John Passos - Manhattan transfer

‘They’re no different from anybody else, Joe.’

‘The hell you say.’

‘Say Joe you havent got an extra dollar on you?’

‘Maybe I have.’

‘My stomach’s a little out of order… I’d like to take a little something to steady it, and I’m flat till I get paid Saturday… er … you understand… you’re sure you dont mind? Give me your address and I’ll send it to you first thing Monday morning.’

‘Hell dont worry about it, I’ll see yez around somewheres.’

‘Thank you Joe. And for God’s sake dont buy any more Blue Peter Mines on a margin without asking me about it. I may be a back number but I can still tell a goldbrick with my eyes closed.’

‘Well I got my money back.’

‘It took the devil’s own luck to do it.’

‘Jez it strikes me funny me loanin a dollar to the guy who owned half the Street.’

‘Oh I never had as much as they said I did.’

‘This is a funny place…’

‘Where?’

‘Oh I dunno, I guess everywhere… Well so long Joe, I guess I’ll go along an buy that ticket… Jez it’s goin to be a swell fight.’

Joe Harland watched the young man’s short jerky stride as he went off down the path with his straw hat on the side of his head. Then he got to his feet and walked east along Twentythird Street. The pavements and housewalls still gave off heat although the sun had set. He stopped outside a corner saloon and examined carefully a group of stuffed ermines, gray with dust, that occupied the center of the window. Through the swinging doors a sound of quiet voices and a malty coolness seeped into the street. He suddenly flushed and bit his upper lip and after a furtive glance up and down the street went in through the swinging doors and shambled up to the brassy bottleglittering bar.

After the rain outdoors the plastery backstage smell was pungent in their nostrils. Ellen hung the wet raincoat on the back of the door and put her umbrella in a corner of the dressing room where a little puddle began to spread from it. ‘And all I could think of,’ she was saying in a low voice to Stan who followed her staggering, ‘was a funny song somebody’d told me when I was a little girl about: And the only man who survived the flood was longlegged Jack of the Isthmus.’

‘God I dont see why people have children. It’s an admission of defeat. Procreation is the admission of an incomplete organism. Procreation is an admission of defeat.’

‘Stan for Heaven’s sake dont shout, you’ll shock the stagehands … I oughtnt to have let you come. You know the way people gossip round a theater.’

‘I’ll be quiet just like a lil mouse… Just let me wait till Milly comes to dress you. Seeing you dress is my only remaining pleasure… I admit that as an organism I’m incomplete.’

‘You wont be an organism of any kind if you dont sober up.’

‘I’m going to drink… I’m going to drink till when I cut myself whiskey runs out. What’s the good of blood when you can have whiskey?’

‘Oh Stan.’

‘The only thing an incomplete organism can do is drink… You complete beautiful organisms dont need to drink… I’m going to lie down and go byby.’

‘Dont Stan for Heaven’s sake. If you go and pass out here I’ll never forgive you.’

There was a soft doubleknock at the door. ‘Come in Milly.’ Milly was a small wrinklefaced woman with black eyes. A touch of negro blood made her purplegray lips thick, gave a lividness to her very white skin.

‘It’s eight fifteen dear,’ she said as she bustled in. She gave a quick look at Stan and turned to Ellen with a little wry frown.

‘Stan you’ve got to go away… I’ll meet you at the Beaux Arts or anywhere you like afterwards.’

‘I want to go byby.’

Sitting in front of the mirror at her dressingtable Ellen was wiping cold cream off her face with quick dabs of a little towel. From her makeup box a smell of greasepaint and cocoabutter melted fatly through the room.

‘I dont know what to do with him tonight,’ she whispered to Milly as she slipped off her dress. ‘Oh I wish he would stop drinking.’

‘I’d put him in the shower and turn cold water on him deary.’

‘How’s the house tonight Milly?’

‘Pretty thin Miss Elaine.’

‘I guess it’s the bad weather… I’m going to be terrible.’

‘Dont let him get you worked up deary. Men aint worth it.’

‘I want to go byby.’ Stan was swaying and frowning in the center of the room. ‘Miss Elaine I’ll put him in the bathroom; nobody’ll notice him there.’

‘That’s it, let him go to sleep in the bathtub.’

‘Ellie I’ll go byby in the bathtub.’

The two women pushed him into the bathroom. He flopped limply into the tub, and lay there asleep with his feet in the air and his head on the faucets. Milly was making little rapid clucking noises with her tongue.

‘He’s like a sleepy baby when he’s like this,’ whispered Ellen softly. She stuck the folded bathmat under his head and brushed the sweaty hair off his forehead. He was hardly breathing. She leaned and kissed his eyelids very softly.

‘Miss Elaine you must hurry… curtain’s ringing up.’

‘Look quick am I all right?’

‘Pretty as a picture… Lord love you dear.’

Ellen ran down the stairs and round to the wings, stood there, panting with terror as if she had just missed being run over by an automobile grabbed the musicroll she had to go on with from the property man, got her cue and walked on into the glare.

‘How do you do it Elaine?’ Harry Goldweiser was saying, shaking his calf’s head from the chair behind her. She could see him in the mirror as she took her makeup off. A taller man with gray eyes and eyebrows stood beside him. ‘You remember when they first cast you for the part I said to Mr Fallik, Sol she cant do it, didnt I Sol?’

‘Sure you did Harry.’

‘I thought that no girl so young and beautiful could put, you know… put the passion and terror into it, do you understand?… Sol and I were out front for that scene in the last act.’

‘Wonderful, wonderful,’ groaned Mr Fallik. ‘Tell us how you do it Elaine.’

The makeup came off black and pink on the cloth. Milly moved discreetly about the background hanging up dresses.

‘Do you know who it was who coached me up on that scene? John Oglethorpe. It’s amazing the ideas he has about acting.’

‘Yes it’s a shame he’s so lazy… He’d be a very valuable actor.’

‘It’s not exactly laziness…’ Ellen shook down her hair and twisted it in a coil in her two hands. She saw Harry Goldweiser nudge Mr Fallik.

‘Beautiful isn’t it?’

‘How’s Red Red Rose going?’

‘Oh dont ask me Elaine. Played exclusively to the ushers last week, do you understand? I dont see why it dont go, it’s catchy… Mae Merrill has a pretty figure. Oh, the show business has all gone to hell.’

Ellen put the last bronze pin in the copper coil of her hair. She tossed her chin up. ‘I’d like to try something like that.’

‘But one thing at a time my dear young lady; we’ve just barely got you started as an emotional actress.’

‘I hate it; it’s all false. Sometimes I want to run down to the foots and tell the audience, go home you damn fools. This is a rotten show and a lot of fake acting and you ought to know it. In a musical show you could be sincere.’

‘Didnt I tell ye she was nuts Sol? Didnt I tell ye she was nuts?’

‘I’ll use some of that little speech in my publicity next week… I can work it in fine.’

‘You cant have her crabbin the show.’

‘Not but I can work it in in that column about aspirations of celebrities… You know, this guy is President of the Zozodont Company and would rather have been a fireman and another would rather have been a keeper at the Zoo… Great human interest stuff.’