairs....
Yes sir with pleasure. Well, here’s health and long life and to hell with
the jinx.... Hah makes a man of you ... Well I suppose there’s not one
of you gentlemen here who hasnt at some time or other taken a
plunger, and how many of you hasnt come back sadder and wiser.
Another illustration of the peculiar predominance of luck in human
affairs. But not so with me; gentlemen for ten years I played the
market, for ten years I didn’t have a ticker ribbon out of my hand day
or night, and in ten years I only took a cropper three times, till the
last time. Gentlemen I’m going to tell you a secret. I’m going to tell
you a very important secret.... Charley give these very good friends
of mine another round, my treat, and have a nip yourself.... My, that
tickles her in the right place.... Gentlemen just another illustration of
the peculiar predominance of luck in human affairs. Gentlemen the
secret of my luck ... this is exact I assure you; you can verify it
yourselves in newspaper articles, magazines, speeches, lectures
delivered in those days; a man, and a dirty blackguard he turned out
to be eventually, even wrote a detective story about me called the
Secret of Success, which you can find in the New York Public Library
if you care to look the matter up.... The secret of my success was ...
and when you hear it you’ll laugh among yourselves and say Joe
Harland’s drunk, Joe Harland’s an old fool.... Yes you will.... For ten
years I’m telling you I traded on margins, I bought outright, I covered
on stocks I’d never even heard the name of and every time I cleaned
up. I piled up money. I had four banks in the palm of my hand. I
began eating my way into sugar and gutta percha, but in that I was
before my time.... But you’re getting nervous to know my secret, you
think you could use it.... Well you couldnt.... It was a blue silk
crocheted necktie that my mother made for me when I was a little
boy.... Dont you laugh, God damn you.... No I’m not starting
anything. Just another illustration of the peculiar predominance of
luck. The day I chipped in with another fellow to spread a thousand
dollars over some Louisville and Nashville on margin I wore that
necktie. Soared twentyfive points in twentyfive minutes. That was the
beginning. Then gradually I began to notice that the times I didnt
wear that necktie were the times I lost money. It got so old and
ragged I tried carrying it in my pocket. Didnt do any good. I had to
wear it, do you understand?... The rest is the old old story
gentlemen.... There was a girl, God damn her and I loved her. I
wanted to show her that there was nothing in the world I wouldnt do
for her so I gave it to her. I pretended it was a joke and laughed it off,
ha ha ha. She said, Why it’s no good, it’s all worn out, and she threw
it in the fire.... Only another illustration.... Friend you wouldn’t set me
up to another drink would you? I find myself unexpectedly out of
funds this afternoon.... I thank you sir.... Ah that puts ginger in you
again.”

In the crammed subway car the messenger boy was pressed up

against the back of a tall blond woman who smelled of Mary Garden.
Elbows, packages, shoulders, buttocks, jiggled closer with every
lurch of the screeching express. His sweaty Western Union cap was
knocked onto the side of his head. If I could have a dame like dat, a
dame like dat’d be wort havin de train stalled, de lights go out, de
train wrecked. I could have her if I had de noive an de jack. As the
train slowed up she fell against him, he closed his eyes, didnt
breathe, his nose was mashed against her neck. The train stopped.
He was carried in a rush of people out the door.
Dizzy he staggered up into the air and the blinking blocks of
lights. Upper Broadway was full of people. Sailors lounged in twos
and threes at the corner of Ninetysixth. He ate a ham and a
leberwurst sandwich in a delicatessen store. The woman behind the
counter had buttercolored hair like the girl in the subway but she was
fatter and older. Still chewing the crust of the last sandwich he went
up in the elevator to the Japanese Garden. He sat thinking a while
with the flicker of the screen in his eyes. Jeze dey’ll tink it funny to
see a messengerboy up here in dis suit. I better get de hell outa
here. I’ll go deliver my telegrams.
He tightened his belt as he walked down the stairs. Then he
slouched up Broadway to 105th Street and east towards Columbus
Avenue, noting doors, fire escapes, windows, cornices, carefully as
he went. Dis is de joint. The only lights were on the second floor. He
rang the second floor bell. The doorcatch clicked. He ran up the
stairs. A woman with weedy hair and a face red from leaning over
the stove poked her head out.
 “Telegram for Santiono.”
“No such name here.”
“Sorry maam I musta rung de wrong bell.”
