Or, “What business are you in?”
“I’m a contractor.”
“Well, that’s a good, honorable business and, if I was you, I wouldn’t be ashamed of it. I’d quit trying to make people believe I was in the fire department.”
Or, “How do you like London?”
“Me? I’ve never been there.”
“I thought that’s where you got the habit of driving on the wrong side of the street.”
Transgressions at Ben’s corner, unless they resulted seriously, were seldom punished beyond these sly rebukes, which were delivered in such a nice way that you were kind of glad you had done wrong.
Off duty he was “a big good-natured boy,” willing to take Grace to a picture, or go over to the Arnolds’ and play cards, or just stay at home and do nothing.
And then one morning in September, a dazzingly new Cadillac roadster, blue with yellow trimmings, flashed down from the north, violating all the laws of common sense and of the State and City of New York. Shouts and whistles from Carmody and Noonan, at Forty-eighth and Forty-seventh, failed to check its crazy career, but Ben, first planting his huge bulk directly in its path, giving the driver the choice of slackening speed or running into him, and then, with an alertness surprising in one so massive, sidestepping and jumping onto the running-board, succeeded in forcing a surrender at the curb halfway between his post and Forty-fifth Street.
He was almost mad and about to speak his mind in words beginning with capitals when he got his first look at the miscreant’s face. It was the prettiest face he had ever seen and it wore a most impudent, ill-timed, irresistible smile, a smile that spoiled other smiles for you once for all.
“Well—” Ben began falteringly; then recovering something of his stage presence: “Where’s your helmet?”
She made no reply, but continued to smile.
“If you’re in the fire department,” said Ben, “you ought to wear a helmet and a badge. Or paint your car red and get a sireen.”
Still no reply.
“Maybe I look like a bobby. Maybe you thought you was in London where they drive on the left side of the street.”
“You’re cute,” she said, and her voice was as thrilling as her smile. “I could stay here all morning and listen to you. That is I could, but I can’t. I’ve got a date down on Eighth Street and I’m late for it now. And I know you’re busy, too. So we mustn’t keep each other any longer now. But I’d like to hear your whole line some day.”
“Oh, you would!”
“Where do you live?”
“At home.”
“That isn’t very polite, is it? I was thinking you might live in the Bronx—”
“I do.”
“—and that’s on the way to Rye, where I live, so I might drive you.”
“Thanks. When I die, I want to die of old age.”
“Oh, I’m not a bad driver, really. I do like to go fast, but I’m careful. In Buffalo, where we lived before, the policemen all knew I was careful and they generally let me go as fast as I wanted to.”
“This ain’t Buffalo. And this ain’t no speedway. If you want to go fast, stay off Fifth Avenue.”
The girl looked him right in the eye. “Would you like that?”
“No,” said Ben.
She smiled at him again. “What time are you through?”
“Four o’clock,” said Ben.
“Well,” said the girl, “some afternoon I may be going home about then—”
“I told you I wasn’t ready to die.”
“I’d be extra careful.”
Ben suddenly realized that they were playing to a large staring audience and that, for once, he was not the star.
“Drive on!” he said in his gruffest tone. “I’m letting you go because you’re a stranger, but you won’t get off so easy next time.”
“I’m very, very grateful,” said the girl. “Just the same I don’t like being a stranger and I hope you won’t excuse me on that ground again.”
Which remark, accompanied by her radiant smile, caused Mr. Collins, hitherto only a bathroom singer, to hum quite loudly all the rest of his working day snatches of a gay Ohman and Arden record that his wife had played over and over the night before.
His relief, Tim Martin, appeared promptly at four, but Ben seemed in no hurry to go home. He pretended to listen to two new ones Tim had heard on the way in from Flushing, one about a Scotchman and some hotel towels and one about two Heebs in a night club. He managed to laugh in the right place, but his attention was on the northbound traffic, which was now none of his business.
At twenty minutes past four he said goodbye to Martin and walked slowly south on the east side of the street. He walked as far as Thirty-sixth, in vain. Usually he caught a ride home with some Bronx or north suburban motorist, but now he was late and had to pay for his folly by hurrying to Grand Central and standing up in a subway express.
“I was a sucker!” he thought. “She probably drove up some other street on purpose to miss me. Or she might have came in on one of them cross streets after I’d walked past it. I ought to stuck at Forty-fourth a while longer. Or maybe some other fella done his duty and had her locked up. Not if she smiled at him, though.”
But she wouldn’t smile like that at everybody. She had smiled at him because she liked him, because she really thought he was cute. Yes, she did! That was her regular line. That was how she had worked on them Buffalo fellas. “Cute!” A fine word to use on a human Woolworth Building. She was kidding. No, she wasn’t; not entirely. She’d liked his looks as plenty other gals had, and maybe that stuff about the fire department and London had tickled her.
Anyway, he had seen the most wonderful smile in the world and he still
