BUtterfield 8 (25 page)

“Sure. But I don’t want you to spend your money on me. We’ll go Dutch Treat.”

“Nuts. I buy this lunch. I’ll be over for you how soon?”

“You can start right away. I’ve been up for over an hour. Come right over.”

“I’ll be over before you can say Jefferson Machamer.”

“Jefferson Machamer,” she said.

“That’s not the way to say it,” said Eddie, and hung up.

Eddie was full of plans, few of them making sense when his income was considered. All Gloria had to do was listen. “A small car, an Austin or one of those little Jordans. You know those little Jordans? They don’t make them any more, but they were some cars. Or I keep seeing an ad in the paper for a baby Peugeot. I just want a small car.”

“Naturally.”

“Why naturally?”

“So you won’t have to take anyone else for a ride. You want a car to think in, don’t you, Baby?”

“That’s right,” he said. “A car I can think in.”

“And Norma and I, we’ll just sit around and sew on Sunday afternoons when it’s hot. You go out to the country—the North Shore is nice and cool. You go out and you think and Norma and I will sit and wait for you, and then you come home and tell us what you’ve been thinking. Understand, if you don’t
want
to tell us, or you’re too tired, it’ll keep. What else are you going to do with your money?”

“Well—” They were at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Eighth Street, halted by traffic. “You see those figures on top of the traffic lights?” At that time the traffic light standards were adorned on top with gilt statuettes of semi-nude men in trench helmets.

“Uh-huh.”

“Well, I’m going to do something about them. I’m not sure what, but something.”

“Somebody ought to.”

“I may only buy them, all the way from here to a Hundred and Tenth Street, if they go that far, and send them to a silly old uncle of mine who loves to play with soldiers.”

“No.”

“No. You’re right. I have a better idea, but I don’t know you well enough to tell you.”

“Certainly not.”

“The idea is, how to control female jaywalkers. I would have instead of a light, when it is time for the red light to go on, all the little soldiers would uh, come to attention as it were.”

“As it were.”

“And all the women would stop, see? They would watch this phenomenon and meanwhile traffic would be rolling by. There’s only one difficulty. When the women get tired of watching it we’ll have jaywalking again.”

“Ho-ho. Women—”

“I know. Women won’t ever get tired of watching that phenomenon. This is a
nice
conversation.”

“What about men jaywalkers?” said Gloria.

“We have a jaywalker for a mayor,” said Eddie.

“Oh, stop it. That isn’t even original.”

“Yes, it’s at least original. It may be lousy, but it’s original. Anyway I never heard anyone else say it. That’s always my trouble when I make puns.”

“What else with your money?”

“Buy you lunch. Buy you a present. Buy Norma a present—”

“And get a haircut.”

Eddie was gay all through luncheon, long after Gloria grew tired of his fun. She could see that it was more than the prospect of the job that made him feel good. The other thing was without a doubt Norma Day. Always before this when he was gay it did not last so long without encouragement from Gloria; this time he went on, and in a way that in anyone else she would have called stupid. Not stupid in Eddie. Eddie did not do stupid things. And God knows he was entitled to some fun. But twice in one day was too much for this: first it was Ann Paul with her Mr. Fletcher—Mr. Henderson, rather. Ann was all packed and everything and moving right out of Gloria’s life. And now Eddie. She could easily have said the hell with Ann. She didn’t like women anyway. Women had no spine. Gloria thought they were more intelligent than men, but they didn’t get as much out of it as men did. Unless trouble was getting something out of it. Now that Ann was safe and happy Gloria admitted to herself that what their schoolmates had suspected might easily have been true. It was nothing special against Ann. Gloria had a theory that there was a little of that in practically all women; just get them drunk enough in the right surroundings. And a lot of them didn’t have to get drunk. She had had passes made at her by dressmakers’ fitters, show girls, women doctors, and—and then she pulled herself out of this. For every woman who had made a pass at her there were ten, fifteen, a hundred, a thousand, who had not, and who probably had not the slightest inclination in that direction. But admitting that she was factually wrong did not get her out of the general mood. She came back to wishing Ann well, and found herself wanting to be away from Eddie. She was tired of being with him. The only person she wanted to be with was Liggett. She wanted to be home or with Liggett. One or the other. Away from the whole thing, all that was her usual life; Eddie, her friends, the smart places or the gay places, the language she and they spoke, and all about that life. But if she had to have any of it, she wanted all of it. Here, with the bright sun on Fifth Avenue, she was thinking that the only thing she wanted was to be with Liggett, lying in bed or on the floor or anywhere with him, drunk as hell, taking dope, doing anything he wanted, not caring about the time of day or the day of the week and not thinking whether it was going to end. And if not Liggett, then no one. Then she wanted to be home where she could be within sound of her mother’s voice, surrounded by the furniture that she would not bump even in the dark. She wanted to be moral. She would stop smoking. She would wear plain clothes and no makeup. She would wear a proper brassière, no nail polish. She would get a job and keep regular hours. And she knew she could do these things, because she knew Liggett would be back. Maybe.

