Just Around the Corner: Romance en casserole
standing here--ready for what, dearie?"
"You tell 'em, Joe; you--you're big and strong."
"I--I don't know, ma. I don't think I--I know for sure, dearie."
"Ready for what, ma? Tell us, darlin'."
She turned her face toward them, a smile printed on her lips.
"Just ready, children."
THE PARADISE TRAIL
At five o'clock the Broadway store braced itself for the last lap of a
nine-hour day. Girls with soul-and-body weariness writ across their
faces in the sure chirography of hair-line wrinkles stood
pelican-fashion, first on one leg and then on the other, to alternate
the strain.
Floor-walkers directed shoppers with less of the well-oiled suavity of
the morning; a black-and-white-haired woman behind the corset-counter
whitened, sickened, and was revived in the emergency-room; the jewelry
department covered its trays with a tan canvas sheeting; the stream of
shoppers thinned to a trickle.
Across from the notions and buttons the umbrella department suddenly
bloomed forth with a sale of near-silk, wooden-handled umbrellas;
farther down, a special table of three-ninety-eight rubberette
mackintoshes was pushed out into mid-aisle.
Miss Tillie Prokes glanced up at the patch of daylight over the
silk-counters--a light rain was driving against the window.
"Honest, now, Mame, wouldn't that take the curl out of your hair?"
"What's hurtin' you?"
"Rainin' like a needle shower, and I got to wear my new tan coat
to-night, 'cause I told him in the letter I'd wear a tannish-lookin'
jacket with a red bow on the left lapel, so he'd know me when I come in
the drug store."
Mame placed the backs of her hands on her hips, breathed inward like a
soprano testing her diaphragm, and leaned against a wooden spool-case.
"It _is_ rainin' like sixty, ain't it? Say, can you beat it? Watch the
old man put Myrtle out in the aisle at the mackintosh-table--there!
Didn't I tell you! Gee! I bet she could chew a diamond, she's so mad."
"She ain't as mad as me; but I'm going to wear my tan if it gets
soaked."
Tillie sold a packet of needles and regarded the patch of window with a
worried pucker on her small, wren-like face.
"Honest, ain't it a joke, Til?--you havin' the nerve to answer that ad
and all! You better be pretty white to me, or I'll snitch! I'll tell
Angie you're writin' pink notes to Box 25, _Evenin' News_--Mr. Box 25!
Say, can you beat it!"
Mame laughed in her throat, smoothed her frizzed blonde hair, sold a
paper of pins and an emery heart.
"Like fun you'll tell Angie! I got it all fixed to tell her I'm going to
the picture-show with you and George to-night."
"Before I'd let a old grouch like her lord it over me! It ain't like she
was your sister or relation, or something--but just because you live
together. Nix on that for mine."
"She don't think a girl's got a right to be young or nothin'! Look at
me--a regular stick-at-home. Gee! a girl's got to have something."
"Sure she does! Ain't that what I've been tryin' to preach to you ever
since we've been chumming together? You ain't a real old maid yet--you
got real takin' ways about you and all; you ought to be havin' a steady
of your own."
"Don't I know it?"
"Look how you got to do now--just because she never lets you go to
dances or nothin' with us girls."
"She ain't never had it, and she don't want me to have it."
"Say, tell it to the Danes! She ain't got them snappy black eyes of hers
for nothin'. Whatta you live with her for? There ain't a girl up in the
corsets that's got any use for her."
"She's been pretty white to me, just the samey--raised me and all when I
didn't have no one. She's got her faults; but I kinda got the habit of
livin' with her now--I got to stick."
"Gee! even a stepmother like Carrie's'll let her have fun once in a
while. It's Angie's own fault that you got to meet 'em in drug stores
and take chances on ads and all."
"I'm just answerin' that ad for fun--I ain't in earnest."
"I've always been afraid of matrimonial ads and things like that. You
know I was the first one to preach your gettin' out and gettin'
spry--that's me all over! I believe in bein' spry; but I always used to
say to maw before I was keepin' steady with George, 'Ads ain't safe.'"
"I ain't afraid."
"Lola Flint, over in the jewelry, answered one once--'Respectable young
man would like to make the acquaintance of a genteel young lady; red
hair preferred.' And when she seen him he had only one eye, and his left
arm shot off."
"I ain't afraid. Say, if Effie Jones Lipkind can answer one, with her
behind-the-counter stoop and squint, and get away with it, there ain't
no reason why there ain't more grand fellows like Gus Lipkind writin'
ads."
"Come out of the dark room, Til! Effie had two hundred saved up."
"I ain't ashamed of not havin' any steadies. Where's a straight-walkin'
girl like me goin' to get 'em? Look at that rain, will you!--and me
tellin' him I'd be there in tan, with red ribbon on the lapel!"
"Paper says rain for three days, too. Angie's a old devil, all-righty,
or you could meet him in your flat."
"He's going to wear a white carnation and a piece of fern on his left
coat lapel; and if he don't look good I ain't going up."
"What did he call hisself--'a bachelor of refined and retiring habits'?
Thank Gawd!--if I do say it--George is refined, but he ain't
over-retirin'. It's the retirin' kind that like to sit at home in their
carpet slippers instead of goin' to a picture-show. Straighten that bin
of pearl buttons, will you, Til? Say, how my feet do burn to-night! It's
the weather--I might 'a' known it was goin' to rain."
Tillie ran a nervous finger down inside her collar; there was a tremolo
in her quail-like voice.
"A fellow that writes a grand little letter like him can't be so
bad--and it's better to have 'em retirin'-like than too fresh. Listen!
