"Well, I'm not going."
"When you going to cut this comedy, Marj?"
"I'm not. I'm just beginning."
"Breaking into high society, eh? Fine chance."
"Yes, with the gang of you down there hanging on like the plague, I got
a swell chance, nix."
"It's because we know you too well, Marj. Knew you when you had two
black pigtails and used to carry a bucket into the family entrance of
Harry's place, crying with madness every time your old man sent you.
Gad! I can see you yet, sweetness, with your big black eyes blacker than
ever, and steering home your old man from off a jamboree."
"God! sometimes I wake up in the night just like him and ma was still
alive and me and her was sitting there listening to him creak up the
stairs on his bad nights. I wake up, I can tell you, in a sweat--right
in a sweat."
"I knew you in them days, kiddo, just like you knew me. That's why you
can't pull nothing over on a fellow, kiddo, that's had as many pulls on
your all-day suckers as I have. You're a little quitter, you are, and
sometimes I think you're out for bigger game."
"It don't mean because a girl was born in the mud she's got to stick
there, does it?"
"No, but she can't pretend she don't know one of the old mud-turtles
when she sees one."
"Mud-turtle is the right name."
"The crowd has got your number, all right, kiddo; they know you're out
after bigger game. You're a little turncoat, that's what they say about
you."
"Turncoat! Who wouldn't turn a coat they was ashamed of? I guess you all
don't remember how I used to say, even back in those years when I was
taking tickets down at Lute's old Fourteenth Street Amusement Parlors,
how when my little minute came I was going to breeze away from the gang
down there?"
"I remember, all righty."
"How I was going to get me a job up-town here, where I could get in with
a decent crowd of girls, and not be known for the kind down there that
you and all of 'em knew I--I wasn't."
"Sure we knew."
"Yes, but what good does that do me? Can a dirty little yellow-haired
snip over in the Fancy Fruits give me the once-over and a turn-down?
She can. And why? Because I ain't certified. I come from a counterfeit
crowd, and who's going to take the trouble to find my number and see if
it's real?"
"Aw, now--"
"Didn't a broken-down old granny over in the Thirty-fourth Street house
where I roomed give me notice last week, because Addie Lynch found me
out one night and came to see me, lit up like a Christmas tree?"
"That's why I say, Marj, stick to the old ones who know you."
"Like May Pope used to say, a girl might as well have the game as the
name."
"If I was a free man, Marj, I'd--"
"Where has the strait and narrow got me to, I'd like to know? Sometimes
I think it's nothing but a blind alley pushing me back."
"If I was a free man, Marj--"
"Let me meet a slick little up-stage fellow that doesn't have to look
two ways before he walks the wrong beat in daylight; let me meet a
fellow like that, and where does it get me?"
"I'm no saint, Marj, but there ain't a beat in town I'd have to look two
ways on. Ask any cop--"
"Does the slick little up-stage fellow get my number? He does not. I'd
like to see one of them ask that dirty little yellow-head over in the
Fancy Fruits to go home with him. A little Nobody-Home like her, just
because she was raised in an amen corner of the Bronx and has a six-foot
master-mechanic brother to call for her every time she works fifteen
minutes later, she can wear her hands crossed on her chest and a lily
stuck in 'em and get away with it, too."
"You're right, kiddo; you got more sand than ten of such put together."
"I'm as good as her and better. I'm not so sure by a long shot that any
of those baby faces would say no if they was ever invited to say yes.
Watch out there, that cab, Blink. Gee! your nerves are as steady as
gelatin."
They were veering through the crowds and out into the soft flurry of the
storm. Flakes like pulled-out bits of cotton floated to their shoulders,
resting there. Seventh Avenue, for the instant before the eye left the
great Greek façade of the Pennsylvania Terminal, was like a dream of
Athens seen through the dapple of white shadows. Immediately the eye
veered, however, the great cosmopolis formed by street meeting avenue
tore down the illusion. Another block and second-hand clothing shops
nudged one another, their flapping wares for sale outside them like
clothes-wash on a line, empty arms and legs gallivanting in the wind. A
storm-car combed through the driven snow, scuttling it and clearing
the tracks. Down another block the hot, spicy smell of a Mexican dish
floated out between the swinging doors of an all-night bar. A man
lurched out, laughing and crying.
Marjorie Clark's companion steered her past and turned toward her, his
twitching features suddenly, and even through their looseness, softened.
