“What’s the matter with this damn thing anyway?” he exploded at length.
Bessie—for all the world suggestive of the rays of a fading sunset reflected across a foaming glass of vanilla ice-cream soda—at once so ethereally poetic and so materially delectable did she look in her new evening dress—stepped out of the bedroom, where she had been testing at different angles, on her snug, well-filled little bodice, the effectiveness of the diamond-and-platinum bar pin which her mother had given her, almost eight years before, as an engagement present.
“Matter, dear?” she asked; and catching sight of the distorted face of her lord above the wreck of his full-dress tie she turned him about and began with cool deft fingers to undo the abortive fruit of all his labors, nimbly piloting the ends once more into preliminary position.
“Are you going to wear your high hat?” she inquired, measuring the two ends, one against the other.
Irving squirmed, uncomfortably conscious of her strangle hold upon his tie.
“No,” he answered at length, defiantly. But he kept his glance well above her head, all snowed in under drifts of fluffy hair. “The Junior League ain’t such a swell affair—away up there in Harlem; and anyway”—gathering conviction as he went along—“who sees it if I have it on or I don’t? We go in Yittelman’s car and we come home in Yittelman’s car, don’t we?” he concluded.
To his surprise and relief Bessie did not pursue the subject.
“Do you think your sister Rae will like Leo Yittelman?”
“Will it rain next Sunday a week? Could I tell something with that mischugene? A beauty she never was—money she ain’t got—and thirty she wouldn’t see again. But she picks like she was Lillian Russell hung round with diamonds and in high school yet I ask you—what is she got to pick so much?”
“She’s considered very bright.” Bessie gave a last pat to the once fractious tie, now lying in docile orthodoxy beneath the square chin of its late antagonist.
Irving, scowling at himself in the mirror, smoothed imaginary violations of the patent-leather smoothness of his hair, which rolled, shiny wave on shiny wave, straight back from his square, sloping forehead.
Bessie, lingering against the bathroom door, swung idly to and fro.
“I don’t think he’s very bright,” she admitted.
“You’re telling me?” Irving ran a tentative finger over his closely shaved chin. “Between you and I, he’s a damn fool.”
Bessie did not contradict him. “But,” she suggested hopefully, “lots of bright women marry simple men. And he hasn’t a bad face, dear.”
“My enemies should have such a face,” retorted her spouse ungraciously.
“He makes a lot of money too.” She preceded him into the bedroom, and picking up her bar pin tried it once more across her low, tightly draped little bodice. “And he’s got a nice disposition.”
Irving transferred his change from the dresser to his pocket. “Listen, Bessie, no matter how much you talk him up I wouldn’t marry him. And I bet Rae don’t neither. To tell you the truth I don’t know why you begun this business.”
Well, Bessie thought it would be a favor to both sides.
“You and your favors. Ain’t you got enough to do without always looking round how you can do for everybody favors? Favors! And for such a lemon like Leo Yittelman.”
“He’s not so bad, really. And he has good manners.”
“Save your compliments to tell Rae. And the same time, you could remind her she ain’t such a mazir herself, even if she does earn forty dollars a week stenographing.”
The bar pin in place, Bessie picked up a silver mirror and regarded her back hair. “It would mean a lot to your mother to see her settled down, and she might like Leo—especially if he was a little more stylish.”
“Him? Stylish?” Irving reached for his vest. “Like my Prince Albert, he’s stylish.”
“So I thought,” Bessie went on, ignoring his cynicism, “we’d better fix him up a little. I’m sure, with your high hat—”
“Bessie,” cut in Irving firmly, “you don’t begin that. He don’t get my high hat.”
“But, Irving! You’re not going to wear it yourself.”
“Is that a reason I got to leave him have it?”
“Think what it would mean to your mother to see Rae married!”
“How does by my lending him a hat make Rae right away get married to him?”
“Don’t forget how much first impressions count! And you know how people always look at you when you wear it. Of course”—she helped him into his coat, smoothing it across the shoulders—“he can’t possibly look like you do in it! Still—”
Bessie could feel his defenses wavering.
