One On The House
One on the House!
Mary Lasswell
Contents
Books by Mary Lasswell
SUDS IN YOUR EYE
HIGH TIME
ONE ON THE HOUSE
WAIT FOR THE WAGON
TOONER SCHOONER
LET’S GO FOR BROKE
The characters in this book are fictitious; any resemblance to real persons is wholly accidental and unintentional.
For
LASS
M
RS
.
FEELEY
STOOD SWEATING AND SWEARING AT
the corner of Broadway and Forty-Third Street, New York City, on a steaming July afternoon. She looked up and down the crowded street filled with cut-rate drugstores, phony pineapple-juice places, and blatting record shops.
“Gawd!” she breathed. “An’ I thought I owned a junk-pile!”
The reek of the overworked cotton-seed oil from a doughnut place hit her in the nose.
“Phew!” she snorted. “Enough to drive a buzzard off a gut-cart! I wish Mrs. Rasmussen an’ Miss Tinkham would hurry. The sight o’ these malted-milk shops makes me nauseous! Not a decent beer saloon in sight!”
Across the street she spied her two friends, Mrs. Rasmussen conspicuous by the neatness of her tan pongee dress in a town of drooping hems and frowsy necklines, and Miss Tinkham majestic above the crowd in a Roman-striped silk jersey tunic over a pleated skirt. She wore a large white Panama hat with a band of tropical shells around it.
“How about a beer?” Mrs. Feeley roared across the din. She charged into the street without looking at the traffic lights. An open hand the size of a premium ham was shoved against her diaphragm.
“On the green, lady! You cross on the green.” Mrs. Feeley looked at the cop, then at the orange warning light. It changed almost instantly to green and she nudged the officer with her elbow.
“You don’t give the Protestants much time, do you?”
Miss Tinkham and Mrs. Rasmussen waited on the traffic-island. They looked tired and a little sad.
“Let’s go home to San Diego soon,” Mrs. Rasmussen said.
“Took the words right outa my mouth, dirty unsanitary habit that it is!” Mrs. Feeley grinned and reached out for her share of the bundles. “It’s been swell, but I had about enough o’ this.”
Miss Tinkham turned for a last look down Forty-Third Street. In her eyes was the holy zeal of the faithful facing Mecca.
“Such Thrift Shoppes!” she breathed. “But of course California’s more picturesque.” In her arms she clutched an almost life-size figure of Aphrodite rising from the foam. Some misbegotten person had wired it for electricity and an even more perverse mind had conceived and executed the lampshade of pleated cerise chiffon. The shade was slightly awry, producing an effect of gay abandon not unlike the angle Miss Tinkham’s own picture hats assumed on convivial occasions.
“Bunglesome to pack, ain’t it?” Mrs. Feeley said.
“A trifle. But it was this or the gorgeous full-length coat of Irish crochet, and I thought we could all share the lamp.”
“Only two stores I wanted to see,” Mrs. Rasmussen said as they nudged their way through the crowd. “Klein’s an’ Saks-Fifth Avenue. Both full o’ sweaters with beads round the neck.”
“I seen the Rockettes again an’ found a beer saloon up this alley—Shamrock Bar.” Mrs. Feeley and her friends executed a pivot that would have turned a Marine sergeant green with envy. The bartender slid the schooners with speed and accuracy. Mrs. Feeley paid and planted one small foot on the rail:
Here’s to them that wish us well,
An’ those who don’t can go to hell.
The bartender grinned and set up three on the house. “You was in here earlier. Sightseeing?”
“Yeup. I seen a sight. Them Rockettes flingin’ their legs around. I sure like ’em. Just one thing puzzles me: how does anybody know ’em when they see ’em on the street?”
“They look different without make-up,” Miss Tinkham said.
“In a town this size, you don’t often run into anybody you know,” the bartender said.
“It’s a damn good thing!” Mrs. Feeley said. “Their own mother wouldn’t recognize ’em unless they had their clothes pulled up over their heads.”
“Where’s she from?” the bartender asked Miss Tinkham.
“San Diego, California. Mrs. Feeley is the owner of the famous Noah’s Ark, where two of everything can be found. She has a heart like a poorhouse blanket with a warm side for everybody. We came East to visit Mrs. Feeley’s nephew, an officer in the Supply Corps of the United States Navy. Not unchaperoned,” Miss Tinkham said confidentially. “We were accompanied by Mrs. Feeley’s handy-man, Old-Timer. He is the strong silent type.” The bartender’s eyes twinkled. Even in the kindly light of the bar, none of the ladies would see sixty again.
