Just Around the Corner Part 71

"That's the way of the world," said Loo. She sucked in her breath and cluck-clucked her tongue against the roof of her mouth.

"I'll be over about eight, then--after he goes."

"All right. Bring what you need, and send for the other stuff. You better put in a party dress; we might get a date for to-night, for all I know. You know you always brought me luck when it come to dates. I ain't had a chum since that could bring them round like you."

"Oh, Loo! I ain't thinkin' about such things."

"Sure you ain't; but it won't hurt you to know you're livin', will it?--and to chaperon your friend?"

"No," admitted Lil.

"Well, so long! I'll see you later. Don't let on to Charley I was over.

He ain't got no truck for me."

They embraced.

"Good-by for a little while, Loo."

"Good-by, dearie."

Lilly watched her friend pa.s.s down the narrow hall, then she closed the door. Left alone, she crossed to the window and leaned out well beyond the cas.e.m.e.nt--a _Demoiselle_ whose three lilies were despair, anger, and fear. The stagnant air, savored with frying pork, weighted her down with its humidity; her brow puckered into tiny lines.

Do not, reader, construe this setting too lightly. The most pungent essay in all literature is devoted to the succulency of roast pig; Sappho was most lyric after she had rubbed her wine goblet with garlic-flavored ewe meat. But such kindly reflection was not Lilly's--fleshpots and life alike were unsavory.

The Nottingham lace curtains hung limp and motionless round her, and waves of heat deflected from the asphalt came up heavy as fog. Three stories beneath, Third Avenue spluttered on the griddle of a merciless August--an exhausted day was duskening into a scarcely less kind twilight; she could feel the brick wall of the building exhaling like a furnace.

It was characteristic of Lilly that, with the thermometer up in three figures and her own mental mercury well toward the top of the tube, she should strike the one note of relief in a Saharan aridness. She suggested the drip of clear water in a grotto or the inmost petals of a tight-closed rose. If her throat ached and strained to keep down the tears, her neck, where the sheer white collar fell away, was cold and chaste; if anger and resentment were pounding through her veins the fresh firmness of her flesh did not betray it.

She leaned her head against the window-frame and looked down with a certain remoteness upon the human caldron three stories removed. Lights were beginning to p.r.i.c.k out wanly; the bang and clang of humanity, distant, but none the less insistent, came up to her in a medley of street-car clangs, shouts, and hum-hum. Children cried.

Upon a fire-escape level with her own window a child, with bare feet extended over the iron rail, slept on an improvised bed; from the interior of that same apartment came the wail of a sick infant. A woman nude to the waist pa.s.sed to and fro before the open window, crooning to the bundle she carried in the crook of her arm. Lilly's mouth hung at the corners.

Came darkness, she pa.s.sed out into the kitchen and covered the slow-cooking chops with a tin lid, lighted the gas-jet, turning the flame down into a mere bead, and resumed her watch at the front window.

Clear like a clarion a familiar whistle ripped through the din of the street and came up to her sharp and undiverted--two clean calls and a long, quavering ritornelle. At that signal, for the year and a half of their married life, Lilly had unfailingly fluttered a white handkerchief of greeting from the three flights up. Her arm contracted reflexly, but she stayed it and stepped back into the frame of the window, leaning straight and tense against the jamb. Her pulse leaped into the hundreds as she stood there, her arms hugging her sides and her blouse rising and falling with the heave of her bosom, her handkerchief a tight little wad in the palm of her hand.

Again the call, tearing straight and true to its destination! She remained taut as stretched elastic. There was a wondering interim--and a third time the signal split the air, sharp-questioning, insistent. Then a silence.

Lilly darted into the kitchen and stooped absorbed over the burbling coffee. A key rattled the front-room lock, and she bent lower over the stove. She heard her name called sharply; a door slammed, and her husband bounded into the kitchen, his face streaming perspiration and his collar like a rag about his neck.

"h.e.l.lo, honey! Gee! You gimme a scare there fer a minute. I thought the heat might 'a' got you."

He gathered her in his arms, pushed back her head, and looked into her reluctant eyes.

"What's the matter, hon? You ain't sick, are you?"

She wriggled herself free of his arms and turned to the stove.

"No," she said, in a monotone, "I ain't sick."

He regarded her with a worried pucker between his eyes.

"Aw, come on, Lil--tell a fellow what's the matter, can't you? It ain't like you to be like this."

"Nothin'!" she insisted.

"You gimme a swell turn there fer a minute. They're droppin' like flies to-day--hottest day in five summers."

Silence.

"Whew!" He peeled off his coat and hung it, with his imitation Panama hat, behind the door; his pink s.h.i.+rt showed dark streaks of perspiration; and he tugged at the rear b.u.t.ton of his limp collar.

"Be-e-lieve me, the pianner business ain't what it's cracked up to be!

There ain't a picture house in town got the Gem beat when it comes to heat. Had to take off the Flyin' Papinta act to-day and run in an extry picture because two of the kids give out with the heat. I've played to over ten thousand feet o' films to-day; and be-e-lieve me, it was some stunt!"

He sluiced his face with cold water at the sink, and slush-slushed his head in a roller-towel, talking the while.

"I never seen the--extry picture--they--run in to cover the--Papinta act; and before I--could keep up--with the film--I was givin' ragtime fer a funeral. You oughta heard Joe squeal!" He laughed and threw his arms affectionately across his wife's shoulder. "Eh--ragtime fer a funeral! Fine pianner-player you got fer a husband, honey!"

Given a checked suit, a slender bamboo cane, and a straw Katy slightly askew, Charley might have epitomized vaudeville. He had once won a silver watch-fob for pre-eminent buck-dancing at a Coney Island informal, and could sing "Oh, You Great Big Beautiful Doll!" with nasal perfection.

"Yes, sirree, Lil; you got a fine pianner-player fer a husband!"

She squirmed away from his touch and carried the coffee-pot to the little set-for-two table. The chops steamed from a blue-and-white plate.

Her husband, unburdened with subtleties, straddled his chair and sc.r.a.ped up to the table; his collapsed collar, with two protruding ends of red necktie, lay on the window-sill; the sleeves of his pink s.h.i.+rt were rolled back to the elbow.

The meal opened in a silence broken only by the clat-clat of dishes and the wail of suffering babies.

"Poor kiddies, they ain't got a chance in a hundred. Gee! If I had the coin, wouldn't I give them a handout of fresh air and milk? I'd give every one of the durn little things a Delmonico banquet. I'd jest as soon get hit in the head as hear them kids bawl."

Suddenly he glanced up from his plate and pushed himself from the table; his wife was making bread-crumbs out of her bread.

"Say, Lil, I ain't never seen you like this before! Ain't you feeling good? Come on--tell a feller what's the matter with you."

He rose and came round to her chair, leaning over its back and taking her cheeks between thumb and forefinger.

"Come on, Lil; what's the matter? You ain't sore at me, are you?"

"Can't a girl get tired once in a while?" she said.

"Poor little p.u.s.s.y!" He patted her hair and returned to his place.

"Guess what I got!" groping significantly in the direction of his hip-pocket. "Something you been havin' your heart set on fer a long time. Guess!"

"I dunno," she said.

"Aw, gwan, kiddo! Give a guess."

"I can't guess, Charley."