Just Around the Corner: Romance en casserole

magnetized eyes never leaving his reddening face and her hands groping ahead. Her mouth was moist and no older than a child's; but her skin dead, as if coated over with tallow. She opened the door slowly, fearing to break the spell--then suddenly slipped through the aperture and slammed it after her. Then the slam of another door; the scurrying of feet down cold stone steps that sprung echoes in the deserted street. The douse of cold air stung her flaming cheek; a policeman glanced after her; a drunken sailor staggered out of a black doorway, and her trembling limbs sped faster--a labyrinth of city streets and rows of blank-faced houses; an occasional pedestrian, who glanced after her because she wheezed in her throat, and ever so often gathered her strength and broke into a run; then a close, ill-smelling apartment house, with a tipsy gas-light mewling in the hall, and a dull-brown door that remained blank to her knocks and rings. The sobs were rising in her throat, and the trembling in her limbs shook her as with ague. A knock that was more of a pound and a frenzied rattling of the knob! Finally from the inside of the door a thump-thump down a long hallway--and the door creaked open cautiously, suspiciously! In its frame a pale figure, in the rumpled clothes of one always sitting down and hunched on a pair of silver-mounted mahogany crutches that slanted from her sides like props. "Goldie! Little Goldie!" "Oh, Addie! Addie!" * * * * * Youth has rebound like a rubber ball. Batted up against the back fence, she bounces back into the heart of a rose-bush or into the carefully weeded, radishless radish-bed of the kitchen garden. Mrs. Trimp rose from the couch-bed davenport of the Bopp sitting-dining-sleeping-room, with something of the old lamps burning in her eyes and a full-lipped mouth to which clung the memory of smiles. Even Psyche, abandoned by love, smiled a specious smile when she posed for the scalpel. Eddie Bopp reached out a protective arm and drew Goldie by the sleeve of her shirt-waist down to the couch-bed davenport again. "Take it easy there, Goldie. Don't get yourself all excited again." "But it's just like you say, Eddie--I got the law on my side. I got him on the grounds of cruelty if--if I show nothin' but--but this cheek." "Sure, you have, Goldie; but you just sit quiet. Addie, come in here and make Goldie behave her little self." "I'm all right, Eddie. Gee! With Addie treating me like I was a queen in a gilt crown, and you skidding round me like a tire, I feel like cream!" Eddie regarded her with eyes that were soft as rose-colored lamps at dusk. "You poor little kid!" Addie hobbled in from the kitchen. "I got something you'll like, Goldie. It's hot and good for you, too." God alone knew the secret of Addie. He had fashioned her in clay and water, even as you and me--from the same earthy compound from which is sprung ward politicians and magic-throated divas, editors and plumbers, poet laureates and Polish immigrants, kings and French ballet dancers, propagandists and piece-workers, single-taxers and suffragettes. He fashioned her in clay; and it was as if she came from under the teeth of a Ninth Avenue street-car fender--broken, but remolded in alabaster, and with the white light of her stanch spirit shining through--Addie, whose side, up as high as her ribs, was a flaming furnace and whose smile was sunshine on dew. "You wouldn't eat no supper; so I made you some chicken broth, Goldie. You remember when we was studying shorthand at night school how we used to send Jimmie over to White's lunch-room for chickenette broth and a slab of milk chocolate?" "Do I? Gee! You were the greatest kid, Addie!" "Eat, Goldie--gwan." "I ain't hungry--honest!" "Quit standing over her, Eddie; you make her nervous. Let me feed you, Goldie." "Gee! Ain't you swell to me!" Ready tears sprang to her eyes. "Like you ain't my old chum, Goldie! It don't seem so long since we were working in the same office and going to Recreation Pier dances together, does it?" "Addie! Addie!" "Do you remember how you and me and Ed and Charley Snuggs used to walk up and down Ninth Avenue summer evenings eating ice-cream cones?" "Do I? Oh, Addie, do I?" "I'm glad we had them ice-cream days, Goldie. They're melted, but the flavor ain't all gone." Addie's face was large and white and calm-featured, like a Botticelli head. "You two girls sure was cut-ups! Remember the night Addie first introduced us, Goldie? You came over to call for her, and us three went to the wax-works show on Twenty-third Street. Lordy, how we cut up!" "And I started to ask the wax policeman if we was allowed to go past the rail!" They laughed low in their throats, as if they feared to raise an echo in a vale of tears. "It's like old times for me to be staying all night with you again, Addie. It's been so long! He--he used to get mad like anything if I wanted to see any of the old crowd. He knew they didn't know any good of him. He was always for the sporty, all-night bunch." "Poor kid!" "Don't get her to talking about it again, Eddie; it gets her all excited." "He could have turned me against my own mother, I was that crazy over him." "That," said Addie, softly, "was _love_! And only women can love like that; and women who do love like that are cursed--and blessed." "I'm out of it now, Addie. You won't never send me back to him--you won't ever?" "There now, dearie, you're gettin' worked up again. Ain't you right here, safe with us?" "That night at Hinkey's was the worst, Goldie," said Eddie. "It makes my blood boil! Why didn't you quit then; why?" "I ain't told you all, neither, Eddie. One night he came home about two o'clock, and I had been--" "Just quit thinking