Part 15 (1/2)
”Don't kid yourself!” she says. ”You ain't even makin' the money I could get with a trained seal! You gotta stop this pinochle thing--you don't see Alex wastin' his time playin' pinochle with a lotta loafers!”
”You bet you don't!” I comes back. ”You'll never see Alex playin' no game where they's a chance of the other guy winnin'! He wouldn't bet zero was cold! And don't be callin' my friends loafers--every one of them guys is successful business men!”
”That mob you hid out in here one night looked like a lotta plumbers to me!” she says. ”Any man who sits up half the night playin' cards is a loafer!”
”One of them loafers I while away my time with lives in the next flat,”
I says, ”and the dumbwaiter door is wide open.”
”I don't care,” says the wife, flus.h.i.+n' all up. ”Let him hear me!”
”I ain't stoppin' him,” I says. ”But you don't want it to get rumored all over New York that you and me is quarrelin', do you?”
The wife's answer is nothin'. She walks over to the window and looks out on Manhattan, doin' a soft shoe dance with one toe on the floor.
If bein' good lookin' was water, she'd be Niagara Falls. You've seen her picture many a time on a can of ma.s.sage cream--which she never touched in her life! The label claims it was this stuff that put her over, but she don't know whether rouge is for red cheeks or measles.
They ain't a day goes by without some movie company pesterin' her to sign up, and she can write her own ticket when it comes to salary.
Well, I'm in dutch again, but I don't care! This here knockout is wed to me, and they ain't _nothin'_ can give me the blues!
”Listen!” I says. ”Honey, we only been wed ten years--and here we are sc.r.a.ppin' _already_!”
She turns on the weeps and I'm across the floor like a startled rabbit.
We come to terms in about five minutes, and as far as a disinterested stranger could of seen, everything is O.K. again.
”Well,” I says, finally, ”you ain't mad at me no more, heh, honey?”
She wags her head, no.
”We got _that_ all settled, heh?” I says.
Her head is on my shoulder and why shouldn't it be, and she says yes.
They is a pause. To bust it up, I coughs.
”If that pest Alex wasn't comin' here to-night,” I says, ”we might go to the theatre.”
”The _movies_ hurts my eyes!” she answers, givin' me a sarcastical smile.
”D'ye mean to give the neighbors the idea I have never staked you to nothin' but the movies?” I hollers, gettin' sore, naturally enough.
”Don't be callin' my cousin no pest!” she says and--well, we're off again!
In less than five minutes, some new-comers which has a flat across the hall, knocks on the dumbwaiter bell furiously. I answered.
”Why don't you people let go?” inquires a harsh voice. ”We can't stand that tourney in there no longer!”
”They ain't no way of puttin' a man in jail for movin',” I says.
”The idea of a man hollerin' at his wife like that!” comes a female voice in back of this guy.