"Poor kiddo!" he said. "Just send them to me for reference. I can do
some tall vouching for you."
"The way I feel lately sometimes, honest, I think if I get to getting
the indigoes much deeper, there's no telling where they'll land me. The
game as well as the name ain't all poetry, let me tell you that."
Through the fall of mild snow he could see her face shining out darkly,
and his bare, eager fingers moved toward her arm, and except when the
spasmodic twitch locked his features, his face, too, was thrust forward,
keen and close to hers.
"I've been telling you that for five years, girl."
"Now don't go getting me wrong, Blink."
"If I was what the law calls a free man, Marj, you know what kind of
a proposition I would have put up to you five years ago when I had my
health and my looks and--"
"If you want to make me sore, just tune up on that old song. You ain't
man enough to even get your own little kid out of the clutches of a
mother that's pulling her down to Hades with her. Take it from me, if
there wasn't something in me that's just sorry for you, I wouldn't walk
these here blocks with you. Sometimes when I look at you right hard,
Blink, honest, it looks to me like the coke's got you, Blink."
"Now, Marjie--"
"You wouldn't tell me if it had. But you got the twitches, all righty."
"It's me nerves, Marj; me nerves and you."
"Bah! you got about as much backbone as a jellyfish. Blaming things on a
girl."
"You took the backbone out of me, I tell you."
"Oh no, I didn't; it's been missing since your first birthday."
"Eating out my heart and vitals for you and your confounded highfalutin
amen notions."
"Before you ever clapped eyes on me you was more famous for your arm
muscle than your backbone. I guess I don't remember how your own mother
told me the very day before she died how she tried on her old knees to
keep you out of a marriage with that woman. All that happened way back
in the days when you had your muscles and was head rubber-down at
Herschey's. You knew her kind when you did it, and now why ain't you man
enough to blame yourself for what you are instead of blaming the girl?
Gee!"
"I didn't mean it, Marj. It slipped. S'help me, I didn't. Sometimes I
just don't know what I'm saying, Marj; that's how my mind kinda gets
sometimes. All fuzzed over like."
"What's the odds what you say, Blink? You're just not man-size, I
guess."
She was a bleak little figure bowing into the wind, her tippet flapping
back over one shoulder.
"I ain't, ain't I? I 'ain't gone through a living hell sitting on the
water-wagon for you, have I?"
"Try to keep from twitching that way, Blink. You give me the horrors."
"I 'ain't cut out playing stakes, have I? Gad! I can live from Sunday to
Sunday on a pick-up from a little gamble here and a little gamble there.
But when you hollered, I didn't cut it and begin to work up muscle to
get back on the job again, did I? I didn't, did I?"
"You can't pump that into me, Blink."
His voice narrowed to a nasal quality. "I didn't send her and the kid
a whole Christmas box like you wanted me to, did I? I didn't stick a
brand-new fiver in the black-silk-dress pattern, knowing all the while
she'd have it drunk up before she opened the creases out. I didn't, did
I?"
They were approaching the intersection of a wide and white-lighted
cross-town street. The snowfall had lightened. Marjorie Clark let her
gaze rest for the moment upon her companion, and her voice seemed
suddenly to nestle deep in her throat.
"Gee! Blink, if I thought any of the--the uplift stuff I've tried to
pump into you had seeped in. Gee! if I could think that, Blink!"
Tears lay close to the surface of her words, and his lean face was
thrust farther forward in affirmation.
"It has, Marj. All I got to do is to think of you and those big black
eyes of yours shining, and I could lead a water-wagon parade."
"It's the habits, Blink, you got to watch most. For a minute to-night
you looked like coke and--and it scared me. Don't let the coke get you,
Blink. For God's sake, don't!"
"I sent her a fiver, Marj, and a black silk, and a doll with real hair
for the kid. Y'oughtta seen, Marj, real hair on it."
"That was fine, Blink. Fine!"
"Where you going? Aw, come, Marj. For the love of Mike, you're not
going."
"Yes, yes. I got to go. This is Twenty-second Street, my corner. That's
where I room; that fourth house to the right. That dark one. I got to
go."
"Where?"
"Where do you s'pose? Home."
"What's doin' there?"
"N-nothing."
"Whatta you going to do Christmas Eve? Sit in your two-by-four and
twiddle your thumbs?"
Immediate sobs rose in her throat. "Lord!" she said, "I dun'no'! I
dun'no'!"