“It doesn’t make any difference to me, either,” I said. “But anything you like I’m sure I’ll like too. So just say the word,” I said.
“Well, then, let’s see. Oh, I know. I’ll tell you what I’d really like to do.”
“What?”
“I’d like to go up to the Stadium Concert,” she said.
Well, that’s what I got for asking for suggestions.
“Okay with me,” I said, “if you really want to go.”
“Oh, I’d love it. They’re having a special Viennese program to-night and Albert Spalding is the soloist.”
“Who?”
“Albert Spalding.”
“Yeah, well, I guess we’ll have to go then, that’s all. Let’s see, now, what time is it?”
I looked at my wristwatch.
“Seven o’clock,” she said.
“That’s right,” I said. “Now, then, when do these—when does this concert start?”
“Eight-thirty, I think.”
“That gives me an hour and a half to get the tickets and to come up to your—”
“Oh, you don’t have to do that,” she said quickly. “Why should you travel all the way up to the Bronx and back?” That’s just what I was trying to figure out. “Why don’t you go up to the Stadium, get the tickets, and then I’ll meet you at—well, any place you say.”
“Well, I’ll tell you the truth,” I said, “I don’t know much about the neighborhood up there—”
“All right,” she said, “here, I’ve got it. The Stadium, you know, is on Amsterdam Avenue between a Hundred and Thirty-eight and a Hundred and Thirty-seventh Streets. Across the street, I mean across the Avenue, is the Hebrew Orphan Asylum. Suppose we meet there, right in front of the main entrance to the Orphan Asylum?”
“That’s the first time I ever met a girl in front of an orphan asylum,” I said with a laugh. Come on, Bogen, be natural. She’s not paying you. You don’t have to laugh at all of them. “But for you I’ll do it.”
“Thank you, kind sir,” she said sweetly, “I’m—”
I felt my face wrinkle up as I scowled into the mouthpiece. Before I knew I was talking, I said, “Don’t ever say that,” sharply.
“Don’t say what?”
“Nothing,” I said quickly. “I mean—I’ll tell you when I see you.”
“But I don’t understand. What were we talking about?”
“I was saying that this is the first time I ever arranged to meet a girl in front of an orphan asylum, but for you I’d do it.”
Her voice, when she spoke, was suddenly sharp and cool.
“And I was about to say,” she said, “that I was going to consider that a compliment. Would you mind telling me what’s wrong in that?”
“Nothing,” I said quickly. “And you’re right—it is.”
“It is what?”
“A compliment,” I said.
“Then what did you mean when you said—?”
“It’s not important,” I said. “I’ll tell you when I see you.”
“All right,” she said, laughing the way I liked to hear her, “then it’s the Hebrew Orphan Asylum at, say, eight-fifteen.”
“Right,” I said, and hung up.
During the next hour and a quarter I had a chance to call myself as many different kinds of a horse’s ass as I could think of. And I could think of plenty. But after I’d gone through the whole list, it still didn’t help. The fact remained that I was going to a concert and, worse than that, that I was actually looking forward to it.
I could think of an answer, of course. I knew how to read and understand English, and I’d seen a movie or two in my day, so I knew what the answer was supposed to be. But I was damned if I’d admit that a thing like that could happen to me.
But being certain of immunity couldn’t change the fact that I was pacing around nervously in front of an orphan asylum on Amsterdam Avenue, all but biting my nails, waiting for what my common sense told me was as Jewish-looking a broad as I’d ever seen in my life.
Hell, I said finally, I guess the smartest of us will do more for ten thousand dollars than we’re willing to admit.
When I saw her turn the corner into Amsterdam Avenue, I went forward to meet her.
“Hello,” I said, taking her arm, “I was beginning to get scared that you wouldn’t show up.”
“Oh, I don’t think you were scared,” she said.
That’s how much she knew about it.
“Well, maybe—” I said, staring at her.
She looked frightened and began to examine her dress and purse and hands.
“Is there anything wrong?” she asked.
“No,” I said, still staring hard, “nothing’s wrong. I’m just trying to discover two things.”
“What?”
“Whether you look the same as you did the other night when we had blintzes,” I said, “and whether you’re as pretty as my mother keeps saying you are.”
She blushed suddenly and looked down at her hands with an embarrassed smile and for the first time in my life I knew what it meant to want to kiss a girl. I mean, just to kiss her.
“Oh, I think your mother is—I mean, she’s too—”
“Maybe she is,” I said, still staring. “But I don’t think so.”
“Well,” she said in a slightly higher-pitched tone of voice, “shall we go in?”
“We might as well,” I said, putting my arm through hers. It was amazing how warm she was, even through the thickness of a dress and a light summer coat. “I got the best seats in the house.”
“You mean the ones at the tables downstairs?” she said, stopping.
“Yeah.”
“Oh, you shouldn’t have done that. It’s—”
“Forget it,” I said, patting her arm. “They’re only a dollar and a half a piece.”
“It isn’t that,” she said. “But it’s so much nicer in the fifty cent seats, high up in the Stadium.”
