Crazy Cock (15 page)

When they staggered out they had a beautiful edge on. As they walked down Sixth Avenue they were followed by an undersized pimp who insisted on handing them cards while he described more or less graphically the various women at his disposal. Next to a cigar store there was a dance hall. It was swamped. Booze again . . . vile, stinking booze. Where did it all come from? New York was just one big river of booze.

As they were leaning against the wall with ginger ale bottles in their hands suddenly they heard a scream and a hysterical young wench rushed out of the lavatory saying that she had been assaulted. A shot was fired, tables knocked over. In a jiffy, almost as if it were a Mack Sennett comedy, the cops appeared. They swarmed over the place, using their clubs liberally. They got hold of the young woman and bundled her
out. And then the music started up and the waiters began mopping the floor. Nobody could say who had pulled the gun. Nobody seemed to want to know. Time to dance. Time to take another swig. Dredge looked around for a partner. All taken. It was like a bargain sale. They waited for the next dance. All taken. . . .

Outside the fellow with the cards was laying for them. He shook his head disparagingly. “Come with me,” he urged. “Fifty nifty gals . . . and what I mean, they're nifty!”

“Tomorrow,” said Dredge.

They ambled leisurely through the quaint old streets. The names of the dives were promising, but that was about all one could say for them. It was a bohemia without bohemians. The villainy, the vice, the joy, the misery—all was fictitious.

“I'm sick of the Village,” said Dredge. He had been saying this for years.

Just then a door opened and they caught sight of a bar. They walked in without ceremony. It was one of those joints which are open to any and every one, from the President on down. Mahogany bar, brass footrails, soaped mirrors, calendars, photographs of pugilists and soubrettes clipped from the
Police Gazette
. The only innovation was the presence of the other sex. In the old days the female element kept to the back room. They weren't allowed to stand at the bar telling dirty stories or bragging about the number of men they had slept with. Nor did they need to be dragged out by a boat hook when the place closed. No, in the old days the women of the street sometimes conducted themselves like ladies, at least they tried to; the new age made it compulsive for the ladies to conduct themselves like whores.

At any rate, this was the conclusion the two of them came
to while indulging in a little quiet drinking. They discussed the situation backward and forward. They were annoyed that they should be obliged to rub shoulders with these respectable eighteen-year-old prostitutes.

They were walking toward Fifth Avenue, their way taking them through Washington Square, deserted now and silent. Near the arch they paused to void a little sentimentality. Once there was a charm to New York—the Haymarket, Huber's Museum, Tom Sharkey's, the German Village, and there was Barnum and Thomas Paine and O. Henry. . . . Gone all that. Skyscrapers now . . . kikes, flappers, automats. Dredge opened up about the Luneta in Manila. A thousand times better off there, or in Nagasaki, where there were certain houses with red lights over the door and beautiful dolls with cherry-ripe lips and almond eyes. . . .

A cab pulled up to the curb. The driver leaned out and beckoned to them. Would they like to know of a nice, quiet, refined place, etc.? To hear his dulcimer notes one would imagine that he had in mind a paradise of houris and musk.

Dredge was skeptical—it sounded too good, too much like the days when the Guadalquivir was ashimmer, etc.

“Hell,” said the driver, “you don't want to go to some dive and get cracked over the bean, do you?” This by way of clinching the argument. “Get in,” he purred, “and if you don't like it you can beat it. I wouldn't steer you to no gyp joint.”

They no sooner got in than he started off hell-bent for election. “You'll like it all right,” he shouted through the window.

The tone in which he flung this out irritated Dredge. “We don't have to like it,” he shot back.

“Shut up!” said Tony Bring. “Don't start an argument with him. Let's see where he's taking us.”

Somewhere in the 40s they rolled up in front of an imposing-looking office building. The entrance was barred by a folding gate. In the hallway stood a cop talking to the elevator boy. The five of them bundled into the elevator. As they ascended, the elevator boy whistled. He had a sallow, seamy face, the type one sees standing at the gallery entrance of burlesque theaters on a cold, rainy night.

