John Passos - Big Money

He walked home weak in the knees through the afterthetheater bustle of Park Avenue and Fortysecond Street. He could still feel her mouth on his mouth, the smell of her pale frizzy hair, the littleness of her hands on his chest when she pushed his face away from hers.

The next morning he woke late feeling pooped as if he’d been on a threeday drunk. He bought the papers and had a cup of coffee and a doughnut at the coffeebar that stank of stale swill. This time he didn’t look in the Business Opportunities column but under Mechanics and Machinists. That afternoon he got a job in an automobile repairshop on First Avenue. It made him feel bad to go back to the overalls and the grease under your fingernails and punching the timeclock like that but there was no help for it. When he got back to the house he found a letter from Emiscah that made him feel worse than ever.

The minute he’d read the letter he tore it up. Nothing doing, bad enough to go back to grinding valves without starting that stuff up again. He sat down on the bed with his eyes full of peeved tears. It was too goddamned hellish to have everything close in on him like this after getting his commission and the ambulance service and the Lafayette Escadrille and having a mechanic attend to his plane and do all the dirty work. Of all the lousy stinking luck. When he felt a little quieter he got up and wrote Joe for Christ’s sake to get well as soon as he could, that he had turned down an offer of a job with Triangle Motors over in Long Island City and was working as a mechanic in order to tide over and that he was darn sick of it and darned anxious to get going on their little proposition.

He’d worked at the repairshop for two weeks before he found out that the foreman ran a pokergame every payday in a disused office in the back of the building. He got in on it and played pretty carefully. The first couple of weeks he lost half his pay, but then he began to find that he wasn’t such a bad pokerplayer at that. He never lost his temper and was pretty good at doping out where the cards were. He was careful not to blow about his winnings either, so he got away with more of their money than the other guys figured. The foreman was a big loudmouthed harp who wasn’t any too pleased to have Charley horning in on his winnings; it had been his habit to take the money away from the boys himself. Charley kept him oiled up with a drink now and then, and besides, once he got his hand in he could get through more work than any man there. He always changed into his good clothes before he went home.

He didn’t get to see Doris before she went to York Harbor for the summer. The only people he knew were the Johnsons. He went down there a couple of times a week. He built them bookshelves and one Sunday helped them paint the livingroom floor.

Another Sunday he called up early to see if the Johnsons wanted to go down to Long Beach to take a swim. Paul was in bed with a sorethroat but Eveline said she’d go. Well, if she wants it she can have it, he was telling himself as he walked downtown, through the empty grime of the hot sundaymorning streets. She came to the door in a loose yellow silk and lace negligee that showed where her limp breasts began. Before she could say anything he’d pulled her to him and kissed her. She closed her eyes and let herself go limp in his arms. Then she pushed him away and put her finger on her lips.

He blushed and lit a cigarette. “Do you mind?” he said in a shaky voice.

“I’ll have to get used to cigarettes again sometime, I suppose,” she said very low.

He walked over to the window to pull himself together. She followed him and reached for his cigarette and took a couple of puffs of it. Then she said aloud in a cool voice, “Come on back and say hello to Paul.”

Paul was lying back against the pillows looking pale and sweaty. On a table beside the bed there was a coffeepot and a flowered cup and saucer and a pitcher of hot milk. “Hi, Paul, you look like you was leadin’ the life of Riley,” Charley heard himself say in a hearty voice. “Oh, you have to spoil them a little when they’re sick,” cooed Eveline. Charley found himself laughing too loud. “Hope it’s nothin’ serious, old top.” “Naw, I get these damn throats. You kids have a good time at the beach. I wish I could come too.”

“Oh, it may be horrid,” said Eveline. “But if we don’t like it we can always come back.” “Don’t hurry,” said Paul. “I got plenty to read. I’ll be fine here.”

“Well, you and Jeremy keep bachelor hall together.”

Eveline had gotten up a luncheonbasket with some sandwiches and a thermos full of cocktails. She looked very stylish, Charley thought, as he walked beside her along the dusty sunny street carrying the basket and the Sunday paper, in her little turnedup white hat and her lightyellow summer dress. “Oh, let’s have fun,” she said. “It’s been so long since I had any fun.”

When they got out of the train at Long Beach a great blue wind was streaming off the sea blurred by little cool patches of mist. There was a big crowd along the boardwalk. The two of them walked a long way up the beach. “Don’t you think it would be fun if we could get away from everybody?” she was saying. They walked along, their feet sinking into the sand, their voices drowned in the pound and hiss of the surf. “This is great stuff,” he kept saying.

They walked and walked. Charley had his bathingsuit on under his clothes; it had got to feel hot and itchy before they found a place they liked. They set the basket down behind a low dune and Eveline took her clothes off under a big towel she’d brought with her. Charley felt a little shy pulling off his shirt and pants right in front of her but that seemed to be on the books.

“My, you’ve got a beautiful body,” she said. Charley tugged uneasily at the end of his bathingsuit. “I’m pretty healthy, I guess,” he said. He looked at his hands sticking out red and grimed from the white skin of his forearms that were freckled a little under the light fuzz. “I sure would like to get a job where I could keep my hands clean.” “A man’s hands ought to show his work… That’s the whole beauty of hands,” said Eveline. She had wriggled into her suit and let drop the towel. It was a paleblue onepiece suit very tight. “Gosh, you’ve got a pretty figure. That’s what I first noticed about you on the boat.” She stepped over and took his arm. “Let’s go in,” she said. “The surf scares me, but it’s terribly beautiful… Oh, I think this is fun, don’t you?”

Her arm felt very silky against his. He could feel her bare thigh against his bare thigh. Their feet touched as they walked out of the hot loose sand onto the hard cool sand. A foaming wide tongue of seawater ran up the beach at them and wet their legs to the knees. She let go his arm and took his hand.

He hadn’t had much practice with surf and the first thing he knew a wave had knocked him galleywest. He came up spluttering with his mouth and ears full of water. She was on her feet laughing at him holding out her hand to help him to his feet. “Come on out further,” she shouted. They ducked through the next wave and swam out. Just outside of the place where the waves broke they bobbed up and down treading water. “Not too far out, on account of the seapussies…” “What?” “Currents,” she shouted, putting her mouth close to his ear.

He got swamped by another roller and came up spitting and gasping. She was swimming on her back with her eyes closed and her lips pouted. He took two strokes towards her and kissed her cold wet face. He tried to grab her round the body but a wave broke over their heads. She pushed him off as they came up sputtering. “You made me lose my bathingcap. Look.” “There it is. I’ll get it.” He fought his way back through the surf and grabbed the cap just as the undertow was sucking it under. “Some surf,” he yelled.