The Vertical City Part 21

"Nothing of the kind!"

"Everything--up there--worries me so! Monkey's room right over mine.

My ceiling so full of soft footsteps that frighten me. I know your footsteps, Getaway, just as well as anything. The ball-of-your-foot--squeak! The-ball-of-your-foot--squeak!"

"Well, that's a good one! The-ball-of-me-foot--squeak!"

"Everybody tiptoeing! Muggs! Somebody's stocking feet! Monkey's. Steps that aren't honest. All on my ceiling. Monkey never ought to have rented a room in a respectable house like Mrs. Granady's. n.o.body but genteel young fellows holding down genteel jobs ever had that room before.

Monkey pa.s.sing himself off as Mr. James Pollard, or whatever it is he calls himself, just for the cover of a respectable house--or of me, for all I know. You could have knocked me down with a feather the first time I met him in the hall. If I did right I'd squeal."

"You would, like h.e.l.l."

"Of course I wouldn't, but with Mrs. Granady trying to run a respectable house, only the right kind of young fellows and girls rooming there, it's not fair. Monkey getting his nose into a house like that and hatching G.o.d knows what! Getaway, what do you keep doing up in that room--all hours--you and all the p.u.s.s.yfooters?"

"That's the thanks a fellow gets for letting a straight word like 'marry' slip between his teeth; that's the thanks a fellow gets for honest-to-G.o.d intentions of trying to get his girl out of a shirt factory and dike her out in--"

"But, Getaway, if I was only sure it's all straight!"

"Well, if that's all you think of me--"

"All your big-gun talk about the ring. Of course I--I'd like it. How could a girl help liking it? But only if it's on the level. Getaway--you see, I hate to act suspicious all the time, but all your new silk shirts and now the new checked suit and all. It don't match up with your twenty-dollar job in the Wall Street haberdashery."

Then Getaway threw out one of his feints of mock surprise. "Didn't I tell you, Fairylin? Well, whadda you know about that? I didn't tell her, and me thinking I did."

"What, Getaway, what?"

"Why, I'm not working there any more. Why, Gawalmighty couldn't have pleased that old screwdriver. He was so tight the dimes in his pocket used to mildew from laying. He got sore as a pup at me one day just because I--"

"Getaway, you never told me you lost that job that I got for you out of the newspaper!"

"I didn't lose it, Marylin. I heard it when it fell. Jobs is like vaccination, they take or they don't."

"They never take with you, Getaway."

"Don't you believe it. I'm on one now--"

"A job?"

"Aw, not the way you mean. Me and a guy got a business proposition on.

If it goes through, I'll buy you a marriage license engraved on solid gold."

"What is it, then, the proposition?"

"Can't you trust me, Marylin, for a day or two, until it goes through?

Sometimes just talking about it is enough to put the jinx on a good thing."

"You mean--"

"I mean I'm going to have money in my pockets."

"What kind of money?"

"Real money."

"_Honest_ money?"

"Honest-to-G.o.d money. And I'm going to dike you out. That's my idea.

Pink! That's the color for you. A pink sash and slippers, and one of them hats that show your yellow hair right through it, and a lace umbrella and--"

"And streamers on the hat! I've always been just crazy for streamers on a hat."

"Red-white-and-blue ones!"

"No, just pink. Wide ones to dangle it like a basket."

"And slippers with real diamond buckles."

"What do you mean, Getaway? How can you give me real diamond shoe buckles--"

"There you go again. Didn't you promise to trust me and my new business proposition?"

"I do, only you've had so many--"

"You do--_only!_ Yah, you do, only you don't!"

"I--You see--Getaway--I know how desperate you can be--when you're cornered. I'll never forget how you--you nearly killed a cop--once! Oh, Getaway, when I think back, that time you got into such trouble with--"

"Leave it to a woman, by Jove! to spoil a fellow's good name, if she has to rub her fingers in old soot to do it."

"I--I guess it is from seeing so much around me all the time that it's in me so to suspect."

"Oh, it's in you all right. Gawalmighty knows that!"

"You see, it's because I've seen so much all my life. That's why it's been so grand these last years since I'm alone and--and away from it.

Nothing to fear. My own little room and my own little job and me not getting heart failure every time I recognize a plain-clothes man on the beat or hear a night stick on the sidewalk jerk me out of my sleep.

Getaway, don't do anything bad. You had one narrow escape. You're finger-printed. Headquarters wouldn't give you the benefit of a doubt if there was one. Don't--Getaway!"

"Yah, stay straight and you'll stay lonesome."

"Money wouldn't make no difference with me, anyway, if everything else wasn't all right. Nothing can be pink to me even if it is pink, unless it's honest. That's why I hold back, Getaway--there's things in you I--can't trust."

"Yah, fine chance of you holding back if I was to come rolling up to your door in a six-cylinder--"

"I tell you, no! If I was that way I wouldn't be holding down the same old job at the factory. I know plenty of boys who turn over easy money.

Too easy--"

"Then marry me, Marylin, and you'll wear diamonds. In a couple of days, when this goes through, this deal with the fellows--oh, _honest_ deal, if that's what you're opening your mouth to ask--I can stand up beside you with money in my pockets. Twenty bucks to the pastor, just like that! Then you can pick out another job and I'll hold it down for you.

Bet your life I will--Oh--here, Marylin--this way--quick!"