Big Money (35 page)

“Tad'll do anything I say,” said Margo crossly.

“You wait and see,” said Queenie. “But here we are squabblin' when we ought to be enjoyin' ourselves. . . . Isn't this the swellest room in the swellest hotel in Jacksonville, Florida?” Margo couldn't help laughing. “Well, whose fault is it?” “That's right,” said Queenie, flouncing out of the shampoosteaming bathroom where they were washing their hair, and slamming the door on Margo. “Have the last word.”

At one o'clock the boys came by for them, and made them get all packed up and check out of the hotel. They went down to the dock in a Lincoln car Tad had hired. It was a beautiful sunny day. The
Antoinette
was anchored out in the St. Johns River, so they had to go out in a little speedboat.

The sailor was a goodlooking young fellow all in white; he touched his cap and held out his arm to help the girls in. When Margo put her hand in his arm to step into the boat she felt the hard muscles under the white duck sleeve and noticed how the sun shone on the golden
hairs on his brown hand. Sitting on the darkblue soft cushion she looked up at Tad handing the bags down to the sailor. Tad looked pale from being sick and had that funny simple broadfaced look, but he was a husky wellbuilt boy too. Suddenly she wanted to hug him.

Tad steered and the speedboat went through the water so fast it took the girls breath away and they were scared for fear the spray would spoil the new sportsdresses they were wearing for the first time. “Oh, what a beauty,” they both sighed when they saw the
Antoinette
so big and white with a mahogany deckhouse and a broad yellow chimney. “Oh, I didn't know it was a steamyacht,” crooned Queenie. “Why, my lands, you could cross the ocean in it.” “It's a diesel,” said Tad. “Aren't we all?” said Margo.

Tad was going so fast they crashed right in the little mahogany stairway they had for getting on the boat, and for a second it cracked and creaked like it would break right off, but the sailors managed to hold on somehow. “Hold her, Newt,” cried young Rogers, giggling. “Damn,” said Tad and he looked very sore as they went on board. The girls were glad to get up onto the beautiful yacht and out of the tippy little speedboat where they were afraid of getting their dresses splashed.

The yacht had goodlooking officers in white uniforms and a table was all ready for lunch out under an awning on deck and a Filipino butler was standing beside it with a tray of cocktails and all kinds of little sandwiches cut into fancy shapes. They settled down to lunch in a hurry, because the boys said they were starved. They had broiled Florida lobster in a pink sauce and cold chicken and salad and they drank champagne. Margo had never been so happy in her life.

While they were eating the yacht started to move slowly down the river, away from the ramshackle wharves and the dirtylooking old steamboats into the broad reaches of brown river that was splotched with green floating patches of waterhyacinths. A funny damp marshy smell came on the wind off the tangled trees that hid the banks. Once they saw a dozen big white birds with long necks fly up that Tad said were egrets. “I bet they're expensive,” said Queenie. “They're protected by the federal government,” said young Rogers.

They drank little glasses of brandy with their coffee. By the time they got up from the table they were all pretty well spiffed. Margo had decided that Tad was the swellest boy she'd ever known and that she wouldn't hold out on him any longer, no matter what happened.

After lunch Tad showed them all over the boat. The diningroom was wonderful, all mirrors paneled in white and gold, and the cabins were the coziest things. The girls' cabin was just like an oldfashioned drawingroom. Their things had been all hung out for them while they'd been eating lunch.

While they were looking at the boat young Rogers and Queenie disappeared somewhere, and the first thing Margo knew she and Tad were alone in a cabin looking at a photograph of a sailboat his father had won the Bermuda race with. Looking at the picture his cheek brushed against hers and there they were kissing.

“Gee, you're great,” said Tad. “I'm kind of clumsy at this . . . no experience, you know.”

She pressed against him. “I bet you've had plenty.” With his free hand he was bolting the door. “Will you do like the ring said, Tad?”

