A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago Part 16

And for eight years or so the newspaper man had been fumbling around trying to get it down on paper. But no novel had grown out of the blur in his head.

The newspaper man put on his last year's straw hat and went into the street, taking his pensiveness with him. Warm. Rows of arc lights. A shifting crowd. There are some streets that draw aimless feet. The blazing store fronts, clothes shops, candy shops, drug-stores, Victrola shops, movie theatres invite with the promise of a saturnalia in suspense.

At Wilson Avenue and Sheridan Road the newspaper man paused. Here the loneliness he had felt in his bedroom seemed to grow more acute. Not only his own aimlessness, but the aimlessness of the staring, smiling crowd afflicted him.

Then out of the babble of faces he heard his name called. A rouged young flapper, high heeled, short skirted and a jaunty green hat. One of the impudent little swaggering boulevard promenaders who talk like simpletons and dance like Salomes, who laugh like parrots and ogle like Pierettes.

The birdlike strut of her silkened legs, the brazen lure of her stenciled child face, the lithe grimace of her adolescent body under the stiff coloring of her clothes were a part of the blur in the newspaper man's mind.

She was one of the things he fumbled for on the typewriter--one of the city products born of the tinpan baccha.n.a.l of the cabarets. A sort of frontispiece for an Irving Berlin ballad. The caricature of savagery that danced to the caricature of music from the jazz bands. The newspaper man smiled. Looking at her he understood her. But she would not fit into the typewritten phrases.

"Wilson Avenue," he thought, as he walked beside her chatter. "The wise, brazen little virgins who shimmy and toddle, but never pay the fiddler.

She's it. Selling her ankles for a gla.s.s of pop and her eyes for a fox trot. Unhuman little piece. A cross between a macaw and a marionette."

Thus, the newspaper man thinking and the flapper flapping, they came together to a cabaret in the neighborhood. The orchestra filled the place with confetti of sound. Laughter, shouts, a leap of voices, blazing lights, perspiring waiters, faces and hats thrusting vivid stencils through the uncoiling tinsel of tobacco smoke.

On the dance floor bodies hugging, toddling, shimmying; faces fastened together; eyes gla.s.sy with incongruous ecstasies.

The newspaper man ordered two drinks of moonshine and let the scene blur before him like a colored picture puzzle out of focus. Above the music he heard the childishly strident voice of the flapper:

"Where you been hiding yourself? I thought you and I were cookies. Well, that's the way with you Johns. But there's enough to go around, you can bet. Say boy! I met the cla.s.siest John the other evening in front of the Hopper. Did he have cla.s.s, boy! You know there are some of these fancy Johns who look like they were the cla.s.s. But are they? Ask me. Nix. And don't I give them the berries, quick? Say, I don't let any John get moldy on me. Soon as I see they're heading for a dumb time I say 'razzberry.'

And off your little sugar toddles."

"How old are you?" inquired the newspaper man abstractedly.

"Eighteen, nosey. Why the insult? I got a new job yesterday with the telephone company. That makes my sixth job this year. Tell me that ain't going good? One of the Johns I met in front of the Edgewater steered me to it. He turned out kind of moldy, and say! he was dumb. But I played along and got the job.

"Say, I bet you never noticed my swell kicks." The flapper thrust forth her legs and twirled her feet. "Cla.s.sy, eh? They go with the lid pretty nice. Say, you're kind of dumb yourself. You've got moldy since I saw you last."

"How'd you remember my name?" inquired the newspaper man.

"Oh, there are some Johns who tip over the oil can right from the start.

And you never forget them. n.o.body could forget you, handsome. Never no more, never. What do you say to another shot of hootch? The stuff's getting rottener and rottener, don't you think? Come on, swallow. Here's how. Oh, ain't we got fun!"

The orchestra paused. It resumed. The crowd thickened. Shouts, laughter, swaying bodies. A tinkle of gla.s.sware, snort of trombones, whang of banjos. The newspaper man looked on and listened through a film.

The brazen patter of his young friend rippled on. A growing gamin coa.r.s.eness in her talk with a nervous, restless twitter underneath. Her dark child eyes, perverse under their touch of black paint, swung eagerly through the crowd. Her talk of Johns, of dumb times and moldy times, of cla.s.sy times and cla.s.sy memories varied only slightly. She liked dancing and amus.e.m.e.nt parks. Automobile riding not so good. And besides you had to be careful. There were some Johns who thought it cute to play caveman.

