So Little Time (39 page)

“Alf,” he asked, “where do you want to go? There's a little place to eat—”

Alf took him by the arm and pushed him toward the elevator.

“We don't eat in any little place,” Alf said. “The car's downstairs. I've got a date uptown,” and then in the elevator he began to sing, “In old New York, in old New York, the peach crop's always fine.” The other people in the elevator stared at them, obviously thinking that Alf had been drinking.

“What car?” Jeffrey asked.

“My car,” Alf answered. “She's a two-seater, and she's a pretty little job.”

“Get out!” Jeffrey said. “You don't own a car!”

“Well,” Alf answered, “it's mine for tonight. We're taking it to show a customer, and we're going to buy him dinner. Come on, kid.”

A new Buick runabout was standing on Park Row, close to the roaring traffic over Brooklyn Bridge. In the present it would have been an incongruous awkward sight, but back there it was so shining and beautiful that people slowed their steps to look.

“It's not a bad can,” Alf said. “Have you got a girl? You let me know and I'll buzz you over sometime. It knocks them for a row, kid. There's nothing like a car.”

Madge and her family had moved to town by then and Jeffrey had been seeing too much of Madge, her family thought. Jeffrey had a brief sickening picture of Alf, with his purple coat that was belted in the back, taking him in that Buick to call on her, but in another way he was impressed by Alf.

It was a warm night for November with a gentle west breeze that made the air and the streets clean and fresh. Alf said that he could get everything there was out of this can, and it was quite a can. Alf slouched behind the wheel and pulled his hat over his eyes. They made a U turn, and passed the old Post Office and turned uptown on Broadway. Lower Broadway was a sleepy place at that hour, but farther on there were more and more lights and more traffic and more pedestrians, but they did not bother Alf. Jeffrey wished he did not feel the way he did about Alf, secretive and anxious that Alf should not know too much about him, but there had been no need to be anxious. Alf did the talking, all about himself. Alf had been everywhere. Alf could land on his feet anywhere. He had been over with the Rainbow Division, and to hell with that. He had been a clerk in a store and he had hopped a train to Los Angeles. He had picked oranges in California and he had sold copies of Dr. Eliot's Five Foot Shelf of Books, because he was a great salesman. Alf did not know why it was, but he could sell anything—books, cars, or anything—and it was easy, now that everyone had lots of money. They stopped for the traffic at Times Square, and then turned west.

“Where are we going, Alf?” Jeffrey asked.

He had been in New York for such a short time that the traffic and the electric signs around Times Square confused him, although he would not have admitted it. Alf stopped the car at the curb and a doorman in a bright blue coat ran toward them.

“You're a hell of a guy to work on a newspaper,” Alf said. “Don't you know your way around? We're going downstairs at the Rockwell. Give the nice man four bits, kid. Brother, watch the car.”

It was strange having the past mingle with the present downstairs at the Rockwell. It was like the technique of a dramatic flash-back, fading lights, and twenty years earlier … and, in no time, there was the old Rockwell bar with its brass rail and the old beer steins and the dark oak tables and the grill in back where they did the steaks.

“Hey, buddy,” Alf called to the headwaiter, “give us a table, bud.” And Jeffrey wished that Alf would not call the headwaiter “bud.” “We'll have a drink, but we won't order yet. If a gentleman asks for a Mr. Wilson, show him over here.”

They sat opposite each other at a table in the corner.

“What's your snort, kid?” Alf asked.

“What's that?” Jeffrey asked.

“Jesus,” Alf said, “can't you speak English, kid? Waiter, the kid can't speak English. Make it two side-cars, bud.”

Jeffrey felt his face grow red.

“Make mine a dry Martini,” he said, then he saw Alf stare at him, and he knew that Alf was sorry. The trouble was that their old relationship was gone, with nothing to take its place.

“Kid,” Alf said, “you're kind of different, but I always knew that you'd be quite a kid.” Then before Jeffrey could answer, he began humming again, “‘In old New York, in old New York, the peach crop's always fine.'”

“You're in the money,” Alf said. “You're pretty lucky, kid.”