Door slammed in his nose. His sallow sagging face tightened up
all of a sudden. He ran lightly on tiptoe up the stairs to the top
landing then up the little ladder to a trapdoor. The bolt ground as he
slid it back. He caught in his breath. Once on the cindergritty roof he
let the trapdoor back softly into place. Chimneys stood up in alert
ranks all about him, black against the glare from the streets.
Crouching he stepped gingerly to the rear edge of the house, let
himself down from the gutter to the fire escape. His foot grazed a
flowerpot as he landed. Everything dark. Crawled through a window
into a stuffy womansmelling room, slid a hand under the pillow of an
unmade bed, along a bureau, spilled some facepowder, in tiny jerks
pulled open the drawer, a watch, ran a pin into his finger, a brooch,
something that crinkled in the back corner; bills, a roll of bills.
Getaway, no chances tonight. Down the fire escape to the next floor.
No light. Another window open. Takin candy from a baby. Same
room, smelling of dogs and incense, some kind of dope. He could
see himself faintly, fumbling, in the glass of the bureau, put his hand
into a pot of cold cream, wiped it off on his pants. Hell. Something
fluffysoft shot with a yell from under his feet. He stood trembling in
the middle of the narrow room. The little dog was yapping loud in a
corner.
The room swung into light. A girl stood in the open door, pointing
a revolver at him. There was a man behind her.
“What are you doing? Why it’s a Western Union boy....” The light
was a coppery tangle about her hair, picked out her body under the
red silk kimono. The young man was wiry and brown in his
unbuttoned shirt. “Well what are you doing in that room?”
“Please maam it was hunger brought me to it, hunger an my poor
ole muder starvin.”
“Isnt that wonderful Stan? He’s a burglar.” She brandished the
revolver. “Come on out in the hall.”
 “Yes miss anythin you say miss, but dont give me up to de bulls.
Tink o de ole muder starvin her heart out.”
“All right but if you took anything you must give it back.”
“Honest I didn’t have a chanct.”
Stan flopped into a chair laughing and laughing. “Ellie you take
the cake.... Wouldnt a thought you could do it.”
“Well didnt I play this scene in stock all last summer?... Give up
your gun.”
“No miss I wouldn’t carry no gun.”
“Well I dont believe you but I guess I’ll let you go.”
“Gawd bless you miss.”
“But you must make some money as a messengerboy.”
“I was fired last week miss, it’s only hunger made me take to it.”
Stan got to his feet. “Let’s give him a dollar an tell him to get the
hell out of here.”
When he was outside the door she held out the dollarbill to him.
“Jez you’re white,” he said choking. He grabbed the hand with the
bill in it and kissed it; leaning over her hand kissing it wetly he caught
a glimpse of her body under the arm in the drooping red silk sleeve.
As he walked, still trembling, down the stairs, he looked back and
saw the man and the girl standing side by side with their arms
around each other watching him. His eyes were full of tears. He
stuffed the dollarbill into his pocket.
Kid if you keep on bein a softie about women you’re goin to find
yourself in dat lil summer hotel up de river.... Pretty soft though.
Whistling under his breath he walked to the L and took an uptown
train. Now and then he put his hand over his back pocket to feel the
roll of bills. He ran up to the third floor of an apartmenthouse that
smelled of fried fish and coal gas, and rang three times at a grimy
glass door. After a pause he knocked softly.
“Zat you Moike?” came faintly the whine of a woman’s voice.
 “No it’s Nicky Schatz.”
A sharpfaced woman with henna hair opened the door. She had
on a fur coat over frilly lace underclothes.
“Howsa boy?”
“Jeze a swell dame caught me when I was tidying up a little job
and whatjer tink she done?” He followed the woman, talking
excitedly, into a dining room with peeling walls. On the table were
used glasses and a bottle of Green River whiskey. “She gave me a
dollar an tole me to be a good little boy.”
“The hell she did?”
“Here’s a watch.”
“It’s an Ingersoll, I dont call ’at a watch.”
“Well set yer lamps on dis.” He pulled out the roll of bills. “Aint dat
a wad o lettuce?... Got in himmel, dey’s tousands.”
“Lemme see.” She grabbed the bills out of his hand, her eyes
popping. “Hay ye’re cookoo kid.” She threw the roll on the floor and
wrung her hands with a swaying Jewish gesture. “Oyoy it’s stage
money. It’s stage money ye simple saphead, you goddam ...”