Yes, she'd had a lot of close times, but they wouldn't get her. Never, no, never no more. Anyway, not while there was music and dancing and a whoop-de-da-da in the amus.e.m.e.nt parks.

The newspaper man, listening, thought, "An infant gone mad with her dolls.

Or no, vice has lost its humanness. She's the symbol of new sin--the unhuman, pa.s.sionless whirligig of baby girls and baby boys through the cabarets."

They came back from a dance and continued to sit. The din was still mounting. Entertainers fighting against the racket. Music fighting against the racket. Bored men and women finally achieving a bedlam and forgetting themselves in the artifice of confusion.

The newspaper man looking at his young friend saw her taking it in. There was something he had been trying to fathom about her during her breathless chattering. She talked, danced, whirled, laughed, let loose giggling cries. And yet her eyes, the part that the rouge pot or the bead stick couldn't reach, seemed to grow deader and deader.

The jazz band let out the crash of a new melody. The voices of the crowd rose in an "ah-ah-ah." Waiters were shoving fresh tables into the place, squeezing fresh arrivals around them.

The flapper had paused in her breathless rigmarole of Johns and memories.

Leaning forward suddenly she cried into the newspaper man's ear above the racket:

"Say this is a dumb place."

The newspaper man smiled.

"Ain't it, though?" she went on. There was a pause and then the breathless voice sighed. She spoke.

"Gee!"--with a laugh that still seemed breathless--"gee, but it's lonely here!"

THE INDESTRUCTIBLE MASTERPIECE

"You come with me to the Art Inst.i.tute today," said Max Kramm. "My friend Broun has an exhibition. You know Broun? Ah, I think he is today the greatest living artist. No, we will walk. It is only four or five blocks.

And I tell you a story."

A story from Max Kramm is worth attention even though it is hot and though the Boul Mich pavement feels like a stove griddle through the leather of one's shoes. For the Dante-faced Max, in addition to being one of the leading piano professors of the country, the billiard champion of the Chicago Athletic Club and the most erudite porcelain connoisseur in Harper Avenue, is one of the survivors of the race of raconteurs that flourished in the time of nickel cigars and the free lunch.

"I have eight more lessons to administer today," sighed Max with a parting glower at the premises of the Chicago Musical College, "But when my old friend Broun has an exhibition I go."

"It was when we lived together in a studio in North Avenue," said Max. "Jo Davidson, Walter Goldbeck and the bunch, we all roomed together in the same neighborhood and we were poor, I can tell you. But young. And that makes up for a lot of things.

"Broun and I, we room together in a little attic where I have a piano and he paints. Even in those days we all knew Frank Broun would be a great painter if he didn't starve to death first. And the chances looked even.

"Well, there was Schneider, of course. You never heard of him, I'll bet you. No, he don't paint. And he don't sing and he don't play the piano. He was somebody much more important than such things. Schneider was the proprietor of a beer saloon in North Avenue. Where is he now, I wonder?

Well, in those days he saved our life twice a day regularly.

"Broun and I we keep alive for one whole year on Schneider's free lunch.

Herring, pickles, rye bread, pepper beef, boiled ham, onions, pretzels, roast beef and a big jar full of fine cheese. And, I forgot, a jar full of olives and a dish of crackers. Oh, there was food fit for a king in Schneider's. You buy one gla.s.s beer, for five cents, and then you eat till you bust--for nothing.

"You can't imagine what that meant to us in those days. Broun and I, we sometimes have so much as ten cents a day between us and on this we must live. So at noon we both go into Schneider's. Broun says, 'You want a drink, Max? I say, 'No, Frank.' Then I engage Schneider in talk while Broun makes away with a meal. Then Broun does the talking and it is my turn.

"Well, it got so that the good Schneider finally points out to us one day.

'Max,' he says, 'and Frank, I tell you something. You boys owe me three dollars and you come in here and eat all your meals and you don't even pay for the one gla.s.s beer you buy any more. I am sorry, but your credit is exhausted.'

"So you can imagine what Broun and I feel when we get home. No more Schneider's, no more food, and eventually we see ourselves both starving to death.

"'Max' says Broun, 'I have an idea.' And he did.