Big Money

by John Dos Passos

  At the end of the week Charley and Bill flew back to New York leaving Andy Merritt to negotiate contracts with the government experts. When they’d run the ship into the hangar Charley said he’d wheel Bill home to Jamaica in his car. They stopped off in a kind of hofbrau for a beer. They were hungry and Bill thought his wife would be through supper so they ate noodlesoup and schnitzels. Charley found they had some fake rhinewine and ordered it. They drank the wine and ordered another set of schnitzels. Charley was telling Bill how Andy Merritt said the government contracts were going through and Andy Merritt was always right and he’d said it was a patriotic duty to capitalize production on a broad base. “Bill, goddam it, we’ll be in the money. How about another bottle? . . . Good old Bill, the pilot’s nothin’ without his mechanic, the promotor’s nothin’ without production. . . . You and me, Bill, we’re in production, and by God I’m goin’ to see we don’t lose out. If they try to rook us we’ll fight, already I’ve had offers, big offers from Detroit . . . in five years now we’ll be in the money and I’ll see you’re in the big money too.”

  They ate applecake and then the proprietor brought out a bottle of kummel. Charley bought the bottle. “Cheaper than payin’ for it drink by drink, don’t you think so, Bill?” Bill began to start saying he was a family man and had better be getting along home. “Me,” said Charley, pouring out some kummel into a tumbler, “I haven’t got no home to go to. . . . If she wanted she could have a home. I’d make her a wonderful home.”

  Charley discovered that Bill Cermak had gone and that he was telling all this to a stout blonde lady of uncertain age with a rich German accent. He was calling her Aunt Hartmann and telling her that if he ever had a home she’d be his housekeeper. They finished up the kummel and started drinking beer. She stroked his head and called him her vandering yunge. There was an orchestra in Bavarian costume and a thicknecked man that sang. Charley wanted to yodel for the company but she pulled him back to the table. She was very strong and pushed him away with big red arms when he tried to get friendly, but when he pinched her seat she looked down into her beer and giggled. It was all like back home in the old days, he kept telling her, only louder and funnier. It was dreadfully funny until they were sitting in the car and she had her head on his shoulder and was calling him schatz and her long coils of hair had come undone and hung down over the wheel. Somehow he managed to drive.

  He woke up next morning in a rattletrap hotel in Coney Island. It was nine o’clock, he had a frightful head and Aunt Hartmann was sitting up in bed looking pink, broad and beefy and asking for kaffee und schlagsahne. He took her out to breakfast at a Vienna bakery. She ate a great deal and cried a great deal and said he mustn’t think she was a bad woman, because she was just a poor girl out of work and she’d felt so badly on account of his being a poor homeless boy. He said he’d be a poor homeless boy for fair if he didn’t get back to the office. He gave her all the change he had in his pocket and a fake address and left her crying over a third cup of coffee in the Vienna bakery and headed for Long Island City. About Ozone Park he had to stop to upchuck on the side of the road. He just managed to get into the yard of the plant with his last drop of gas. He slipped into his office. It was ten minutes of twelve.

  His desk was full of notes and letters held together with clips and blue papers marked IMMEDIATE ATTENTION. He was scared Miss Robinson or Joe Askew would find out he was back. Then he remembered he had a silver flask of old bourbon in his desk drawer that Doris had given him the night before she sailed, to forget her by she’d said, kidding him. He’d just tipped his head back to take a swig when he saw Joe Askew standing in front of his desk.

  Joe stood with his legs apart with a worn frowning look on his face. “Well, for Pete’s sake, where have you been? We been worried as hell about you. . . . Grace waited dinner an hour.”

  “Why didn’t you call up the hangar?”

  “Everybody had gone home. . . . Stauch’s sick. Everything’s tied up.”

  “Haven’t you heard from Merritt?”

  “Sure . . . but that means we’ve got to reorganize production. . . . And frankly, Charley, that’s a hell of an example to set the employees . . . boozing around the office. Last time I kept my mouth shut, but my god . . .”

