Potash & Perlmutter Part 38

Perlmutter--I don't think you need it all that s.p.a.ce."

"That's a fresh real-estater for you, Abe," Morris said after Henochstein left. "Wants to tell it us our business and calls us boys yet, like we was friends from the old country already."

"Oh, I don't know, Mawruss," Abe replied. "He means it good, I guess; and anyway, Mawruss, we give so much of our work out by contractors, we might as well give the whole thing out and be done with it. We might as well have one loft with the cutting-room in the back and a rack for piece goods. Then the whole front we could fit it up as an office and show-room yet, and we would have no noise of the machines and no more trouble with garment-makers' unions nor nothing. I think it's a good idee sending out all the work."

"Them contractors makes enough already on what we give them, Abe,"

Morris replied. "I bet yer Satinstein buys real estate on what he makes from us, Abe, and Ginsburg & Kaplan also."

"Well, the fact is, Mawruss," Abe went on, "I ain't at all satisfied with the way what Satinstein treats us, Mawruss, nor Ginsburg & Kaplan neither. I got an idee, Mawruss: we should give all our work to a decent, respectable young feller what is going to marry a cousin of my wife, by the name Miriam Smolinski."

Morris looked long and hard at Abe before replying.

"So, Abe," he said, "you squashed it in the bud!"

"Well, them two women goes right up and sees my Rosie yesterday, Mawruss," Abe admitted; "and so my Rosie thinks it wouldn't do us no harm that we should maybe give the young feller a show."

"Is your wife Rosie running this business, Abe, or are we?" Morris asked.

"It ain't a question what Rosie thinks, Mawruss," Abe explained; "it's what I think, too. I think we should give the young feller a show. He's a decent, respectable young feller, Mawruss."

"How do I know that, Abe?" Morris replied. "I ain't never seen him, Abe; I don't even know his name."

"What difference does that make it, Mawruss?" said Abe. "I ain't never seen him neither, Mawruss, and I don't know his name, too; but he could make up our line just as good, whether his name was Thoma.s.sheffsky or Murphy. Also, what good would it do us if we did see him first? I'm sure, Mawruss, we ain't giving out our work to Satinstein because he's a good-looking feller, and Ginsburg & Kaplan ain't no John Drews neither, so far what I hear it, Mawruss."

"That ain't the idee, Abe," Morris broke in; "the idee is that we got to give up doing our work in our own shop and send it out by a contractor just starting in as a new beginner already--a young feller what you don't know and I don't know, Abe--and all this we got to do just because you want it, Abe. Me, I am nothing here, Abe, and you are everything. You are the dawg and I am the tail. You are the oitermobile and I am the smell, and that's the way it goes."

"Who says that, Mawruss?" Abe interposed. "I didn't say it."

"You didn't say it, Abe," Morris went on, "but you think it just the same, and I'm going to show you differencely. I am content that we move, Abe, only we ain't going to move unless we can find it two lofts for the same rent what we pay it here. And we ain't going to have less room than we got it here neither, Abe, because if we move we're going to do our own business just the same like we do it here, and that's flat."

For the remainder of the day Abe avoided any reference to their impending removal, and it was not until Henochstein entered the show-room the following morning that the discussion was renewed.

"Well, boys," he said in greeting, "I got it a fine loft for you on Nineteenth Street with twicet as much floor s.p.a.ce what you got here."

"A loft!" Morris cried.

"A loft," Henochstein repeated.

"One loft?" Morris asked.

"That's what I said," Henochstein replied, "one loft with twicet as much floor s.p.a.ce, and it's got light on all----"

Morris waved his hand for silence.

"Abe," he said, "this here Henochstein is a friend of yours; ain't it?"

Abe nodded sulkily.

"Well, take him out of here," Morris advised, "before I kick him out."

He banged the show-room door behind him and repaired to Wa.s.serbauer's Cafe and Restaurant across the street to await Henochstein's departure.

"Mawruss is right," Abe declared. "You was told distinctively we wanted it two lofts, not one, and here you come back with a one-loft proposition."

Henochstein rose to leave.

"If you think it you could get two up-to-date lofts on Seventeenth, Eighteenth or Nineteenth Street, Abe, for what you pay it here in this d.i.n.ky place," he said, "you got another think coming."

He opened the show-room door.

"And also, Abe," he concluded, "if I got it a partner what made it a slave of me, like Perlmutter does you, I'd go it alone, that's all I got to say."

After Henochstein left, Abe was a prey to bitter reflections, which were only interrupted by his partner's return to the show-room a quarter of an hour later.

"Well, Abe," Morris cried, "you got your turn at this here moving business; let me try a hand at it once."

"Go ahead, Mawruss," Abe said wearily. "You always get your own way, anyhow. You say I am the dawg, Mawruss, and you are the tail, but I guess you got it the wrong way round. I guess the tail is on the other foot."

Morris shrugged.

"That's something what is past already, Abe," he replied. "I was just talking to Wa.s.serbauer, and he says he got it a friend what is a sort of a real-estater, a smart young feller by the name Sam Slotkin. He says if Slotkin couldn't find it us a couple of lofts, n.o.body couldn't."

"I'm satisfied, Mawruss," Abe said. "If Slotkin can get us lofts we move, otherwise we stay here. So far we made it always a living here, Mawruss, and I guess we ain't going to lose all our customers even if we don't move; and that's all there is to it."

Mr. Sam Slotkin was doubtless his own ideal of a well-dressed man. All the contestants in a chess tournament could have played on his clothes at one time, and the ox-blood stripes on his s.h.i.+rt exactly matched the color of his necktie and socks. He had concluded his interview with Morris on the morning following Henochstein's fiasco, before Abe's arrival at the office, and he was just leaving as Abe came in.

"Who's that, Mawruss?" Abe asked, staring after the departing figure.

"That's Sam Slotkin," Morris replied. "He looks like a bright young feller."

"I bet yer he looks bright," Abe commented. "He looks so bright in them vaudeville clothes that it almost gives me eye-strain. I suppose he says he can get us the lofts."

"Sure," Morris answered; "he says he can fix us up all right."

"I hope so," Abe said skeptically, and at once repaired to the office.

It was the tail-end of a busy season and Abe and Morris found no time to renew the topic of their forthcoming removal until two days later when Sam Slotkin again interviewed Morris. The result was communicated to Abe by Morris after Slotkin's departure.

"He says, Abe, that he thinks he's got the very place for us," Morris said.

"He thinks he got it, Mawruss," Abe exclaimed. "Well, we can't rip out our store here on the strength of a think, Mawruss. When will he know if he's got it?"

"To-morrow morning," Morris replied, and went upstairs to the workroom, where the humming of many machines testified to the last rush of the season's work. Abe joined him there a few minutes later.

"Believe me, Mawruss," he said, "I'll be glad when this here order for the Fas.h.i.+on Store is out."

"It takes a week yet, Goldman tells me," Morris replied, "and I guess we might have to work nights if they don't make it a hurry-up."

"Well, we're pretty late with that Fas.h.i.+on Store delivery as it is, Mawruss," Abe replied. "It wouldn't hurt none if we did work nights, Mawruss. We ought to get that order out by the day after to-morrow yet."