Texas by the Tail

declared he must-became the housekeeper for the family. He felt that he just about had to, for the time being and under the circumstances. Teddy's earning power was far greater than his, and

much would be needed for a family of three. Also, he could not dispute with his wife at what he considered a very trying period for her, nor could he ask her to cut down on expenses merely to indulge his vanity.

As a bachelor, living in a furnished room, he had entered marriage with only the vaguest idea of the cost of maintaining a wife and household. A wife like Teddy, that is, and a household governed by her whims. In fact, he never knew, since Teddy did the buying and bill- paying, accepting whatever portion of his earnings he gave her as being 'plenty.' But it did gradually dawn on him that Teddy was pooping off enormous amounts of money.

Teddy had to have the very best of everything-furniture, food and drink, apparel, living quarters. But that was only the beginning. She would buy a hundred-dollar dress, and discard it after one wearing. She would buy new furnishings, decide that they were 'all wrong' and dispose of them for whatever was offered. She would do senselessly extravagant things for Mitch-the purchase, for example, of a dozen pairs of watered-silk pajamas-then pout when he was not properly appreciative.

Mitch had the weird notion at times that Teddy hated money, that she felt guilty about having it and was impelled to get rid of it as quickly as possible.

Well, things were going to change, he told himself determinedly. After the baby was born and she had recovered from her pregnancy- inspired goofiness (as he thought of it), little Teddy was going to get squared away fast.

That's what the man thought. That wasn't what happened. For one thing, he was immediately enchanted by little Sam-named after his father. For another, Teddy was not enchanted by the baby. It annoyed her. She regarded it as an intruder on a situation which had been just about perfect as it was.

'You're my baby,' she told Mitch. 'You're all I need.'

'But you're his mother,' Mitch insisted. 'A mother should want to take care of her baby.'

'I do. I love taking care of you.'

'But goddammit-! I mean, look, honey, why did you have a baby if you felt like this?'

'Because you wanted one. You wanted a baby, so I gave you a baby.'

'But-but, Teddy-'

'So now it's your job to take care of him,' Teddy continued Sweetly. 'You take care of your baby, and I'll take care of my baby.'

The conversation took place about ten days after Sam's birth, and Teddy had already returned to work. He had awakened in the middle of the night to find her gone from his side and a note pinned to her pillow. He had been so angry that he almost called her employers, and he refrained from doing so only out of fear of embarrassing her.

They didn't know she was married. Her pregnancy, almost undetectable even to Mitch, had gone unnoticed; and she had gotten her needed time off on the pretext of traveling to the deathbed of a close relative. It was the company's policy not to employ married women. Teddy had strictly enjoined him against ever calling or coming to the place.

Well, anyway. Mitch decided to let things rock along as they were for a while. He loved being with the baby. Someone had to earn the living, and he had no job to go to.

So he became the housekeeper for their apartment, and the full-time nurse for his son. He read a lot. He worked with the dice. On nice days, he loaded Sam into his perambulator and took him out for an airing. As time went on, these walks often wound up in hotel locker- rooms and the back rooms of pool halls and cigar stores, or wherever else a crap game could be found.

Mitch was getting better and better with the dice. He was not nearly as good then as he eventually got to be, but he was good. He banked part of his winnings, contributing the rest to household expenses. That gave him some feeling of independence; at least, he was paying for his own keep. But he was far from satisfied.

Sure, he loved being with the baby, but he couldn't make a career of it. Sure, he was doing fairly good with the dice- but how was he doing it? By hanging out in the kind of places that had always been faintly repugnant to him. Cheap, shoddy places; the habitat, as a rule, of cheap shoddy people. Walk into one of those joints ten years from now, and you'd find pretty much the same people there.

They were pikers, bums, the small fry of the nowhere world. Stick around them long enough, and you became a permanent member of the family. If you ever wanted to be in the big time, you had to be where the big-timers were.

Still… what to do about Teddy? He loved Teddy; he wanted her to be happy. He wasn't afraid of her-not exactly, that is-but he shrank from the prospect of annoying her.

As it turned out, he didn't have to do anything about Teddy, because she had also become dissatisfied with the way they were living. She announced abruptly one morning that they were renting a house, and in that house there was going to be a housekeeper or a nurse- housekeeper or whatever the heck was necessary to allow Mitch to take a job.

'I mean it, Mitch!' she said crossly. 'I don't care what kind of job it is, but by golly you get one and get it fast!'

'But-but that's what I've been wanting to do, all along!' Mitch exploded. 'You're the one that insisted that I stay at home, and-'

'I did not! Anyway, what good is it having you stay at home if I never get to be with you? When I'm working, you're asleep, and when I'm ready for bed you're cleaning house or out walking with the baby or some other crazy thing!'

'I know, but-'

'You'd better stop arguing with me, Mitch Corley! Get yourself a night job like I've got. Then maybe we'll get to see each other from one week end to the next!'

Mitch did as he was told. The job he took-hotel doorman-was not something he would have bothered with ordinarily; it didn't pay enough money. But money wasn't the most important factor at the moment, and there were compensations for the lack of cash.

He wore the hotel's livery, but he was actually employed by the garage-taxi company which serviced the hotel. Thus, since the latter company could hardly hire a supervisor for one man, he was pretty much his own boss. Then (and this was more important to him than he had previously realized) he was no longer addressed as 'boy.' Lifted out of the category of faceless flunkies, he became a person-a man with a name, who was to be consulted with at least a measure of respect on the vital matters of transportation and the maintenance of ultra-expensive cars.

There was little if anything to do between two and six in the morning, and he could sit in his starter's cubicle and read or chat with the inevitable guests who were afflicted with insomnia. One of his most frequent visitors was an ageless little man, with eyes which bugged enormously behind his thick-lensed glasses and a great mop of wiry iron-gray hair. Early in Mitch's employment, he had introduced himself with a question:

'If you are a doorman,' he said, in subtly accented English, 'why are you called a starter?'

'I'll look it up,' Mitch grinned. 'Ask me tomorrow night.'

'So.' The man nodded, gravely approving, then leaned far over into the starter's cubicle. 'Why do you read a book on modern art? Someone has asked you a question about it?'

Mitch said no, he was simply doing it on his own account. He'd heard some ostensibly important people talking about modern art, and he figured it was something he should know about.

'Then, you are not doing it on your own account. It is only a sop to others.'