III
Nine Days’ Wonder
The sun’s moved to Jersey, the sun’s behind Hoboken.
Covers are clicking on typewriters, rolltop desks are closing; elevators go up empty, come down jammed. It’s ebbtide in the downtown district, flood in Flatbush, Woodlawn, Dyckman Street, Sheepshead Bay, New Lots Avenue, Canarsie.
Pink sheets, green sheets, gray sheets, Full Market Reports, Finals on Havre de Grace. Print squirms among the shopworn officeworn sagging faces, sore fingertips, aching insteps, strongarm men cram into subway expresses. Senators 8, Giants 2, Diva Recovers Pearls, $800,000 Robbery.
It’s ebbtide on Wall Street, floodtide in the Bronx.
The sun’s gone down in Jersey.
“Godamighty,” shouted Phil Sandbourne and pounded with his fist on the desk, “I don’t think so. … A man’s morals arent anybody’s business. It’s his work that counts.”
“Well?”
“Well I think Stanford White has done more for the city of New York than any other man living. Nobody knew there was such a thing as architecture before he came. … And to have this Thaw shoot him down in cold blood and then get away with it. … By gad if the people of this town had the spirit of guineapigs they’d—”
“Phil you’re getting all excited over nothing.” The other man took his cigar out of his mouth and leaned back in his swivel chair and yawned.
“Oh hell I want a vacation. Golly it’ll be good to get out in those old Maine woods again.”
“What with Jew lawyers and Irish judges …” spluttered Phil.
“Aw pull the chain, old man.”
“A fine specimen of a public-spirited citizen you are Hartly.”
Hartly laughed and rubbed the palm of his hand over his bald head. “Oh that stuff’s all right in winter, but I cant go it in summer. … Hell all I live for is three weeks’ vacation anyway. What do I care if all the architects in New York get bumped off as long as it dont raise the price of commutation to New Rochelle. … Let’s go eat.” As they went down in the elevator Phil went on talking: “The only other man I ever knew who was really a born in the bone architect was ole Specker, the feller I worked for when I first came north, a fine old Dane he was too. Poor devil died o cancer two years ago. Man, he was an architect. I got a set of plans and specifications home for what he called a communal building. … Seventyfive stories high stepped back in terraces with a sort of hanging garden on every floor, hotels, theaters, Turkish baths, swimming pools, department stores, heating plant, refrigerating and market space all in the same buildin.”
“Did he eat coke?”
“No siree he didnt.”
They were walking east along Thirtyfourth Street, sparse of people in the sultry midday. “Gad,” burst out Phil Sandbourne, suddenly. “The girls in this town get prettier every year.” “Like these new fashions, do you?”
“Sure. All I wish is that I was gettin younger every year instead of older.”
“Yes about all us old fellers can do is watch em go past.”
“That’s fortunate for us or we’d have our wives out after us with bloodhounds. … Man when I think of those mighthavebeens!”
As they crossed Fifth Avenue Phil caught sight of a girl in a taxicab. From under the black brim of a little hat with a red cockade in it two gray eyes flash green black into his. He swallowed his breath. The traffic roars dwindled into distance. She shant take her eyes away. Two steps and open the door and sit beside her, beside her slenderness perched like a bird on the seat. Driver drive to beat hell. Her lips are pouting towards him, her eyes flutter gray caught birds. “Hay look out. …” A pouncing iron rumble crashes down on him from behind. Fifth Avenue spins in red blue purple spirals. O Kerist. “That’s all right, let me be. I’ll get up myself in a minute.” “Move along there. Git back there.” Braying voices, blue pillars of policemen. His back, his legs are all warm gummy with blood. Fifth Avenue throbs with loudening pain. A little bell jinglejangling nearer. As they lift him into the ambulance Fifth Avenue shrieks to throttling agony and bursts. He cranes his neck to see her, weakly, like a terrapin on its back; didnt my eyes snap steel traps on her? He finds himself whimpering. She might have stayed to see if I was killed. The jinglejangling bell dwindles fainter, fainter into the night.
The burglaralarm across the street had rung on steadily. Jimmy’s sleep had been strung on it in hard knobs like beads on a string. Knocking woke him. He sat up in bed with a lurch and found Stan Emery, his face gray with dust, his hands in the pockets of a red leather coat, standing at the foot of the bed. He was laughing swaying back and forth on the balls of his feet.
“Gosh what time is it?” Jimmy sat up in bed digging his knuckles into his eyes. He yawned and looked about with bitter dislike, at the wallpaper the dead green of Poland Water bottles, at the split green shade that let in a long trickle of sunlight, at the marble fireplace blocked up by an enameled tin plate painted with scaly roses, at the frayed blue bathrobe on the foot of the bed, at the mashed cigarette-butts in the mauve glass ashtray.
Stan’s face was red and brown and laughing under the chalky mask of dust. “Eleven thirty,” he was saying.
“Let’s see that’s six hours
