Suds In Your Eye (8 page)

The Creole Palace was jammed full…but that was no place for ladies. Mrs. Feeley knew the proprietor of old! The Rainbow Gardens were doing a land-office business.

‘Don’t the bars look funny with them blackout curtains?’ Mrs. Rasmussen asked. Miss Tinkham noted the screen of chicken-wire that surrounded the orchestra; that must have been put up for protection after the bottle-throwing incident Mrs. Feeley had described.

The trio did not stop long enough for a drink in any of these places. Miss Tinkham began to be a little impatient, wondering when the fun was going to start. Soon they reached the Merry-Go-Round.

‘This’ll do!’ Mrs. Feeley announced with finality. The place was jammed with sailors and B girls. Miss Tinkham wanted to know what B girls were, and Mrs. Rasmussen explained while Mrs. Feeley ordered beer for her guests.

‘They acts like hostesses, only they gets a cut on every drink the feller buys ’em,’ she said. ‘They keeps the checks outa the cash register an’ at closin’ time the boss pays ’em a percentage on the checks. The girls don’t drink nothin’ but ginger ale, but the bartender charges for whiskey an’ soda on the check, so they makes out all right!’

Mrs. Feeley finished her beer and opened the box containing the gardenias. She took a few dollar bills out of her purse to make change, and handed Mrs. Rasmussen the purse for safe-keeping.

‘Now you watch me! I’m a-goin’ to work!’ she instructed Miss Tinkham, and sauntered off among the tables, her weather eye peeled for likely-looking sailors.

‘Kiss-arge! Buy a kiss-arge, Chief?’ Mrs. Feeley wheedled. Miss Tinkham watched her, fascinated. She heard a burly boatswain’s mate say, ‘Keep the change, Grandma!’ as Mrs. Feeley stalled around pretending not to have the right change…nothing but dollar bills in her hand. At the next table a homesick seaman asked her to sit down and have a drink with him. When Mrs. Rasmussen caught her eye, she nodded and winked; Mrs. Rasmussen grinned and ordered more beer for Miss Tinkham and herself.

In a little while Mrs. Feeley returned minus half her corsages, but some eleven dollars to the good. Miss Tinkham was spellbound: it was too fantastically easy!

‘Come on! Let’s get outa here!’ said Mrs. Feeley when the beer was gone. ‘It’s gettin’ close to ten o’clock, an’ that’s when they puts out the free ordures at the Tropic! I’m hungry!’

They were stuffing the hors d’oeuvres with both hands when the second mate off a freighter joined them. Apparently he was well in the weeds.

‘Hi, there!’ he shouted, shaking hands with each of them in turn. ‘If I’d a known you was comin’, I’d a baked a cake…with nuts in it! Sit down an’ have a drink on me!’

The ladies accepted graciously. The Saturday-night excursion was going even better than they had hoped for. After the third beer, their host quietly folded up and went to sleep with his head on the table. The bartender came over and presented the bill. Mrs. Feeley told him to collect it from the sleeper.

‘Him?’ the bartender inquired scornfully. ‘He’s been broke since six o’clock!’

Mrs. Feeley paid, but grudgingly.

‘Let that be a lesson to me,’ she muttered. ‘At my age!’ She explained to Miss Tinkham how badly they had been used.

‘Never sit down with ’em unless you see the pay-dirt piled up in front of ’em on the table! They generally pays for a round o’ drinks outa a five- or ten-dollar bill; then they leaves the change piled up in front of ’em, an’ drinks till that’s gone, too. Be sure you see the color o’ their money, or they’ll hook you every time!’

Miss Tinkham promised to be careful. Then she asked shyly:

‘Mrs. Feeley, could I go round with the flowers? I’d love to see if I could sell some!’ Mrs. Feeley handed her the box and some sweaty bills to make change with.

‘Sure, dear! Always tell ’em you’ll go get the change, then they’ll tell you never mind an’ you can keep the change!’

Miss Tinkham caught on fast.

