Outside in the shiny marble hall, Joe O’Keefe was whistling “Sweet Rosy O’Grady” waiting for the elevator. Imagine a guy havin a knockout like that for a secretary. He stopped whistling and let the breath out silently through pursed lips. In the elevator he greeted a walleyed man in a check suit. “Hullo Buck.”
“Been on your vacation yet?”
Joe stood with his feet apart and his hands in his pockets. He shook his head. “I get off Saturday.”
“I guess I’ll take in a couple o days at Atlantic City myself.”
“How do you do it?”
“Oh the kid’s clever.”
Coming out of the building O’Keefe had to make his way through people crowding into the portal. A slate sky sagging between the tall buildings was spatting the pavements with fiftycent pieces. Men were running to cover with their straw hats under their coats. Two girls had made hoods of newspaper over their summer bonnets. He snatched blue of their eyes, a glint of lips and teeth as he passed. He walked fast to the corner and caught an uptown car on the run. The rain advanced down the street in a solid sheet glimmering, swishing, beating newspapers flat, prancing in silver nipples along the asphalt, striping windows, putting shine on the paint of streetcars and taxicabs. Above Fourteenth there was no rain, the air was sultry.
“A funny thing weather,” said an old man next to him. O’Keefe grunted. “When I was a boy onct I saw it rain on one side of the street an a house was struck by lightnin an on our side not a drop fell though the old man wanted it bad for some tomatoplants he’d just set out.”
Crossing Twentythird O’Keefe caught sight of the tower of Madison Square Garden. He jumped off the car; the momentum carried him in little running steps to the curb. Turning his coatcollar down again he started across the square. On the end of a bench under a tree drowsed Joe Harland. O’Keefe plunked down in the seat beside him.
“Hello Joe. Have a cigar.”
“Hello Joe. I’m glad to see you my boy. Thanks. It’s many a day since I’ve smoked one of these things. … What are you up to? Aint this kind of out of your beat?”
“I felt kinder blue so I thought I’d buy me a ticket to the fight Saturday.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Hell I dunno. … Things dont seem to go right. Here I’ve got myself all in deep in this political game and there dont seem to be no future in it. God I wish I was educated like you.”
“A lot of good it’s done me.”
“I wouldn’t say that. … If I could ever git on the track you were on I bet ye I wouldn’t lose out.”
“You cant tell Joe, funny things get into a man.”
“There’s women and that sort of stuff.”
“No I dont mean that. … You get kinder disgusted.”
“But hell I dont see how a guy with enough jack can git disgusted.”
“Then maybe it was booze, I dont know.”
They sat silent a minute. The afternoon was flushing with sunset. The cigarsmoke was blue and crinkly about their heads.
“Look at the swell dame. … Look at the way she walks. Aint she a peacherino? That’s the way I like ’em, all slick an frilly with their lips made up. … Takes jack to go round with dames like that.”
“They’re no different from anybody else, Joe.”
“The hell you say.”
“Say Joe you havent got an extra dollar on you?”
“Maybe I have.”
“My stomach’s a little out of order. … I’d like to take a little something to steady it, and I’m flat till I get paid Saturday … er … you understand … you’re sure you dont mind? Give me your address and I’ll send it to you first thing Monday morning.”
“Hell dont worry about it, I’ll see yez around somewheres.”
“Thank you Joe. And for God’s sake dont buy any more Blue Peter Mines on a margin without asking me about it. I may be a back number but I can still tell a goldbrick with my eyes closed.”
“Well I got my money back.”
“It took the devil’s own luck to do it.”
“Jez it strikes me funny me loanin a dollar to the guy who owned half the Street.”
“Oh I never had as much as they said I did.”
“This is a funny place. …”
“Where?”
“Oh I dunno, I guess everywhere. … Well so long Joe, I guess I’ll go along an buy that ticket. … Jez it’s goin to be a swell fight.”
Joe Harland watched the young man’s short jerky stride as he went off down the path with his straw hat on the side of his head. Then he got to his feet and walked east along Twentythird Street. The pavements and housewalls still gave off heat although the sun had set. He stopped outside a corner saloon and examined carefully a group of stuffed ermines, gray with dust, that occupied the center of the window. Through the swinging doors a sound of quiet voices and a malty coolness seeped into the street. He suddenly flushed and bit his upper lip and after a furtive glance up and down the street went in through the swinging doors and shambled up to the brassy bottleglittering bar.
After the rain outdoors the plastery backstage smell was pungent in their nostrils. Ellen hung the wet raincoat on the back of the door and put her umbrella in a corner of the dressing room where a little puddle began to spread from it. “And all I could think of,” she was saying in a low voice to Stan who followed her staggering, “was a funny song somebody’d told me when I was a little girl about: And the only man who survived the flood was longlegged Jack of the Isthmus.”
“God I dont see why