  Charley walked over to the cooler and drew himself a couple of papercupfuls of water. “I got to celebratin’ that trip to Washington last night. . . . After all, Joe, these contracts will put us on the map. . . . How about havin’ a little drink?” Joe frowned. “You look like you’d been having plenty . . . and how about shaving before you come into the office? We expect our employees to do it, we ought to do it too. . . . For craps’ sake, Charley, remember that the war’s over.” Joe turned on his heel and went back to his own office.

  Charley took another long pull on the flask. He was mad. “I won’t take it,” he muttered, “not from him or anybody else.” Then the phone rang. The foreman of the assemblyroom was standing in the door. “Please, Mr. Anderson,” he said.

  That was the beginning of it. From then everything seemed to go haywire. At eight o’clock that night Charley hadn’t yet had a shave. He was eating a sandwich and drinking coffee out of a carton with the mechanics of the repaircrew over a busted machine. It was midnight and he was all in before he got home to the apartment. He was all ready to give Joe a piece of his mind but there wasn’t an Askew in sight.

  Next morning at breakfast Grace’s eyebrows were raised when she poured out the coffee. “Well, if it isn’t the lost battalion,” she said.

  Joe Askew cleared his throat. “Charley,” he said nervously, “I didn’t have any call to bawl you out like that . . . I guess I’m getting cranky in my old age. The plant’s been hell on wheels all week.”

  The two little girls began to giggle.

  “Aw, let it ride,” said Charley.

  “Little pitchers, Joe,” said Grace, rapping on the table for order. “I guess we all need a rest. Now this summer, Joe, you’ll take a vacation. I need a vacation in the worst way myself, especially from entertaining Joe’s dead cats. He hasn’t had anybody to talk to since you’ve been away, Charley, and the house has been full of dead cats.” “That’s just a couple of guys I’ve been trying to fix up with jobs. Grace thinks they’re no good because they haven’t much social smalltalk.” “I don’t think, I know they are dead cats,” said Grace. The little girls started to giggle some more. Charley got to his feet and pushed back his chair.

  “Comin’, Joe?” he said. “I’ve got to get back to my wreckin’crew.”

  It was a couple of weeks before Charley got away from the plant except to sleep. At the end of that time Stauch was back with his quiet regretful manner like the manner of an assisting physician in a hospital operatingroom, and things began to straighten out. The day Stauch finally came to Charley’s office door saying, “Production is now again smooth, Mr. Anderson,” Charley decided he’d knock off at noon. He called up Nat Benton to wait for him for lunch and slipped out by the employees’ entrance so that he wouldn’t meet Joe in the entry.

  In Nat’s office they had a couple of drinks before going out to lunch. At the restaurant after they’d ordered, he said, “Well, Nat, how’s the intelligence service going?”

  “How many shares have you got?”

  “Five hundred.”

  “Any other stock, anything you could put up for margin?”

  “A little. . . . I got a couple of grand in cash.”

  “Cash,” said Nat scornfully. “For a rainy day . . . stuff and nonsense. . . . Why not put it to work?”

  “That’s what I’m talkin’ about.”

  “Suppose you try a little flyer in Auburn just to get your hand in.”

  “But how about Merritt?”

  “Hold your horses. . . . What I want to do is get you a little capital so you can fight those birds on an equal basis. . . . If you don’t they’ll freeze you out sure as fate.”

  “Joe wouldn’t,” said Charley.

  “I don�
��t know the man personally but I do know men and there are darn few who won’t look out for number one first.”

  “I guess they’ll all rook you if they can.”

  “I wouldn’t put it just that way, Charley. There are some magnificent specimens of American manhood in the business world.” That night Charley got drunk all by himself at a speak in the Fifties

  By the time Doris landed from Europe in the fall Charley had made two killings in Auburn and was buying up all the Askew-Merritt stock he could lay his hands on. At the same time he discovered he had credit, for a new car, for suits at Brooks Brothers, for meals at speakeasies. The car was a Packard sport phaeton with a long low custombody upholstered in red leather. He drove down to the dock to meet Doris and Mrs. Humphries when they came in on the Leviathan. The ship had already docked when Charley got to Hoboken. Charley parked his car and hurried through the shabby groups at the thirdclass to the big swirl of welldressed people chattering round piles of pigskin suitcases, patentleather hatboxes, wardrobetrunks with the labels of Ritz hotels on them, in the central part of the wharfbuilding. Under the H he caught sight of old Mrs. Humphries. Above the big furcollar her face looked like a faded edition of Doris’s, he had never before noticed how much.

