The Lotus Garden with its bright hanging lanterns and spicy native
odors suggested a Chinese festival gay with curious, high-pitched
music. One thought of red-lipped, sloe-eyed girls munching golden
limes, queer eastern games of chance, and yellow youths with black
silk hair. The delicately-molded Orientalism of the Lotus Garden was
enhanced by the decorative presence of its owner. Herbert Yet Sim
Nom, complacent blend of Mott Street and Times Square, moved quietly
through the restaurant, diffusing his suave diplomacy among the makers,
servers, and consumers of Chinese and American dishes all hours of the
day and night.
Yet Sim Nom knew full well the languorous allure that dripped from
every lantern, curtain, and incense-breathing idol in the place. He had
planned it all, and his greatest pleasure was in watching the senses of
the Americans reel dizzily under the triple assault of Chinese music,
lights, and cookery. He knew that the young men and women who drifted
in and out of the Lotus Garden pictured China as a dazzling expanse of
golden dragons and fascinating symbols designed by Herbert Yet Sim Nom.
He enjoyed watching the diners. Those with mingled expressions of
bewilderment and admiration did not please him. They were yokels. Those
whose faces were grim, disapproving masks brought a faint glimmer of
amusement into Yet Sim Nom’s brown eyes. His delight was appreciative
patrons whose easy familiarity with the menu card proclaimed them
veterans of many Chinese cafés. He disliked most the person who ate,
drank, and smoked, all without realizing that the Lotus Garden was as
beautiful as the visions of a dreaming China maid.
Such a blind one was Eddie Collins. He had come to the Lotus Garden
solely to eat chow mein, and he went about his business with a steady,
systematic motion. Frequently he raised his tea-cup and when he did his
eyes dwelt for one disinterested moment on the surroundings. His gaze
would lower again with the cup, and Eddie Collins would once more apply
himself vigorously to the bowl before him.
His companion was different. Her eyes sparkled as she watched other
couples swing by in the rhythm of the dance. There was an anxious
vividness about her. She wanted to be part of the swaying, squirming
mass. Herbert Yet Sim Nom could see that the atmosphere had claimed
her. Great splashes of color glowed on her cheeks, and she smoked her
cigarette in a manner that marked her as a girl who only smoked on
special occasions.
Yet Sim Nom strolled past them. They had been served by a new waiter,
and the practiced eye of the owner quickly took in the table. The
only impression that he carried away with him was that the stupid,
sandy-haired youth had scorned the ash tray and was arranging a wet
gray semicircle of cigarette stubs on his saucer.
The music stopped, and the dancers hurried back to the chow mein,
growing cold and pasty in the course of many encores. A girl with lazy
eyelids and dewy vermilion lips floated past the table where Dot Haley
sat with Eddie. A vagrant cloud of perfume surrounded her. It seemed
to spiral from her fluffy black bob to the heels of her slippers. They
were red slippers.
“I know her,” said Dot. “Her name is Maude McLaughlin. She went to
school with me, and we used to go out together after we started to go
to work, but she got going with a fellow steady, and she didn’t have no
more time for girl friends.”
“Is that the fellow?” Eddie asked, looking curiously at a slim, dapper
youth who wore a dark suit with a light gray vest smiling through.
“Yeh, that’s him. His name is Ted Monroe. He bets on horses and he
always wins, Maude told me.”
Eddie laughed a little. “He’s in a class by himself,” he remarked.
“Well, I guess he’s a clever fellow, Eddie. Maude’s going to marry him.
She told me she would have married him the first week she met him, only
he didn’t have enough money.”
“No horses running that week?”
“I don’t know. Maybe--Oh, Maude sees me. She’s coming over.”
Eddie kept his seat. If a coach of social etiquette had been there and
said, “Eddie, why don’t you arise?” he would have promptly replied,
“Why? I ain’t goin’ no place.”
Maude greeted Dot effusively and turned a careful appraising smile upon
Eddie.
“How do you do,” she said.