and talking about him, Goldie. You're right here, safe with me and Eddie; and he's going to get you a job when you're feeling stronger. And then, when you're free--when you're free--" Addie regarded her brother with the tender aura of a smile on her lips and a tender implication in her eyes that scurried like a frightened mouse back into its hole. Eddie flamed red; and his ears, by a curious physiological process, seemed to take fire and contemplate instant flight from his head. "Oh, look, Ad. We got to get a new back for your chair. The stuffin's all poking through the velvet." "So it is, Eddie. It's a good thing you got your raise, with all these new-fangled dangles we need." "To-night's his lodge night. He never came home till three--till three o'clock, lodge nights." "There you go, Goldie--back on the subject, makin' yourself sick." "Gee!" "What's the matter, Goldie?" "To-night's his lodge. I could go now and get my things while he ain't there--couldn't I?" "Swell! I'll take you, Goldie, and wait outside for you." "Eddie, can't you see she ain't in any condition to go running round nights? There's plenty time yet, Goldie. You can wear my shirt-waists and things. Wait till--" "I got to get it over with, Addie; and daytimes Eddie's working, and I'd have to go alone. I--I don't want to go alone." "Sure; she can't go alone, Addie; and she's got to have her things." Eddie was on his feet and beside Goldie's palpitating figure, as though he would lay his heart, a living stepping-stone, at her feet. "We better go now, Addie; honest we had! Eddie'll wait outside for me." "You poor kid! You want to get it over with, don't you? Get her coat, Eddie, and bring her my sweater to wear underneath. It's getting colder every minute." "I ain't scared a bit, Addie. I'll just go in and pack my things together and hustle out again." "Here's a sweater, Goldie, and your coat and hat." "Take care, children; and, Goldie, don't forget all the things you need. Just take your time and get your things together--warm clothes and all." "I'll be waiting right outside for you, Goldie." "I'm ready, Eddie." "Don't let her get excited and worked up, Eddie." "I ain't scared a bit, Addie." "Sure you ain't?" "Not a bit!" "Good-by, Addie. Gee, but you're swell to me!" "Don't forget to bring your rubbers, Goldie; going to work on wet mornings you'll need them." "I--I ain't got none." "You can have mine. I--I don't need them any more." "Good-by, Ad--leave the dishes till we come back. I can do 'em swell myself after you two girls have gone to bed." "Yes. I'll be waiting, Goldie; and we'll talk in bed like old times." "Yes, yes!" It was as if Addie's frail hands were gripping Goldie's heart and clogging her speech. "Good-by, children!" "Good-by." "S'long!" The night air met them with a whoop and tugged and pulled at Goldie's hat. "Take my arm, Goldie. It's some howler, ain't it?" Their feet clacked on the cold, dry pavement, and passers-by leaned into the wind. "He was a great one for hating the cold, Eddie. Gee, how he hated winter!" "That's why he wears a fur-collared coat and you go freezing along in a cheese-cloth jacket, I guess." "It always kind of got on his chest and gave him fever." "What about you? You just shivered along and dassent say anything!" "And I used to fix him antiphlogistin plasters half the night. When he wasn't mad or drunk he was just like a kid with the measles! It used to make me laugh so--he'd--" "Humph!" "But one night--one night I got the antiphlogistin too hot while I was straightening up--'cause he never liked a messy-looking room when he was sick--and he was down and out from one of his bad nights; and it--and it got too hot, and--" She turned away and finished her sentence in the teeth of the wind; but Eddie's arm tightened on hers until she could feel each distinct finger. "God!" he said. "I ain't scared a bit, Eddie." "For what, I'd like to know! Ain't I going to be waiting right here across the street?" "See! That's the room over there--the dark one, with the shade half-way up. Gee, how I hate it!" "I'll be waiting right here in front of Joe's place, Goldie. If you need me just shoot the shade all the way up." "I won't need you." "Well, then, light the gas, pull the shade all the way down, and that'll mean all's well." "Swell!" she said. "Down comes the shade--and all's well!" "Good!" They smiled, and their breaths clouded between them; and down through the high-walled street the wind shot javelin-like and stung red into their cheeks, and in Eddie's ears and round his heart the blood buzzed. Goldie crossed the street and went up the steps lightly, her feet grating the brown stone like fine-grained sandpaper. When she unlocked the front door the cave-like mustiness and the cold smell of unsunned hallways and the conglomerate of food smells from below met her at the threshold. Memories like needle-tongued insects stung her. The first-floor front she opened slowly, pausing after every creak of the door; and the gas she fumbled because her hand trembled, and the match burned close to her fingers before she found the tip. She turned up the flame until it sang, and glanced about her fearfully, with one hand on her bruised cheek and her underlip caught in by her teeth. Mr. Trimp's room was as expressive as a lady's glove still warm from her hand. He might have slipped out of it and let it lie crumpled, but in his own image. The fumes of bay-rum and stale beer struggled for supremacy. The center-table, with a sickening litter of empty bottles and dead ashes, was dreary as cold mutton in its grease, or a woman's painted face at crack o' dawn, or the moment when the flavor of love becomes as tansy. A red-satin slipper, an unhygienic drinking-goblet, which has leaked and