The Boy Grew Older Part 7

There was a voice for every level. It was part singing. And they swayed back and forth from one foot to another. The room swayed with them but it would not keep time. The rhythm of the room was much longer. Peter could feel it pound as if he had been a mile runner and the finish lay a hundred yards ahead of him. He still knew that he was a fool to come up.

After a long time the song stopped. The patrons of the place began to throw money out to the singers. With painstaking recklessness Peter fumbled in his pockets and found a silver dollar. It almost filled his hand as if it had been a baseball. He shook his head vehemently. What did he care if the count was two and three, he was not going to lay it over. The curve was the trick. The outside corner was the nervy spot to shoot for. Drawing back his arm he flung the dollar and it crashed against a table and bounded away. For a second the coin spun around and then it waddled in a long arc straight home to Peter's chair. He put his foot on it and picked it up. No, he was too sober not to know that a dollar was excessive.

These men were not very good waiters--any of them--but that did not make them artists. They were not very good singers either. Peter remembered that he had read in his little leather Bible, "You cannot serve G.o.d and mammon." That was the trouble. Art and utility should never meet. A fine tenor ought not to serve drinks and even indifferent singing seemed to spoil a man as a waiter. This theme had been in his mind before. A great dancer could not be a mother. Yes, that was the point where this speculation had begun. At last he found a quarter and threw that and he left a ten cent tip on the table.

"h.e.l.lo, big boy," said a woman as he was going out. She was as blonde and as fat as the lonely waiter and much redder. Peter made no reply but went out and up the street to the Eldorado. Eldorado! That was a land of which the Spaniards had dreamed, a land of gold. They never found it.

Perhaps that was just as well. Somebody in a tub had said, "Eldorado!"

No, he didn't--that was "Eureka!"

At the Eldorado the waiters didn't sing at all. Special people did that.

But mostly it was just dancing. The floor was filled with couples. A long flight of steps led down to the tables. At the foot of the steps a girl sat alone. She was a young girl and pretty but hard and brazen enough. And she didn't call him, "Dearie." She merely said, "Buy me a drink."

Peter sat down.

"My name's Elaine," she said. "But you don't have to call me that. I think it's sort of a cold name, don't you? I'm not cold. People that like me call me 'Red,' on account of my hair. Now you tell me your name."

"John Whittier," said Peter, reverting to the slumming name he had used in his Freshman year at Harvard. It was the name of the proctor in his entry.

"Maybe John Greenleaf Whittier," said Elaine.

"Perhaps you're a poet. Yes, I can see you're a poet."

Peter was annoyed. "John Whittier's not my real name," he said. "My name's Peter Neale."

That aroused no flash of recognition. Peter was surprised that this girl of the Eldorado should know John Greenleaf Whittier and never have heard of Peter Neale.

"I don't think it's very nice of you," she said, "not to give me your real name. I gave you mine. Are you ashamed of me?"

"No," replied Peter, "I'm ashamed of myself."

"What are you doing?"

"Trying to get drunk."

"We'll get drunk together. I'll help you."

Drinking with somebody did seem to help. At any rate after two rounds Peter achieved for the first time during the evening that detached feeling which he had been seeking. All the dancers now were dim and distant. The music was something which tinkled from down a long corridor. Even the obligation to drink seemed lighter. Peter merely sat and stared at Elaine. Gray-eyed, firm and flaming, it was a face which blotted out all other images. He found himself thinking only of this woman in front of him. And she was real. She was close. He could touch her.

"Who are you looking at?" said the girl.

"Elaine."

"I told you that people that liked me called me Red. Why don't you call me that? Why don't you like me?"

"I like you a lot."

Elaine made a face at him. In her no barriers seemed to have been set up against the potency of drinking. Already she was in the babbling stage.

"I'm not like the rest of the girls around here. You don't need to be ashamed of me. I've had a good education. I can prove it to you. Ask me about the square on the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle."

"What about it?"

"It's equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides. You see, if it wasn't for hard luck I wouldn't be in a place like this. I'm a lady. I know Latin too. _Amo_, that's love. _Amo_, I love. _Amas_, you love."