It's real poetry-like: 'Meet me in the Sixth Avenue Drug Store, Miss 27.
I'll have a white carnation and a piece of fern in my left buttonhole,
and a smile that won't come off; and when I spy the yellow jacket I'm
comin' up and say, "Hello!" And if I look good I want you to say
"Hello!" back.' ... The invisible hair-pins only come by the box, ma'am.
Umbrellas across the aisle, ma'am.... That ain't so bad for a start, is
it, Mame?... Ten cents a box, ma'am."
"You got your nerve, all-righty, Til--but, gee! I glory in your spunk.
If I was tied to a old devil like Angie I'd try it, too. Is the back of
my collar all right, Til? Look at Myrtle out there, will you--how she's
lovin' that mackintosh sale!"
"Water spots tan, don't it?" said Tillie, balancing her cash-book.
At six o'clock the store finished its last lap with a hysterical singing
of electric bells, grillingly intense and too loud, like a woman who
laughs with a sob in her throat.
Tillie untied her black alpaca apron, snapped a rubber band about her
cash-book, concealed it beneath the notion-shelves, and brushed her
black-serge skirt with a whisk-broom borrowed from stock.
"Good night, Mame! I guess you're waitin' for George, ain't you? See you
in the morning. I'll have lots to tell you, too."
"Good night, Til! Remember, if he turns out to be a model for a
classy-clothes haberdashery, it was me put you on to the idea."
Tillie pressed a black-felt sailor tight down on her head until only a
rim of brown hair remained, slid into her black jacket, and hurried out
with an army of workers treading at her slightly run-down heels and
nerves.
Youth, even the fag-end of Youth, is like a red-blooded geranium that
fights to bloom though transplanted from a garden bed to a tin can in a
cellar window. A faint-as-dawn pink persisted in flowing underneath the
indoor white of Miss Prokes's cheeks--the last rosy shadow of a
maltreated girlhood, which too long had defied the hair-line wrinkles,
the notion-counter with the not-to-be-used stool behind it, nine hours
of arc-light substitute for the sunshine on the hillside and the green
shade of the dell.
At the doors a taupe-colored dusk and a cold November rain closed round
her like a wet blanket. She shrank back against the building and let the
army tramp past her. They dissolved into the stream like a garden hose
spraying the ocean.
Broadway was black and shining as polished gunmetal, with reflections of
its million lights staggering down into the wet asphalt. Umbrellas
hurried and bobbed as if an army of giant mushrooms had suddenly
insurrected; cabs skidded, honked, dodged, and doubled their rates;
home-going New York bought evening papers, paid as it entered, and
strap-hung its way to Bronx and Harlem firesides.
The fireside of the Bronx is the steam-radiator. Its lullabies are sung
before a gilded three-coil heater; its shaving-water and kettle are
heated on that same contrivance. It is as much of an epic in apartment
living as condensed milk and folding-davenports.
All of which has little enough to do with Miss Tillie Prokes, except
that in her lifetime she had hammered probably a caskful of nails into
the tops of condensed-milk cans. Also she could unfold her own
red-velours davenport; cold-cream her face; sugar-water her hair and put
it up in kids; climb into bed and fall asleep with a despatch that might
have made more than one potentate, counting sheep in his hair-mattressed
four-poster, aguish with envy.
Miss Prokes yawned as she waited and regarded a brilliantly illuminated
display window of curve-fingered ladies in exquisite waxen attitudes and
nineteen-fifty crepe-de-Chine gowns. Her breath clouded the plate-glass,
and she drew her initials in the circle and yawned again.
With the last driblet of employees from the store a woman cut diagonally
through a group and hurried toward Miss Prokes.
"Come on, Tillie!"
"Gee! I was afraid you wouldn't have a umbrella, Angie. What made you so
late? The rest of the corsets have gone long ago."
"Oh, I just stopped a minute to take a milk-and- rose-leaves
bath--they're doin' it in our best families this year."
Tillie glanced at her companion sharply.
"What's the matter, Angie? You ain't had one of your spells again, have
you? Your voice sounds so full of breath and all."
Angie pushed a strand of black-and-white hair up under her nest-like
hat. Her small, black eyes were too far back; and her face was slightly
creased and yellow, like an old college diploma when it is fished out of
the trunk to show the grandchildren.
"I just keeled over like a tenpin--that's all! It came on so
sudden--while I was sellin' a dame a dollar-ninety-eight hipless--that
even old Higgs was scared and went up to the emergency-room with me
hisself."
"Oh, Angie--ain't that a shame, now!"
Tillie linked her arm in the older woman's and, with their joint
umbrella slanted against the fine-ribbed rain, they plunged into the
surge of the street. Wind scudded the rain along the sidewalks; electric
signs, all blurred and streaky through the mist, were dimmed, like
gas-light seen through tears.
"We better ride home to-night, Angie--you with one of your spells, and
this weather and all."
"You must 'a' been clipping your gilt-edge bonds this afternoon instead
of sellin' buttons! It would take more'n only a bad heart and a
rainstorm and a pair of thin soles to make me ride five blocks."
"I--I'll take your turn to-night for fixin' supper. You ain't feelin'
well, Angie--I'll take your turn to-night."
They turned into a high-walled, black, cross-town street. The wind
turned with them and beat javelin-like against their backs and blew
their skirts forward, then shifted and blew against their breathing.
"Gawd!" said the older woman, lowering their umbrella against the
onslaught. "Honest, sometimes I wish I wuz dead and out of it. Whatta we
get out of livin', anyway?"
"Aw, Angie!"