Moloch: Or, This Gentile World (23 page)

“All right, D. M., but not
Danny
Morgan
”

“Why not? What’s wrong with Danny?”

“It don’t fit you. Wait a minute,” he begged, “or I’ll laugh muh guts out. Look here, D. M., we don’t wanta look phony.”

“Geez, what a fusspot you can be over a name. What’s the difference what name I take? We’ll be drunk inside of fifteen minutes.”

“That’s all well and good, but…”

“But what? You and your buts again....”

Dave bent over and whispered: “We don’t wanta get arrested,”

“
Arrested?
”

“Sure. For givin’ false names.”

“
W-h-a-t?
To a coupla Polacks? Go on. Chase yourself. You’re getting frightened.”

“Wait a minute, D. M. Take it easy.” He lowered his voice. “You know where we are?” He blinked as he said this. “This is a tough neighborhood....”

“The tougher it is, the better I like it…. Watch me kiss the cross after the party’s on a while.”

Dave clutched Moloch’s arm frantically.

“For Christ’s sake, D. M., don’t do a thing like that. I gotta go home wid the same mug.”

Moloch laughed. “I’m only kiddin’,” he said. “Don’t stand there like a pigeon.”

“You’re sure?”

“Positive.”

“You had me worried. I never know when to take you serious or not.”

They arrived in front of the house. Dave went first up the low stoop and struck a match in the vestibule to read the names.

“I had you frightened, eh?” said Moloch, as Dave glanced from one name to another. Some bells had three and four names under them.

“Before you push the button, Dave—I want to tell you something that happened to me around here about ten years ago. … You don’t like to get in a jam, you say. Well, listen. One night I went to a dance somewhere in this neighborhood … it all comes back to me now. I got a terrible jag on, and so I went outside to get the air. I see a big mick of a cop coming along, so I gets friendly with him. I don’t know what I said to him, but I guess he didn’t like the way I talked to him. Maybe I said something about religion.... Anyhow, the more I tried to excuse myself, the worse he got. I never saw such a dumb bastard! But
that’s the way they are Anyway, the first thing you know, he
grabs me by the collar and starts choking me. Then he hauls off with the other hand and clouts me right in the puss. Wow! I guess I saw daylight…. Now that’s what I call mean …
tough
.
If we see any of those birds hanging around we clear out… right?”

Dave pressed the button and remarked casually: “What pleasant subjects you bring up!”

The latch clicked in a moment and they pressed their combined weight against the door. Dave whispered a final warning in Moloch’s ear: to avoid the subject of wives.

“I promise,” said Moloch lightly. “By the way, how is she now?”

Dave made an unnecessary clatter on the rough wooden stairs and answered:

“My sister’s fine now… just a touch of tonsilitis....Are you following me, Morgan?”

“Right behind you, Brown, old man,” and Moloch let out a big guffaw.

Two malapert sluts, as Congreve would call them, leaned over the banisters and warbled a jocund greeting. The blonde one wasn’t so bad but the other one, the one in the black satin dress, she was terrible. Oddly enough, she was the one Dave had arranged the party with. Dave wanted to swap horses right then and there, but Moloch was too fast for him. He sized up the situation immediately, and before Dave had a chance to finagle, he threw his arms around the blonde as though he had known her all his life.

“Wot a warm baby this bird is,” said the blonde, plastering a slobbery kiss on Moloch’s lips. She got a good whiff of the liquor. “Whew! Where did you get it?”

He motioned to Dave. Dave was frankly disturbed. As they laid their coats on the bed—they were asked to make themselves comfortable right away—he conveyed in an undertone that there had been a mistake about the girls. “You picked the wrong one, D. M.”

“Like hell I did. You mean
you
picked the lemon. Don’t try to crawl out of it.” Unconsciously he was raising his voice.

“Not so loud,” cautioned Dave. “You work her for a while and afterwards we’ll switch.”

“Not while I’m conscious, Dave.”

The two clucks followed them into the bedroom.

“Say, wot are you boys arguin’ about?”

“He wanted me to be sure and take him home early,” Moloch confided.

“Swell chance,” piped the runt in the black satin dress, giving Dave a big squeeze.

“Wot’s the matter?” said the blonde, who had a little more acumen than the other. “Is his wife waitin’ up fer him?”

Dave looked imploringly at his companion.

“That guy?” said Moloch. “Why, he’s got a half-dozen wives waitin’ up fer him. He’s a regular sheik, ain’t that right,
Brown?
”

Dave offered the blonde the flask. She threw back her head and took a good swig, then passed it over to her friend, who was already sitting like a bunch of bananas in Dave’s lap.

“Am I heavy, kid?” she asked.

Dave made a wry grimace behind her back. “Naw, you’re as light as a feather,” he replied.

Someone suggested starting the victrola. Moloch assisted the blonde in cranking the machine. He leaned all over her and almost broke her back.

“Hey, you!” she cried. “Shove off! Wot do you take me for, a horse?”

He offered a polite apology which seemed to baffle her.

“Say, wot wuz dat last woid?”

“Why, that was French for
very chic
.”
He smiled affably at her.

“You talk Polish, too?”

“No, just French … and English, sometimes.”

“Quit cher kiddin’.”

He grabbed her roughly and commenced to dance. Dave sat by as though a tombstone had fallen on him and crushed him. He got a kick just watching Moloch wiggle the blonde around.

“Wot’s the matter with yer friend?” asked the blonde.

“He must be drunk already,” said Moloch.

“I’ll shake him out of it,” she said, freeing herself from his embrace.