“You mean way up there on those stone seats?”
She nodded.
“It’s not as comfortable as the ones downstairs,” she said, “but they’re not as uncomfortable as they look. And it’s really much more—well, sort of private. But it doesn’t matter. If you have these already, why—”
“Just a moment,” I said. I took the tickets out of my pocket and tore them in half and tossed them in the gutter.
“Oh!” she said, “you shouldn’t—”
“Why not?” I said, remembering to kick myself. I don’t like that kind of cheap flash. “No sense in sitting out in the open like an actor on a stage with the whole world staring at you. I should’ve had more sense than to buy those tickets, anyway. Come on, we’ll get a couple of those other tickets.”
There was quite a crowd going in when I stopped to buy two of the cheaper tickets. It never occurred to me that there were that many people in the world who were willing to spend money to sit on stone steps and listen to music. Well, and I guess it never occurred to me that I’d be one of them, either.
“Let’s go over toward this end,” she said, leading me toward the left. “We can climb up to the top row there, and it won’t be very crowded. Most of the people sit lower down and toward the right.”
“You seem to know a lot about this place, don’t you?” I said.
“Oh, I come here pretty often,” she said.
“Alone?” I asked.
She blushed and I was sorry I’d asked.
“Sometimes,” she said awkwardly. “Sometimes with some other girls or some—”
“Hold it a second,” I said. “I want to get a couple of these.”
I bought two straw mats from a boy that was selling them, and we continued to climb the wide cement steps.
“You don’t really need them,” she said. “It’s just as comfortable sitting on the stone.”
“I suppose,” I said. But I couldn’t imagine her sitting on anything so hard and not hurting herself seriously.
“This ought
to be about right,” she said finally, and I spread the mats on the cement step and we sat down.
The huge Stadium stretched away below and to the right of us. It was getting dark quickly, but there was still enough light to see the tiers, arranged like the rays from a flashlight, and how crowded they were. Down below, at the focus of the rays, was the orchestra, with the men tuning their instruments. The sky was blue with a few stars beginning to show and a handful of clouds moving across it slowly. I hadn’t looked at the sky for a month. Somehow you get out of the habit downtown.
“It’s nice, isn’t it?” she said.
I nodded and looked around at the people near us. Most of them were couples of about our own age; they were sitting very close to one another and were whispering and holding hands and laughing for all the world as though they were alone up there. And none of them paid any attention to the others. I considered it a good sign. They had sense.
Just as the music started she turned to me suddenly and said, “I’ve been wanting to ask you, but I forgot in all the excitement about the tickets. What was it you meant when you said to me on the phone before, ‘Don’t ever say that,’ or something like that?”
It was pretty dark, now, and the only lights were down in the center of the Stadium, with the orchestra.
“Oh, I guess I didn’t mean anything,” I said. “Let’s just forget it.”
That marked another first in my life. For once I was afraid to say something to a dame.
“But you must have,” she said, looking at me. “I could tell by the way you said it, all of a sudden.”
“Well, I’ll tell you,” I said. “I don’t know if I can exactly tell you what I mean. And then, again,” I added, “maybe you won’t like it. So suppose we skip the whole thing and listen to—”
“But, Harry, please,” she said. “I’d rather you told me.”
It was the first time she’d called me by my given name. And the way she said it made the skin and the little hairs on the side of my jaw stand up and tingle. Well, at least I could say she had better manners than Babushkin.
“Well, it’s like this,” I said. “Maybe I don’t know you long enough to go around telling you these things, but hell, the way I figure, I figure it’s important. So don’t get sore, or anything like that. Okay?”
“I promise,” she said, smiling, and I was sure she meant it.
“All right,” I said. “Now don’t ask me for explanations or anything like that, because I can’t give them to you. All I know is there’s something about you, let’s say about the way they put your face together when they made it, or the way you sit and walk and even talk—I heard it on the phone to-night—there’s something there that’s sort of soft and, well, I guess honest is the best word. Anyway, that’s the general idea, see? And it reminds me a lot of my mother. And any girl that can do that, I mean remind me of my mother, must be pretty good. You follow me?”
She nodded a little, quickly, without looking at me.
“Now,” I continued, “this is where it gets a little thick, but it’s the best I can do in the way of an explanation. I mean, if you only let yourself alone, if you only act natural, you can take my word for it you’re all right; you can’t go wrong. Anything you say or do, any way you sit or walk or I don’t know what, if you only do it natural, without adding anything fancy, you don’t have to worry; it’ll come out right and it’ll look and sound right, too. But the minute you try to add some of those touches, you know, the minute you try to do something different than what you would do if you let yourself alone, it sticks out like a sore thumb; it just doesn’t ring right. Now take for instance to-night. We were talking there on the phone and everything was okay; then, I don’t know exactly where it was, but all of a sudden you said something—yeah, I remember, now—I think you said something about ‘Thank you, kind sir,’ or something like that. Anyway—now don’t get sore—it was, well, it was fake; just like me tearing up that couple of tickets a little while ago was fake. It didn’t sound like you and if you wanna really get right down to it, it wasn’t you talking. So the second you said it, it hit me so wrong that before I even knew what was happening, I forgot all those high-class manners my mother taught me and like a dope I was yelling ‘Ouch,’ and I was telling you not to talk like that. Naturally, I got no right to tell you what—aah, hell,” I said suddenly, “what’s the sense of talking?”