Eddie didn’t know whether to shout “How do _you_ do” right back at her
challengingly or to say “I’m feeling well”; so he said nothing, which
was quite all right, as Miss McLaughlin’s interest in him had already
flagged.
She was very different from Dot. Eddie felt the difference. She wore a
large yellowish diamond and a dress with heavy sophisticated folds of
satin.
“Why, Honey, I haven’t seen you in ages. You should have come over to
the house, you dear kid. You knew I’d always be glad to see you.”
Her flood of affability embarrassed Dot. She floundered. “I--I supposed
that you were always busy.”
Maude smiled importantly. “Of course there’s always a crowd around, but
they’re just a lot of hangers-on that don’t mean much. You should have
come over, Dot. Ted was just saying one night about a month ago that
he wondered what had ever become of that nice little Haley girl.”
Eddie didn’t like Maude. He didn’t like the way she acted toward Dot.
There was probably a word for it, but he couldn’t think what it was.
She was acting as though she was giving Dot something. Eddie wished he
could think of that word so he could tell Dot later.
“I’ll get Ted to come over here and we will have a foursome. How would
you like that, Mr. Collins?”
“Try anything once,” Eddie responded gloomily.
Ted came over. It was obvious at once that he had never asked anything
at all about that nice little Haley girl. He didn’t remember having met
her before and two minutes after his second introduction had forgotten
her name.
“This is a rotten place,” Maude said. “I’m glad I have the car
downstairs so I can get away from it quick.”
“Is it your car?” Dot asked in awe.
“Yes, of course. That is, practically. It’s mother’s car really.”
If Maude had gone a little further she might have reached the truth.
The car, a three-year-old Buick, really belonged to a friend of Maude’s
mother. A most intimate friend of Maude’s mother. A friend, in fact,
whose intimacy with Maude’s mother good people could only deplore.
The orchestra was at work again, but neither of the couples noticed
it. Eddie was smoking a cigarette and listening to Maude McLaughlin.
He wished he could think of that word. Ted was drinking tea with a
certain masculine grace that showed off his soft, well-kept hands. Dot
fashioned narrow golden skirts of pineapple with the side of her spoon
and thought of Maude at the age of seven sitting on the steps of the
teachers’ entrance, holding forth on the subject of where babies come
from.
She wasn’t telling “secrets” now, though there would always be a
certain aura of naughtiness surrounding Maude’s words. It was because
her eyes carried forever with them the look of an easy and unrepented
surrender.
“And you, dear, what have you been doing?” Maude had finished
discoursing on what she termed a perfectly ghastly summer, and she was
ready to listen now in case anybody else had anything to say.
“Oh, I’ve been working,” Dot responded. “That’s about all I ever do.”
“You poor thing. I simply couldn’t stand an office routine. I nearly
went mad rushing downtown every day. If I hadn’t quit I’d have had a
nervous breakdown, I feel sure.”
Eddie moved uneasily and lit another cigarette.
“Hold the light,” Maude said. She lifted a cork-tipped cigarette to her
lips and put cool white fingers on Eddie’s hand to steady it. A faint,
light breath crossed Eddie’s cheek, and the match was out.
He withdrew his hand. “That’s my last match,” he said, and he turned to
blow smoke out at the dance floor.
The waiter brought the checks. Ted Monroe covered them with one hand
and endeavored to look unconcerned under Eddie’s steady gaze. He was
ready to begin the popular good-humored argument when Eddie said
quietly, “Let me have my check, Monroe.”
Ted passed it over, smiling as he did so. This Collins was a strange
guy, obviously low-class. Ted looked at his own check and asked Maude
for three dollars and eighty cents.
Eddie got up noisily. His chair hesitated for a brief moment on its two
back legs, then settled down to normal with a bang. The three at the
table eyed him disapprovingly. Dot looking up from her powder compact
to do so.
“Come on,” he said to her. “Quit fussing. You’ll look just as bad when
you’re finished.”
Dot closed her vanity with a hasty little snap and jumped to her feet.