Giggling they sat side by side on the edge of the bed. Through the
stuffy smell of the room full of little silky bits of clothing falling off
chairs a fading freshness came from a bunch of yellow roses on the
bureau. Their arms tightened round each other’s shoulders;
suddenly he wrenched himself away and leaned over her to kiss her
mouth. “Some burglar,” he said breathlessly.
“Stan ...”
“Ellie.”
“I thought it might be Jojo;” she managed to force a whisper
through a tight throat. “It’ll be just like him to come sneaking around.”
 “Ellie I don’t understand how you can live with him among all
these people. You’re so lovely. I just dont see you in all this.”
“It was easy enough before I met you.... And honestly Jojo’s all
right. He’s just a peculiar very unhappy person.”
“But you’re out of another world old kid.... You ought to live on top
of the Woolworth Building in an apartment made of cutglass and
cherry blossoms.”
“Stan your back’s brown all the way down.”
“That’s swimming.”
“So soon?”
“I guess most of it’s left over from last summer.”
“You’re the fortunate youth all right. I never learned how to swim
properly.”
“I’ll teach you.... Look next Sunday bright and early we’ll hop into
Dingo and go down to Long Beach. Way down at the end there’s
never anybody.... You dont even have to wear a bathingsuit.”
“I like the way you’re so lean and hard Stan.... Jojo’s white and
flabby almost like a woman.”
“For crissake don’t talk about him now.”
Stan stood with his legs apart buttoning his shirt. “Look Ellie let’s
beat it out an have a drink.... God I’d hate to run into somebody now
an have to talk lies to ’em.... I bet I’d crown ’em with a chair.”
“We’ve got time. Nobody ever comes home here before twelve....
I’m just here myself because I’ve got a sick headache.”
“Ellie, d’you like your sick headache?”
“I’m crazy about it Stan.”
“I guess that Western Union burglar knew that.... Gosh....
Burglary, adultery, sneaking down fireescapes, cattreading along
gutters. Judas it’s a great life.”
 Ellen gripped his hand hard as they came down the stairs
stepping together. In front of the letterboxes in the shabby hallway he
grabbed her suddenly by the shoulders and pressed her head back
and kissed her. Hardly breathing they floated down the street toward
Broadway. He had his hand under her arm, she squeezed it tight
against her ribs with her elbow. Aloof, as if looking through thick
glass into an aquarium, she watched faces, fruit in storewindows,
cans of vegetables, jars of olives, redhotpokerplants in a florist’s,
newspapers, electric signs drifting by. When they passed cross-
streets a puff of air came in her face off the river. Sudden jetbright
glances of eyes under straw hats, attitudes of chins, thin lips, pouting
lips, Cupid’s bows, hungry shadow under cheekbones, faces of girls
and young men nuzzled fluttering against her like moths as she
walked with her stride even to his through the tingling yellow night.
Somewhere they sat down at a table. An orchestra throbbed. “No
Stan I cant drink anything.... You go ahead.”
“But Ellie, arent you feeling swell like I am?”
“Sweller.... I just couldnt stand feeling any better.... I couldnt keep
my mind on a glass long enough to drink it.” She winced under the
brightness of his eyes.
Stan was bubbling drunk. “I wish earth had thy body as fruit to
eat,” he kept repeating. Ellen was all the time twisting about bits of
rubbery cold Welsh rabbit with her fork. She had started to drop with
a lurching drop like a rollercoaster’s into shuddering pits of misery. In
a square place in the middle of the floor four couples were dancing
the tango. She got to her feet.
“Stan I’m going home. I’ve got to get up early and rehearse all
day. Call me up at twelve at the theater.”
He nodded and poured himself another highball. She stood
behind his chair a second looking down at his long head of close
ruffled hair. He was spouting verses softly to himself. “Saw the white
implacable Aphrodite, damn fine. Saw the hair unbound and the feet
unsandaled, Jiminy.... Shine as fire of sunset on western waters.
Saw the reluctant ... goddam fine sapphics.”
 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 plate. “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 Olgethorpe.... 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.”
“I vait tree veeks ... I not vait any more.”
 “But my dear lady I assure you upon my honor as a gentleman...”
Mrs. Budkowitz began to jerk her shoulders about. Her voice rose
thin and wailing like the sound of a peanut wagon. “You pay me tat
fifteen dollar or I rent te room to somebody else.”
