Moloch: Or, This Gentile World (21 page)

He says: ‘Hadn’t you better let me take care of this till the morning?’ Pretty decent of him, hah? ‘Aw, hell,’ I says, ‘that’s just a piece of easy change I picked up in a poker game this afternoon. Easy come, easy go, you know.’ And I slipped him a friendly smile.... Well, he paid me out in fives and tens, and there were a lot of singles, too, I recall. To me it felt like a helluva big wad—big enough to choke a horse, as they say. We had another drink on the house, and then I lit out. Boy, what a load-on!”

He lit another cigarette: a Mecca. They were better than Turkish Trophies, Stanley declared.

“When I got outside the joint the first thing I saw was an old-fashioned horse cab with a big Sambo perched on top of the thingamajig and a long whip in his hand that would cut a boxcar in two. ‘Hey, buddy!’ I called. ‘Come ‘ere. Drive this gentleman to Coney Island!’ He pretended not to hear me, but I ran after the bloody gig and jumped in. How the hell I managed it I don’t know … just to show this bozo I meant business I shoved a couple of Hoya de Monterez through the little box at the top and repeated: ‘Coney Island, Sambo All aboard for Dreamland!’

We started off at a trot. In a few minutes I was sound asleep. When I woke up I was still in dreamland. ‘Dis yeah’s Coney Island, boss,’ the nigger kept repeating, as though I were going to argue the point with him…. So it was, b’Jesus! We were on Surf Avenue, and a big mob milling around on the sidewalks. I gave the cabby a five-spot and told him to keep the change. Then I takes a look around me. Cripes, the place was one big razzle-dazzle! I was still under the weather, but what you’d call awry-eyed. I felt bully … wanted to tell the whole cock-eyed world to blow up and bust.… Now that I had arrived, I wondered what the hell to do with myself. I guess I was standing there half an hour—maybe it was five minutes (time didn’t mean a damned thing to me)—when a dizzy blonde with a sailor hat grabs me by the elbow and says: ‘Lonesome, honey?’ My first impulse was to sock her in the eye, but she kept on talking so quietly and gently (and she was nothing but a bum) that before I realized what was what we were ambling down Surf Avenue together, arm in arm, as though we were on a honeymoon. ‘Let’s go somewheres and talk this over,’ I suggested. Seeing as how she had hooked on to me so cleverly it was rather embarrassing to try and give her the slip right there in that big crowd. You can never tell what a moll like that may be up to. She might take it into her head to say I had insulted her. I wasn’t taking any chances … not in my condition. She said she knew a nice quiet little place not far away, so I let her steer me.

“Two minutes later we were sitting inside a swell cafe with a sprinkle of soft lights and rubber-heeled waiters gliding around with heavy silver trays. There was more crystal than you could shake a stick at. Even the saltcellars glittered as if they had been polished especially for us. … I wasn’t slow in noticing that someone had set a big bottle of wine in front of us … yellow wine, tasted like cheap champagne. ‘How did that get here?’ I had sense enough to inquire. ‘Why, honey, you ordered that. Dear me, what a weak memory you have!’ I bawled her out good and plenty. ‘Weak memory hell! You’re a god-damned liar,’ I shouted…. ‘I never ordered a toothpick.’ ‘Easy, honey, easy,’ she smiled. ‘You don’t want to be carried out, do you?’ There was such a mean emphasis to her words that I piped down at once, and decided to act like a good sport—until I got my bearings, at least. After all, what was a bottle of wine? Shoot another five: that was the way I looked at it. … Well, to make a long story short, I shot the other ninety-five. Some more wine, a shore dinner, champagne and cognac, a box of good cigars for the doorman, a few toys for some sick relative she mentioned, and a little change for herself so as she wouldn’t starve to death in the morning. Man, I never thought a hundred dollars could go so fast!

“But that was only the beginning of my troubles…. When I got back to my own neighborhood in the morning I was ashamed to go home. So I went into a saloon on the corner and tried to brace myself up. I was determined, one way or another, to get to Washington and see Secretary Daniels.... But it was no go. I couldn’t for the life of me think of a way to raise the carfare, let alone the incidental expenses. Would you believe it, I hung 
around that saloon for three days, making short trips at intervals to borrow a few bucks from this fellow and that in the neighborhood. All the time, too, I wondered what the hell my wife would be thinking. It got so that I grew afraid to look at a newspaper
 
for fear there would be headlines about me.... 
On the afternoon
 
of the third day who did I see coming into the joint but a lad from the Navy Yard. Jesus! I wanted to pass out! ‘Well, Stanley, old boy,’ he chirps up. ‘what the hell’s come
 
over
 
you?’ I must say he acted pretty decent about it. I was so damned mortified I couldn’t get a word out.... ‘Look here, you,’ he said all of a sudden, and all the friendliness went out of his voice, ‘I’ll give you until tomorrow morning to get on the train and present that petition.’ He didn’t have to tell me twice. I knew he didn’t mean maybe. Believe me, I sobered up presto! Fifteen minutes later I was down at my aunt’s house; twenty-five minutes later I left my aunt’s house with seventy-five bucks in my jeans. I didn’t look for no saloon, neither, I’m tellin’ you. I bought a clean shirt, got my suit pressed while I waited in my BVD’s, and went straight to the depot. … I was in my berth and asleep before the train pulled out.”

“Did you make your speech?” cried Prigozi and Moloch in unison.

“Did I? You should have been there It was all impromptu, 
but it went over big. I forgot all about Pontius Pilate and the
 
Bellerophon
;
 
I forgot everything I had once memorized.... When I walked in and told the Secretary who I was and where I came from, he gave me a peach of a reception. I must say he treated me like a prince. No ceremony … not a bit of it. The first thing he did was to hand me a fat cigar. Then he tells me to sit down and make myself comfortable. I was still a bit shaky, kind o’ rocky, you know, and almost afraid to put the cigar in my mouth for fear it would fall out.... ‘Mr. Daniels,’ I commenced—but he wouldn’t hear of me starting right in that way. He made me sit there for a while and chat with him. I guess we talked about nine hundred different things …
 
everything but increases
.
 
Then, when he saw I was feeling easy, and had lost my stage fright, he says: ‘Now, my young man, just what brought you down here to see me?’ When he said that, I let him have it—the whole works—straight from the shoulder; no filigree, no fussing and fuming, no fireworks à la Daniel Webster. Just plain dollars and cents When I get through, he stands up and grabs my hand (with some warmth, I thought). ‘Mr. Miravaki,’ he says (funny how he remembered my name!), ‘let me congratulate you. You’re a credit to the service. A clean, intelligent, level-headed young man, yes sir! You may depend upon me—I certainly shall see to it that this petition is heeded.’… I took the next train back, and soon after we got what we asked for.… And that’s that!