‘That’s why I come out tonight,’ Mrs. Feeley explained to Mrs. Rasmussen in a mellow, confidential mood. ‘If she’s any good at it, she can work the kiss-arge racket every Saturday night an’ probably make herself as much by the end o’ the month as she’d a had from her income!’

‘It sure takes you to think o’ things!’ Mrs. Rasmussen sighed admiringly.

Apparently Mrs. Feeley’s apprentice was an apt one, for they soon saw her smiling her lovely heartwarming smile at the boys in blue. She was bridling and tossing her head coquettishly at them. They noticed that her greatest personal triumphs were at tables where there were no hostesses or other feminine competition. Before long Miss Tinkham was sitting at a table, the center of an admiring group of submarine sailors. They were stacking up drinks on her, and a lad had bought the last corsage and was pinning it on Miss Tinkham.

Mrs. Rasmussen looked at Mrs. Feeley with twinkling eyes and cried, ‘Skoal!’

Mrs. Feeley clinked glasses with her and said: ‘Skoal! It’s a low bush that the sun never shines on! Looks like we got her all set! Pssssssst! Look who just come in the door!’

In response to Mrs. Feeley’s Panamanian love call, Mrs. Rasmussen turned and saw Danny and Kate Logan disappearing into the cocktail lounge where the Hawaiian orchestra was playing.

‘Gawd!’ Mrs. Feeley breathed, her eyes shining. ‘They got it good, an’ that ain’t bad! Come on! Let’s me ‘n you get stiff as a haddock!’

‘Okay by me!’ Mrs. Rasmussen agreed. ‘Guess I’ll just put these here in the First National!’ And she took the money from her purse and shoved it well down into her stocking.

‘Good idea!’ said Mrs. Feeley. ‘Take mine, too; just in case some drunk should try to roll us.’

Miss Tinkham and the submarine sailors were singing with a fine disregard for the lyrics ‘The Song of the Islands,’ bearing down hard on the ‘na-ni-Hawaii’ part.

‘You know,’ Mrs. Feeley confided with a slight hiccup, ‘you can’t beat fun!’

Mrs. Rasmussen drank to that sentiment and began looking around for the ladies’ room.

‘Come on! I’ll go with you,’ Mrs. Feeley said. ‘That door over there where them girls just come out!’

Several minutes later when they were both feeling much more comfortable, they noticed the life-sized painting of a handsome male nude over the washbowl. His sole sop to the proprieties consisted of a large fig-leaf where it would do the most good.

‘Look!’ Mrs. Rasmussen tittered.

‘Ain’t he somepin’?’ chortled Mrs. Feeley. ‘Hey, they’s words on the fig-leaf! Let’s see what it says!’ Slowly and carefully Mrs. Rasmussen read aloud:

‘Do not raise this leaf!’

The sports looked at each other questioningly, each trying to measure the other’s daring. Mrs. Feeley got her nerve up first:

‘Come on! Let’s lift it!’ she urged. ‘After all, it ain’t as if it would be anythin’ you an’ me ain’t seen before!’

Gingerly she lifted the fig-leaf, and as she did so the air was filled with the wild, high buzzing of a burglar alarm. Mrs. Feeley immediately dropped the leaf back into place. The clamor ceased.

The two culprits emerged from the ladies’ room grinning sheepishly. They were met at the door by wild salvos of applause, whistles, and cat-calls. The patrons at the bar turned around to stare at them and the sailors demanded a drink on the house.

Miss Tinkham was pounding on the table with her beer-glass and laughing heartily as the sailors explained the joke to her…they had caught an unsuspecting male earlier in the evening who lifted the fig-leaf of the feminine nude that adorned the wall of the men’s room.

Two suckers in one evening! Second drink on the house in one night…almost too good to be true!

Nothing abashed, Mrs. Feeley and Mrs. Rasmussen enjoyed their free beer. They had scarcely finished when the lights were dimmed as a signal for closing time.

As they left, Miss Tinkham told everyone what a marvelous time she had had; she promised to write regularly to the sailor boys. It had been a glorious binge.