  She didn’t recognize him for a moment. “Why, Charles Anderson, how very nice.” She held her hand out to him without smiling. “This is most trying. Doris of course had to leave her jewelcase in the cabin. . . . You are meeting someone, I presume.” Charley blushed. “I thought I might give you a lift . . . I got a big car now. I thought it would take your bags better than a taxi.” Mrs. Humphries wasn’t paying much attention.” There she is. . . .” She wave dag loved hand with an alligatorskin bag in it. “Here I am.”

  Doris came running through the crowd. She was flushed and her lips were very red. Her little hat and her fur were just the color of her hair. “I’ve got it, Mother . . . what a silly girl.” “Every time I go through this,” sighed Mrs. Humphries, “I decide I’ll never go abroad again.”

  Doris leaned over to tuck a piece of yellow something into a handbag that had been opened.

  “Here’s Mr. Anderson, Doris,” said Mrs. Humphries.

  Doris turned with a jump and ran up to him and threw her arms round his neck and kissed him on the cheek. “You darling to come down.” Then she introduced him to a redfaced young Englishman in an English plaid overcoat who was carrying a big bag of golfclubs. “I know you’ll like each other.”

  “Is this your first visit to this country?” asked Charley.

  “Quite the contrary,” said the Englishman, showing his yellow teeth in a smile. “I was born in Wyoming.”

  It was chilly on the wharf. Mrs. Humphries went to sit in the heated waitingroom. When the young man with the golfsticks went off to attend to his own bags, Doris said, “How do you like George Duquesne? He was born here and brought up in England. His mother comes from people in the Doomsday Book. I went to stay with them at the most beautiful old abbey. . . . I had the time of my life in England. I think George is a duck. The Duquesnes have copper interests. They are almost like the Guggenheims except of course they are not Jewish. . . . Why, Charley, I believe you’re jealous. . . . Silly . . . George and I are just like brother and sister, really. . . . It’s not like you and me at all, but he’s such fun.”

  It took the Humphries family a couple of hours to get through the customs. They had a great many bags and Doris had to pay duty on some dresses. When Mrs. Humphries found she was to drive uptown in an open car with the top down she looked black indeed, the fact that it was a snakylooking Packard didn’t seem to help. “Why, it’s a regular rubberneck wagon,” said Doris. “Mother, this is fun . . . Charley’ll point out all the tall buildings.” Mrs. Humphries was grumbling as, surrounded by handbaggage, she settled into the back seat, “Your dear father, Doris, never liked to see a lady riding in an open cab, much less in an open machine.”

  When he’d taken them uptown Charley didn’t go back to the plant. He spent the rest of the day till closing at the Askews’ apartment on the telephone talking to Benton’s office. Since the listing of Standard Airparts there’d been a big drop in Askew-Merritt. He was hocking everything and waiting for it to hit bottom before buying. Every now and then he’d call up Benton and say, “What do you think, Nat?”

  Nat still had no tips late that afternoon, so Charley spun a coin to decide; it came heads. He called up the office and told them to start buying at the opening figure next day. Then he changed his clothes and cleared out before Grace brought the little girls home from school; he hardly spoke to the Askews these days. He was fed up out at the plant and he knew Joe thought he was a slacker.

  When he changed his wallet from one jacket to the other he opened it and counted his cash. He had four centuries and some chickenfeed. The bills were crisp and new, straight from the bank. He brought them up to his nose to sniff the new sweet sharp smell of the ink. Before he knew what he’d done he’d kissed them. He laughed out loud and put the bills back in his wallet. Jesus, he was feeling good. His new blue suit fitted nicely. His shoes were shined. He had clean socks on. His belly felt hard under his belt. He was whistling as he waited for the elevator.

  Over at Doris’s there was George Duquesne saying how ripping the new buildings looked on Fifth Avenue. “Oh, Charley, wait till you taste one of George’s alexanders, they’re ripping,” said Doris. “He learned to make them out in Constant after the war. . . . You see he was in the British army. . . . Charley was one of our star aces, George.”