“You just ought to see how nice he looks in it,” she announced, jumping into the breach.
“What? He’s got it already?”
She reached up and kissed him on the chin. “I knew you wouldn’t wear it unless I made a scene. So when he came over before and he had on a brown derby and a ready-made tie—”
“You right away loaned him my high hat. And”—he faced her accusingly—“you loaned him my best full-dress tie!”
Bessie was busy with her long gloves.
“Bessie, this is got to stop!”
“Oh, Irving,” she remonstrated, “you always make such a fuss about a little favor.”
“There you go again—‘little favor.’ We’re always doing everybody favors. Especially them Yittelmans. If it ain’t him it’s her. And now it’s the brother. What do they ever do for us?”
“Isn’t Leo driving us in?”
“Ain’t we introducing him to a grand girl—smart, stylish, from a nice family? Don’t he have to drive himself in? If you could even call it driving. He ought to thank us yet we take a chance with our life with such driving.”
“Don’t talk so loud, dear. I left the back door open, and I think that’s Leo now.”
“Listen, Bessie, I warn you, if anything happens to that hat—”
“What could happen to a high hat?”
“It ain’t what could—but if it does—I warn you—”
“Sh-h! That’s Leo.”
“I warn you”—he lowered his voice but refused to leave his warning unuttered—“it’s the last time you get me to loan anything. You could stand on your head.”
“That you, Mr. Yittelman?” Bessie called down the back stairs.
Irving followed her into the hall. Again he warned her: “Remember now, if anything happens to that—”
“I heard you. Now be still.”
“If anything happens to—”
“We’ll be right down, Mr. Yittelman,” called Bessie, and picking up her coat she started down the stairs. Irving followed.
“Remember if anything happens to that—”
“Good evening, Mr. Apfel. I got to thank you for the loan of your hat—”
“You’re welcome,” replied Mr. Apfel, impelled more by custom than a strict respect for the truth.
* * * *
“It’s no use to argue, Bessie; you heard what I said.”
Bessie picked up the black cotton which had rolled to the floor and went on darning.
“Some day,” continued her husband, slapping the mahogany music cabinet, “you’ll learn when I say a thing I mean it.”
“Don’t be silly.” Bessie regarded the gaping heel of a sock. “How could you go through life without ever doing anyone a favor?”
“How could I? I’ll tell you how. When I’ll need an umbrella I’ll have one. When I’ll need a monkey wrench—remember how your friend Blumenfeld loaned my monkey wrench to move with? And then he invites us over for supper and gives me bade the monkey wrench and I got to schlep it from Staten Island to Flatbush in the middle of the night? Remember?”
“Yes, I rememb
er,” sighed his wife.
Irving walked up and down the living room, one fist pounding the other palm behind his back.
“Never did I loan a man a dollar yet that I didn’t right away have from him a enemy. Am I telling the truth?”
“But you can’t be a crab just because some things turn out wrong. How can you enjoy having things if you don’t share them with others?”
“And how could you have them to enjoy if you do? Anyway I don’t see nobody sharing theirs with us.”
“Why, only yesterday you borrowed an egg from Mrs. Fisch—”
“Sure! And it was a rotten one. We could do without such mitzwos. And for that she uses all the time our telephone. It’s cheaper to keep on hand a extra dozen eggs. I tell you, I’m done. I don’t want to loan from the neighbors, and they shouldn’t loan from me. I told you if anything happens to that hat—”
“Irving, don’t talk any more about that hat!”
“Sure. He busts my hat and I shouldn’t even talk about it.”
“But you don’t talk of anything else!”
“Well, I got a right to talk, ain’t I? You loan him my hat and he busts it—”
“But he couldn’t help it.”
“Does that buy me a new hat?”
“You ought to be glad he wasn’t killed.”
