Just Around the Corner: Romance en casserole
They rose to the introductory titillation of violins; she slid into his
embrace with a little fluid movement, and they slithered out on the
shining floor. A light murmur like the rustle of birds' wings went after
them, and couples leaned from their tables to watch the perfect
syncopation of their steps. His slightly crepuscular eyes took on the
sheen of mica; the color ran high in her face, and her lips parted.
"They sit up and take notice when we slide out, don't they, little one?"
"Yes."
"Some class to my trotting, ain't there, sweetness?"
"Yeh. Look, Joe; we gotta go after this round--it's nearly twelve."
"Twice round, sweetness, and then we go. If we ain't got the profesh
beat on that Argentine Dip I'll give ten orchestra seats to charity and
let any box-office in this town land me for what I'm worth."
"Joe!"
"Aw, I was only kiddin'. They got as much chance with me as a man with
Saint Vitus's dance has of landing a trout. Gee, you're pretty to-night,
sweetness!"
"Sweetness yourself!"
"Peaches and Cream!"
"Come on, Joe; this is twice round."
"Once more, sweetness--just once more! See, you got me hypnotized; my
feet won't stop. See, they keep going and going. See, I can't stop.
Whoa! Whoa! Honest, I can't quit! Whoa! We gotta go round once more,
sweetness. I--just--can't--stop!"
"Just once more, Joe."
* * * * *
At one o'clock the gas-flame in the hallway outside the rear third-floor
apartment flared sootily and waned to a weary bead as the pressure
receded. Through the opacity of the sudden fog the formal-faced door
faded into the gloom, and Miss Essie Birdsong pushed the knob stealthily
inch by inch to save the squeak.
"Plunk-plunk-plunka-plunka-plunk-plunk! Essie?"
"'Sh-h-h-h! Yes, Jimmie--it's only me. Why you makin' that noise? Why's
the light burning? What's--"
"Essie! Essie, is that you and--"
"Ma dearie, you--What's the matter? You ain't sick, are you?
What's--what's wrong, Jimmie? Please, what's wrong?"
She stood with her back to the door, her face struck with fear suddenly,
as with white forked lightning, and her breath coming on every alternate
heart-beat.
"Ma! Jimmie! For Gawd's sakes, what's the matter?"
The transitional falsetto of her brother's voice came to her gritty as
slate scratching slate, and cold, prickly flesh sprang out over her.
"Don't come in here! You--you and your friend stay out there a minute
till ma kinda gets her breath back; she--she's all right--ain't you, ma?
You and your friend just wait just a minute, Ess."
"Me and---"
"Yeh; both of you wait. Nothing ain't wrong--is it, ma? There, just lay
back on the pillow a minute, ma. Gwan; be a sport! Look, your cheek's
all red from restin' on my shoulder so long. Lemme go a minute and bring
Essie and her gen'l'man friend in to see you. Gee! After you been
waitin' and waitin' you--you ain't goin' to give out the last minute.
There ain't nothin' to be scared about, ma. Lemme go in just a minute.
Here it is, ma; don't break it--seven years' bad luck for smashin' a
hand-mirror. Here; you look swell, ma--swell!"
"Tell him it ain't like me to give out like this. Take them bottles and
that ice away, Jimmie--throw my flowered wrapper over my shoulders.
There! Now tell him, Jimmie, it ain't like me."
"Surest thing, ma. Watch me!"
He emerged from the bedroom suddenly, his face twisted and his
whispering voice like cold iron under the stroke of an anvil, and Essie
trembled as she stood.
"Jimmie!"
"You--you devil, you! Where is he?"
She edged away from him with limbs that seemed as though they took root
at every step and she must tear each foot from the carpet.
"To-morrow night he's comin' sure, Jimmie; he couldn't to-night,
he--couldn't."
Jimmie's lips drew back from his gums as though too dry to cover them.
"You--you street-runner, you!"
"Jimmie!"
"You--you--you--"
"For Gawd's sakes, she'll hear you, Jimmie!"
"You devil, you! You've killed her, I tell you! I've been holdin' her in
there for two hours, with the sweat standing out on her like
water--you--"
"Oh, Gawd! Jimmie, lemme run for old man Gibbs; lemme--"
"Oh no, you don't! Lizzie Marks down-stairs is gone for him--but that
ain't goin' to help none; what she wants is _you_--you and your low-down
sneaking friend; and she's goin' to have him, too."
"He's gone, Jimmie. What--"
"You can't come home here to-night without him--you can't! You better
run after him, and run after him quick. You can't come home here
to-night without him, I tell you! Whatta you going to do about it--huh?
Whatta you going to do? Quick! What?"
She trembled so she grasped the back of a chair for support, and tears
ricocheted down her cheeks.
"I can't, Jimmie! He's gone by now; he's gone by now--out of sight. I
can't! Please, Jimmie! I'll tell her! I'll tell her! Don't--don't you
dare come near me! I'll go, Jimmie--I'll go. 'Sh-h-h!"
"You gotta get him--you can't come here to-night without him. I ain't
goin' to stand for her not seeing him to-night. I--I don't care how you
get him, but you ain't going to kill her! You gotta get him, or I'll--"
"Jimmie--'sh-h-h!"
"Jimmie, tell him it ain't like me to give out like this. Tell--"
"Yes, ma."
"Yes, ma--we're comin'. Joe's waitin' down at the door. I'll run down
and bring him up; he--he's so bashful. In a minute, ma darlin'."
She flung open the door and fled, racing down two flights of stairs,
with her steps clattering after her in an avalanche, and out into a
quiet street, which sprung echoes of her flying feet.