  Charley took George and Doris to dinner at the Plaza and to a show and to a nightclub. All the time he was feeding highpower liquor into George in the hope he’d pass out, but all George did was get redder and redder in the face and quieter and quieter, and he hadn’t had much to say right at the beginning. It was three o’clock and Charley was sleepy and pretty tight himself before he could deliver George at the St. Regis where he was staying. “Now what shall we do?” “But, darling, I’ve got to go home.” “I haven’t had a chance to talk to you. . . . Jeez, I haven’t even had a chance to give you a proper hug since you landed.” They ended up going to the Columbus Circle Childs and eating scrambled eggs and bacon.

  Doris was saying there ought to be beautiful places where people in love could go where they could find privacy and bed in beautiful surroundings. Charley said he knew plenty of places but they weren’t so beautiful. “I’d go, Charley, honestly, if I wasn’t afraid it would be sordid and spoil everything.” Charley squeezed her hand hard. “I wouldn’t have the right to ask you, kid, not till we was married.” As they walked up the street to where he’d parked his car she let her head drop on his shoulder. “Do you want me, Charley?” she said in a little tiny voice. “I want you too . . . but I’ve got to go home or Mother’ll be making a scene in the morning.”

  Next Saturday afternoon Charley spent looking for a walkup furnished apartment. He rented a livingroom kitchenette and bath all done in grey from a hennahaired artist lady in flowing batiks who said she was going to Capri for six months of sheer beauty, and called up an agency for a Japanese houseboy to take care of it. Next day at breakfast he told the Askews he was moving.

  Joe didn’t say anything at first, but after he’d drunk the last of his cup of coffee he got up frowning and walked a couple of times across the livingroom. Then he went to the window saying quietly, “Come here, Charley, I’ve got something to show you.” He put a hand on Charley’s arm. . . . “Look here, kid, it isn’t on account of me being so sour all the time, is it? You know I’m worried about the damn business . . . seems to me we’re getting in over our heads . . . but you know Grace and I both think the world of you. . . . I’ve just felt that you were putting in too much time on the stockmarket. . . . I don’t suppose it’s any of my damn business. . . . Anyway us fellows from the old outfit, we’ve got to stick together.”

  “Sure, Joe, sure. . . . Honestly, the reason I want this damn apartment has nothin’ to do with that. .
. . You’re a married man with kids and don’t need to worry about that sort of thing . . . but me, I got woman trouble.”

  Joe burst out laughing. “The old continental sonofagun, but for crying out loud, why don’t you get married?”

  “God damn it, that’s what I want to do,” said Charley. He laughed and so did Joe.

  “Well, what’s the big joke?” said Grace from behind the coffeeurn. Charley nodded his head towards the little girls. “Smokin’room stories,” he said. “Oh, I think you’re mean,” said Grace.

  One snowy afternoon before Christmas, a couple of weeks after Charley had moved into his apartment, he got back to town early and met Doris at the Biltmore. She said, “Let’s go somewhere for a drink,” and he said he had drinks all laid out and she ought to come up to see the funny little sandwiches Taki made all in different colors. She asked if the Jap was there now. He grinned and shook his head. It only took the taxi a couple of minutes to get them around to the con verted brownstone house. “Why, isn’t this cozy?” Doris panted a little breathless from the stairs as she threw open her furcoat. “Now I feel really wicked.” “But it’s not like it was some guy you didn’t know,” said Charley, “or weren’t fond of.” She let him kiss her. Then she took off her coat and hat and dropped down beside him on the windowseat warm from the steamheat.

  “Nobody knows the address, nobody knows the phonenumber,” said Charley. When he put his arm around her thin shoulders and pulled her to him she gave in to him with a little funny shudder and let him pull her on his knee. They kissed for a long time and then she wriggled loose and said, “Charley darling, you invited me here for a drink.”

  He had the fixings for oldfashioneds in the kitchenette and a plate of sandwiches. He brought them in and set them out on the round wicker table. Doris bit into several sandwiches before she decided which she liked best. “Why, your Jap must be quite an artist, Charley,” she said.

  “They’re a clever little people,” said Charley.