“Who, me? Do I have to pay his funeral expenses? Believe me, I wouldn’t miss him. But my hat, which I paid eleven dollars for—”
“Eight years ago.”
“Sure! Today you wouldn’t get it for twenty.”
“He felt so sorry.”
“Believe me, not half so sorry as me. He needed to wear my hat! My sister Rae needs him—such a lobster—such a high-hat smasher!” Bessie picked up her darning and departed.
“I ought to sue him,” continued her husband, following her into the kitchen. “Such a feller ought to get sent to jail.”
“If you only speak a little louder,” remarked Bessie caustically, “Yittelmans will hear you.”
“Leave them. I bet you he didn’t even tell them what he—”
There was a knock at the back door, and Bessie, with a warning look at Irving, opened it. A stout, middle-aged lady with small steel-rimmed spectacles stood bowl in hand on the threshold. She was Mrs. Yittelman, sister-in-law to the smasher of high hats and foster parent to one fat, watery-eyed and pampered old fox terrier, name of Tootsie. Tootsie was the sworn pal and crony of little Ruthie Apfel and the implacable enemy of her father, Irving. The mere sound of Irving’s voice set her to rumbling ominously. And though the Yittelmans by dint of scoldings, threats, and whippings had brought her to the point where she no longer went into the canine for apoplexy at the sight of him, this truce was merely military necessity, and she showed the true state of her feelings by snapping at his ankles whenever her parents were not about.
“Excuse me,” began Mrs. Yittelman mildly, “but could you—”
“I suppose,” interrupted Irving, “you heard what happened last night?”
Bessie sent him an eloquent but utterly wasted look.
“Yes,” replied Mrs. Yittelman pleasantly. “Leo was telling me you had eppes a little misfortune.”
“Little!” roared Irving. “Did he tell you what he done to my hat?”
“No,” answered the sister-in-law of the vandal innocently.
“Say, if your brother-in-law could run a automobile, then I could run a Chinese laundry! First, I tell him: ‘Go Bedford Avenue.’ No, he knows better—the park! You know Prospect Park, how it’s full of bumps? Well, you could believe me, Mrs. Yittelman, I don’t exaggerate it, if there was one bump he missed he went back and done it over again! And he ain’t satisfied that he nilly bumps my wife out the back seat. It ain’t enough I bite off the end from a quarter cigar and swaller it. No. He ain’t satisfied till he finds himself a bump like a Adirondack Mountain. Then he gives a jump up in the air—and God knows maybe he would be flying yet if not for the top of the car.”
“Th-th.” Mrs. Yittelman’s head wagged concern. “He could have smashed out his brains.”
“Not him,” said Irving bitterly. “He couldn’t do nothing to his brains. But, oi, what he done to my high hat! Could you imagine,” he went on, carried away by the tragedy he was depicting—“could you imagine what it looks like—my high hat—all smashed in?”
“Mr. Yittelman,” observed the visitor tactfully, “used to have once such a high hat—it went together like a okkordeen.”
Irving gave her a withering look. “If I want such a high hat like a accordion, Mrs. Yittelman, believe me, I know enough to buy it in the first place from a hat store. I don’t need your brother-in-law to make for me no hocus-pocus with the other one.”
Mrs. Yittelman strove to present matters in a more hopeful light. “You’re lucky nothing worse didn’t God forbid happen, Mr. Apfel. All your life you shouldn’t get nothing worse smashed, please God, then effsche a high hat.”
Irving glared at her a moment, too outraged for speech, then turned on his heel.
“Ain’t I right, Mrs. Apfel?” she continued placidly, at the same time holding forth her bowl, all unconscious of how she was piling Pelion on Ossa. “Could I borrow, please, a little milk for Tootsie?”
Irving swung round in the doorway. “No!” he shouted before Bessie had a chance to answer. “We ain’t got none left.”
Bessie, taken aback, held her peace.
“Oh!” Mrs. Yittelman was all upset. “Leo drank up the last glass before he went away, and I got no one to send to the avenue.”
“Ain’t that too bad?” said Irving hypocritically.
