Just Around the Corner: Romance en casserole
swell marble-entrance apartments. Ain't that right?"
"You've hit it, Loo. Take this here red parlor set--when me and Charley
went down to pick it out I couldn't hardly wait till we got it up in the
flat; and now just look! I can't look red plush in the face no more."
"That's the way of the world," said Loo. She sucked in her breath and
cluck-clucked her tongue against the roof of her mouth.
"I'll be over about eight, then--after he goes."
"All right. Bring what you need, and send for the other stuff. You
better put in a party dress; we might get a date for to-night, for all I
know. You know you always brought me luck when it come to dates. I ain't
had a chum since that could bring them round like you."
"Oh, Loo! I ain't thinkin' about such things."
"Sure you ain't; but it won't hurt you to know you're livin', will
it?--and to chaperon your friend?"
"No," admitted Lil.
"Well, so long! I'll see you later. Don't let on to Charley I was over.
He ain't got no truck for me."
They embraced.
"Good-by for a little while, Loo."
"Good-by, dearie."
Lilly watched her friend pass down the narrow hall, then she closed the
door. Left alone, she crossed to the window and leaned out well beyond
the casement--a _Demoiselle_ whose three lilies were despair, anger, and
fear. The stagnant air, savored with frying pork, weighted her down with
its humidity; her brow puckered into tiny lines.
Do not, reader, construe this setting too lightly. The most pungent
essay in all literature is devoted to the succulency of roast pig;
Sappho was most lyric after she had rubbed her wine goblet with
garlic-flavored ewe meat. But such kindly reflection was not
Lilly's--fleshpots and life alike were unsavory.
The Nottingham lace curtains hung limp and motionless round her, and
waves of heat deflected from the asphalt came up heavy as fog. Three
stories beneath, Third Avenue spluttered on the griddle of a merciless
August--an exhausted day was duskening into a scarcely less kind
twilight; she could feel the brick wall of the building exhaling like a
furnace.
It was characteristic of Lilly that, with the thermometer up in three
figures and her own mental mercury well toward the top of the tube, she
should strike the one note of relief in a Saharan aridness. She
suggested the drip of clear water in a grotto or the inmost petals of a
tight-closed rose. If her throat ached and strained to keep down the
tears, her neck, where the sheer white collar fell away, was cold and
chaste; if anger and resentment were pounding through her veins the
fresh firmness of her flesh did not betray it.
She leaned her head against the window-frame and looked down with a
certain remoteness upon the human caldron three stories removed. Lights
were beginning to prick out wanly; the bang and clang of humanity,
distant, but none the less insistent, came up to her in a medley of
street-car clangs, shouts, and hum-hum. Children cried.
Upon a fire-escape level with her own window a child, with bare feet
extended over the iron rail, slept on an improvised bed; from the
interior of that same apartment came the wail of a sick infant. A woman
nude to the waist passed to and fro before the open window, crooning to
the bundle she carried in the crook of her arm. Lilly's mouth hung at
the corners.
Came darkness, she passed out into the kitchen and covered the
slow-cooking chops with a tin lid, lighted the gas-jet, turning the
flame down into a mere bead, and resumed her watch at the front window.
Clear like a clarion a familiar whistle ripped through the din of the
street and came up to her sharp and undiverted--two clean calls and a
long, quavering ritornelle. At that signal, for the year and a half of
their married life, Lilly had unfailingly fluttered a white handkerchief
of greeting from the three flights up. Her arm contracted reflexly, but
she stayed it and stepped back into the frame of the window, leaning
straight and tense against the jamb. Her pulse leaped into the hundreds
as she stood there, her arms hugging her sides and her blouse rising and
falling with the heave of her bosom, her handkerchief a tight little wad
in the palm of her hand.
Again the call, tearing straight and true to its destination! She
remained taut as stretched elastic. There was a wondering interim--and a
third time the signal split the air, sharp-questioning, insistent. Then
a silence.
Lilly darted into the kitchen and stooped absorbed over the burbling
coffee. A key rattled the front-room lock, and she bent lower over the
stove. She heard her name called sharply; a door slammed, and her
husband bounded into the kitchen, his face streaming perspiration and
his collar like a rag about his neck.
"Hello, honey! Gee! You gimme a scare there fer a minute. I thought the
heat might 'a' got you."
He gathered her in his arms, pushed back her head, and looked into her
reluctant eyes.
"What's the matter, hon? You ain't sick, are you?"
She wriggled herself free of his arms and turned to the stove.
"No," she said, in a monotone, "I ain't sick."
He regarded her with a worried pucker between his eyes.
"Aw, come on, Lil--tell a fellow what's the matter, can't you? It ain't
like you to be like this."
"Nothin'!" she insisted.
"You gimme a swell turn there fer a minute. They're droppin' like flies
to-day--hottest day in five summers."
Silence.
"Whew!" He peeled off his coat and hung it, with his imitation Panama
hat, behind the door; his pink shirt showed dark streaks of
perspiration; and he tugged at the rear button of his limp collar.
"Be-e-lieve me, the pianner business ain't what it's cracked up to be!
There ain't a picture house in town got the Gem beat when it comes to
heat. Had to take off the Flyin' Papinta act to-day and run in an extry
picture because two of the kids give out with the heat. I've played to
over ten thousand feet o' films to-day; and be-e-lieve me, it was some
stunt!"
He sluiced his face with cold water at the sink, and slush-slushed his
head in a roller-towel, talking the while.