The disk was grinding out “The St. Louis Blues.” In an instant the tall blonde baby was standing before Dave, hardly moving her feet but managing to make the rest of her body compensate.

With eyes rolling heavenward, shoulders twitching, knees bending slightly forward, she unlimbered a drowsy, frankly crude muscle dance. Dave’s eyes opened like two saucers. She snapped her fingers under his nose, raised her skirt a little higher, and settled down to a slow, steady roll that caught Dave in the pit of the stomach.

“Take her away,” he cried, putting his hand over his eyes and peeking through his fingers.

“Where did she get that movement?” Moloch inquired, studying her as if she were a trick seal. Dave ventured to suggest that they introduce her to the manager of the National Winter Garden.

“That dump?” she said scornfully.

Then she stationed herself in front of Moloch, who had taken a cigar from his pocket with the intention of enjoying the performance in comfort.

“Want to see some more?” she asked.

“Sure,” he said, “but give us something rough this time,” and he looked over at Dave for approval.

“Something like this?” She made a few Arabian passes with her navel.

“Lady, don’t do that!” begged Dave. “Oh, lady!”

Moloch calmly lit his cigar and proceeded to blow the smoke in her face as she writhed and twisted her loins.

When she had finished he remarked: “Not bad, kid, not bad.”

“How can he sit there like that?” said Dave. He pointed to his companion, who was puffing away on his cigar as though a prandial interregnum had been declared at the six-day bike race.

“For life’s pleasant retrospections nothing like a cigar,” Moloch reflected aloud, carelessly flicking the ashes on the carpet as he spoke.

“Wot is he?” asked the blonde. “A reporter?”

“No, he peddles dope,” said Dave.

“good night!” chorused the two females in unison.

The party had the gamy flavor that was peculiar to the dying days of the Roman Empire. It was hard to believe that a couple of stupid Polacks could provide such merriment. When they weren’t dancing, or mushing it up in a corner, or leaning against the mantelpiece, they were telling dirty stories. Here Dave’s natural lubricity showed to mean advantage. Occasionally even the blonde one signaled thumbs down. No one blushed because there wasn’t any time for blushing. Things happened too fast. And when the flask gave out, as it did immediately, the two malapert sluts proved their sportsmanship by dragging a case of kummel up from the cellar.

Every once in a while Moloch would sing out: “Hey, Brown, hadn’t we better think about getting back to the car barns?”

When the women got maudlinly stewed they began to tire of the smut and take a romantic turn. The blonde demanded a recitation … “somethin’ decent.”

Moloch obliged by standing on his hands with his feet propped against the wall. In that ridiculous posture it suddenly occurred to him to intone the opening lines of Virgil’s
Aeneid … “
Arma virumque cano
,”
etc., etc., for about ten lines. Here he lost the continuity, and with true poetic license, jumped to that magic line
“
Rari nantes ingurgite vasto
.
“Enchanted with this, he kept repeating the last two words—
“
gurgite vasto
,” “
gurgite vasto
”
—until the blonde yelled for him to come up for air.

Dave was lolling on a settee, with his tongue hanging out like a St. Bernard’s, trying to imitate the sonorous roar of Virgil’s
gurgite vasto
,
but never quite succeeding. The runt in the black satin dress put an end to his Latinizing by squirting seltzer water over him. Everyone laughed but Dave. He was thinking of what his wife would say when she saw his bedrabbled appearance.

As no one could read his thoughts the conversation flowed along just as if there had been no seltzer water squirted over him.

Said the runt in the black satin dress: “Vat vere you spik-kink—Spahneesh or mebbe Grik?”

“No,” Moloch replied, “that was just a little Tagalog I picked up in the Philippines. You liked it, hah?”

“I like it better ven I could understand de woids.”

“No you wouldn’t, kid. Poetry is better when you don’t understand the words.”

The blonde had lost all interest in poetry. She was doing her
best to entice Moloch to lie down beside her on the daybed. “Put your arms around me, kid, and squeeze the guts outa me,” she begged.

“I can’t, honey, I’m hungry, honest I am. Can’t you dig up a few sandwiches?”

Dave tittered at the mention of food and thought to smooth over Moloch’s tactlessness by dilating on the subject of tapeworms. But the blonde was hard to ruffle. She had taken quite a fancy to Dave’s boss and wasn’t going to permit a little food to get between her and the object of her affection.

While the Lithuanian miscarriage prepared the sandwiches in the kitchen, Moloch and Dave were entertained by an impromptu exhibition that revealed the blonde’s superb muscle control. Dave, who was perched like a rubber doll on the settee, glutted his greedy eyes until, exasperated beyond endurance by Moloch’s composure, he jumped up impulsively, clutched the blonde’s white thigh like a turkey leg, and fastened his yellow teeth into it. The girl screamed with terror. Dave let go with a whine and groveled at her feet, begging forgiveness.

Moloch laughed inordinately and gave Dave a vigorous shove with his feet which sent him sprawling on his back. Dave looked like a turtle that had been turned over. His eyes were bloodshot and terror-stricken. He had never bitten a woman before.

“Get up, you dirty little bum,” cried Moloch, pretending to be furious with him. “This is no Billy Sunday show,” he added savagely, yanking Dave to his feet. “Now apologize to the lady.”

Dave wondered if a mere apology would clear him. The blonde was evidently impressed by his earnestness, although it took quite a few drinks of kummel to restore her equanimity. However, the episode was finally forgotten and they were soon seated in convivial mood in the kitchen, surrounded by slimy green walls, munching cheerfully on caviar sandwiches and pickled herring.