6
I decided that I would start writing the daily column without waiting for Alan Cromwell’s O.K. To write something new and interesting each day, and keep it within the spatial limits allotted, demanded a bit of practise. I thought it well to be a few columns ahead; if Cromwell kept his word I would already be in the groove. In order to determine which had the most appeal, I tried out a variety of styles. I knew there would be days when I would be incapable of writing a word. I wasn’t going to be caught napping.
Meanwhile Mona had taken a temporary job as hostess in one of the Village night clubs—Remo’s. Mathias, the real estate operator, wasn’t quite ready to launch her. Why, I couldn’t discover. It might be, of course, that she had first to cool him off a bit. Sometimes these admirers of hers became too impetuous, wanted to marry her without delay. So she maintained.
Anyway, the job was rather in line with her temperament and previous experience. She danced as little as possible. The important thing was to make the victims drink as much as possible. The hostesses always got a percentage of the drink-money, if nothing more.
It wasn’t long before young Corsi, who had a celebrated establishment of his own in the Village—one of the landmarks—fell violently in love with her. He would drop in towards closing time and escort her to his place. There they drank nothing but champagne. Towards daybreak he would have his chauffeur drive her home in his beautiful limousine.
Corsi was one of the impetuous ones who was set on marrying her. He had dreams of spiriting her away to Capri or Sorrento, where they would adopt a new mode of life. Evidently he was doing his utmost to persuade Mona to quit Remo’s. So was I, as a matter of fact. I sometimes whiled away an idle hour wondering how it would look to see his reasoning and mine side by side. And her replies.
Well, Cromwell was due in town any day. With his arrival perhaps she’d take a different view of things. At any rate, she had intimated in an off moment that she might.
More disquieting to me, however, than young Corsi’s violent attempts to woo her were the annoyances she was subject to at the hands of certain notorious Lesbians in the Village. Apparently they came to Remo’s expressly to work on her, buying drinks just as liberally as the men. Corsi too was incensed, I learned. In desperation he begged her—if she must work—to work for him. This failing, he tried another tack. He tried to make her drunk each night, assuming that that would make her grow disgusted with her job. But this too failed to work.
The reason nothing would budge her, I finally learned, was because she had taken a fancy to one of the dancers, a Cherokee girl who was in bad straits—and pregnant to boot. Too decent, too frank and outspoken, the girl would have been fired long ago had she not been the main attraction. Every night, it seems, people dropped in ‘just to seen her do her number. The number always ended with the split. How long she could continue to do the split, without dropping the child, was a grave question.
A few nights after Mona had confided the situation to me the girl fainted on the floor. They carried her from the dance floor to the hospital, where she had a premature birth, the child being born dead. Her condition was so critical that she was obliged to remain in the hospital several weeks. Then an unexpected event occurred. The day she was to be released she was taken with such a fit of despondency that she jumped from, the window and killed herself.
After this tragic incident Mona couldn’t look at Remo’s. For a while she made no attempt to do anything. To make her feel easier, also to prove to her that I could do a little gold-digging myself when I had a mind to, I sallied forth each day to make a few touches here and there. It wasn’t that we were desperate; I did it to get my hand in, and—to convince her that if we really had to carry on like sharks I was almost as good at it as she. Naturally, I tackled the sure-fire ones first. My cousin, the one who owned my beautiful racing wheel, was number one on my list. I got a ten spot from him. He handed it to me grudgingly, not because he was a tight-wad but because he disapproved of borrowing and lending. When I inquired about the bike he informed me that he had never ridden it, that he had sold it to a chum of his, a Syrian. I went immediately to the Syrian’s home—it was only a few blocks away—and made such an impression on him, talking about bike races, prize fights, football and so on, that when we parted he slipped me a ten dollar bill. He even urged me to bring my wife some night and have dinner with the family.
From Zabrowskie, my old friend the ticker-tapper at the telegraph office near Times Square, I got another ten spot and a new hat. An excellent lunch too. The usual conversation, of course. All about the horses, about working too hard, about looking out for a rainy day. Eager to have me promise that I would accompany him some night when there was a good fight on.
When I finally let out that I expected to write a column for the Hearst papers he looked at me goggle-eyed. As I say, he had already given me the ten spot. Now he began talking in earnest. I was to remember, if I needed any more between now and then—then meaning when I was in full swing as a columnist—I was to call on him. Maybe you’d better take twenty instead of ten, he said. I handed him back the bill and received a twenty. At the corner we had to stop at a cigar store where he filled my breast pocket with fat cigars. It was then he noticed that the last hat he had bought for me looked rather seedy. We stopped at a haberdasher’s, on the way back to the telegraph office, where he bought me another hat, a Borsalino no less. One has to look right, he counseled. Never let them know you’re poor. He looked so happy when we parted you would have thought I was the one who had done the favors. Don’t forget! was his last shot, and he rattled the keys in his trousers pocket.
I felt pretty good with forty dollars in my pocket. It was a Saturday and I thought I might just as well keep up the good work. Maybe I’d bump into an old friend and shake down some more jack—just like that. Running my hands through my pockets, I realized I didn’t have any small change on me. I didn’t want to break a bill—a clean forty bucks or nothing.
I said I had nothing in change; I was mistaken, for in my vest pocket I found two ancient-looking pennies, white pennies. Had probably kept them for good luck.
Up on Park Avenue I came upon the showrooms of the Minerva Motor Company. A handsome car, the Minerva. Almost as good as the Rolls-Royce. I wondered if by chance my old friend Otto Kunst, who had once been a bookkeeper for them, was still there. Hadn’t seen Otto for years—almost since the dissolution of our old club.
I stepped inside the swanky showroom and there was Otto, as sombre and sedate as an undertaker. He was sales manager now. Smoking Murads, as of yore. Had a couple of good-looking rocks on his fingers too.
He was glad to see me again, but in that restrained way which always irritated me.
You’re sitting pretty, I said.
And what are you doing? He flung this at me as if to say—what is it this time?
I told him I was taking over a column for a newspaper shortly.
Well! He arched his eyebrows. Hmmm!
I thought I might just as well try him for a ten spot—to make it an even fifty. After all, sales manager, old friend … Why not?
I got a curt refusal. Didn’t even bother to explain why he couldn’t. It was out of the question, that was all. Impossible. I knew it was useless to prod him but I did, just to irritate him. Damn it, even though I didn’t need o it, he had no right to refuse. He should do it for old time’s sake. Otto twiddled his watch chain as he listened. Cool as a cucumber, mind you. No embarrassment whatever. No sympathy either.
God, you’re a tightwad! I concluded.
He smiled unperturbedly. I never ask a favor and I never give any, he responded blandly. Smug as a bug in a rug, he was. As though he’d always be a sales manager—or something even more important. Didn’t think, did he, that only a few years later he’d be trying to sell apples on Fifth Avenue. (Even