Eddie asked her to have more coffee but she said she had to go home and wait for a call. Like that Eddie understood. His gayety disappeared, he was considerate, he remembered that she had not been participating in his fun. “You go on home,” he said. “I’m going uptown, and I’ll take a bus from here.”

“I’m sorry, Eddie.”

“You’re sorry? I’m the one to be sorry.”

“It just happens today—”

“I know. Go ahead. Kiss me good-by.”

“No,” she said.

“All right, don’t,” he said. But she did, and at least made the waiter glad.

She went home, feeling like crying part of the way, and then halfway changing to pleased with herself because she was on her way home, which was a path to righteousness or something.

Three o’clock was striking when she let herself in. Elsie, the maid, was dusting the staircase and could easily have opened the door, but not Elsie. Sometimes Gloria suspected that Elsie, who was colored, knew something of Gloria’s Harlem benders. It may have been that, and it may only have been the contrast between the respectful, almost slave-like obedience Elsie accorded Mrs. Wandrous, and the casual, silent manner Elsie showed Gloria.

“Packages come from the stores,” said Elsie.

“For me?” said Gloria.

“Yes,” said Elsie. She spoke it on a high note, as much as to say, “Why, sure. Who else would be getting packages in this house?”

“Then why don’t you say so? . . . Oh, don’t answer me.” This was a swell way to start the new life, but this nigger irritated her. “What’s your husband doing now? Is he working?”

“Why?” said Elsie.

“Don’t ask why. Answer my question.”

“He’s gettin’ along. Now and then he gets sumpn. Now may I ask why?”

“You may not.” Gloria was on the verge of mentioning Lubby Joe, a Negro big shot the mention of whose name was enough to command respect among most Negroes. But it would be hard to explain how she knew Lubby Joe, and it was a thing that could not be left unexplained. This made her angry too, to start something she could not finish, especially something that would have given her so much pleasure as throwing a scare into Elsie. “Where’d you put the packages?”

“Uh cared them all the way up to your room,” said Elsie.

“Yeah man!” said Gloria, in spite of herself.

She was upstairs, trying on the new clothes, when Elsie came in, dust-cloth in hand. “Some man called you on the phone. He lef’ this here number.”

“God damn you, you black bitch! Why didn’t you give me this message when I came in?”

“Uh didn’t think.”

“Get out of here!”

She called the number, which was a private branch exchange, and the extension number which had been given Elsie. The extension did not answer. The number was the Biltmore. It could have been a
lot
of people, but it
couldn’t
have been anyone but Liggett. She sat there half dressed, too furious to curse Elsie, hating the Negro race, hating herself and her luck. In five minutes she called the number again. It was always possible he was in the bathroom the first time. This time she left word that she had called. “Just say that Gloria phoned. The party will know.” She only hoped it was Liggett. She was sitting there and she heard the front door close in the careful but not noiseless way her mother closed it. Gloria called to her to come upstairs.

“Certainly is getting warmer. When did you get back? Is Eddie really working?”

“Mother, this is the last straw. I want you to fire Elsie. Today.”

“Why, what’s she done?”

“I just had a very important message and she forgot to give it to me till just this minute, and of course when I called the party had left.”

“Well, you know Elsie has a lot to do. She’s got this whole house—”

“You can get any number of niggers that will do twice the work and won’t forget a simple little thing like that. I’m sick of her. She’s lazy—”

“Oh, no. No, she isn’t lazy. Elsie’s a good worker. I admit she has her shortcomings, but she isn’t lazy, Gloria.”