After midnight every pedestrian becomes a simulacrum, wrapped in a black
domino of mystery and a starry ephod of romance. A homeward-bound
pedestrian is a faun in evening dress. Fat-and-forty leans from her
window to hurtle a can at a night-yelling cat and becomes a demoiselle
leaning out from the golden bar of Heaven.
In the inspissated gloom of the street occasional silhouettes hurried in
silent haste; and a block ahead of her, just emerging into a string of
shop lights, she could distinguish the uneven-shouldered outline of Joe
Ullman and the unmistakable silhouette of his slightly askew hat.
She sobbed in her throat and made a cup of her hands to halloo; but her
voice would not come, and she ran faster.
A policeman glanced after her and struck asphalt. A dog yapped at her
tall heels. Even as she sped, her face upturned and her mouth dry and
open, the figure swerved suddenly into a red-lighted doorway with a
crescent burning above it; and, with her eyes on that Mecca, she pulled
at her strength and gathered more speed.
The crescent grew in size and redness, and its lettering sprang out; and
suddenly she stopped, as suddenly as an engine jerking up before a
washout.
CRESCENT POOL AND BILLIARD ROOM--
OPEN ALL NIGHT
And her heart folded inward like the petals of a moonflower.
Stretched to the limit of their resilience, the nerves act reflexly. The
merest second of incertitude, and then automatically she swung about,
turned her blood-driven face toward the place from whence she came and
groped her way homeward as Polymestor must have groped after being
blinded in the presence of Hecuba.
Tears hot from the geyser of shame and pain magnified her eyes like
high-power spectacle-lenses; and when she reached the dim entrance of
the cliff dwelling she called home an edge of ice stiffened round her
heart and her feet would not enter.
A silhouette lurched round a black corner and zigzagged toward her, and
she held herself flat as a lath against the building until it and its
drunken song had lurched round another corner; a couple hurried past
with interlinked arms; their laughter light as foam. More
silhouettes--a flat-chested woman, who wore her shame with the conscious
speciousness of a prisoner promenading in his stripes; a loutish fellow,
who whistled as he hurried and vaulted up the steps of the Electric
Institute three steps at a bound; an old man with an outline like a
crooked finger; a shawled woman; a cab lined with vague faces, and
streamers of laughter floating back from it; and, standing darkly
against the cold wall, Essie, with the tears drying on her cheeks, and
her whole being suddenly galvanized by a new thought.
A momentary lull in the drippy streamlet of pedestrians; she leaned out
into the darkness and peered up, then down the aisle of street. A shadow
came gliding toward her, and she stepped forward; but when the
street-lamp fell on the cold eyes and cuttlefish stare she huddled back
into her corner until the steps had receded like the stick-taps of a
blind man.
Two women in the professional garb of nurses twinkled past, twitting
each to each like sparrows; a man whose face was narrow and dark,
bespeaking in his ancestry a Latin breed, kept close to the shadow of
the buildings; and, with her finger-nails cutting her palms, she stepped
out from her lair directly in his path and clasped her hands tighter to
keep them from trembling.
"You--please!"
He glanced down at her yellowish face, with the daubed-on red standing
out frankly, tossed her a sneer and a foreign expression, and brushed
by. She darted back as though he had struck at her, and panic closed her
in.
A young giant, tall as a Scandinavian out of Valhalla, with wide
shoulders, a wide stride, and heavy-soled, laced-to-the-knee boots that
clattered loudly, ran up the steps of the Electric Institute, and she
flashed across the sidewalk, her arm reaching out.
"You--please!"
He paused, with the street lamp full on his smiling mouth and
wide-apart, smiling eyes, one foot in the act of ascending, after the
manner of tailors' fashion-plates, which are for ever in the casual
attitude of mounting stairs.
"You--please! Please--"
"Aw, little lady, go home and go to bed. This ain't no time and place
for a little thing like you. Here, take this and go home, little girl."
She arrested his arm on its way to his pocket, her breath crowding out
her words, and the stinging red of shame burning through her rouge.
"No, no! For Gawd's sakes, no! It's--my mother--"
He brought his feet down to a level.
"Your mother?"
"Yes; she's sick--maybe dyin'. I--please--she wants to see somebody that
can't--can't--"
"What, little lady?"
"She's sick--dyin' maybe. She wants to see somebody that can't--can't--"
"Take your time, little lady--can't _what_?"
"Can't come."
"Who can't come?"
"He--my young--he's a young man. She's never seen him; and if--please,
if you'd come and act super--just like you was fillin' in at a show; if
you'd act like my young man just for a minute--please! My friend, he
can't come--he can _never_ come; but she--she wants him. You come,
please! You come, please!"
She tugged at his arm, and he descended another step and peered into the
exacerbated anxiety of her face.
"On the level, little lady?"
"Please--just for a minute! For somebody that's sick--maybe dyin'. Just
tell her you're my young man--tell her everything's all
right--everything's comin' all right for all of us, for her and--and my
little brother, and--and me--you and me--like you was my young man,
please, lovin' and all. And tell her how pretty her poor hair is and how
everything's goin'--goin' to be all right. Come, please--it's just next
door."
"Why, you poor little thing! I ain't much on play-actin'; and look at my
hands all black from the power-house!"
"Please! That ain't nothin'. It'll be only a minute. Just kinda say
things after me and don't let her know--don't let her know that I--I
ain't got any young man. Don't let her know!"
"You poor little thing, you--shaking like a leaf! Lead the way; but not
so fast, little lady--you'll give out."