Alex the Great Part 20

"Don't be blowin' about how much food we got in the ice box," I says.

"They may be some spies from Hoover's office around."

"That reminds me," says Alex, makin' the best of it by devourin' all the crackers and jam. "I expect to go to Washington this week and offer my services to Mister Hoover."

"What was you thinkin' of doing for Mister Hoover, Alex?" says the wife.

"I got a scheme for--," he begins, when I ceased firin' on the bacon and eggs and arose.

"Listen!" I b.u.t.ts in. "I don't like to walk out in the middle of your act, Alex, but I gotta date. I have just bought a infielder from Jersey City which they tell me is a second Ty Cobb. The last guy which come recommended to me like that acted like hittin' the ball was a felony and he must of figured that droppin' grounders put Cobb over. I have give everything but the franchise for this new bird, and I wanna see right now if he's one of them things or a ball player."

"Don't make no engagements for to-night," says the wife, "because we're goin' to the movies with them lovely Wilkinsons."

"Who's them lovely Wilkinsons?" I says.

"You could spend a year at the bottom of the ocean and never get acquainted with a fish!" says the wife. "The Wilkinsons is the people which just moved in across the hall. Her husband is a salesman for a big wholesale clothing house downtown and if you're nice to him he can prob'ly get you a raincoat or something, for a great deal different price than you'd pay yourself."

"Yeh," I says. "It would no doubt cost me about ten bucks _more_, if I bought it from him! I know them birds. That guy will gimme his card and send me down to the foundry where he works, and they'll sell me somethin' which has graced their shelves for the last ten years, at ten per cent over the retail price. The public will laugh me outa wearin'

it and, on top of that, this guy will want the first five rows at the world's series for doin' me the favor! Anyways, I don't need no raincoat, I got two already."

"I never seen n.o.body like you," says the wife. "I'll bet you think the war was a frame-up! Accordin' to you, n.o.body or nothin' is on the level, and the whole world and Yonkers is out to give you the work. I have already talked with Mister Wilkinson, which is a nice little innocent fellow and not a brute like you which battles night and day with his wife, and he will have a raincoat up here for you to-morrow."

I throwed up my hands!

"How much is it?" I says.

"Practically nothin'," says the wife. "Forty-five dollars."

Oh, boy!

"Listen!" I says, openin' the door. "Unless that bird has give you his age in mistake for the price of the raincoat, you can tell him that if I had forty-five bucks to hurl away like that I wouldn't wear no raincoat. I wouldn't care if it rained or not!"

"It's one of the latest trench models," says the wife. "I got two of them. One for myself."

"You and that lovely little Wilkinson will have to shoot c.r.a.ps for them then!" I hollers. "I wouldn't let him take me for ninety bucks if--"

"They are both paid for long ago," smiles the wife, pinchin' my cheek, and pullin' the smile that used to get her photo in the magazines. "I give him a check last week!"

As unfortunately I am nothin' but human, I beat it before they was violence and bloodshed. I was afraid to trust myself with speech, but I managed to let off a little steam before I left by throwin' three pillows and a Rumanian beer stein at Alex, havin' caught him grinnin'

at me like a idiot.

It was about six hours before I got back and my temper had failed to improve with age, havin' had a rough day at the ball park. We played a double-header with the Phillies and lost a even two games. Both the scores sounded more like Rockefeller's income tax than anything else.

Iron Man Swain pitched the first game for us and before five innin's had come and went, I found out that the only thing iron about him was his nerve in drawin' wages as a pitcher. Everybody connected with the Philly team but the batboy got a hit and from the way them guys run around the bases it looked more like a six-day race than a ball game!

I sent in Red Mitchel to pitch the second half of the ma.s.sacre, and all he had was a boil on his arm. As far as his offerin's was concerned, everybody on the Philly club could of been christened Home Run Baker.

When he throwed the ball on the clubhouse roof tryin' to get a guy nappin' off first, lettin' in two extry runs instead, I went out to the box and removed him by hand. Ed Raymond finished the game for us, and he's so scared we might win it that he walks the first three men and knocks the fourth guy cold with a inshoot. I didn't even stay to see the finish--I had enough!

One of the features of the day was the work of this so-called "Second Ty Cobb" at short. He come to bat eleven times in the two games and got one hit. That was a left jab from the Philly first baseman which got peeved at bein' called a liar and bounced one off the Second Ty Cobb's ear. At fieldin' he made more errors than the Kaiser and was just as popular with the crowd. I give up five thousand berries and a outfielder for him, and after them two games I couldn't of sold him as a watch charm to the manager of a high school club!

From all of this you may get an idea of the sweet humor I was in when I blowed into the flat that night. My idea was to put on the feed bag, and then go around to the corner and play a little pinochle with the gang. Like the guy which fell off Washington's Monument I was doomed to disappointment, because they was quite a little reception committee awaitin' me. Among them present besides the wife was Alex and them lovely Wilkinsons.

The lovely Wilkinsons consisted of the regular set--husband and wife.

They had only been wed about three weeks, new time, and from the way they behaved towards each other, a innocent bystander would think they had only staggered away from the altar a hour before. They sit together on the sofa, three inches closer to each other than the paper is to the wall and both of them must of been palmists judgin' from the way they hung on to each other's hands. The male of the layout is a husky kid which either come direct from one of the college football teams or had just knocked off posin' for the lingerie ads in the subway. The female would of been a knockout, if my wife had been in Denver, but bein' in the same room with her the best Mrs. Wilkinson could do was to finish a good second. They is one thing about the wife, they may be dames which can knit sweaters faster than her, but when it comes to bein' excitin' to gaze upon she leads the league! I don't have to tell the world that, the world keeps tellin' it to me.