"Don't," said Peter crossly. The spell was broken. The woman was making him think. Now he could hear the drums again. This was the meanest trick of many which the fate of the day had played him. With all the evil women of a great city to choose from it had been Peter's misfortune to happen upon an educated harlot. He had drugged himself steadfastly to be rowdy and here was a lady who talked about Latin and right angles.

Elaine sensed a mistake in technique. "Come away from here, Peter," she said. "Come on. You're just a tired little baby. You don't want to talk any more. You're my little baby."

Peter got up and had to catch the table to keep from falling over. "My name's Otto Schmaltz," he said and did a silly imitation of the accent of the comedian in "The Joy Girls." But the possibility of a revision of the material came to him. "My baby's bes' lil' baby in the world."

He would have gone away at once, but a man came down the stairs at that moment and approached the table. "Red," he said, "if you ever stand me up again I'll bust your face."

"Honest, Jim," said the girl, "I waited half an hour. I thought you weren't coming."

"Let that lady alone," said Peter. "She's with me."

He didn't like Elaine any more, but he knew that the code demanded that he should show resentment of the intrusion.

"Keep your face out of this," said the newcomer. "What d.a.m.ned business is it of yours?"

There was a ready-made answer for that in the code.

"You come outside and I'll make it my business," said Peter.

"Don't waste your time on the big souse, Jim," said Elaine clutching at the arm of the man who had threatened her. But the fact that the girl absolved Peter from all the cares of guardianship did not remove his responsibilities according to the code. "Come on outside," he repeated.

He went slowly up the stairs but when he reached the sidewalk and turned around there was no Jim. Peter waited. He wanted very much to hit somebody and Jim seemed wholly appropriate. After a few seconds the man came out. He walked up close to Peter but he held his hands behind his back. According to the code nothing could be done until each had extended an arm.

"Come on," said Peter impatiently, "put up your hands and I'll punch your head off."

Jim suddenly drew his right arm from behind his back and clipped him sharply over the head with a bottle. Peter stared at him wonderingly for almost a second. Surprise seemed to halt the message to his brain.

Slowly he crumpled up on the sidewalk. The blow was not painful, but the swinging arc of all things visible was now longer than ever before. The lights, the lamp-posts and the buildings slowly turned end over end in a complete circle. Peter put one hand to his head. It was wet and sticky.

For a second or so he considered that and wondered. Finally he realized that it was blood. Lifting himself up on his hands and knees he saw Jim and Elaine scrambling into a taxicab.

"I'll bet she doesn't talk about right angles to him," thought Peter.

For a moment he considered pursuit, but before he could make up his mind the taxicab had started. It swept past him no more than ten feet away.

He could see the red head of the woman in the window. One week later he decided that he should have cupped his hands and shouted, "You hypotenuse hussy!" That night he could think of nothing. The fragments of gla.s.s lay about him. Peter examined them and found it had been a champagne bottle. After a bit he called a taxicab for himself and said, "Go to some hospital that's near." He had begun to feel a little faint.

A doctor in the reception room dug the gla.s.s out of Peter's scalp bit by bit and hurt him dreadfully. Every stab of pain cut through the fumes and left him clear-headed. Nothing was forgotten any more. He was able to compare the relative poignancy of two sorts of pain and decided that he did not care much how long the doctor kept it up. At last the job was finished and Peter's head bandaged.

"You were drunk, weren't you?" said the doctor.

"Yes," said Peter, "I was."

There was no other comment. n.o.body would call Peter Sir Galahad on account of this fight and yet it was honorable enough he thought, even if the issues were a little mixed. Nor was it entirely unsatisfactory.

At least he had been able to taunt Fate into an overt act. He knew a poem by a man who wrote, "My head is b.l.o.o.d.y but unbowed." Peter had often used that line in prizefight stories. Still he was a little sick now and perfectly sober. He looked at his watch. In an hour or so it would be dawn. There didn't seem to be anything to do but go home.

Opening the door of his apartment, Peter tripped over something in the dark and fell with a bang. Kate woke and called out in obvious terror, "Who's there?"

"It's only me," said Peter, "Mr. Neale. I decided not to stay out after all. I'm sorry I woke you up. I fell over the baby carriage."