"You done all the work on the job as much as me, and it's half your
present, anyways. You roll him down the hall and stand next to her till
she wakes up. She's a tight little sleeper, but if she don't wake soon
I'll drop a book or something. Go on, Gert, roll it in."
"No, no, Phonzie. You and her have your fun out alone. It's your fun,
anyways, not mine. This piece of rolling-stock will roll herself along
home now."
"Aw, now--"
"Anyways, I'm dead. Look what a rag I am! Look at the hem of this skirt!
The next time I do a crazy thing like walk from Brooklyn, I want to be
burned in oil."
"Now, Gert, stick around and I'll send you home in a cab."
But she was out and past him craning her neck backward through the
aperture of the open door. "Go to it, Phonzie! It's your fun, anyways.
Yours and hers. S'long!"
He had already begun his triumphant passage down the hallway, and on her
couch among her pillows Madam Moores closed her eyes in a simulation of
sleep and against the tears that scalded her lids.
In a south-bound car Gertie Dobriner found a seat well toward the front.
Across the aisle a day laborer on a night debauch threw her a watery
stare and a thick-tongued, thick-brogued remark. A char-woman with a
newspaper bundle hugged under one arm dozed in the seat alongside, her
head lolling from shoulder to shoulder. Raindrops had long since dried
on the window-pane. Gertie Dobriner cupped her chin in her palm and
gazed out at the quiet street and the shuttered shops hurtling past.
Twice the conductor touched her shoulder, his hand outstretched for
fare. She sprang about, fumbling in her purse for a coin, but with
difficulty, because through the hot blur of her tears she could only
grope ineffectually. When she finally found a five-cent piece, a tear
had wiggle-waggled down her cheek and fell, splotching the back of her
glove.
Across the aisle the day laborer leaned to her batting at the hen
pheasant's tail in her hat, and a cold, alcoholic tear dripping from the
corner of his own eye.
"Cheer up, my gir-rl," he said, through a beard like old moss--"cheer up
and be a spor-r-rt!"