Of course Jeffrey knew that Alf was referring to their grandfather's estate. He wanted to tell Alf that he thought it had not been fair, but Alf stopped him before he could start.

“Forget it,” Alf said, “I suppose you've heard a lot about me, kid.”

“What about you?” Jeffrey asked. Alf was looking at him, still smiling.

“Old Nestleroade at the bank talked, didn't he?”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” Jeffrey said.

Alf's expression changed, and he sighed.

“Well,” he said, “forget it, kid,” and then the drinks came, and whatever it had been that Alf wanted him to forget, Alf seemed to have forgotten himself. He stood up and waved his napkin.

“Hey, Jesse,” he called, “come and get it, Jesse.”

You could almost create that effect right now with lights and that tune from “The Red Mill.” Jesse Fineman was walking toward them, downstairs at the Rockwell, and he looked much the same then as he did now. Perhaps his indigestion had always kept Jesse thin. Jesse had been wearing a blue double-breasted coat and a shirt with a blue-and-white-striped collar and even then he carried a cane.

“Your car's outside, Jesse,” Alf said. “Right off the floor this morning, and believe you me, you won't regret it, Jesse, and this is my kid brother. Jeff, shake hands with Mr. Jesse Fineman. My brother's in the newspaper game.”

Jeffrey wished that Alf would not talk so loudly, but Mr. Fineman did not appear to mind.

“I'm glad to meet you,” Jesse Fineman said. “I was in the newspaper business once myself.”

“Hey, bud,” Alf called to the waiter. “Bring the minoo. Take a look at Mr. Fineman, kid. He's somebody for you to eat with.”

“Oh, come now,” Jesse Fineman said, “hardly that.”

“You don't know who you're eating with,” Alf said. “Jesse Fineman's in the theatrical game.”

“Hardly that,” Jesse Fineman said, “only in a small way.”

Back in those days, Jesse could not have helped selling himself if he had tried. Alf was selling the car all through dinner, and Jesse was selling himself. Jesse was saying that he needed the car if he had to pass the week end with stage personalities. When you were dealing with stage personalities, Jesse said, it was necessary to do things right. If the Old Man sent him around to see George Arliss, for instance—good old George, a truly great actor and a grand man—and sometime he must tell them what he said to George and what George said to him at a party that Margaret Anglin had given (dear Margaret)—why, it would make all the difference if he could take George out for a ride. And Julia and Ina, they liked to have you ride up in a car when you went to see them—he meant Julia Sanderson and Ina Claire, of course; he just unconsciously referred to them by their first names. When he talked to Ina about a new vehicle, it would help to take Ina for a spin. And Walter Hampden liked motoring, and someday Jesse would tell them something perfectly killing about Walt that happened backstage at the Little Theater. Some night they must all go to the Little Theater. All he had to do was to ask for the house seats.

Later, Jeffrey knew that it was impossible for Jesse to have had more than a nodding acquaintance with any of these people, and that certainly Lee Shubert and Florenz Ziegfeld would not have known him if he had handed them their hats … but at the time, that monologue had the scintillating effect that Jesse intended.

It must have been in the middle of the dinner that Jeffrey made up his mind to speak about what he was writing. He was eating lobster, and Jesse Fineman was eating a mutton chop, and Jesse had been telling just how he had been a newspaper man once himself. Jeffrey supposed that he must have felt toward Jesse as one feels toward anyone who has the power to do a favor, and he knew that his voice sounded strained.

“I wonder if you would mind giving me a little advice, Mr. Fineman,” Jeffrey said. His words seemed to make Jesse Fineman watchful and Jeffrey reached for his glass and took a quick swallow of water. “That is, if it wouldn't bother you. I have an idea for a play. I don't know how I got it, but I've worked on it in my spare time.”

He stopped and tried to laugh. He could see Alf frowning at him because Alf was selling a car to Mr. Fineman and he did not want anything to interfere with it.

“Everybody on a newspaper is always writing something, I guess,” Jeffrey said. “I guess you know that as well as I do. Well, I've written a sort of play.”

Alf told him not to bother Mr. Fineman, and what was he doing, trying to write a play? But Jesse Fineman had been nice about it, not that he was in the least interested, but still, he was polite. Jesse drew a pigskin wallet from his pocket and produced a printed business card.