“Poor Tootsie,” sighed Mrs. Yittelman. “She ain’t allowed to have no meat and she wouldn’t take her puppy biscuits only soaked in milk.”
Bessie eyed her spouse sternly behind Mrs. Yittelman’s departed bade. “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? There’s a quart of milk in that ice box, and Tootsie will have to go to bed hungry.”
“It wouldn’t hurt her. She’s too fat already. I told you if my high hat—”
“Oh, oh!” Bessie gave a little shriek. “If you mention that high hat again I’ll jump out of the window!”
“Well, I stick to my word. Anyway, I should feed yet such a vicious animal that’s always trying to bite me in the leg.”
“That’s because you don’t like her. Ruthie plays with her, day in, day out. To think you would let even a dog go hungry!”
“I tell you it wouldn’t hurt that dog. It’s time she learned to eat puppy biscuits nicht gesoaked in milk. If she starves to death it’s her own fault. And I wouldn’t break my heart!”
“No, but your child would.”
“Nicht so gefährlich. All my life I lived without dogs and I got big too. If Tootsie dies Ruthie’ll get a husband anyway. Anyhow I told you I’m done with this lending.”
“Some day you’ll want to borrow something from Yittelmans—”
“What, for instance? A high hat, maybe? Or Tootsie?”
“You never can tell. You might even need a dog some day.”
“I should live so long,” said Irving Apfel.
Next morning Irving rose late, for though when questioned accusingly by Bessie at four A.M. he stoutly maintained that he did not hear anything, and she must be dreaming if she thought she heard Tootsie wailing, still something caused him to pull the covers over his head until the arrival of the milkman next door. And for some reason he overslept.
That was how he happened to be eating his breakfast when the telephone rang at a time when he was usually New Yorkward winging via the Brighton L. Bessie was upstairs putting some finishing touches to Ruthie.
“Hello,” said a strange voice, “would you please call Mrs. Fisch on the telephone?”
“No!” Irving was himself surprised at the vehemence with which he replaced the receiv
er. But he was just sick of them Fisches making a pay station out of his telephone. Annie was forever running across the street to call Mrs. Fisch on the phone while his dinner got cold and he got hot.
“For me?” called Bessie over the balustrade.
“No,” growled Irving; “not for us.”
Bessie went back to Ruthie.
The telephone rang a second time. All the muscles of Irving’s throat grew tense, and a mouthful of coffee almost went down the wrong way. He snatched the receiver.
“Hello!”
“Hello,” came back an equally bellicose voice, “I’d like to speak to one of the Fisches.”
“Say, what do you think this is—th’ aquarium?”
Irving banged up the receiver once more.
The hand that picked up his coffee cup trembled so that the amber liquid splashed into the saucer.
“Wrong number again?” inquired Bessie, opening Ruthie’s door.
“Same feller,” replied Irving, just as the ringing recommenced.
An outraged moment Irving hesitated. Then a crafty light came into his eyes, and lifting the receiver he answered in a low voice: “Hello.”
“Hello. Would you please call Mrs. Fisch on the telephone?”
“Who?”
“Mrs. C. Fisch.”
“Oh!” Irving’s voice was all misleading softness. “You want 2-1-5-6.”
“No, I don’t. I want—”
“That’s the best place if you want sea fish. That’s the King’s Highway Fish Market.”
Far from being out of humor now, Irving was all amiability. Not so the other fellow.
“Is this Apfels?” he bellowed.
“Apples? Oh! Why didn’t you say so right away? If you want apples I could recommend you Malkin’s Veg’table Store; 2-2-2.” And hanging up the receiver he actually did a little hop and skip on the hardwood floor. With genuine relish he responded to the next summons.
“Is this 2-1-3-2-J?”
“No.”
“Well, Central says it is.”
“Well, then, it is. I wouldn’t make a liar from a lady.”
“Is that you, Mr. Apfel?”
The Viola Brothers Shore Mystery Page 27