Maude was still seated, and Eddie was starting away.
“I’m going, Maude. See you again,” Dot said, stopping for a moment at
Maude’s side.
Maude laughed. “Your rough Romeo has you trained,” she said. “Do you
jump through hoops for him? I was going to have you both come home with
me for a while. Wouldn’t you like that?”
“Oh, sure, that would be swell.” Dot’s ready smile disappeared as a
doubting look overspread her face. “But maybe Eddie wouldn’t come.
Wait, I’ll ask him.”
He was leaning up against the door at the top of the restaurant stairs.
His hat was on his head, and his cigarette burned close to his fingers.
“Ready to go now?” he asked.
“Eddie, Maude wants--” Dot gulped; he was looking at her coldly--“wants
me to go over to her house.”
“Well?”
“I thought you’d like to go, too.”
“You thought cockeyed,” he returned, opening the door. “What’ll I do
with that jane and her sweet boy? You go.”
He was over the threshold. Dot caught his hand, and the door closed
behind them. They were at the head of the stairs, looking down at One
Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street.
“Eddie, I came out with you and I’m going to stick with you. I ain’t
like that Higgins girl.”
His sulky eyes blinked, but he never faced her. He was watching the
light on his cigarette creep closer to his hand.
“Please come, Eddie. Maude and Ted want you and I want to go so badly.”
“Well, go,” he said, flinging what was left of his cigarette to the
little tile foyer below. “They’re your friends and I suppose it means
something to you to go calling on them. It means nothing to me.”
Dot’s teeth wandered from one finger to another in vain search for a
scrap of nail to bite. She turned her head away from Eddie and looked
at the wall, an uninteresting but safe view.
“It means nothing to me either,” she said finally, “unless you go, too.”
He did not answer. There was silence on the landing for a second; then
a strange, smothered sound reached Eddie’s ears.
“Say, are you crying?” he demanded. “You make me sick, crying ’cause
you want to go to some dame’s house and won’t.”
“Oh, it isn’t that, Eddie.”
He could see her face now. Her eyes were unbecomingly red. The lips
that were warm and full were misbehaving. She could hardly make him
hear, so low did she speak to keep her voice from ending in a silly
little sob.
“It’s because you’re so mean, Eddie. You speak so cross to me. I guess
you don’t like me, Eddie.”
“Aw, for Christ’s sake!” he said, drawing the words out slowly so as to
get the maximum amount of contempt in each. “If you want to go to that
dizzy broad’s house that bad, come on.”
“Oh, you’re a darling,” Dot said, brightening up and making a dive for
her compact.
Eddie said nothing. He fumbled for another cigarette and was scratching
a match on Herbert Yet Sim Nom’s frosted glass panel when Maude and Ted
joined them.
“Has Mr. Collins decided to favor us?” asked Maude. Her eyes sparkled
with amusement, and she broke into a little light laugh when Dot
answered:
“Yes, he says he’ll go over for a while, Maude.”
Ted was already in the car. There was a small pucker of discontent
between his dark brows as he watched Maude come downstairs with Eddie
and Dot. Why did Maude do such things? he wondered. What amusement
could she derive from entertaining that little dumb-bell? And if the
girl wasn’t bad enough, there was this Collins with the manners of a
ditch-digger.
“Your friend can sit with Ted,” said Maude as they reached the car. “I
have so much to tell you, Dottie.”
Wordlessly, Eddie climbed into the seat beside the wheel. Ted sat
expressionless and silent, waiting for the girls to get seated in the
rear.
“Wanna go right home?” he asked Maude.
“I have to,” she answered. “I may get a long-distance call from mother.
She’s in Atlantic City,” Maude explained to Dot. “Then Sue Cudahy is
going to drop in for a minute. You know Sue, don’t you, Dottie?”
“Oh, sure. She’s the girl who couldn’t graduate, ain’t she? She had to
get her working papers.”
