Manhattan Love Song Read online

  “No, no,” I interposed, “this is just to show you who I am; so you’ll know I’m on the level. I’ll give it to you at your stand, on the corner.”

  “Yeah, but suppose I’m not there?” he objected.

  But I was sick of him by now, so I said, “I’ll find you, don’t worry,” and went in to Bernice. She was doing a tap dance on one leg, holding her dress up to her thighs.

  We went up in an automatic elevator to the roof, passed under the open sky for an instant, and then were indoors again in a one-story stucco bungalow. No one came forward to greet us. Bernice suddenly left my side, opened a door revealing a bedroom with white furniture and pink hangings, and went in with the remark, “You go in there.” I couldn’t make out where there might be, so I stayed where I was and waited for her.

  Shortly afterward, a beautiful, unprepossessing, black-haired person passed beyond an open doorway at the back of the dwelling and glanced casually out. My presence didn’t register in time to halt her progress at the moment, but a second later she was back again for another look, had turned, and was coming toward me. She bore a length of white stuff sewn with glass along with her, but it didn’t hide anything of much importance. “Didn’t Jerry give you your money yet?” she remarked irritably.

  I turned around and looked behind me to see who she was talking to, but there was no one there. By the time I turned again, she was standing before me. “How much is it?” she said then, “I have to do everything myself around here!”

  I must have looked blank, because she sighed as one with the patience of a kindergarten teacher and said slowly and distinctly, “How — much — is — the stuff? Or don’t you talk English?”

  “I’m not the bootlegger,” I grinned.

  “Well, then, who are you?” she said.

  “I came with Bernice,” I said.

  “Well, who’s Bernice?” she wanted to know.

  My nerves snapped and I said, “What’s the matter, don’t you live here?”

  “Do I live here?” she echoed. “Are you telling me?” And then turning her head toward where she had just come from, she emitted an appalling quantity of noise, a combined scream and bellow, as though I had attempted to assault her. “Jerry!” I nearly jumped out of my socks.

  But instead of a man rushing excitedly out there to protect her, a tawny-haired girl came hurriedly into view and said, “Did you want something, Marion?”

  “Yes, I do,” Marion declared positively. “Do you know any one named Bernice?”

  “Which Bernice?” inquired Jerry. “I know a Bernice Fairchild and I also know—”

  “Oh, for Jesus’ sake, Bernice,” I roared toward the door, “will you please come out here and tell these dumb broads something!”

  Instantly I saw a gleam of admiration light each of their four eyes; evidently calling them broads was the “open sesame.” I was the sort of person they were used to having around. Their hauteur dissolved before my eyes; they seemed to relax. Bernice opened the door and came out, her features barely peering forth through snowdrifts of powder. “Oh, hello, Bernice,” Jerry said, “I didn’t know you were here!” Bernice took her aside and said something to her; I had a distinct impression she was explaining my presence in terms of “I didn’t know what to do with him so I brought him along.” Jerry tactlessly allowed her eyes to stray toward me, and I heard her say; “Leave it to me.”

  Jerry announced to the other girl, “She knew Sonny Boy,” meaning Bernice. This was evidently by way of introduction, for I saw them shake hands.

  “I only met him once,” said Bernice guardedly. “Jerry told me about him and you.”

  “Twice, pal, twice,” Jerry reminded her sweetly. “Once in my place and once—”

  “Oh, I don’t mind,” the one called Marion said. “He’s gone now. He’s in Detroit.”

  “She’s been sharing expenses with me this last month,” Jerry said.

  Bernice suddenly without the least provocation whirled around to me and said with a gust of undisguised anger, “For Pete’s sake, do you have to be told where the liquor is! Can’t you find it?”

  So I took it for granted she wanted to be left alone with them, and I strolled off with my hands in my pockets and my head bent unhappily.

