Nelson Algren - The Man with the Golden Arm

Frankie waited till he heard Sparrow’s steps fade out on the third floor, then touched the bottle on his hip and knocked lightly at the first floor front. He had to knock twice, he knocked so lightly, before she replied.

And managed to look just a little surprised when she did. ‘You knocked so light,’ she told him, and through his mind went Sparrow’s warning: ‘It sounds like a sucker, he knocks so light.’

‘I wasn’t sure it was any body.’ She looked from the tired-looking man to the demented-looking hound. This time she was protected against the light, standing in her fresh white dress and the little blood-red earrings against the sallow olive of her cheeks and the midnight darkness of her hair. The hair that swept down over her shoulders as if touched by the wind that drove the curtains aside when the long Els stormed overhead. She was looking less careworn since John had left her.

‘I just thought you’d like to see a dog that drinks beer,’ Frankie apologized, ‘you told me to get one of my own to kick.’

‘I didn’t say nothin’ about a beer-drinkin’ one, Frankie,’ she protested as gravely as a child. ‘But if you want we’ll try him out.’ Rumdum, at first listening only listlessly, picked up suddenly and hauled Frankie forward into the room.

‘The smell of Budweiser makes him powerful,’ Frankie explained. Before she could get the saucer filled Rumdum had licked the saucer dry and Frankie had to clamp his snout with both hands, the great hound whimpering brokenheartedly, till she could get it filled again without losing a finger.

‘He ain’t had a drink all day,’ Frankie sympathized with all dry throats. ‘Fact is, I ain’t neither.’ He pulled the bottle off his hip with feigned surprise at finding it there. ‘Look what some guy stuck in my pocket!’

‘I’ll stick to beer,’ Molly told him cautiously. ‘I been on the wagon since John’s gone.’ She turned to the little combination record player on the dresser while he drank.

‘Everythin’ is movin’ too fast,’

the record complained drowsily.

‘I got Girlie tied up in the pantry,’ Molly reported. ‘I really don’t have room for her in here but I can’t find nobody to take her off my hands.’

‘I know a party might be some help that way,’ Frankie offered, while Rumdum’s tongue lolled at the half-empty bottle on the table. Molly poured him another saucer and herself a glass – before the foam had settled he was lolling up at her for a refill. While from the pantry, muted and miserable, Girlie moaned a melancholy protest. Rumdum’s left ear perked to half-mast.

‘Don’t let her loose,’ Frankie counseled Molly. ‘She might remember me ’n take a bite.’

‘Slow-ow down

Slow-ow down,’

the singer counseled both Frankie and Rumdum,

‘’Cause everythin’ is movin’ too fast.’

‘I just bought this one,’ Frankie indicated the half-perked ear with the point of his shoe, ‘to give Zosh somethin’ to do beside stone me.’

‘I remember Zosh from the old days, Frankie. Remember the time you took me to the dance by St Wenceslaus ’n she come right across the floor ’n slapped me a good one, right in front of everybody – you wasn’t supposed to go dancin’ with nobody but Zosh?’ N look at her now. Such a shame. ’

But couldn’t keep the small note of triumph out of her tone. Frankie didn’t have to have Molly Novotny remind him that Zosh didn’t talk to just anybody in those years.

‘She’s still pretty, too,’ Molly added hurriedly, and picked up some song or other in her hoarse, wise, taunting voice, letting her eyes remember the one night they had danced together.

‘This is a great big city,

There’s a million things to see,

But the one I love is missing.

Ain’t no town big enough for me.’

Rumdum barked weakly, more like a dream than a dog, scratched himself feebly and folded up onto his forepaws to sleep the sleep of the just.

‘A dog should have fleas once in a while,’ Molly told Frankie seriously. ‘He ain’t a real dog if he don’t. I don’t know why.’

‘Them little fox terrors is good,’ Frankie informed her. ‘Out West they carry them on a saddle ’n when they see the fox the little terror leads all the other hounds to it.’

Rumdum’s paws waggled in sleep. He was a dream terrier running down a dream fox, leading all the other hounds to it. The fox changed into a great white merry-go-round steed, loping with infinite mechanical ease to some old merry-go-round tune and the dog scrambled, slipping and falling and barking, upon its terrible hooves; all down the weary merry-go-round of old-dog dreams.

‘Dogs dream too,’ Molly added, from some authentic source she did not care to reveal, ‘they dream they’re doin’ what they like to do best. Just like people.’

‘That one don’t,’ Frankie assured her, ‘or he’d be dreamin’ he was drownin’ in a beer barrel ’n wake up yipin’.’

‘I don’t sleep good myself – I guess I’m just not used to sleepin’ alone. I dream that John is back ’n wake up. Some nights I can’t sleep at all, like my vitality is runnin’ away with me. I’m too high-strung. You know what I am?’ And before he could ask what – ‘Polish, Bohemian ’n Magyar.’

‘No wonder you can’t sleep.’

‘All I do on rainy days here is play classical music,’ she informed him with a primness he thought she had long lost. ‘I try to stay out of the whisky taverns now that John’s gone. You like classical music?’

‘No.’

‘I do. Sometimes I hear a new word. Then I find a word to rhyme with it ’n make up classical music to go with it. You read books?’

‘No.’

‘I do. Sex books. Intellectual sex books like that Strange Woman . She has this guy, that’s the sex. Then they get married, so that makes it intellectual.’

Since he had nothing to add to that, and still didn’t reach for her or move, she fell into one of her little singsong taunts:

‘Let me be your little sweetheart,

I’ll be much obliged to you.’

Then, with a gesture Frankie never forgot, touched two fingertips lightly to her tongue, then touched the fingers to her breasts. ‘It’s how the girls do at the Safari,’ she apologized – and actually blushed. ‘But all I do is get the suckers to drink.’

‘If people dream what they want to dream’ – he came awake at last – ‘then I’ll dream I’m gettin’ a new girl on the first floor front – I think you’re a nice girl, Molly-O.’

‘I know,’ she acknowledged readily, ‘I’m a real nice girl. ’N the bathroom’s to the right.’

‘I mean it, Molly-O. You got the good kind of heart, the kind that melts a guy.’

She studied him to see just what made him tick. Something had gone wrong with him, she sensed without being able to put a finger on it while her eyes moved from the shaggy tousle of his hair to the battered army brogans. ‘You don’t keep yourself sharp like you used to,’ she decided. ‘When you gonna get that sleeve sewed up?’ It was the sleeve that had been ripped in the accident, Sophie hadn’t yet gotten around to patching it. Some days it was hooked together with a safety pin and some days wasn’t hooked at all. ‘I remember you when your pants was so sharp they was jealous of your shoes,’ she teased him in a voice ready to break into laughter or tears without knowing which it wanted most to do. He came to her.

‘Yeh.’ N I remember you when you had that profile that went all the way down.’

‘I do get lonely,’ she had to confess then, and her voice broke on his name. ‘Frankie.’