Somewhere they sat down at a table. An orchestra throbbed. “No Stan I cant drink anything. … You go ahead.”
“But Ellie, arent you feeling swell like I am?”
“Sweller. … I just couldnt stand feeling any better. … I couldnt keep my mind on a glass long enough to drink it.” She winced under the brightness of his eyes.
Stan was bubbling drunk. “I wish earth had thy body as fruit to eat,” he kept repeating. Ellen was all the time twisting about bits of rubbery cold Welsh rabbit with her fork. She had started to drop with a lurching drop like a rollercoaster’s into shuddering pits of misery. In a square place in the middle of the floor four couples were dancing the tango. She got to her feet.
“Stan I’m going home. I’ve got to get up early and rehearse all day. Call me up at twelve at the theater.”
He nodded and poured himself another highball. She stood behind his chair a second looking down at his long head of close ruffled hair. He was spouting verses softly to himself. “Saw the white implacable Aphrodite, damn fine. Saw the hair unbound and the feet unsandaled, Jiminy. … Shine as fire of sunset on western waters. Saw the reluctant … goddam fine sapphics.”
Once out on Broadway again she felt very merry. She stood in the middle of the street waiting for the uptown car. An occasional taxi whizzed by her. From the river on the warm wind came the long moan of a steamboat whistle. In the pit inside her thousands of gnomes were building tall brittle glittering towers. The car swooped ringing along the rails, stopped. As she climbed in she remembered swooningly the smell of Stan’s body sweating in her arms. She let herself drop into a seat, biting her lips to keep from crying out. God it’s terrible to be in love. Opposite two men with chinless bluefish faces were talking hilariously, slapping fat knees.
“I’ll tell yer Jim it’s Irene Castle that makes the hit wid me. … To see her dance the onestep juss makes me hear angels hummin.”
“Naw she’s too skinny.”
“But she’s made the biggest hit ever been made on Broadway.”
Ellen got off the car and walked east along the desolate empty pavements of 105th Street. A fetor of mattresses and sleep seeped out from the blocks of narrow-windowed houses. Along the gutters garbagecans stank sourly. In the shadow of a doorway a man and girl swayed tightly clamped in each other’s arms. Saying good night. Ellen smiled happily. Greatest hit on Broadway. The words were an elevator carrying her up dizzily, up into some stately height where electric light signs crackled scarlet and gold and green, where were bright roofgardens that smelled of orchids, and the slow throb of a tango danced in a goldgreen dress with Stan while handclapping of millions beat in gusts like a hailstorm about them. Greatest hit on Broadway.
She was walking up the scaling white stairs. Before the door marked Sunderland a feeling of sick disgust suddenly choked her. She stood a long time her heart pounding with the key poised before the lock. Then with a jerk she pushed the key in the lock and opened the door.
“Strange fish, Jimmy, strange fish.” Herf and Ruth Prynne sat giggling over plates of paté in the innermost corner of a clattery lowceilinged restaurant. “All the ham actors in the world seem to eat here.”
“All the ham actors in the world live up at Mrs. Sunderland’s.”
“What’s the latest news from the Balkans?”
“Balkans is right …”
Beyond Ruth’s black straw hat with red poppies round the crown Jimmy looked at the packed tables where faces decomposed into a graygreen blur. Two sallow hawkfaced waiters elbowed their way through the seesawing chatter of talk. Ruth was looking at him with dilated laughing eyes while she bit at a stalk of celery.
“Whee I feel so drunk,” she was spluttering. “It went straight to my head. … Isnt it terrible?”
“Well what were these shocking goingson at 105th Street?”
“O you missed it. It was a shriek. … Everybody was out in the hall, Mrs. Sunderland with her hair in curlpapers, and Cassie was crying and Tony Hunter was standing in his door in pink pyjamas. …”
“Who’s he?”
“Just a juvenile. … But Jimmy I must have told you about Tony Hunter. Peculiar poissons Jimmy, peculiar poissons.”
Jimmy felt himself blushing, he bent over his plate. “Oh is that’s what’s his trouble?” he said stiffly.
“Now you’re shocked, Jimmy; admit that you’re shocked.”
“No I’m not; go ahead, spill the dirt.”
“Oh Jimmy you’re such a shriek. … Well Cassie was sobbing and the little dog was barking, and the invisible Costello was yelling Police and fainting into the arms of an unknown man in a dress suit. And Jojo was brandishing a revolver, a little nickel one, may have been a waterpistol for all I know. … The only person who looked in their right senses was Elaine Olgethorpe. … You know the titianhaired vision that so impressed your infant mind.”
“Honestly Ruth my infant mind wasnt as impressed as all that.”
“Well at last the Ogle got tired of his big scene and cried out in ringing tones, Disarm me or I shall kill this woman. And Tony Hunter grabbed the pistol and took it into his room. Then Elaine Oglethorpe made a little bow as if she were taking a curtaincall, said Well goodnight everybody, and ducked into her room cool as a cucumber. … Can you picture it?” Ruth suddenly lowered her voice, “But everybody in the restaurant is listening to us. … And really I think its very disgusting. But the worst is yet to come. After the Ogle had banged on the door a couple of times and not gotten any answer he went up to Tony and rolling his eyes like Forbes Robertson in Hamlet put his arm round him and said Tony can a broken man crave asylum in your room for the night. … Honestly I was just so shocked.”
“Is Oglethorpe that way
