The Vertical City Part 24

"You were up in Monkey's room last night about eleven. Now think, Getaway!"

"Aw now--"

"You were."

"Aw now--"

"n.o.body can fool me on your step. You tiptoed for all you were worth, but I knew it! The-ball-of your-foot--squeak! The-ball-of-your foot--squeak!"

"Sure enough, now you mention it, maybe for a minute around eleven, but only for a minute--"

"Please, Getaway, don't lie. It was for nearly all night. Comings and goings on my ceiling until I couldn't sleep, not because they were so noisy, but because they were so soft. Like ugly whispers. Is Monkey the friend you got the deal on with, Getaway?"

"We just sat up there talking old times--"

"And Muggs, about eleven o'clock, sneaking up through the halls, dressed like the messenger boy again. I saw him when I peeked out of the door to see who it was tiptoeing. Getaway, for G.o.d's sake--"

He closed over her wrist then, his face extremely pointed. It was a bony face, so narrow that the eyes and the cheek bones had to be pitched close, and his black hair, usually so s.h.i.+ny, was down in a bang now, because it was damp, and to Marylin there was something sinister in that dip of bang which frightened her.

"What you don't know don't hurt you. You hear that? Didn't I tell you that after a few days this business deal--_business_, get that?--will be over. Then I'm going to hold down any old job your heart desires. But first I'm going to have money in my pockets! That's the only way to make this old world sit up and take notice. Spondulicks! Then I'm going to carry you off and get spliced. See? Real money. Diamonds. If you weren't so touchy, maybe you'd have diamonds sooner than you think. Want one now?"

"Getaway, I know you're up to something. You and Monkey and Muggs are tied up with those Wall Street bond getaways."

"For the luvaG.o.d, cut that talk here! First thing I know you'll have me in a brainstorm too."

"Those fake messenger boys that get themselves hired and, instead of delivering the bonds from one office to another--disappear with them.

Muggs isn't wearing that messenger's uniform for nothing. You and Monkey are working with him under cover on something. You can't pa.s.s a cop any more without tightening up. I can feel it when I have your arm. You've got that old over-your-shoulder look to you, Getaway. My father--had it.

My--mother--too. Getaway!"

"By gad! you can't beat a woman!"

"You don't deny it."

"I do!"

"Oh, Getaway, I'm glad then, glad!"

"Over-the-shoulder look. Why, if I'd meet a plain-clothes this minute I'd go up and kiss him--with my teeth in his ear. That's how much I got to be afraid of."

"Oh, Getaway, I'm so glad!"

"Well, then, lay off--"

"Getaway, you jumped then! Like somebody had hit you, and it was only a kid popping a paper bag."

"You get on my nerves. You'd make a cat nervous, with your suspecting!

The more a fellow tries to do for a girl like you the less--Look here now, you got to get the h.e.l.l out of my business."

She did not reply, but lay to the accompaniment of his violent nervousness and pinchings into the sand, with her face still away from him, while the dusk deepened and the ocean quieted.

After a while: "Now, Marylin, don't be sore. I may be a rotten egg some ways, but when it comes to you, I'm there."

"I'm not sore, Getaway," she said, with her voice still away from him.

"Only I--Let's not talk for a minute. It's so quiet out here--so full of rest."

He sat, plainly troubled, leaning back on the palms of his hands and dredging his toes into the sand. In the violet light the tender line of her chin to her throat still teased him.

Down farther along the now deserted beach a youth in a bathing suit was playing a harmonica, his knees hunched under his chin, his mouth and hand sliding at cross purposes along the harp. That was the silhouette of him against a clean sky, almost Panlike, as if his feet might be cloven.

What he played, if it had any key at all, was rather in the mood of Chopin's Nocturne in D flat major. A little sigh for the death of a day, a sob for the beauty of that death, and a hope and ecstasy for the new day yet unborn--all of that on a little throbbing mouth organ.

"Getaway," cried Marylin, and sat up, spilling sand, "that's it! That's what I meant a while ago. Hear? It can't be talked. That's it on the mouth organ!"

"It?"

"It! Yes, like I said. Somebody has to feel it inside of him, just like I do, before he can understand. Can't you feel it? Please! Listen."

"Aw, that's an old jew's-harp. I'll buy you one. How's that?"

"All right, I guess," she said, starting off suddenly toward the bathhouse.

He was relieved that she had thrown off the silence.

"Ain't mad any more, are you, Marylin?"

"No, Getaway--not mad."

"Mustn't get fussy that way with me, Marylin. It scares me off. I've had something to show you all day, but you keep scaring me off."

"What is it?" she said, tiptoe.

His mouth drew up to an oblique. "You know."

"No, I don't."

"Maybe I'll tell you and maybe I won't," he cried, scooping up a handful of sand and spraying her. "What'll you give me if I tell?"

"Why--nothing."

"Want to know?"

But at the narrowing something in his eyes she sidestepped him, stooping down at the door of her bathhouse for a last scoop of sand at him.

"No," she cried, her hair blown like spray and the same breeze carrying her laughter, guiltless of mood, out to sea.

On the way home, though, for the merest second, there recurred the puzzling quirk in her thoughtlessness.

In the crush of the electric train, packed tightly into the heart of the most yammering and petulant crowd in the world--home-going pleasure seekers--a youth rose to give her his seat. A big, beach-tanned fellow with a cowlick of hair, when he tipped her his hat, standing up off his right brow like a little apostrophe to him, and blue eyes so very wide apart, and so clear, that they ran back into his head like aisles with little lakes s.h.i.+ning at the ends of them.