There was a sprinkle of tinkling lights, carpets soft as velvet, doves glittering with sequins, their backs cool as alabaster, their vermilion lips trembling like wavelets. From a hidden alcove, subdued strains that made their limbs melt. An odor of sweetened bodies, heavy languor of roses, flurry of powdered limbs, goldfish dozing in tepid bowls. The door closed and the elevator dropped out of sight. They looked at each other helplessly. Trapped. Sorcerized. Locked in with the mystic bride.

There was someone at their elbow, pattering away in a suave, seductive tongue. Beside him stood the taxi driver, his hand outstretched. Tony Bring nudged his companion. “He wants you to slip him something.”

“But I did,” said Dredge.

“Well, give him some more then.”

“For what?”

“For bringing us to such a nice, quiet, refined place.”

T
HE
G
REEK
who took them in tow proved to be a polite, smooth-faced assassin. He said yes to everything. His hands were pale and velvety and he had deep-set, roving eyes that
glittered like agates. At the cloakroom they glanced around timidly. Gorgeous butterflies, dragging their cocoons, sailed by or paused to rest their wings, drugged by their own eroticism. In their passage they scattered a shower of petals and chatter thin as gauze.

The table to which they were conducted rose up like a drunken ship in a mist of smoking wine. Sparkle of silver and splintered crystal dissolving in fires of dust. Letters of pitch rising an inch thick from the menus. . . . The refinement of it made them shudder.

Hardly had they seated themselves when a pair of doves fluttered over. Dredge made an abortive effort to rise while Tony Bring rubbed his hand over his beard meditatively and glanced at his frazzled shirt in the mirror beside him. The introductions were brief and pleasant. The Greek rubbed his smooth, velvety hands. His tongue moved smoothly between his smooth white teeth. Everything smooth as a bright new scabbard.

Miss Lopez, of Spanish blood and somewhat oversexed, inquired at once if they weren't thirsty. She asked it in a parched voice, as if the past were a monsoon and her life a desert. The other, Miss St. Clair, expressed herself as just dying to dance. She got hold of Dredge and, in her refined way, dragged him to the floor for a workout. Miss Lopez employed a different strategy. She had the trick of appearing to swoon in one's arms.

They were scarcely seated when the orchestra struck up again, whereupon Miss Lopez became electrified. It was one of those specialty numbers which provide an opportunity for the singer to circulate from table to table and pour out her heart as the music bursts open the windows of her soul. Miss
Lopez paused just long enough at each table to touch the pocketbook of the one on whom she fastened her drowning eyes, then stuffing the money in her bosom she gave a gratuitous wriggle or two and moved on—all without interruption, while the musicians repeated the chorus of the song over and over. It was a song about love. . . . “I love you . . . I love you . . .” There seemed to be scarcely any other words to it. The performance was concluded in front of the clover club cocktails which Dredge had ordered. As she imparted to the worn words a last lingering shred of tenderness, she sank to her seat like an angel breathing her last.

By now the girls had become extraordinarily thirsty. They asked for Sauternes, and when they had taken a few sips they excused themselves and fluttered away.

“Better count your dough,” said Tony Bring.

Dredge pulled out his wad. There was thirty-seven dollars.

“Is that all you've got?” said Tony Bring.

“Is that
all
?” Dredge did his best to look amazed.

“Listen, Dredge, pull yourself together. This is a nice, refined place. . . .”

Dredge retreated behind his usual weak, amiable smile. “I don't know what's going to happen,” he said, “and what's more I don't care. I've been thrown out of better places than this. Forget about it!”

But Tony Bring couldn't forget—not all at once, at any rate. He was thinking of the taxi driver's words . . . and then that smooth-faced assassin with the velvety paws!

When the girls returned they remarked immediately that the boys looked pensive. Miss Lopez leaned on Tony Bring's shoulder and whispered something in his ear. Her hand burned right through his trousers. “Just one little kiss,” she
whispered, and, lying back in his arms, she pulled his head down, fastened her warm lips to his mouth, and hung there. The lights grew dim and as the first muted notes of “The Kashmiri Song” throbbed in their ears she clung to him rapturously. All about them were panting nymphs expiring in the arms of their partners. It was like a warm night in spring below the Himalayas when the pigeons begin to rut, when among the wet leaves of the forest there begins a rustling and murmuring, a bursting of fragrant buds, an imperceptible movement and stir that thickens the blood.