“She is! She’s terrible, and I want you to fire her. I insist!”

“Oh, now don’t fly off the handle this way over a simple little telephone message. If it’s that important the person will call again, whoever it was. Who was it, and why is it so important?”

“It’d take too long to tell you now. I want you to fire Elsie, that’s what I want you to do. If you don’t I’ll tell Uncle Bill. I won’t stay here.”

“Now look here, just because Elsie does something bad isn’t any reason why you should be rude to me. You have your own way quite a lot it seems to me. Too much for your own good. You go around doing as you please, staying away at night and doing dear knows what, and we permit it because—well, I sometimes wonder why we do permit it. But you can’t come home and disrupt the whole household because one little thing goes wrong. If you can’t appreciate all the things we do, all for you—”

“I’m not going to listen to you.” She went to the bathroom and locked the door. In the bathroom was a dressing table with triplicate mirrors and many lights. Even the front of the drawer had a mirror, and whenever she noticed this she thought about the unknown person who designed the table, what he or she must have had in mind: what earthly use could there be for a mirror on a drawer, just that height? What
other
earthly use, that is? It reflected your body right where your legs begin. Did other women really look at themselves as much as she did or what? Yes, she guessed they did, and it was not an altogether unwelcome thought. She wanted to be like other women, now, for the time being. She didn’t want to be the only one of her type in the world. She didn’t want to be a marked girl, who couldn’t get along with the rest of the world. It had started out a good day, and then came Ann, and her joy for Ann didn’t hold over an hour; she was bored with Eddie, really her best friend; she fought an undignified fight with Elsie, and she had a quarrel with her mother. Why did days have to start right if they were going to turn out like this? Was it to give you a false sense of security, an angry God, a cruel God, making you feel this was going to be a lovely day, about as swell a little day as you could hope to find, and then—smacko! Four times she had gone smacko! So what about this stuff of starting the day feeling it was going to be a good one? Or maybe it was a merciful God who did it. He gave you a good night’s sleep, thereby making you feel good at the beginning of the day, because He knew you were going to have a tough one and you’d need all the optimism you could command. What about God, for that matter? She hadn’t thought about God for a long time. Monday she would begin again, because she noticed one thing about people who believed in God: they were warmer people than those who didn’t. They had a worse time, but they had a better time too. Catholics. Catholics had more fun on parties than anyone else. The Broadway people were mostly all Catholics or Jews, and they seemed to have a good time. At least the Catholics did. As to the Jews, they never seemed to have a really good time. They were too busy showing off when they were supposed to be having a good time. Like Italians. Gloria at this point changed her classification from Catholic to Irish. The people that seemed to have the best time, at least so far as she had observed, were the Irish Catholics who didn’t go to Church. Some of them would confess once a year and then they could start all over again. That didn’t seem right to Gloria, if you were going to have a real religion, but it certainly made those Catholics feel good. She decided she wanted to go to a Catholic Church and confess. What a story that would be if she ever told the father all she could tell. The party she went to thinking it was being given by a movie actress and it turned out to be a gangster party, where they had all the girls from a show and the gangsters tied sheets to one girl’s wrists and hung her stark naked out the twenty-first-floor window, and when they pulled her in they thought she was dead. All the girls getting stinking as fast as they could because they were afraid to stay sober and afraid to suggest leaving. The two virgins. The dwarf. The very young and toughest of the mob, who never even smiled unless he was hurting somebody. She remembered how frightened she was, because that young man kept staring at her, but the lawyer with whom she had gone to the party told the big shot that she was Park Avenue, and the big shot got enough kick out of thinking his party was shocking her. And it was. She had seen wild parties, but this was beyond wild: the cruelty was what made it stick in her memory. She looked around the bathroom and it made her think of Rome. Rome never saw parties like that. Rome didn’t have electric light and champagne and the telephone, thirty-story apartment houses and the view of New York at night, saxophones and pianos. Here she was, just a girl on the town, but about the only thing she had missed was lions and Christians, and she supposed if she hung around long enough she’d have to see that. With an effort she made herself quit this line of thought. It was so real to her that she was sure her mother could hear her thinking. She opened the bathroom door. Her mother had left the bedroom.