  In the rear room, ignoring the presence of a number of people who were lolling around in the background, I helped myself to a drink from a bottle that stood on a table. Not alone on the table by any means, but I chose it for its label. After a while I tired of going back to it so much, so I brought it along with me to the radiator box I was sitting on and kept it there until it was no good any more. Then I opened the window behind me and threw it out. About ten minutes later every one in the room got up and ran out toward the door, so I grew curious and went after them. The fat doorman was standing there looking unhappy, with a tall policeman beside him. I heard the latter say that an old lady had just been taken to the hospital with a scalp wound from broken glass. That didn’t interest me much; I went back to where I had been sitting and wondered who could have done it. It was only a good while later, after the policeman had been made a present of two bottles of rye and had gone away, that I remembered I had done it. So I stood up excitedly and ran over to Jerry, whom I presumed was one of the hostesses, if you could call them that.

  “Listen, do you know who threw that—” I started to say.

  She smiled indulgently and said, “Why, you did, of course; everybody saw you do it.”

  I left her then, but later we were back together again, and she kept getting her head under my chin somehow. “You’re always looking around the room for Bernice,” I heard her say. “Don’t always look around the room for her; she’s all right.”

  Finally I gave her head a strong push, and she fell over on the carpet on her elbows. She stayed there rubbing them, and looked up at me and said, “You’re not so dead, after all.”

  “Quit jazzing around me so much,” I told her. “I’m not hot for you.”

  She laughed and said, “How do you know I’m not for you, though?”

  Then all at once the glass I held in my hand gifted me with momentary intuition, and I saw through the whole maneuver. I remembered how Bernice had taken her aside for a minute when we first came in, and said something to her in an undertone; and how she, this one, had looked over in my direction and answered, “Leave it to me.” So I realized then that Bernice must have asked her to do her a favor and take me off her hands, vamp me or something, anything that would keep me busy and give her a free rein for the evening. And I thought to myself, “Oh, yeah?” But I felt blue and unwanted just the same. And I got up and went out of the place, out into the open air. I went to the back of the roof and sat on the edge of a fire escape with my legs dangling over above a pit a million miles below me. I finished what was in my glass and then I set it down in back of me and lost myself among the lights below, which kept spinning up toward me all the time but never quite reached me. It seemed to me all I had to do was to lean down toward them a little way — and then they would be able to reach me. But I knew better than to do that; so I stopped looking at them, and they all went back to their places far below me. Then I heard a voice say, “Boyfriend, don’t sit there; you scare me.” I turned around and saw a pair of green-silk-stockinged legs standing there slim and straight. And above them was Jerry again, looking down at me.

  I got to my feet and said, “What do you want? What are you following me around for?”

  “Can’t I like you if I want to?” she said.

  I told her that I saw through her, that she was just doing it to do Bernice a favor and keep me away from her.

  “That’s how it started,” she admitted. “She did ask me that. But I’m not pretending now; I really like you.” And a whole lot more, including suggestions as to my future sleeping quarters.

  I spat over the edge of the roof and said, “I didn’t even hear that. Where’s Bernice, what’s she doing now?”

  She flamed up like a skyrocket, an
d I quickly shifted around to the other side of her, thinking she might try to push me over the edge. “Oh, so you want to know, do you, sweet man? Well, she’s put herself under the hammer in there for a hundred dollars. Just one big happy family!”

  I left her standing there and went in, and that lump in my neck wasn’t an Adam’s apple, it was my heart. Bernice was standing up on a chair, just winding up some sort of a harangue she’d been giving. And she was very drunk; her hair kept getting in her eyes. “—All privileges included except leaving marks on the lily-white torso,” I heard her say. “But it’s gotta be in cash, no checks accepted!”

  The noise in there was terrific. And at that, not every one was noticing her. But enough were — too many were. I tried to get to her and get her off the chair. Pick it up by one leg and dump her off if necessary. But, like in a bad dream, I couldn’t get to her; they were all in my way, and the harder I’d push this one and that one, the harder they’d push me back. “Don’t fight!” I heard Bernice call out delightedly.

