“Has Ruth got a job yet, Mr. Herf?” she asked.
“No she hasnt.”
“It’s the rottenest luck.”
“Oh it’s a darn shame. I know she can act. The trouble is she has too much sense of humor to play up to managers and people.”
“Oh the stage is a nasty dirty game, isn’t it Jojo?”
“The nawstiest, my deah.”
Jimmy couldn’t keep his eyes off her; her small squarely shaped hands, her neck molded with a gold sheen between the great coil of coppery hair and the bright blue dress.
“Well my deah …” Oglethorpe got to his feet.
“Jojo I’m going to sit here a little longer.”
Jimmy was staring at the thin triangles of patent leather that stuck out from Oglethorpe’s pink buff spats. Cant be feet in them. He stood up suddenly.
“Now Mr. Herf couldnt you keep me company for fifteen minutes? I’ve got to leave here at six and I forgot to bring a book and I cant walk in these shoes.”
Jimmy blushed and sat down again stammering: “Why of course I’d be delighted. … Suppose we drink something.”
“I’ll finish my tea, but why dont you have a gin fizz? I love to see people drink gin fizzes. It makes me feel that I’m in the tropics sitting in a jujube grove waiting for the riverboat to take us up some ridiculous melodramatic river all set about with fevertrees.”
“Waiter I want a gin fizz please.”
Joe Harland had slumped down in his chair until his head rested on his arms. Between his grimestiff hands his eyes followed uneasily the lines in the marbletop table. The gutted lunchroom was silent under the sparse glower of two bulbs hanging over the counter where remained a few pies under a bellglass, and a man in a white coat nodding on a tall stool. Now and then the eyes in his gray doughy face flicked open and he grunted and looked about. At the last table over were the hunched shoulders of men asleep, faces crumpled like old newspapers pillowed on arms. Joe Harland sat up straight and yawned. A woman blobby under a raincoat with a face red and purplish streaked like rancid meat was asking for a cup of coffee at the counter. Carrying the mug carefully between her two hands she brought it over to the table and sat down opposite him. Joe Harland let his head down onto his arms again.
“Hay yous how about a little soivice?” The woman’s voice shrilled in Harland’s ears like the screech of chalk on a blackboard.
“Well what d’ye want?” snarled the man behind the counter. The woman started sobbing. “He asts me what I want. … I aint used to bein talked to brutal.”
“Well if there’s anythin you want you kin juss come an git it. … Soivice at this toime o night!”
Harland could smell her whiskey breath as she sobbed. He raised his head and stared at her. She twisted her flabby mouth into a smile and bobbed her head towards him.
“Mister I aint accustomed to bein treated brutal. If my husband was aloive he wouldn’t have the noive. Who’s the loikes o him to say what toime o night a lady ought to have soivice, the little shriveled up shrimp.” She threw back her head and laughed so that her hat fell off backwards. “That’s what he is, a little shriveled up shrimp, insultin a lady with his toime o night.”
Some strands of gray hair with traces of henna at the tips had fallen down about her face. The man in the white coat walked over to the table.
“Look here Mother McCree I’ll trow ye out o here if you raise any more distoirbance. … What do you want?”
“A nickel’s woirt o doughnuts,” she sniveled with a sidelong leer at Harland.
Joe Harland shoved his face into the hollow of his arm again and tried to go to sleep. He heard the plate set down followed by her toothless nibbling and an occasional sucking noise when she drank the coffee. A new customer had come in and was talking across the counter in a low growling voice.
“Mister, mister aint it terrible to want a drink?” He raised his head again and found her eyes the blurred blue of watered milk looking into his. “What ye goin to do now darlin?”
“God knows.”
“Virgin an Saints it’d be noice to have a bed an a pretty lace shimmy and a noice feller loike you darlin … mister.”
“Is that all?”
“Oh mister if my poor husband was aloive, he wouldn’t let em treat me loike they do. I lost my husband on the General Slocum might ha been yesterday.”
“He’s not so unlucky.”
“But he doid in his sin without a priest, darlin. It’s terrible to die in yer sin …”
“Oh hell I want to sleep.”
Her voice went on in a faint monotonous screech setting his teeth on edge. “The Saints has been agin me ever since I lost my husband on the General Slocum. I aint been an honest woman.” … She began to sob again. “The Virgin and Saints an Martyrs is agin me, everybody’s agin me. … Oh wont somebody treat me noice.”
“I want to sleep. … Cant you shut up?”
She stooped and fumbled for her hat on the floor. She sat sobbing rubbing her swollen redgrimed knuckles into her eyes.
“Oh mister dont ye want to treat me noice?”
Joe Harland got to his feet breathing hard. “Goddam you cant you shut up?” His voice broke into a whine. “Isnt there anywhere you can get a little peace? There’s nowhere you can get any peace.” He pulled his cap over his eyes, shoved his hands down into his pockets and shambled out of the lunchroom. Over Chatham Square the sky was brightening redviolet through the latticework of elevated tracks. The lights were two rows of bright brass knobs up the empty Bowery.
A policeman passed swinging his nightstick. Joe Harland felt the policeman’s eyes on him. He tried to walk fast and briskly as if he were going somewhere on business.
“Well Miss Oglethorpe how do you
