The car stopped before a brownstone house on Alexander Avenue. The
street was very quiet. The atmosphere of the Bronx had never invaded
this small street. Here one would find no steps full of gossiping
uncorseted Jewesses, no squalling, dirty-faced babies. The quietness
of Alexander Avenue demanded quiet, and noisy, ill-bred families who
came “looking for rooms” were always repelled by the aloofness of the
old brown houses. Here and there a couple stood in a doorway. One
did not think this significant on Alexander Avenue, such an air of
respectability hung over everything. One felt that the rooming-houses
were refined and proper. Perhaps the air of propriety emanated from the
shingles of aged doctors whose last patient had died years before.
The two couples left the car, Ted and Eddie without having exchanged a
single word. Maude rummaged in her gold mesh bag for a key and rushed
up the stoop, her white knees flashing in the darkness as she ran.
“Don’t mind the house,” she said as she threw the doors open. “Bella
hasn’t been here to clean since mother went away. You pay a nigger
twenty-five dollars a week and you can’t get service anyhow.”
The others had reached the vestibule now. Maude drew them in and
switched on the lights. Cheaply stained stairs rose at the foyer’s
side in a straight, simple line. Ahead was the living-room--huge, but
cluttered even so. Dust lay thick over the piano and chairs. The trays
on the smoking-tables had been filled beyond endurance with cigarette
stubs, and the carpet around had graciously catered to the overflow. In
the corners the pattern of the parquet floor was well concealed, and
two glasses redly sticky suggested that Ted and Maude might have had a
drink some days before. Clothes, obviously Maude’s clothes, lay over
chairs and divan. A dressing-gown of masculine cut was draped across
the piano like a scarf.
“It’s filthy,” said Maude somewhat unnecessarily.
Dot and Eddie found seats. Maude flung her hat on the floor and herself
on the divan.
“Be a cherub, Ted, and mix a cocktail,” she said.
“What’s the matter with you?” he returned. “Crippled?”
“You cute thing,” Maude gurgled, “I could eat you up when you try to be
gruff wif oos own ikkle Maudie.”
Maude mixed the cocktail.
Eddie refused his glass. “Never use it,” he explained.
“Mr. Collins suspects your private stock, Ted,” said Maude.
Dot sipped experimentally at her drink. It was a golden shade and
served in a thin-stemmed glass that shimmered with a dozen colors. Dot
was disappointed at the bitter taste of the cocktail. It seemed sad
that such a beautiful thing should taste so awful.
She looked at Maude. Her cocktail was gone, and Ted’s was fast
disappearing.
“Very good,” he said to Maude.
Dot sighed regretfully as she relinquished the glass to the tray. She’d
never be like Maude.
“What’s the matter, honey?” Maude asked.
Dot was embarrassed. “I don’t like it,” she faltered.
Maude and Ted laughed. “Oh, go on,” Maude said, “you’ll get to like
’em.” She took the glass and started toward Dot with it. “Here, drink
this and you’ll love the next one.”
“I’m afraid I can’t,” Dot said.
“Oh, sure you can.”
Dot was glad that the front doorbell rang. She had visions of Maude
holding her while Ted spilled the lovely, horrible drink down her
throat. Eddie was sitting near the piano smiling at her confusion. She
felt that he could be relied on, but there was no comfort in that. She
didn’t want Ted and Eddie pummeling each other all over the room. The
cocktail was forgotten, however, when Maude returned with Sue Cudahy
and Pat Macy in tow.
Sue was big and blonde, as Dot remembered her, with small blue eyes
under thin, undeveloped brows. Her nose was well shaped, but her mouth
was large, and her teeth, when she smiled, looked like three sides of a
square.
Pat, who was suspected of being a soda jerker, had extremely red hair
and a small nervous face. It was impossible to guess at the color of
his eyes because he kept blinking them continually.
He sat down near Eddie. They felt kindly toward each other, but neither
knew why, nor were they conscious of a bond.
Cocktails were not mentioned to the newcomers. Sue watched Maude drink
the one Dot had refused, and there was a slight shadow of amusement in
her eyes.
Ted leaned back in his chair and surveyed Maude’s friends wonderingly.
What did she want of them? What did they give her?
His glance shifted to Maude. She was talking to Sue.
“Oh, Sue, I found some of the loveliest hats and dresses for that
friend of yours who needs them.” Maude looked at Sue meaningly as she
spoke. Her gaze was as sharp and significant as an elbow thrust. She
wanted there to be no question in Sue’s mind of the kindness of her old
school chum.
“That so?” Sue said, carelessly.
“There’s one hat in particular, I think will be very becoming--” Maude
went on.
“That so?” Sue said again and turned to ask Dot if her brother was
still single.
Over near the piano, conversation turned to radio.