“That’s all right, Harry,” she said quietly. “I know what you mean.”
It was nice to know that at least one of us did.
“Then suppose we forget it,” I said, “and listen to the music.”
“All right,” she said.
We sat quietly for a while, and the music coming up made everything seem all right. Then I thought of something, and I said, “There’s one more thing.”
“Yes?”
“What do you want to have people go around calling you Betty for?” I said. “That’s not you. You’re Ruthie. You know what I mean?”
She nodded slowly.
“Ruthie,” I said, trying it out. “Ruthie. See, that sounds right. Because that’s you, you know. Ruthie,” I said again. “Well, that’s settled. Your friends, they call you Betty, but me, I’m different.”
Boy, I was as casual as a freight car.
I turned back to the orchestra below us. The music came up thin and tinkly and it suddenly occurred to me that I liked it. It was just right for that sort of place.
“I never listened to this stuff before,” I said, “but it’s pretty good, isn’t it?”
She didn’t answer.
She sat with her elbows on her knees, supporting her chin in her hands. A man in a white suit stood up under the lights and put a violin under his chin.
“That’s Spalding,” she said, as he began to play.
I put my arm around her and she leaned against me, resting her head on my shoulder. I leaned my head down and kissed her hair gently. She didn’t move.
The music stopped and we left the Stadium with the crowd.
“How about a little bite of something to eat?” I said.
“I’m not hungry,” she said, “but if you are—”
“I’m not either,” I said. “Shall we walk a while?”
“All right,” she said.
We went west, toward the river, and then walked downtown, arm in arm, without talking. In a dark spot, under a tree, we stopped and I tipped her face up toward me with my hand and kissed her on the mouth. It was all right.
She shivered a little and said, “I’m afraid I’ll have to be getting home, Harry.”
“All right,” I said, and hailed a cab.
I sat with my arm around her, holding her hand in mine, and didn’t think of anything.
After a while she coughed a little.
“Well,” she said, “I guess we’ll, well, I guess we’ll be getting home soon.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Wasn’t it nice?” she said.
“Yeah,” I said, without thinking. Then I looked at her quickly. “It was all right,” I added.
She turned to look at me.
“What’s the matter, Harry? Didn’t you like it?”
So far, what had there been to like?
“Yeah, sure,” I said. “I liked it.”
That was just the trouble. What did I like about it? It wasn’t the music, that was sure. And as far as I’m concerned, a stadium is just a big draft. I guess I liked my mother so much, I got a kick out of taking her girl friends out.
“It was all right,” I repeated. Maybe it still would be, at that. “Only I sort of hate to, well, you know, break the whole thing up right now.”
A dame was a dame.
She moved closer to me and put her head against my shoulder. I guess it’s all in the words you use.
“Harry—” she began.
I put my other arm around her and drew her close. The cab stopped. What a spot! That’s what you get when you haven’t got a place to go.
“W
ell, here we are,” she said in a quick, relieved voice.
Yeah, home.
We got out and I paid the driver. She stood on the stoop, hesitating.
“Well, good night,” she said slowly.
“Good night,” I said; then, quickly, “hey, wait a minute!” Where did she get off, making me behave like a gentleman? “What are you doing to-morrow, Ruthie?”
What was I going to do, let her go thinking I went out with her for the sake of her company?
“Nothing,” she said. “Why?”
“How would you like to run up to Totem for the day?” What the hell, I had business up there anyway. I’d kill two birds with one stone. “We could leave early—”
“Oh, I couldn’t go to-morrow, Harry,” she said.
“Why not?”
“It’s Saturday. My mother wouldn’t let me ride on Saturday.”
It was just as well to be warned in advance. Maybe her mother wouldn’t let her do other things on Saturday, either.
“Then suppose we make it for Sunday, then?”
“All right,” she said, opening the door and stepping into the hall. “I’ll tell my mother.”
“Okay,” I said, smiling. “Tell her not to worry.”
She’d be doing that soon enough.
But somehow, as I walked down the street to the subway, I couldn’t help thinking that if I had to knock off a dame to prove I didn’t like her, there was something wrong.
16
I DIDN’T SAY MUCH on the train because I didn’t know what she was thinking. Whatever it was, I could tell by her face that it was harmless. And I didn’t want to jolt her into a series of questions. But I sat with my arm around her and every once in a while I asked her if she was comfortable.
“I’m comfortable, Harry, thanks,” she said, “only—”
“Only what?”
“I’m just a little worried if I’m dressed right for a place like that,” she said.
“Don’t be silly,” I said. “You’re all right.”
She was wearing a blue sports dress with a pleated skirt and white trimmings, including a sailor collar with a white star in each corner.
I Can Get It for You Wholesale Page 14