“I’ll pay you this very evening.”
“Vat time?”
“Six o’clock.”
“Allright. Plis you give me key.”
“But I cant do that. Suppose I was late?”
“Tat’s vy I vant te key. I’m trough vit vaiting.”
“All right take the key..... I hope you understand that after this
insulting behavior it will be impossible for me to remain longer under
your roof.”
Mrs. Budkowitz laughed hoarsely. “Allright ven you pay me fifteen
dollar you can take avay your grip.” He put the two keys tied together
with string into her gray hand and slammed the door and strode
down the street.
At the corner of Third Avenue he stopped and stood shivering in
the hot afternoon sunlight, sweat running down behind his ears. He
was too weak to swear. Jagged oblongs of harsh sound broke one
after another over his head as an elevated past over. Trucks grated
by along the avenue raising a dust that smelled of gasoline and
trampled horsedung. The dead air stank of stores and lunchrooms.
He began walking slowly uptown towards Fourteenth Street. At a
corner a crinkly warm smell of cigars stopped him like a hand on his
shoulder. He stood a while looking in the little shop watching the slim
stained fingers of the cigarroller shuffle the brittle outside leaves of
tobacco. Remembering Romeo and Juliet Arguelles Morales he
sniffed deeply. The slick tearing of tinfoil, the careful slipping off of
the band, the tiny ivory penknife for the end that slit delicately as
flesh, the smell of the wax match, the long inhaling of bitter crinkled
deep sweet smoke. And now sir about this little matter of the new
Northern Pacific bond issue.... He clenched his fists in the clammy
pockets of his raincoat. Take my key would she the old harridan? I’ll
show her, damn it. Joe Harland may be down and out but he’s got
his pride yet.
He walked west along Fourteenth and without stopping to think
and lose his nerve went down into a small basement stationery
store, strode through unsteadily to the back, and stood swaying in
the doorway of a little office where sat at a rolltop desk a blueeyed
baldheaded fat man.
“Hello Felsius,” croaked Harland.
The fat man got to his feet bewildered. “God it aint Mr. Harland is
it?”
“Joe Harland himself Felsius ... er somewhat the worse for wear.”
A titter died in his throat.
“Well I’ll be ... Sit right down Mr. Harland.”
“Thank you Felsius.... Felsius I’m down and out.”
“It must be five years since I’ve seen you Mr. Harland.”
“A rotten five years it’s been for me.... I suppose its all luck. My
luck wont ever change on this earth again. Remember when I’d
come in from romping with the bulls and raise hell round the office?
A pretty good bonus I gave the office force that Christmas.”
“Indeed it was Mr. Harland.”
“Must be a dull life storekeeping after the Street.”
“More to my taste Mr. Harland, nobody to boss me here.”
“And how’s the wife and kids?”
“Fine, fine; the oldest boy’s just out of highschool.”
“That the one you named for me?”
Felsius nodded. His fingers fat as sausages were tapping
uneasily on the edge of the desk.
“I remember I thought I’d do something for that kid someday. It’s a
funny world.” Harland laughed feebly. He felt a shuddery blackness
stealing up behind his head. He clenched his hands round his knee
and contracted the muscles of his arms. “You see Felsius, it’s this
way.... I find myself for the moment in a rather embarrassing
situation financially.... You know how those things are.” Felsius was
staring straight ahead of him into the desk. Beads of sweat were
starting out of his bald head. “We all have our spell of bad luck dont
we? I want to float a very small loan for a few days, just a few
dollars, say twentyfive until certain combinations...”
“Mr. Harland I cant do it.” Felsius got to his feet. “I’m sorry but
principles is principles.... I’ve never borrowed or lent a cent in my life.
I’m sure you understand that....”
“All right, dont say any more.” Harland got meekly to his feet. “Let
me have a quarter.... I’m not so young as I was and I haven’t eaten
for two days,” he mumbled, looking down at his cracked shoes. He
put out his hand to steady himself by the desk.
Felsius moved back against the wall as if to ward off a blow. He
held out a fiftycent piece on thick trembling fingers. Harland took it,
turned without a word and stumbled out through the shop. Felsius
pulled a violet bordered handkerchief out of his pocket, mopped his
brow and turned to his letters again.
We take the liberty of calling the trade’s attention to four
new superfine Mullen products that we feel the greatest
confidence in recommending to our customers as a fresh and
absolutely unparalleled departure in the papermanufacturer’s
art ...