“I wish I was brilliant enough to know something about that marvelously
interesting subject,” said Maude. She was piqued--these two stupid
couples ignoring her!
“I’m gonna tell a smutty story,” she announced. “I’m not interested in
radio or Dot’s brother.”
It was milder than Dot had expected. She laughed a little and looked at
Eddie. He was not amused.
“Mr. Collins didn’t like my story,” Maude giggled wickedly.
“Oh, yes, I did,” Eddie returned, “the first time I heard it.”
His reply drew a bigger laugh from Sue and Pat than Maude’s story.
“Here’s one you never heard,” said Maude.
Throughout the second story, Dot focused her gaze on the rug. She lived
a hundred years waiting for Maude to finish. When Maude finally did,
Dot knew it only by the laugh of Pat Macy. Dot couldn’t find a bit of
sense in the line that had brought Pat’s laugh. Again she looked at
Eddie. He wasn’t laughing either, but she could see that he had found
sense in Maude’s joke. Eddie was staring curiously at Ted. There was a
middle-class oath forming in his brain. “He’d be God damned if a woman
of his would ever tell a filthy story.”
Dot knew he was displeased. She whispered to Maude that they had to
go. But Maude was just beginning to enjoy herself. She insisted that
they stay, and Dot’s misgivings were routed by her hostess’s purring
arguments. Maude told another story. This one carried a faint whiff of
stale beer and free lunch. What the girl in the Pullman said to the man
who had shared her berth struck Dot like a slap across the mouth. She
couldn’t have believed it of Maude. Dot sat silent while Ted chipped
in with a yarn about the woman who didn’t want any more children.
Her glance met Eddie’s, and there was a blush on Dot’s face that made
her turn from him. Were these people her friends? She had wanted to
come there. She couldn’t let Eddie see that she hated them, hated being
in this dusty, smoke-filled room with the vulgar and shameless Maude.
And so they stayed while Maude fed a score of cigarettes to her amber
holder. Sue waited with honest boredom for the bundles which were for
her “friend.”
It was Pat Macy who at length yawned sleepily. “It’s twelve o’clock,”
he said. “Time to go, Sue.”
“Yes,” she agreed, walking toward the table where she had laid her hat.
“Where are those boxes, Maude? Can I get them?”
She could. Maude directed her upstairs and turned her attention to Dot.
“Are you going, too?” she asked, noting that Dot had risen from her
chair.
“I must. I should have gone an hour ago.” There was a frightened look
in Dot’s eyes. Her brows were drawn together nervously.
“What are you scared of? The dark?” Maude laughed. “I’m sure Mr.
Collins could be persuaded to take you home.”
Sue reappeared with a hat box and four flat oblong boxes tied together.
She handed them to Pat and wasted no time saying good night to her
benefactress. A brief “So long,” and Sue was walking down the steps to
Alexander Avenue.
The others followed.
“Thank God that’s over,” Sue said. “I hate that house worse than
poison.”
“It’s like all the other houses in the row,” said Dot.
“Oh, I mean I hate Maude and Ted and their actions.”
Dot said nothing. Her eyes roamed undirected to the boxes which Pat
carried piled up in front of his face like a moving-picture comedian.
“Sure she gives me clothes, but say, how she enjoys it! I owe her
nothing,” Sue declared. “You could tell her what I’ve said and she’d
still continue to pass on her cast-offs to me. I could kill her
sometimes, she’s so damn patronizing.”
“Patronizing!” Eddie suddenly exclaimed. “That’s the word.”
Nobody noticed him. Dot was absorbed in what Sue was saying. Open
dislike of any one who had been kind was entirely new to Dot.
It occupied her mind till Pat and Sue turned off toward the subway
and Eddie and she were alone. There was no word spoken between them.
They walked on, their heels sounding hollow and sad on the deserted
pavements. They passed a bakery and the odor of fresh loaves rose up,
seeking to lure them into the shop where a blatant white light spread
itself over marble-topped tables and raisin-studded coffee rings.
“Want some coffee?” Eddie asked.
“No, thank you,” Dot returned firmly.
They walked on, their steps growing slower as they neared Dot’s door.
“Well?” Eddie prompted as they stopped.
“What well?”
“Gonna see me again?”
“That’s up to you.”
“No, it ain’t.”
“Sure it is.”
“I ain’t gonna argue at this hour. I got to get some sleep. You call me
up tomorrow. I gave you the number in the Chinee joint, didn’t I?”
“Yes, I have it.”
“Well, use it. I’ll be waiting tomorrow for you.”
He caught hold of her hands and pulled her to him. She kissed him
without question or coquetry.
“Good night, Kid, I’ll expect your call.”
He started away from her and was arrested by her hand on his sleeve. He
turned and found her eyes brimming with tears.