There was not a taxi in sight and the busses had stopped running. Mrs. Feeley did not feel like walking. They trudged a few steps along Market Street and were about to cross over to Island Avenue when the red light stopped them. The same red light stopped a car, heading down Island Avenue. Mrs. Feeley thought fast.

‘Stay close to me an’ do just what I do!’ she said. She stepped out into the street, opened the back door of the sedan, and got in, followed by the other two, before the astonished young driver or his companion could open their mouths.

‘You don’t mind if we just ride along to the foot o’ Island Avenue, do you? It’s only a little ways, an’ my feet hurts!’

As the junk yard came into view, Mrs. Feeley told the young man he could stop.

‘Thanks for the lift, young feller!’ she said as he drove off scratching his head.

‘Yeup!’ said Mrs. Feeley as she got ready for bed. ‘Home’s the best place after all…after all the gin-mills is closed!’

M
ISS
TINKHAM
came up the walk from the front gate with the mail in her hand. There was a card from the Broadway Beauty School for Mrs. Rasmussen announcing free permanent waves to anyone who would act as a model for the students to practice on.

For Mrs. Feeley there was another of those letters with the bright orange enclosure from the tax collector’s office. Miss Tinkham was concerned about the frequency of these notices. She knew little about business procedure, but she felt sure that tax bills were rendered not more than twice a year, anyway. So she decided to broach the subject to Mrs. Feeley at once. Mrs. Feeley always disposed of the notices quite simply: she dropped them into the glass jar where she kept the tax money without ever opening the letters!

‘Mrs. Feeley, dear, I hope you won’t think I am interfering in what does not concern me, but here is another of those notices from the tax collector. Don’t you think perhaps I had better open it?’

‘Well, ’twon’t do no harm, I guess. I never open ’em, myself! The lawyer feller tends to that, but he ain’t been around an’ it’s a week past his time. He ain’t never been late before! I ain’t so hot on the readin’ myself; that’s why Mr. Feeley told me to leave all that there to Strunk an’ he’d take care o’ it for me. What’s it say in the letter, anyway?’

Miss Tinkham opened the envelope and read silently what the notice contained. She looked stunned, as if unable to believe what her eyes told her.

‘Well?’ queried Mrs. Feeley.

‘It says: “The county tax collector is required by state law to offer for sale at public auction all that property herein described in the attached legal description of the property, delinquent for taxes of nineteen thirty-six, on or about June thirtieth, nineteen forty-two, at the tax collector’s office. You have been repeatedly notified of the delinquency, and unless the property is redeemed by the full payment of arrears in taxes plus eight per cent delinquent penalty, the sale will proceed according to law.”’

Mrs. Feeley stopped rocking. She wet her lips and said, ‘Would you just read that over again…slow, like?’

Miss Tinkham complied, even reading off the list of numbers describing the lots and their location.

‘There’s been a awful mistake somewhere!’ Mrs. Feeley announced at last. ‘I paid every cent o’ them taxes long ’fore they was due for six years! I got receipts to prove it, too!’

From a drawer in her dresser she produced an old tin candy box and dug out a handful of tax receipts. Sure enough, there were the rubber stamp marks in the proper squares marked ‘Paid,’ plain as the nose on your face. Miss Tinkham could see.

‘Come on!’ Mrs. Feeley ordered. ‘We ain’t waitin’ for the lawyer: he must be outa town or he’d a been here before now. We’re goin’ right down to the head man about this!’

Mrs. Rasmussen and Miss Tinkham ran to get their hats while Mrs. Feeley put her shoes on. No one spoke. The tenseness of the situation had spread to all of the group. This situation would require the combined mental resources of the friends, and they were saving their strength. The monstrous fact that their happy home was in danger rendered them utterly speechless. It was all a bad dream.

As Mrs. Feeley finished gathering up the tax receipts she said:

‘We’ll have the truck, on account o’ it’s so important. Just holler to Old-Timer, one o’ you!’

Old-Timer rolled the truck out and the ladies climbed aboard.