They came out of the movie blinking into bright pools of electric
glare. Cassie watched him stand with his feet apart and eyes
absorbed lighting a cigar. McAvoy was a stocky man with a beefy
neck; he wore a single-button coat, a checked vest and a dogshead
pin in his brocade necktie.
“That was a rotton show or I’m a Dutchman,” he was growling.
 “But I loved the twavel pictures, Morris, those Swiss peasants
dancing; I felt I was wight there.”
“Damn hot in there.... I’d like a drink.”
“Now Morris you promised,” she whined.
“Oh I just meant sodawater, dont get nervous.” “Oh that’d be
lovely. I’d just love a soda.”
“Then we’ll go for a walk in the Park.”
She let the lashes fall over her eyes “Allwight Morris,” she
whispered without looking at him. She put her hand a little
tremulously through his arm.
“If only I wasn’t so goddam broke.”
“I dont care Morris.”
“I do by God.”
At Columbus Circle they went into a drugstore. Girls in green,
violet, pink summer dresses, young men in straw hats were three
deep along the sodafountain. She stood back and admiringly
watched him shove his way through. A man was leaning across the
table behind her talking to a girl; their faces were hidden by their
hatbrims.
“You juss tie that bull outside, I said to him, then I resigned.”
“You mean you were fired.”
“No honest I resigned before he had a chance.... He’s a stinker
d’you know it? I wont take no more of his lip. When I was walkin outa
the office he called after me.... Young man lemme tell ye sumpen.
You wont never make good till you learn who’s boss around this
town, till you learn that it aint you.”
Morris was holding out a vanilla icecream soda to her. “Dreamin’
again Cassie; anybody’d think you was a snowbird.” Smiling
brighteyed, she took the soda; he was drinking coca-cola. “Thank
you,” she said. She sucked with pouting lips at a spoonful of
icecream. “Ou Morris it’s delicious.”
 The path between round splashes of arclights ducked into
darkness. Through slant lights and nudging shadows came a smell
of dusty leaves and trampled grass and occasionally a rift of cool
fragrance from damp earth under shrubberies.
“Oh I love it in the Park,” chanted Cassie. She stifled a belch.
“D’you know Morris I oughnt to have eaten that icecweam. It always
gives me gas.”
Morris said nothing. He put his arm round her and held her tight to
him so that his thigh rubbed against hers as they walked. “Well
Pierpont Morgan is dead.... I wish he’d left me a couple of million.”
“Oh Morris wouldn’t it be wonderful? Where’d we live? On Central
Park South.” They stood looking back at the glow of electric signs
that came from Columbus Circle. To the left they could see curtained
lights in the windows of a whitefaced apartmenthouse. He looked
stealthily to the right and left and then kissed her. She twisted her
mouth out from under his.
“Dont.... Somebody might see us,” she whispered breathless.
Inside something like a dynamo was whirring, whirring. “Morris I’ve
been saving it up to tell you. I think Goldweiser’s going to give me a
specialty bit in his next show. He’s stagemanager of the second
woad company and he’s got a lot of pull up at the office. He saw me
dance yesterday.”
“What did he say?”
“He said he’d fix it up for me to see the big boss Monday.... Oh but
Morris it’s not the sort of thing I want to do, it’s so vulgar and
howid.... I want to do such beautiful things. I feel I’ve got it in me,
something without a name fluttering inside, a bird of beautiful
plumage in a howid iron cage.”
“That’s the trouble with you, you’ll never make good, you’re too
upstage.” She looked up at him with streaming eyes that glistened in
the white powdery light of an arclamp.
“Oh don’t cry for God’s sake. I didnt mean anythin.”
 “I’m not upstage with you Morris, am I?” She sniffed and wiped
her eyes.
“You are kinda, that’s what makes me sore. I like my little girl to
pet me an love me up a little. Hell Cassie life aint all beer an
sourkraut.” As they walked tightly pressed one to another they felt
rock under their feet. They were on a little hill of granite outcrop with
shrubbery all round. The lights from the buildings that hemmed in the
end of the Park shone in their faces. They stood apart holding each
other’s hands.
“Take that redhaired girl up at 105th Street.... I bet she wouldnt be
upstage when she was alone with a feller.”
“She’s a dweadful woman, she dont care what kind of a wep she
has.... Oh I think you’re howid.” She began to cry again.