  “Bernice!” I shouted over a number of heads, “Do you love me? Don’t do that!”

  Suddenly all the printed peach-colored flowers left her, collapsed into a circle of rag around her feet. And she’d done it herself. “Oh, it’s warm in here, so warm in here!” she shouted.

  “Bernice!” I wailed agonizedly, “don’t do that! Don’t you love me?”

  She heard me then, and looked at me, and said, “Have you got a hundred dollars? If you have, then it’s all right with me.”

  “I’ll get it, Bernice!” I almost screamed. “I’ll get it! Only don’t do that!”

  I saw her wink at somebody, and she called back, “I’ll be waiting for you!”

  Outside in the hallway I came up against Jerry, who was just coming in again. “Make her put her dress on,” I said, ridding my lapel of her hands. “I’m going to get a hundred dollars, so I can get her away from here.”

  “You’re not a real man,” she said scathingly, “or you’d know how to get her away from here without a hundred dollars. And you’re not a sweet man, or you’d let her collect and then make her split it with you. I’m wise to you, you’re just some sap in love with her. Real love!” she grimaced, and flung her hands out after me derisively. “She can have you; I’m glad you passed me by!”

  The elevator came up to the roof at the rate of a floor a year, but finally it got there, which was something. It went down again like dishwater in a choked-up sink. I tore out of it, and the plump doorman sat up alarmedly on his improvised couch and threw off the plush covering that was a table runner in the daytime. “Now what happened up there?” he said, “a murder?”

  There were only two things I wanted to know, and I asked him both of them without bothering to answer.

  “Twenty to eleven,” he said, “and there’s a phone right here in the lobby, but the management don’t like people to use it for outside calls.”

  I looked at it, but it was right in the open, had no door, and I didn’t want him to listen, so I went out and found a drugstore on the corner. Something told me to get a lot of nickels at the cashier’s desk before I went in the booth; something told me I was going to need them. One call, I knew, would never do the trick; I’d have to keep on and on. I carried a fistful in with me and laid them on the little wooden slab under the phone.

  The voices and the laughing were still ringing in my ears. Jerry’s liquor was still in my stomach, the sweat of agony I had shed those last few minutes, with Bernice up on the chair, still dampened the back of my shirt. And here — not a sound, just me alone, by myself, wondering whom to ring up first.

  I took the receiver off and I put the first nickel in, and even as the nickel dropped and rang the bell, I had a sinking feeling to go with it; I knew it wasn’t going to be any use. Lending money to friends went out of style with buttoned shoes and mustache cups. But there was nothing like trying. And while I waited, I rapped the back of my hand against the wall of the booth, which was pine. They call that knocking on wood for luck.

  Jackie Conway, “the boy who made good,” came to the phone. He had stopped being Jackie Conway quite some time before this, and was John Crandall Conway these days. There was only one stage he still had to pass through — the J. Crandall Conway stage. He had even stopped having his phone listed the last few months, but at least he still answered it himself, provided you knew the number. Forgotten was the time I had pretended to look for a room in his rooming house to enable him to smuggle his valise out while the landlady’s back was turned.

  He was in the midst of a bridge game, he told me, but that was all right, it could wait five minutes. One strange thing about him, he actually did, I believe, like to be interrupted by phone calls while he was playing bridge. He thought it gave people the impression that he was much sought-after, a very busy man. And impressions counted for so much in his life.

  I told him I had to have a hundred dollars, and could he lend it to me? “Gladly,” he said, “I’ll expect you to give me an IOU for it, that’s all.” It all seemed too good to be true.

  “You drop around sometime tomorrow—” he went on. “No, tomorrow’s Sunday, isn’t it. Can you make it Monday morning—?”

  I was forced to tell him I couldn’t, that I had to have it right tonight, right within an hour, or it wouldn’t be any good to me.