“I adore that shirt you're wearing,” Anita whispered, as she snuggled up close. She had dropped the Lopez after the second dance.

Tony Bring looked at himself again in the mirror. “It's the only shirt I've got,” he stammered.

Hearing this, Miss St. Clair was in stitches. “His only shirt!” She repeated it several times, tossing her head back and holding her sides in order not to burst with laughter.

“It's the truth,” he declared. “I haven't a red cent to my name.”

Anita looked at him darkly and gave him a playful poke in the ribs. “I know,” she said, rolling her eyes demurely. “I've heard that before.”

Dredge was taking it all in with a big grin. It didn't matter much to him whether they were put out now or later. It was a good jest and nobody seemed depressed over it.

The young ladies seemed to have bladder trouble—they excused themselves again. They were scarcely gone this time when the waiter appeared. It was a new waiter, more formally attired than the previous one, more
hauteur
to his bearing. Without addressing a single word to them he presented
the bill. Dredge looked at the bill and then at the waiter. “We're not going yet,” he said, trying to look unconcerned.

Now it's coming, thought Tony Bring.

The waiter stood by stiffly while Dredge emptied his pockets. He slapped his withered-looking bills on the table. The waiter counted without seeming to touch them. Then, with a brusque, arrogant move, he seized the bill and shoved it under Dredge's nose. “Fifty-five dollars!” he said.

“For what?” said Dredge. “For what?”

“Listen, Dredge, don't argue about it!”

“But where the hell am I going to get fifty-five dollars? You know what I've got. That's what I'm giving him and that's all he's going to get.” Saying which he picked up the money and shoved it in his pocket.

Presently the Greek was standing beside them, rubbing his paws. He had been taking it all in from a distance. “What seems to be the trouble?” he asked, his tone pleasant and conciliatory.

The waiter mumbled in his ear.

“Oh, that's it?” He appeared completely taken by surprise. He turned to Dredge, his voice still cordial, conciliatory, smooth, and affable. He put a few polite questions forward and then, as if the idea had just occurred to him, he remarked: “Perhaps you'd better come with me and talk this over with the credit manager. We ought to be able to straighten this little thing out satisfactorily. It's only a matter of fifty-five dollars.”

Tony Bring sat tight and stared at the wall. He wondered how Dredge would handle “this little thing.” The girls had not returned. The music was still playing, but it sounded less
intoxicating now. The glasses had been removed, the table was bare.

Time dragged. Nobody came near him. He fidgeted about and rubbed his hands over his fuzzy beard. The button of his collar had come off.

Presently Miss St. Clair appeared. Anita had been requested to sit at another table for a while. Wouldn't he like to order her another cocktail? Just one? And where was his friend? All this with the most astonishing naivete. Told that Dredge was trying to settle the bill, she put her hand over her mouth and yawned.

“Buy me just one little drink,” she pleaded.

“But I can't! I haven't a cent on me.”

“You mean that?” said Miss St. Clair. This time she seemed to sense the truth of his words. There was not only scorn in her voice, but fright, as if he had suddenly pulled a lizard out of his pocket and dropped it in front of her.

An awkward moment or two intervened. They sat there without looking at each other, she drumming furiously with her fingertips, he looking at a mural over her head which portrayed a Svengali clawing at a group of dipsomaniacs with long pointed nails.

When at last Dredge returned he was wreathed in smiles. He was escorted as before by the Greek, his factotum, and the regular waiter. “What'll you have to drink?” were his first words. “A little Scotch for me,” he said to the waiter. And then, with a touch of irritation—“Where's Anita? Tell her we want her.”

He sat down. “Everything's O.K.” he said. “Go ahead and enjoy yourself. If you don't like Anita we'll get someone else. We're paying for service and we're going to get it.”

“Listen, Dredge, this is amusing, but what's the dope? I'm sitting here on pins and needles.”