“Yes,” Maude answered, sudden compassion oozing into her voice. “Poor
Sue. I give her all my cast-off clothes. She’s coming in for some I
promised her tonight. Don’t let on you know about it. She’s sensitive.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t,” Dot promised.
The car started, and for a moment no word passed between the occupants.
Motoring was a rare treat for Dot. She loved the motion of the machine,
the wind in her face, the feeling of luxurious privacy. She felt sure
that if ever she owned a car she would ride throughout the night. Not
alone, of course. Somebody would have to be with her; so she would take
Eddie. Maybe sometime they would ride all the way to California. Dot
had heard of people doing that.
“She’s a telephone operator now,” said Maude.
“Oh, yes--Sue.” Dot got in step with Maude again.
“She’s got a sweetheart who is simply impossible.” The dewy vermilion
lips came together in a long, thin disapproving line. “He’s a drug
clerk, so they say, but I think he’s just a plain soda jerker. Poor
Sue, she’ll probably marry him and have six children and wear my
clothes for the rest of her life.”
“Yes,” Dot said rather stupidly. She was thinking of Sue Cudahy as
she remembered her. Big, blonde Sue who had once whispered a wickedly
fascinating tale having to do with Maude McLaughlin and a boy in the
Junior High. So wickedly fascinating was the tale that it spread like a
plague throughout the school. There was no one in the building that did
not hear, and Maude went about her business with her dark eyes leveled
at scholars and teachers alike and a brazen inquiry in the depths of
them. That was six years ago. Now Maude was Sue’s best friend. But was
she? It certainly was kind of her to give Sue charity. Not so kind,
though, to talk with careless freedom of Sue’s circumstances. That
could be avoided. Still the fact remained that Maude said nothing ill
of Sue and had acted generously toward her. Dot was puzzled. People
were hard to understand. It was like a riddle: “When is a friend not a
friend?”
“How do you think I look?” Maude asked suddenly. She had lighted a
cigarette and was leaning back, idly blowing smoke.
“Gee, fine,” said Dot. “Swell diamond you got.”
Maude smiled contentedly. She liked other girls to notice her ring.
“Isn’t it lovely?” she said. “I didn’t want Ted to go over a thousand
dollars, but he is such a silly.”
Dot gasped. Over a thousand dollars! Maude was trying to look very
casual after having delivered that piece of information. Girls didn’t
usually take it like Dottie. They generally made an effort to match
Maude’s casualness. One had said, “Well, he’d have to go over a
thousand, Maude. A girl wouldn’t wear what a fellow could get for a
thousand.” But Dot was so frankly dazzled that for a second Maude was
afraid that she had made it a little too strong. She grew easier as she
saw Dot getting back to normal but decided not to tell Dot that her
winter coat was costing thirty-five hundred dollars. Eighteen hundred
would do nicely in this particular case.
“When are you going to get married?” Dot asked.
Maude threw her cigarette away and drew closer to Dot. Her voice sank
to little more than a whisper as she said, “I have another offer.
There’s a man forty-two years old, a banker, who’s simply wild about
me. He has a hundred-thousand-dollar home and four Rolls Royces. He’s
divorcing his wife simply in the hope that I’ll take him.”
“Oh, Maude, you wouldn’t marry an old man?” Dot asked, horrified.
Maude adopted the woman-to-woman attitude. “I don’t know, Dot,” she
said. “To be perfectly frank with you, I’m not sure I wouldn’t. What
have I if I marry Ted, although I do adore him? Suppose he does have
an income of, say, three or four hundred dollars a week. What’s that,
after all? It’s nothing compared to what Mr. Shaw could give me.”
“Shaw is his name?” Dot asked.
“Yes, George Bernard Shaw,” said Maude. “Isn’t that distinguished?” For
a second she hung in dizzy suspense. The name had a too familiar ring.
Suppose it was the name of a movie actor? But presently Maude breathed
regularly again. There was no inkling of suspicion in Dot’s expression.
Maude smiled to herself. What if George Bernard Shaw was a movie actor?
Dot was so darn dumb it wouldn’t make any difference.