Mrs. Rasmussen was inching away from a persistent and relentless admirer. He moved in on her as she came close to Mrs. Feeley’s side. He was a vaguely gray little man like the dust-kittens under a bed.
Mrs. Feeley braced herself and shoved him in the chest. He lost his balance and fell to the floor with his legs spread out in a V in front of him.
“That’s for nothin’!” Mrs. Feeley glared at him. “Now let’s see you do somethin’!”
“I was only trying to buy you ladies a beer.”
“Three beers,” Mrs. Feeley waved at the bartender.
“Four,” the little man said from the floor.
Mrs. Feeley turned her back on him and drank her beer. Miss Tinkham sniffed. He moved in beside Mrs. Rasmussen once more. “I open safes,” he said.
“Don’t tell me your troubles! Pay for the beer!” Mrs. Feeley commanded. “Let’s go. We’ll be late for supper. Don’t want to keep Katy and Danny waitin’.” She nodded politely to the bartender and coolly to the little man.
“Mesdames,” he said plaintively.
“Let’s not have any name-callin’! You’re outweighed, outnumbered, an’ outclassed.”
“Don’t call us dames,” Mrs. Rasmussen glowered.
“That’s ladies in all the best newspapers,” he said. “I merely wished to inquire if you would be coming this way again. I will gladly provide the cup that cheers.”
“We dislike humble men!” Miss Tinkham raised her lorgnette. “You remind me of Uriah Heep!”
“He’s a wolf in Heep’s clothin’!” Mrs. Feeley withered him with a glance. “If we come back, it’s because the bartender’s civil an’ the beers is big!”
Into the hot steaming subway the three ladies crammed themselves. The five o’clock rush was well under way and smellier than usual.
“Everybody’s goin’ to Brooklyn!” Mrs. Feeley said.
Miss Tinkham was having some difficulty finding standing-room for her statue. A woman knocked the lampshade askew when she turned angrily to see who was being familiar with her. Miss Tinkham smiled and pointed at the culprit.
“Alabaster,” she said.
“Somebody botherin’ you, dear?” Mrs. Feeley turned.
Miss Tinkham shook her head and clasped the lamp more tightly.
“That’s right,” Mrs. Feeley said. “Hold her in front of you an’ face the door. Mrs. Rasmussen an’ me will stand in back o’ you, just to make sure none o’ these jerks makes no passes.” She reached up and from the back of her hat drew a long murderous-looking hatpin. She stuck it out at right angles behind her. “Just to make sure o’ elbow room!”
Mrs. Feeley pressed the button marked 5 on the electric elevator.
“Sure beats walkin’,” she said.
Lieutenant Daniel Malone opened the door of the apartment for his aunt and her two friends.
“Two weeks since we come an’ I still can’t get over the fact o’ bein’ here,” Mrs. Feeley said.
“The town will never be the same,” her nephew laughed. He took the lamp from Miss Tinkham, patted the marble fanny, and set it down in a corner. “What did you get into today?”
“Nothin’ much!” Mrs. Feeley grinned. “Mrs. Rasmussen had a sex-maniac after her.”
“Good for him!” Danny said. “And he doesn’t even know she can cook!”
“Where’s Katy?” Mrs. Feeley said.
“Taking her shower. She’s working too hard…you know how she is! Making lists and collecting all the stuff we’ll need to while away the long winter evenings in Alaska.”
“I sure hate to see you go,” Mrs. Feeley said, “Even if Katy does say it’s good duty. She’d say Siberia was good duty, long as you was home every night.”
“You’d oughta be able to save a lot,” Mrs. Rasmussen said.
“At least getting ordered to Alaska finally made you take the trip up here like you promised over five years ago. It’s not your fault Little Danny wasn’t born with a long, white beard! Katy’s got a full list of things for you gals to do the next two weeks.”
Mrs. Feeley looked at Mrs. Rasmussen, moist but still tidy—at Miss Tinkham, dripping and disheveled. “This time o’ day, if we was home, we’d be reachin’ for a sweater or some other little wrap-rascal.”
“Don’t pull that wistful stuff on me, Toots. You’re not going home. You’ve hardly seen anything yet.”
“We got enough to talk about for a lifetime,” Mrs. Rasmussen said.
“What’s this?” Katy called from the door of her bedroom. Her short hair was damp and curly and her face rosy and cheerful above her peacock-blue shantung dress. “You’re not talking of going home surely! The best is just coming up.”
“You been swell, but there’s so much to be did. I worry about the Ark an’ Darleen an’ all…she might forget to water the gardenias.”
“When we sit down in our accustomed surroundings and recall these pleasures, I think we shall enjoy them even more in retrospect,” Miss Tinkham said.