“Hay dere sit down Congo; Barney’s goin to sing de Bastard King of England.”
Emile jumped on a streetcar and rode uptown. At Eighteenth Street he got off and walked west to Eighth Avenue. Two doors from the corner was a small store. Over one window was Confiserie, over the other Delicatessen. In the middle of the glass door white enamel letters read Emile Rigaud, High Class Table Dainties. Emile went in. The bell jangled on the door. A dark stout woman with black hairs over the corners of her mouth was drowsing behind the counter. Emile took off his hat. “Bonsoir Madame Rigaud.” She looked up with a start, then showed two dimples in a profound smile.
“Tieng c’est comma ça qu’ong oublie ses ami-es,” she said in a booming Bordelais voice. “Here’s a week that I say to myself, Monsieur Loustec is forgetting his friends.”
“I never have any time any more.”
“Lots of work, lots of money, heing?” When she laughed her shoulders shook and the big breasts under the tight blue bodice.
Emile screwed up one eye. “Might be worse. … But I’m sick of waiting. … It’s so tiring; nobody regards a waiter.”
“You are a man of ambition, Monsieur Loustec.”
“Que voulez vous?” He blushed, and said timidly “My name’s Emile.”
Mme. Rigaud rolled her eyes towards the ceiling. “That was my dead husband’s name. I’m used to that name.” She sighed heavily.
“And how’s business?”
“Comma ci comma ça. … Ham’s gone up again.”
“It’s the Chicago ring’s doing that. … A corner in pork, that’s the way to make money.”
Emile found Mme. Rigaud’s bulgy black eyes probing his. “I enjoyed your singing so last time. … I’ve thought of it often. … Music does one good dont it?” Mme. Rigaud’s dimples stretched and stretched as she smiled. “My poor husband had no ear. … That gave me a great deal of pain.”
“Couldn’t you sing me something this evening?”
“If you want me to, Emile? … But there is nobody to wait on customers.”
“I’ll run in when we hear the bell, if you will permit me.”
“Very well. … I’ve learned a new American song … C’est chic vous savez.”
Mme. Rigaud locked the till with a key from the bunch that hung at her belt and went through the glass door in the back of the shop. Emile followed with his hat in his hand.
“Give me your hat Emile.”
“Oh dont trouble yourself.”
The room beyond was a little parlor with yellow flowered wallpaper, old salmon pink portières and, under the gas-bracket from which hung a bunch of crystals, a piano with photographs on it. The pianostool creaked when Mme. Rigaud sat down. She ran her fingers over the keys. Emile sat carefully on the very edge of the chair beside the piano with his hat on his knees and pushed his face forward so that as she played she could see it out of the corner of her eye tilted up towards hers. Madame Rigaud began to sing:
Just a birrd in a geelded cage
A beauteeful sight to see
You’d tink se vas ’appee
And free from all care
Se’s not zo se seems to be. …
The bell on the door of the shop jangled loud.
“Permettez,” cried Emile running out.
“Half a pound o bolony sausage sliced,” said a little girl with pigtails. Emile passed the knife across the palm of his hand and sliced the sausage carefully. He tiptoed back into the parlor and put the money on the edge of the piano. Madame Rigaud was still singing:
’Tis sad ven you tink of a vasted life
For yout cannot mate vit age
Beautee vas soooold
For an old man’s gooold
Se’s a birrd in a geelded cage.
Bud stood on the corner of West Broadway and Franklin Street eating peanuts out of a bag. It was noon and his money was all gone. The Elevated thundered overhead. Dustmotes danced before his eyes in the girderstriped sunlight. Wondering which way to go he spelled out the names of the streets for the third time. A black shiny cab drawn by two black shinyrumped horses turned the corner sharp in front of him with a rasp on the cobblestones of red shiny wheels suddenly braked. There was a yellow leather trunk on the seat beside the driver. In the cab a man in a brown derby talked loud to a woman with a gray feather boa round her neck and gray ostrich plumes in her hat. The man jerked a revolver up to his mouth. The horses reared and plunged in the middle of a shoving crowd. Policemen elbowing through. They had the man out on the curbstone vomiting blood, head hanging limp over his checked vest. The woman stood tall and white beside him twisting her feather boa in her hands, the gray plumes in her hat nodding in the striped sunlight under the elevated.
“His wife was taking him to Europe. … The Deutschland sailing at twelve. I’d said goodbye to him forever. He was sailing on the Deutschland at twelve. He’d said goodbye to me forever.”
“Git oute de way dere;” a cop jabbed Bud in the stomach with his elbow. His knees trembled. He got to the edge of the crowd and walked away trembling. Mechanically he shelled a peanut and put it in his mouth. Better save the rest till evenin. He twisted the mouth of the bag and dropped it into his pocket.
Under the arclight that spluttered pink and green-edged violet the man in the checked suit passed two girls. The full-lipped oval face of the girl nearest to him; her eyes were like a knifethrust. He walked a few paces then turned and followed them fingering his new satin necktie. He made sure the horseshoe diamond pin was firm in its place. He passed them again. Her face was turned away. Maybe she was. … No he couldn’t tell. Good luck he had fifty dollars on