“We're rather crowded with scripts just now,” he said, “but if you call sometime, I shall be glad to look it over personally.”

“That's awfully kind of you,” Jeffrey said. “I hope it isn't asking too much.”

Jesse Fineman put his pocketbook away inside his double-breasted coat.

“Hardly that,” he said, “well, hardly that.”

“Come on, Jesse,” Alf said, “it's time for that spin in the Park. Hey, bud, bring the check. You'll excuse us, won't you Jeff? It's too crowded with three in the seat.”

Jeffrey wondered why Alf had asked him there at all, but not for long. Alf too was reaching in his inside pocket and pulling out his wallet.

“Hell, what the hell?” Alf said. “Slip me something, will you, kid?”

“What?” Jeffrey asked.

“Anything you've got in your pants,” Alf said. “You don't want Jesse here to pay for your dinner, do you?”

“No,” Jeffrey said, “give me the check, Alf.”

“That's the kid,” Alf said. “Come on, Jesse, we'll leave the kid to pay it. ‘That's the way the money goes. Pop, goes the weasel.'”

Jeffrey sat watching while Alf and Jesse Fineman walked out of downstairs at the Rockwell. All that time was filled with a strange golden glow. There was love in it and there was time for everything, plenty of time. He was young enough so that those days always possessed a sort of immortality. Jeffrey picked up the check and reached in his trouser pocket. The dinner check was very large—eight dollars and seventy-five cents. It was lucky that he carried money with him. It was lucky that he had ten dollars.

He supposed that something like that came to everyone in some way. Long afterwards when he read that play of his, it was sophomoric and mawkish; but back there it must have had a certain value, because they had thought it might be something for Ruth Chatterton, and they bought the option. He did not realize until later that entertainment money was very easy at that time.

All that was important was the way he felt and what it did for him. When he got the check and put it in the bank, he was not conscious of walking; there was only that golden glow … he could feel that same glow now. The Rockwell was plywood now and the lighting was indirect. He knew a lot more about financial dealings now, but there was Jesse Fineman sitting across the table and they were sitting not so far from where that older table had been, downstairs at the Rockwell.

“Jesse,” Jeffrey said, “do you remember when you bought that option? Fifteen hundred dollars was an awful lot of money.”

Jeffrey and Madge used to meet sometimes near the Library on Fifth Avenue, not that Madge cared what anybody thought any more than he did. Madge said that it was all too beautiful for anyone to spoil and she did not care what happened, and it was true. She did not care. He used to see her coming toward him when he waited near the steps by the Public Library, walking as straight as though she had been a soldier, her chin held in that queer high way, as soon as they saw each other they would hurry toward each other faster, and Madge would take his arm and press it tight to her side, and then they would walk along up Fifth Avenue in the dark. There always was that moment when she seemed a little strange, and he must have seemed that way to her. They must have both wondered sometimes what on earth they were doing there, but in a second this was over. She would have to get back in time for dinner, back where her winter house was on Murray Hill between Lexington and Park. There was never time enough to tell each other everything.

He could never remember exactly what they talked about, although it must have been intensely real to both of them. He supposed that the truth was that he had wanted something different from what he had, and that the same was true with her, and that each of them had represented in some vivid way a totally unformed wish of what the other wanted. It was the same sort of motivation that caused city girls on dude ranches to fall in love with cowboys, and vice versa, but he never could think of it quite in that way, or see himself as Madge must have seen him. Of course, he must have been gauche in a great many ways. He must have been like all the other thousands who came to New York from somewhere else and who were educated in what might be termed “the American Way” and who were totally oblivious of what politicians now term “the inequities.” Nevertheless, he could not see himself as the sort of person whom Madge's mother had once referred to as “a mere adventurer.” He could think of himself as a very decent sort of person trying to fit into a type of life which he could not understand. When two people were in love the way he and Madge were, nothing could make much sense and he was glad of it, because it would have spoiled the memory. He would never be such a fool again or so utterly inexperienced or so brave or so gentle. It was all too poignant for any sort of repetition.