He pulled her to him roughly, pressed her to him hard with his
spread hands on her back. She felt her legs tremble and go weak.
She was falling through colored shafts of faintness. His mouth
wouldnt let her catch her breath.
“Look out,” he whispered pulling himself away from her. They
walked on unsteadily down the path through the shrubbery. “I guess
it aint.”
“What Morris?”
“A cop. God it’s hell not havin anywhere to go. Cant we go to your
room?”
“But Morris they’ll all see us.”
“Who cares? They all do it in that house.”
“Oh I hate you when you talk that way.... Weal love is all pure and
lovely.... Morris you don’t love me.”
“Quit pickin on me cant you Cassie for a minute...? Goddam it’s
hell to be broke.”
They sat down on a bench in the light. Behind them automobiles
slithered with a constant hissing scuttle in two streams along the
roadway. She put her hand on his knee and he covered it with his big
stubby hand.
“Morris I feel that we are going to be very happy from now on, I
feel it. You’re going to get a fine job, I’m sure you are.”
“I aint so sure.... I’m not so young as I was Cassie. I aint got any
time to lose.”
“Why you’re terribly young, you’re only thirtyfive Morris.... And I
think that something wonderful is going to happen. I’m going to get a
chance to dance.”
“Why you ought to make more than that redhaired girl.”
“Elaine Oglethorpe.... She doesnt make so much. But I’m different
from her. I dont care about money; I want to live for my dancing.”
“I want money. Once you got money you can do what you like.”
“But Morris dont you believe that you can do anything if you just
want to hard enough? I believe that.” He edged his free arm round
her waist. Gradually she let her head fall on his shoulder. “Oh I dont
care,” she whispered with dry lips. Behind them limousines,
roadsters, touringcars, sedans, slithered along the roadway with
snaky glint of lights running in two smooth continuous streams.

The brown serge smelled of mothballs as she folded it. She

stooped to lay it in the trunk; a layer of tissuepaper below rustled
when she smoothed the wrinkles with her hand. The first violet
morning light outside the window was making the electriclight bulb
grow red like a sleepless eye. Ellen straightened herself suddenly
and stood stiff with her arms at her sides, her face flushed pink. “It’s
just too low,” she said. She spread a towel over the dresses and
piled brushes, a handmirror, slippers, chemises, boxes of powder in
pellmell on top of them. Then she slammed down the lid of the trunk,
locked it and put the key in her flat alligatorskin purse. She stood
looking dazedly about the room sucking a broken fingernail. Yellow
sunlight was obliquely drenching the chimneypots and cornices of
the houses across the street. She found herself staring at the white
E.T.O. at the end of her trunk. “It’s all too terribly disgustingly low,”
she said again. Then she grabbed a nailfile off the bureau and
scratched out the O. “Whee,” she whispered and snapped her
fingers. After she had put on a little bucketshaped black hat and a
veil, so that people wouldn’t see she’d been crying, she piled a lot of
books, Youth’s Encounter, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, The Golden
Ass, Imaginary Conversations, Aphrodite, Chansons de Bilitis and
the Oxford Book of French Verse in a silk shawl and tied them
together.
There was a faint tapping at the door. “Who’s that,” she
whispered.
“It just me,” came a tearful voice.
Ellen unlocked the door. “Why Cassie what’s the matter?” Cassie
rubbed her wet face in the hollow of Ellen’s neck. “Oh Cassie you’re
gumming my veil.... What on earth’s the matter?”
“I’ve been up all night thinking how unhappy you must be.”
“But Cassie I’ve never been happier in my life.”
“Aren’t men dweadful?”
“No.... They are much nicer than women anyway.”
“Elaine I’ve got to tell you something. I know you dont care
anything about me but I’m going to tell you all the same.”
“Of course I care about you Cassie.... Dont be silly. But I’m busy
now.... Why dont you go back to bed and tell me later?”
“I’ve got to tell you now.” Ellen sat down on her trunk resignedly.
“Elaine I’ve bwoken it off with Morris.... Isn’t it tewible?” Cassie wiped
her eyes on the sleeve of her lavender dressinggown and sat down
beside Ellen on the trunk.
“Look dear,” said Ellen gently. “Suppose you wait just a second,
I’m going to telephone for a taxi. I want to make a getaway before
Jojo’s up. I’m sick of big scenes.” The hall smelled stuffily of sleep