Gaslight Sonatas Part 32

An immediate flush stung her face.

"Well, of all the darn conceit! Can't a girl walk down to the loop to catch her car and stretch her legs after she's been cooped up all day, without a few of you boys throwing a bouquet or two at yourselves?"

"I got to hand it you, Loo; when you walk down this street, you make every girl in town look warmed over."

"Do you like it, Charley? It's that checked jacket I bought at Hamlin's sale last year made over."

"Say, it's cla.s.sy! You look like all the money in the world, honey."

"Huh, two yards of coat-lining, forty-four cents, and Ida Bell's last year's office-hat reblocked, sixty-five."

"You're the show-piece of the town, all right. Come on; let's pick up a crowd and muss-up Claxton Road a little."

"I meant what I said, Charley. After the cuttings-up of last night and the night before I'm quits. Maybe Charley c.o.x can afford to get himself talked about because he's Charley c.o.x, but a girl like me with a job to hold down, and the way ma and Ida Bell were sitting up in their nightgowns, green around the gills, when I got home last night--nix! I'm getting myself talked about, if you want to know it, running with--your gang, Charley."

"I'd like to see anybody let out so much as a grunt about you in front of me. A fellow can't do any more, honey, to show a girl where she stands with him than ask her to marry him--now can he? If I'd have had my way last night, I'd--"

"You was drunk when you asked me, Charley."

"You mean you got cold feet?"

"Thank G.o.d, I did!"

"I don't blame you, girl. You might do worse--but not much."

"That's what you'd need for your finis.h.i.+ng-touch, a girl like me dragging you down."

"You mean pulling me up."

"Yes, maybe, if you didn't have a cent."

"I'd have enough sense then to know better than to ask you, honey. You 'ain't got that fourteen-carat look in your eye for nothing. You're the kind that's going to bring in a big fish, and I wish it to you."

"Lots you know."

"Come on; let me ride you around the block, then."

"If--if you like my company so much, can't you just take a walk with me or come out and sit on our steps awhile?"

"Lord, girl, Flamm Avenue is hot enough to fry my soul to-night!"

"We can't all have fathers that live in thirty-room houses out in Kingsmoreland Place."

"Thank G.o.d for that! I sneaked home this morning to change my clothes, and thought maybe I'd got into somebody's mausoleum by mistake."

"Was--was your papa around, Charley?"

"In the library, shut up with old man Brookes."

"Did he--did he see the morning papers? You know what he said last time, Charley, when the motor-cycle cop chased you down an embankment."

"Honey, if my old man was to carry out every threat he utters, I'd be disinherited, murdered, hong-konged, shanghaied, and cremated every day in the year."

"I got to go now, Charley."

"Not let a fellow even spin you home?"

"You know I want to, Charley, but--but it don't do you any good, boy, being seen with me in that joy-wagon of yours. It--it don't do you any good, Charley, ever--ever being seen with me."

"There's nothing or n.o.body in this town can hurt my reputation, honey, and certainly not my ace-spot girl. Turn your mind over, and telephone down for me to come out and pick you up about eight."

"Don't hit it up to-night, Charley. Can't you go home one evening?"

He juggled her arm.

"You're a nice little girl, all righty."

"There's my car."

He elevated her by the elbow to the step, swinging up half-way after her to drop a coin into the box.

"Take care of this little lady there, conductor, and don't let your car skid."

"Oh, Charley--silly!"

She forced her way into the jammed rear platform, the sharp brim of the red sailor creating an area for her.

"S'long, Charley!"

"S'long, girl!"

Wedged there in the moist-faced crowd, she looked after him, at his broad back receding. An inclination to cry pressed at her eyeb.a.l.l.s.

Flamm Avenue, which is treeless and built up for its entire length with two-story, flat-roofed buildings, stares, window for window, stoop for stoop, at its opposite side, and, in summer, the strip of asphalt street, unshaded and lying naked to the sun, gives off such an effluvium of heat and hot tar that the windows are closed to it and night descends like a gas-mask to the face.

Opening the door upon the Ha.s.siebrock front room, convertible from bed- to sitting-room by the mere erect-position-stand of the folding-bed, a wave of this tarry heat came flowing out, gaseous, sickening. Miss Ha.s.siebrock entered with her face wry, made a diagonal cut of the room, side-stepping a patent rocker and a table laid out with knickknacks on a lace mat, slammed closed two windows, and, turning inward, lifted off her hat, which left a brand across her forehead and had plastered down her hair in damp scallops.

"Whew!"

"Lo-o, that you?"

"Yes, ma."

"Come out to your supper. I'll warm up the kohlrabi."

Miss Ha.s.siebrock strode through a pair of chromatic portieres, with them swinging after her, and into an unlit kitchen, gray with dusk. A table drawn out center and within range of the gas-range was a blotch in the gloom, three figures surrounding it with arms that moved vaguely among a litter of dishes.

"I wish to Heaven somebody in this joint would remember to keep those front windows shut!"