"I never seen the--extry picture--they--run in to cover the--Papinta
act; and before I--could keep up--with the film--I was givin' ragtime
fer a funeral. You oughta heard Joe squeal!" He laughed and threw his
arms affectionately across his wife's shoulder. "Eh--ragtime fer a
funeral! Fine pianner-player you got fer a husband, honey!"
Given a checked suit, a slender bamboo cane, and a straw Katy slightly
askew, Charley might have epitomized vaudeville. He had once won a
silver watch-fob for pre-eminent buck-dancing at a Coney Island
informal, and could sing "Oh, You Great Big Beautiful Doll!" with nasal
perfection.
"Yes, sirree, Lil; you got a fine pianner-player fer a husband!"
She squirmed away from his touch and carried the coffee-pot to the
little set-for-two table. The chops steamed from a blue-and-white plate.
Her husband, unburdened with subtleties, straddled his chair and
scraped up to the table; his collapsed collar, with two protruding ends
of red necktie, lay on the window-sill; the sleeves of his pink shirt
were rolled back to the elbow.
The meal opened in a silence broken only by the clat-clat of dishes and
the wail of suffering babies.
"Poor kiddies, they ain't got a chance in a hundred. Gee! If I had the
coin, wouldn't I give them a handout of fresh air and milk? I'd give
every one of the durn little things a Delmonico banquet. I'd jest as
soon get hit in the head as hear them kids bawl."
Suddenly he glanced up from his plate and pushed himself from the table;
his wife was making bread-crumbs out of her bread.
"Say, Lil, I ain't never seen you like this before! Ain't you feeling
good? Come on--tell a feller what's the matter with you."
He rose and came round to her chair, leaning over its back and taking
her cheeks between thumb and forefinger.
"Come on, Lil; what's the matter? You ain't sore at me, are you?"
"Can't a girl get tired once in a while?" she said.
"Poor little pussy!" He patted her hair and returned to his place.
"Guess what I got!" groping significantly in the direction of his
hip-pocket. "Something you been havin' your heart set on fer a long
time. Guess!"
"I dunno," she said.
"Aw, gwan, kiddo! Give a guess."
"I can't guess, Charley."
"Well, then, I'll give you three guesses."
"I dunno."
"Look--now can you?"
He showed her the top of a small, square box tied with blue cord. It
bore a jeweler's mark.
"Can you guess now, Lil? It's something you been aching fer."
"Lemme alone!" she said.
He looked at her in frank surprise, slowly replacing the box in his
hip-pocket.
"Durned if I know what's got you!" he muttered.
"Nothing ain't got me," she insisted.
He brightened.
"Poor little girl! Never mind; next summer I'm goin' to grab that
Atlantic City job I been tellin' you about. The old man said again
yesterday that, jest as sure as he opens his sheet-music bazar down
there next season, it's me fer the keyboard."
"His schemes don't ever turn out. I know his talk," his wife objected.
"Sure they will this time, Lil; he's got a feller to back it. He dropped
in special to hear me play the 'Louisanner Rusticanner Rag' to-day; an'
honest, Lil, he couldn't keep his feet still! I sprung that new one on
him, too--the 'Giddy Glide'--an' I had to laugh; the old man nearly
jumped over the pianner--couldn't sit quiet! Just you wait, Lil. I got
that job cinched--no more picture-show stuff fer me! It'll be us fer the
board-walk next summer!"
"That's jest what you said about grabbin' that Coney Island job this
season."
"I couldn't help it that they cut out the pianner at the Concession,
could I? The films ain't no more fun fer me than fer you, honey."
"It's pretty lonesome for a girl sitting here alone every night. It was
bad enough before you took the twelve-to-two job; but I never have no
evenin's nohow."
He looked at her with wide-open eyes.
"I didn't know you were sore, Lil--on the real, I didn't! I jest took
that cafe job fer a few weeks to help along the surprise." His hand went
to his hip-pocket.
"Oh," she said, her lips curling, "I'm sick of that line of talk."
"Lil!"
There was a count-five pause; and then the old cheeriness came back into
his voice.
"I'm going to cut out the cafe job, anyway, now that--"
"Oh, never mind," she said, indifferently. "What's it matter whether you
are home at twelve or two? I ain't had no evenin's for a good long time,
anyhow."
"I guess you're right. Don't I wish I had some steady clerkin' job, like
Bill! But it don't seem like I am cut out fer anything but pounding
ragtime--you knew that, honey, before we was--" He stopped, reddening.
"No, I didn't! If I'd known before we was married what I know now,
things might be different. How was I to know that you was goin' to be
changed from matinee work to all-night shows? How was I to know you was
goin' to make me put up with a life like this? When I see other girls
that's married out of the department, and me, I jest wanna die! Look at
Sally Lee and Jimmy--they go to vaudyville every week and to Coney
Saturdays. You even kick if I wanna go over to Loo's to spend a
evening!"
"I don't kick, Lil; I jest don't like to have you running round with
that live wire. She ain't your style."
"That's right--run down my friends that I worked next to in the gloves
fer four years! She was good enough fer me then. Me and her is old
friends, and jest 'cause I'm married don't make me better'n her."
"I'm sorry I kicked up about it, honey. Maybe I was wrong."
"She can tell you that I had swell times when I was in the gloves--even
when I was in the notions, too. There wasn't a night I didn't have a bid
for some dance or something."