“What the hell--”
“Oh, Eddie, don’t think I’m crazy. If you get mad at me I’ll have to
walk around all night alone. I won’t go home, Eddie, I can’t. I’m
scared to go upstairs.”
He took her hand and led her into the brown-and-white foyer. She was
crying carelessly now and clinging to him.
“I wasn’t gonna tell you, but I had to--”
“What’s the matter?”
“I can’t go upstairs. It’s half past twelve and my brother will kill
me.” The last few words were accompanied by an agonized sob.
“Don’t be crazy,” said Eddie, his face suddenly hardening. “Your
brother won’t kill you. Tell him you were at a friend’s house. Don’t he
know Maude? He won’t holler.”
“Oh, he will, he will, Eddie. He hit me once something awful just
because I went to Coney Island and didn’t get home till twelve.”
Eddie’s eyes narrowed and his hands slipped into his pockets. “I’ll go
up with you,” he said. “Come on.”
“Oh, that would be twice as bad. He’d think I was no good being with a
fellow till this hour.”
“I hope he says so,” Eddie spoke out of the side of his mouth. “Come
on.”
“Oh, no, Eddie. You’d hit Jim and he’d put me out.”
“Then you’d go with me.”
“With you? Where?”
“Where I go, Stupid. Come on, every minute makes you later.” Eddie
started up the marble stairs. He was impatient to see the end of this.
Dot clutched his hand and pulled him back.
“I don’t want to be bad friends with Jim. He likes me in his own way.
You’ll hit him, and whether he clouts the devil out of you or you lick
him, he’ll throw me out anyway.”
“Well, I said that you can come with me.” Eddie’s eyes looked out of
the narrow space he allowed them and found Dot’s. For a moment he held
her gaze; then she looked away.
“There’s my father, too,” she murmured incoherently.
“All right. I won’t fight with your darling brother. I’ll explain like
a movie hero that we were dee-tained and I hope he will forgive me for
keeping you so late and all that bull.”
“Oh, no, Eddie, if he sees you he’ll kill me--”
“What do you take me for? Do you think I’d let anybody in the world
hurt you or any other dame I happened to be with? I’ll start nice, and
if he goes to hit I’ll--Jesus Christ, I’ll tear him apart.”
“Then he’ll put me out.”
She leaned against the wall and gave herself up to a series of dry,
racking sobs.
“Well, what are you going to do?” Eddie asked, brusquely. “Stay down
here and cry all night or face the music? Come on, don’t be a fool.”
“No, Eddie, I can’t go up with you and I can’t go up alone.”
“What else is there to do?”
“Will you walk over to Edna Driggs’ with me? I’ll wake her up and
she’ll come over.”
“What good would she be? If your brother was to hit you she couldn’t
help.”
“But he won’t hit if Edna’s there. He does what she says.”
Eddie made an exclamation of disgust. He walked back and forth in the
grimy foyer, giving Dot a look of complete bafflement now and again.
He wanted to climb the stairs. He wanted to see Dot’s brother, and he
wanted Dot’s brother to say that Dot was no good.
Instead he followed her out into the street and walked in disapproving
silence to the house of Edna Driggs. It was a squat gray stone building
that tenanted eight families. Edna lived on the first floor and
answered the bell at once. She was fully clothed and did not register
the nth degree of alarm which Eddie expected of her. She simply said,
“Hello, Kids, where’s the trouble?”
Dot had ceased crying. Eddie knew it was the confidence that she had in
Edna that had quieted her. Dot was able to state the situation briefly;
so he contributed not one word to the story.
“Sure,” said Edna in answer to Dot’s request. She got her cape and
walked back to Dot’s with them.
“You’ve been with me since nine-thirty, Dot,” Edna schemed as they
walked. “I was taken with pains like ptomaine and you didn’t dare leave
me, but I feel fine now. Thank God, we have no phones,” she added.
No one spoke again till they reached their destination.
“You better run along, Eddie,” Edna advised. “Jim will take me back
home again. Everything is going to be all right now with Dot.”
“Oh, yes, Eddie,” Dot assured him. “I’ll be all right now.”
Eddie grunted his good night. Dot and her champion passed through
the big glass doors and he remained on the sidewalk watching as they
climbed the first flight of steps. Dot was game now to face her angry
brother. She hadn’t trusted him to go with her. She had to have Edna
Driggs. He spat the name mentally. Edna would buy Dot’s safety with
lies and smiles. Eddie would have assured it differently. His hands
closed into white, bloodless fists. Angrily, he turned toward Willis
Avenue.
Damn Edna Driggs for being alive. The trolley had passed over the
bridge and was going west when Eddie suddenly remembered that he should
have slammed Haley anyhow for the other time--the time Dot had gone to
Coney Island.