John Passos - Manhattan transfer

‘Ou-ou, Jimmee…’ Ruth was yodling at him from behind her door. ‘But you mustn’t look at me or at my room.’ A head in curlpapers stuck out like a turtle’s.

‘Hullo Ruth.’

‘You can come in if you promise not to look… I’m a sight and my room’s a pigeon… I’ve just got to do my hair. Then I’ll be ready.’ The little gray room was stuffed with clothes and photographs of stage people. Jimmy stood with his back to the door, some sort of silky stuff that dangled from the hook tickling his ears.

‘Well how’s the cub reporter?’

‘I’m on Hell’s Kitchen… It’s swell. Got a job yet Ruth?’

‘Um-um… A couple of things may materialize during the week. But they wont. Oh Jimmy I’m getting desperate.’ She shook her hair loose of the crimpers and combed out the new mousybrown waves. She had a pale startled face with a big mouth and blue underlids. ‘This morning I knew I ought to be up and ready, but I just couldn’t. It’s so discouraging to get up when you haven’t got a job… Sometimes I think I’ll go to bed and just stay there till the end of the world.’

‘Poor old Ruth.’

She threw a powderpuff at him that covered his necktie and the lapels of his blue serge suit with powder. ‘Dont you poor old me you little rat.’

‘That’s a nice thing to do after all the trouble I took to make myself look respectable… Darn your hide Ruth. And the smell of the carbona not off me yet.’

Ruth threw back her head with a shrieking laugh. ‘Oh you’re so comical Jimmy. Try the whisk-broom.’

Blushing he blew down his chin at his tie. ‘Who’s the funny-looking girl opened the halldoor?’

‘Shush you can hear everything through the partition… that’s Cassie,’ she whispered giggling. ‘Cassah-ndrah Wilkins… used to be with the Morgan Dancers. But we oughtnt to laugh at her, she’s very nice. I’m very fond of her.’ She let out a whoop of laughter. ‘You nut Jimmy.’ She got to her feet and punched him in the muscle of his arm. ‘You always make me act like I was crazy.’

‘God did that… No but look, I’m awfully hungry. I walked up.’

‘What time is it?’

‘It’s after one.’

‘Oh Jimmy I don’t know what to do about time… Like this hat?… Oh I forgot to tell you. I went to see Al Harrison yesterday. It was simply dreadful… If I hadnt got to the phone in time and threatened to call the police…’

‘Look at that funny woman opposite. She’s got a face exactly like a llama.’

‘It’s on account of her I have to keep my shades drawn all the time…’

‘Why?’

‘Oh you’re much too young to know. You’d be shocked Jimmy.’ Ruth was leaning close to the mirror running a stick of rouge between her lips.

‘So many things shock me, I dont see that it matters much… But come along let’s get out of here. The sun’s shining outside and people are coming out of church and going home to overeat and read at their Sunday papers among the rubberplants…’

‘Oh Jimmy you’re a shriek… Just one minute. Look out you’re hooked onto my best shimmy.’

A girl with short black hair in a yellow jumper was folding the sheets off the cot in the hall. For a second under the ambercolored powder and the rouge Jimmy did not recognize the face he had seen through the crack in the door.

‘Hello Cassie, this is… Beg pardon, Miss Wilkins this is Mr Herf. You tell him about the lady across the airshaft, you know Sappo the Monk.’

Cassandra Wilkins lisped and pouted. ‘Isn’t she dweadful Mr Herf… She says the dweadfullest things.’

‘She merely does it to annoy.’

‘Oh Mr Herf I’m so pleased to meet you at last, Ruth does nothing but talk about you… Oh I’m afwaid I was indiscweet to say that… I’m dweadfully indiscweet.’

The door across the hall opened and Jimmy found himself looking in the white face of a crookednosed man whose red hair rode in two unequal mounds on either side of a straight part. He wore a green satin bathrobe and red morocco slippers.

‘What heow Cassahndrah?’ he said in a careful Oxford drawl. ‘What prophecies today?’

‘Nothing except a wire from Mrs Fitzsimmons Green. She wants me to go to see her at Scarsdale tomorrow to talk about the Gweenery Theater… Excuse me this is Mr Herf, Mr Oglethorpe.’ The redhaired man raised one eyebrow and lowered the other and put a limp hand in Jimmy’s.

‘Herf, Herf… Let me see, it’s not a Georgiah Herf? In Atlahnta there’s an old family of Herfs…’

‘No I dont think so.’

‘Too bad. Once upon a time Josiah Herf and I were boon companions. Today he is the president of the First National Bank and leading citizen of Scranton Pennsylvahnia and I… a mere mountebank, a thing of rags and patches.’ When he shrugged his shoulders the bathrobe fell away exposing a flat smooth hairless chest.

‘You see Mr Oglethorpe and I are going to do the Song of Songs. He weads it and I interpwet it in dancing. You must come up and see us wehearse sometime.’

‘Thy navel is like a round goblet which wanteth not liquor, thy belly is like a heap of wheat set about with lilies…’

‘Oh dont begin now.’ She tittered and pressed her legs together.

‘Jojo close that door,’ came a quiet deep girl’s voice from inside the room.

‘Oh poo-er deah Elaine, she wants to sleep . . So glahd to have met you, Mr Herf.’

‘Jojo!’

‘Yes my deah…’

Through the leaden drowse that cramped him the girl’s voice set Jimmy tingling. He stood beside Cassie constrainedly without speaking in the dingydark hall. A smell of coffee and singeing toast seeped in from somewhere. Ruth came up behind them.

‘All right Jimmy I’m ready… I wonder if I’ve forgotten anything.’

‘I dont care whether you have or not, I’m starving.’ Jimmy took hold of her shoulders and pushed her gently towards the door. ‘It’s two o’clock.’

‘Well goodby Cassie dear, I’ll call you up at about six.’

‘All wight Wuthy… So pleased to have met you Mr Herf.’ The door closed on Cassie’s tittering lisp.

‘Wow, Ruth that place gives me the infernal jimjams.’

‘Now Jimmy dont get peevish because you need food.’

‘But tell me Ruth, what the hell is Mr Oglethorpe? He beats anything I ever saw.’

‘Oh did the Ogle come out of his lair?’ Ruth let out a whoop of laughter. They came out into grimy sunlight. ‘Did he tell you he was of the main brawnch, dontcher know, of the Oglethorpes of Georgiah?’

‘Is that lovely girl with copper hair his wife?’

‘Elaine Oglethorpe has reddish hair. She’s not so darn lovely either… She’s just a kid and she’s upstage as the deuce already. All because she made a kind of a hit in Peach Blossoms. You know one of these tiny exquisite bits everybody makes such a fuss over. She can act all right.’

‘It’s a shame she’s got that for a husband.’

‘Ogle’s done everything in the world for her. If it hadnt been for him she’d still be in the chorus…’

‘Beauty and the beast.’

‘You’d better look out if he sets his lamps on you Jimmy.’

‘Why?’

‘Strange fish, Jimmy, strange fish.’

An Elevated train shattered the barred sunlight overhead. He could see Ruth’s mouth forming words.

‘Look,’ he shouted above the diminishing clatter. ‘Let’s go have brunch at the Campus and then go for a walk on the Palisades.’

‘You nut Jimmy what’s brunch?’

‘You’ll eat breakfast and I’ll eat lunch.’

‘It’ll be a scream.’ Whooping with laughter she put her arm in his. Her silvernet bag knocked against his elbow as they walked.

‘And what about Cassie, the mysterious Cassandra?’