  “You seem to be in a hurry,” he observed. “What’s the rush, what’s it all about?”

  I couldn’t tell him that; I know that if I could’ve, I would have gotten the money from him right then and there. It would have been worth that much to him to be able to repeat so piquant a tale to all his friends, as host and as guest, for many months to come. He loves to play the scandal-monger.

  “You in trouble of some kind, Wade?” he went on.

  “No, I’m not in trouble, Jackie,” I said, “it’s just that I’ve got to have the money.”

  So then he answered, a little coolly. “I’m afraid I can’t do it right tonight, Wade, on such short notice. If you can wait until Monday morning, I’d be only too glad to let you have it. Or if you can give me some inkling as to why you have to have it in such a hurry, I could even borrow it on my own responsibility from one of the boys that are up here with me right now (although I don’t like to do that), but I’d really have to know what you want it for before I could do that. It’s only fair, don’t you think?”

  I lost patience then, and growled, “Oh, say yes or no, will you, Jackie, and get it over with! Either you will or you won’t. Which is it?”

  He said stiffly, “You sound as though I were asking you the favor, instead of you’re asking me—”

  “I’m asking you the favor, and you’re turning me down,” I interrupted, “is that right?”

  “Unless,” he said, “you—”

  “Good night,” I said formally, and hung up.

  Next I tried Billy Cumberland, who came in from Duluth over the weekend seven years ago. He never went back to Duluth again. “Billy,” I said, “how’s chances of raising fifty dollars?”

  So I put another nickel in and called up Eddie Ryan. He’d had a song out three months before, and they were still playing it on the merry-go-rounds at Luna Park. So I congratulated him about it, and he seemed surprised and said, “Wait a minute, are you sure I wrote that?” And then it all came back to him and he said, “Oh, sure! I remember now.” Upon which I said, “I want to borrow twenty-five dollars from, you, Eddie.” “Bring up your decimal point two places,” he answered tragically, “and I can accommodate you.”

  I moved next door into a cooler booth and phoned Phil Broderick, who, being married, is afraid to refuse his friends when they endeavor to borrow money because of what his wife might think and say about him. She used to be a chorus girl. But just that evening, she was either out or out of earshot. He turned me down beautifully, as though he’d been rehearsing what he’d like to say on such an occasion for months past and never had the opportunity to use it before now. Incidentally, I ha
d raised the ante to a full hundred once more, figuring that as long as I wasn’t very likely to get it anyway, I may as well try for the whole amount. People have more respect for someone who tries to borrow a hundred dollars than they have for someone who tries to borrow ten. Moreover, it’s very often less of a risk; they’re likely to get the hundred back, but they’re lucky if they ever see the ten again.

  I believe I phoned ten people altogether in the space of about twelve or fifteen minutes. I even lost the little tact I had had left and rang one or two who knew me so little I had to explain to them just who I was before I sprang the question. So you can see what chance I had. When there was just one nickel left, I gave it up as a bad job, left the booth, and bought a phosphate at the soda fountain. My throat was dry from talking so much.

  The phosphate brought the jag on again a little. I went out and started to walk west without exactly knowing where I was going. I crossed Park, and then Madison and Fifth, just missing being run over by a Town Nash on the last thoroughfare. After which the jag left me for good, and I just felt drawn around the eyes. But the incident gave me an idea, which I pondered for fully half a block before finally rejecting it. It was to get myself hit by some timid, affluent old gentleman’s car and settle for a hundred on the spot instead of bringing suit later. The main difficulty was: not to get hit by some one who, after I was all knocked in a heap and no good for the rest of the evening, might prove to be anything but timid or affluent and say, “Go ahead, sue me!” And not to be damaged too badly to be able to get right back to Bernice with the booty. And not to be arrested as a would-be suicide. Outside of which the project was a perfectly good one. So I gave it up.