Part 26 (1/2)
f.a.n.n.y clutched her bag a little fearfully. She looked at his huge frame.
”Why don't you work?”
”Work!” He laughed. ”There ain't any. Looka this!” He turned up his foot, and you saw the bare sole, blackened and horrible, and fringed, comically, by the tattered leather upper.
”Oh--my dear!” said f.a.n.n.y. And at that the man began to cry, weakly, sickeningly, like a little boy.
”Don't do that! Don't! Here.” She was emptying her purse, and something inside her was saying, ”You fool, he's only a professional beggar.”
And then the man wiped his face with his cap, and swallowed hard, and said, ”I don't want all you got. I ain't holdin' you up. Just gimme that. I been sittin' here, on that bench, lookin' at that sign across the street. Over there. It says, 'EAT.' It goes off an' on. Seemed like it was drivin' me crazy.”
f.a.n.n.y thrust a crumpled five-dollar bill into his hand. And was off. She fairly flew along, so that it was not until she had reached Thirty-third street that she said aloud, as was her way when moved, ”I don't care.
Don't blame me. It was that miserable little beast of a dog in the white sweater that did it.”
It was almost seven when she reached her room. A maid, in neat black and white, was just coming out with an armful of towels.
”I just brought you a couple of extra towels. We were short this morning,” she said.
The room was warm, and quiet, and bright. In her bathroom, that glistened with blue and white tiling, were those redundant towels. f.a.n.n.y stood in the doorway and counted them, whimsically. Four great fuzzy bath towels. Eight glistening hand towels. A blue and white bath rug hung at the side of the tub. Her telephone rang. It was Ella.
”Where in the world have you been, child? I was worried about you. I thought you were lost in the streets of New York.”
”I took a 'bus ride,” f.a.n.n.y explained.
”See anything of New York?”
”I saw all of it,” replied f.a.n.n.y. Ella laughed at that, but f.a.n.n.y's face was serious.
”How did you make out at Horn & Udell's? Never mind, I'm coming in for a minute; can I?”
”Please do. I need you.”
A moment later Ella bounced in, fresh as to blouse, pink as to cheeks, her whole appearance a testimony to the revivifying effects of a warm bath, a brief nap, clean clothes.
”Dear child, you look tired. I'm not going to stay. You get dressed and I'll meet you for dinner. Or do you want yours up here?”
”Oh, no!”
”'Phone me when you're dressed. But tell me, isn't it a wonder, this town? I'll never forget my first trip here. I spent one whole evening standing in front of the mirror trying to make those little spit-curls the women were wearing then. I'd seen 'em on Fifth avenue, and it seemed I'd die if I couldn't have 'em, too. And I dabbed on rouge, and touched up my eyebrows. I don't know. It's a kind of a crazy feeling gets you.
The minute I got on the train for Chicago I washed my face and took my hair down and did it plain again.”
”Why, that's the way I felt!” laughed f.a.n.n.y. ”I didn't care anything about infants' wear, or Haynes-Cooper, or anything. I just wanted to be beautiful, as they all were.”
”Sure! It gets us all!”
f.a.n.n.y twisted her hair into the relentless k.n.o.b women a.s.sume preparatory to bathing. ”It seems to me you have to come from Winnebago, or thereabouts, to get New York--really get it, I mean.”
”That's so,” agreed Ella. ”There's a man on the New York Star who writes a column every day that everybody reads. If he isn't a small-town man then we're both wrong.”
f.a.n.n.y, bathward bound, turned to stare at Ella. ”A column about what?”