This here is far from our first season as matrimoniacs, and when I say that it still makes me dizzy to look at her, you may get a idea of how she checks up.

But to get back to them lovely Wilkinsons, they are sittin' there on the sofa keepin' a close eye on each other, and Alex is givin' 'em everything he's got in the line of chatter. They're both payin' the same undivided attention to him that the Board of Aldermen in Afghanistan pays to the primaries in Bird's Nest, Va. Them babies is too busy gazin' on each other and bein' happy, and while that stuff gets silly at times--they is worse things than that.

After we have got the introductions all took care of, the wife rushes me down to Delicatessen Row to grab off some extry food on account of these added starters at our modest evenin' meal. I got a armful of these here liberty links, _nee_ frankfurters, and some liberty cabbage which before the Kaiser went nutty was knowed as sauerkraut. They ain't no use callin' off all the other little trinkets I got to help make the table look tasty, especially as Mister Hoover is liable to scan this and I don't wanna get myself in wrong, but when I got through shoppin' I didn't have enough change left out of a five-case note to stake myself to a joyride in the subway.

Just as we're goin' to the post in this supper handicap, the bell rings, and in come Eve, which same is no less than the blushin' bride of Alex. They is now so many people in the flat that for all the neighbors know I have opened up a gamblin' dive or one of them cabaret things. Everybody is talkin', with the exception of me, which havin'

sit down to eat proceeded to do so with the greatest abandon, as the guy says. Them three girls--the wife, the lovely Mrs. Wilkinson and Eve, was sure some layout to have across the table, I'll tell the world fair! They had the front row of the Follies lookin' like washwomen durin' the rush hour, and all I did was sit there and eat and wonder how in Heaven's name they ever come to fall for a set of guys like me, Alex and the lovely Wilkinson.

Well, the meal come to an end without no violence, and they was only one time when it seemed like boxin' gloves would be needed. Even that wasn't exactly _my_ fault. From the general chatter of the lovely Wilkinson, I figured him as a big, fatheaded, good-lookin' bonehead whose greatest trick so far had been marryin' his wife. He got my goat a coupla times hand runnin' by dealin' himself, first, the last piece of bread and, second, the last potato on the table. Either one of them things would of enraged me by themselves, but pullin' 'em together was a open dare to me to commit homicide. I laid for him for a half hour and fin'ly I get a openin'.

"Mister Wilkinson is packed to the ears with ambition," says the wife to me across the table. "He expects to fall into a lot of money very shortly."

"I don't see how they can be no room for him to be packed with nothin'

else," I says, "after all the meat and potatoes he put away to-night.

And as far as that fallin' into a lot of money is concerned, he must be figurin' on stumblin' at the door of the mint, hey?"

They is a dead silence and the lovely Wilkinson give a nervous snicker and piled up his plate with liberty links and cabbage to hide his confusion. Alex laughs like a hyena and Mrs. Wilkinson looks even prettier when mad than she did when tryin' to be a charmin' guest. The wife gimme a glance that would of killed a guy with a weaker heart and tries to laugh it off.

"You mustn't mind him," she says. "He's always kiddin' that way about everything. Really--I'm--I'm so angry I don't know what to do!"

"I'll tell you what to do," I says. "See if you can get the embargo lifted on that food down at your end of the table and ease a little nourishment up here!"

"He oughta leave the table!" remarks Alex.

"You ain't talkin' to me!" I says. "I'm wonderin' if you guys will leave the table or not. You already have eat everything else!"

"That's right!" says the wife. "Go ahead and advertise the fact that I have married a roughneck!"

"My neck must of got that way from wearin' that sweater you knit me," I says. "Hey, dearie?"

Eve gimme a laugh, but I seen the wife was gettin' ready to bring up the heavy artillery so I laid off.

While the girls is seein' what soap and water will do to a pail of dishes, I released some cigars and us strong men had a even stronger smoke. The lovely Wilkinson seems to have somethin' on his mind and says practically nothin', both when he talked and when he didn't. Alex kids me about my ball team and, finely, the household cares bein'

attended to in the kitchen, we all set sail for the movies.

The wife calls me aside, gimme a kiss and says for me to buy the tickets. Of course after she done that I don't have to tell you who pushed the quarters in under the cashier's window. The picture we seen was one of them forty-eight reel thrillers and was called "Lunatic Lily's Lover" or somethin' like that. They was a guy killed in every reel but the first one. They was three killed in that. The picture must of been made by the local branch of the suicide club, a.s.sisted by a lot of candidates for the insane asylum. I'll tell the world that the guy which wrote the scenario had at least delirium tremens. The girls thought it was great, but I knew better and put in my time figurin' out on the back of a envelope how many games we had to lose to be in last place by August.

The lovely Wilkinson gets very talkative once inside the theatre. He starts right in on the picture and claims it's a awful thing. Every time a guy goes over a cliff or dives off of a bridge and all the salesladies and bankers sittin' around us gasps out loud, he speaks up and says it's all faked with a trick camera and they ain't none of them really doin' nothin' at all. He claims he's got a friend which used to sell tickets for a movie theatre and he told him all about it. The more stunts the hero of this picture does, the worse the lovely Wilkinson gets, and it ain't long before he has captured the goat of friend Alex, which is champion moving picture fan of the United States and Coney Island. When the lovely Wilkinson claims that n.o.body in real life could do the tricks this movie hero was pullin' off, Alex b.u.t.ts in.

"How do _you_ know them things can't be done?" he says.

"Anybody but an idiot could see that!" says Wilkinson. "The idea of trying to make intelligent people believe that this fellow with his hair brushed back like a rabbit's could sell one of those wealthy millionaires gold mines and the like. Why, he'd be thrown out of the office and--"

"No wonder you ain't a success!" b.u.t.ts in Alex.