And then Ada has got still another pal, a dame named Peggy Flood who is hospital mad and ain’t happy unless she is just goin’ under the knife or just been there. She’s had everything removed that the doctors knew the name of and now they’re probin’ her for new giblets.
Well, I wouldn’t mind if they cut her up into alphabet soup if they’d only do such a good job of it that they couldn’t put her together again, but she always comes through OK and she spends the intermissions at our place, describin’ what all they done or what they’re plannin’ to do next.
But the cat’s nightgown is Tom Stevens and his wife. There’s the team that wins the Olympics! And they’re Ada’s team, not mine.
Ada met Belle Stevens on the elevated. Ada was invited to a party out on the North Side and didn’t know exactly where to get off and Mrs. Stevens seen her talkin’ to the guard and horned in and asked her what was it she wanted to know and Ada told her, and Mrs. Stevens said she was goin’ to get off the same station Ada wanted to get off, so they got off together.
Mrs. Stevens insisted on goin’ right along to the address where Ada was goin’ because she said Ada was bound to get lost if she wasn’t familiar with the neighborhood.
Well, Ada thought it was mighty nice of her to do so much for a stranger. Mrs. Stevens said she was glad to because she didn’t know what would of happened to her lots of times if strangers hadn’t been nice and helped her out.
She asked Ada where she lived and Ada told her on the South Side and Mrs. Stevens said she was sure we’d like it better on the North Side if we’d leave her pick out a place for us, so Ada told her we had a year’s lease that we had just signed and couldn’t break it, so then Mrs. Stevens said her husband had studied law and he claimed they wasn’t no lease that you couldn’t break and some evening she would bring him out to call on us and he’d tell us how to break our lease.
Well, Ada had to say sure, come on out, though we was perfectly satisfied with our apartment and didn’t no more want to break the lease than each other’s jaw. Maybe not as much. Anyway, the very next night, they showed up, Belle and Tom, and when they’d gone, I give ’em the nickname—Mr. and Mrs. Fix-It.
After the introductions, Stevens made some remark about what a cozy little place we had and then he asked if I would mind tellin’ what rent we paid. So I told him a hundred and a quarter a month. So he said, of course, that was too much and no wonder we wanted to break the lease. Then I said we was satisfied and didn’t want to break it and he said I must be kiddin’ and if I would show him the lease he would see what loopholes they was in it.
Well, the lease was right there in a drawer in the table, but I told him it was in my safety deposit box at the bank. I ain’t got no safety deposit box and no more use for one than Judge Landis has for the deef and dumb alphabet.
Stevens said the lease was probably just a regular lease and if it was, they wouldn’t be no trouble gettin’ out of it, and meanw’ile him and his wife would see if they couldn’t find us a place in the same buildin’ with them.
And he was pretty sure they could even if the owner had to give some other tenant the air, because he, the owner, would do anything in the world for Stevens.
So I said yes, but suppose we want to stay where we are. So he said I looked like a man with better judgment than that and if I would just leave everything to him he would fix it so’s we could move within a month. I kind of laughed and thought that would be the end of it.
He wanted to see the whole apartment so I showed him around and when we come to the bathroom he noticed my safety razor on the shelf. He said, “So you use one of them things,” and I said, “Yes,” and he asked me how I liked it, and I said I liked it fine and he said that must be because I hadn’t never used a regular razor.
He said a regular razor was the only thing to use if a man wanted to look good. So I asked him if he used a regular razor and he said he did, so I said, “Well, if you look good, I don’t want to.”
But that didn’t stop him and he said if I would meet him downtown the next day he would take me to the place where he bought all his razors and help me pick some out for myself. I told him I was goin’ to be tied up, so just to give me the name and address of the place and I would drop in there when I had time.
But, no, that wouldn’t do; he’d have to go along with me and introduce me to the proprietor because the proprietor was a great pal of his and would do anything in the world for him, and if the proprietor vouched for the razors, I could be sure I was gettin’ the best razors money could buy. I told him again that I was goin’ to be tied up and I managed to get him on some other subject.
Meanw’ile, Mrs. Stevens