When they went up on deck afterwards, Tad was acting kind of funny; he wouldn't look her in the eye and talked all the time to young Rogers. Queenie looked flushed and all rumpled up like she'd been through a wringer, and staggered when she walked. Margo made her fix herself up and do her hair. She sure was wishing she hadn't brought Queenie. Margo looked fresh as a daisy herself, she decided when she looked in the big mirror in the upstairs saloon.

The boat had stopped. Tad's face looked like a thundercloud when he came back from talking to the captain. “We've got to go back to Jacksonville, burned out a bearing on the oilpump,” he said. “A hell of a note.”

“That's great,” said young Rogers. “We can look into the local nightlife.”

“And what I want to know is,” said Queenie, “where's that chaperon you boys were talkin' about?”

“By gum,” said Tad, “we forgot Mrs. Vinton. . . . I bet she's been waiting down at the dock all day.”

“Too late for herbicide,” said Margo and they all laughed except Tad who looked sourer than ever.

It was dark when they got to Jacksonville. They'd had to pack their bags up again and they'd changed into different dresses. While they were changing their clothes Queenie had talked awful silly. “You mark my words, Margo, that boy wants to marry you.” “Let's not talk about it,” Margo said several times. “You treat him like he was dirt.” Margo heard her own voice whining and mean: “And whose business
is it?” Queenie flushed and went on with her packing. Margo could see she was sore.

They ate supper grumpily at the hotel. After supper young Rogers made them go out to a speakeasy he'd found. Margo didn't want to go and said she had a headache, but everybody said now be a sport and she went. It was a tough kind of a place with oilcloth on the tables and sawdust on the floor. There were some foreigners, wops or Cubans or something, standing against a bar in another room. Queenie said she didn't think it was the kind of place Mother's little girl ought to be seen in. “Who the hell's going to see us?” said Tad still in his grouch. “Don't we want to see life?” Rogers said, trying to cheer everybody up.

Margo lost track of what they were saying. She was staring through the door into the barroom. One of the foreigners standing at the bar was Tony. He looked older and his face was kind of puffy, but there was no doubt that it was Tony. He looked awful. He wore a rumpled white suit frayed at the cuffs of the trousers and he wiggled his hips like a woman as he talked. The first thing Margo thought was how on earth she could ever have liked that fagot. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Tad's sullen face and his nice light untidy hair and the cleancut collegeboy way he wore his clothes. She had to work fast. She was just opening her mouth to say honestly she had to go back to the hotel, when she caught sight of Tony's big black eyes and dark lashes. He was coming towards the table with his mincing walk, holding out both hands. “Querida mia. . . . Why are you here?”

She introduced him as Antonio de Garrido, her partner in a Cuban dance number on the Keith circuit, but he let the cat out of the bag right away by calling her his dear wife. She could feel the start Tad gave when he heard that. Then suddenly Tad began to make a great fuss over Tony and to order up drinks for him. He and Rogers kept whispering and laughing together about something. Then Tad was asking Tony to come on the cruise with them.

She could see Tad was acting drunker than he really was. She was ready for it when the boys got up to go. Tad's face was red as a beet. “We got to see the skipper about that engine trouble,” he said. “Maybe Señor de Garrido will see you girls back to the hotel. . . . Now don't do anything I wouldn't do.”

“See you in the morning, cuties,” chimed in young Rogers.

After they'd gone Margo got to her feet. “Well, no use waiting around this dump. . . . You sure put your foot in it, Tony.” Tony had tears in his eyes. “Everything is very bad with me,” he said. “I thought maybe my little Margo remembered . . . you know we used to be very fond. Don Manfredo, you remember my patron, Margo, had to leave Havana very suddenly. I hoped he would take me to Paris, but he brought me to Miami with him. Now we are no more friends. We have been unlucky at roulette. . . . He has only enough money for himself.”

“Why don't you get a job?”

“In these clothes . . . I am ashamed to show my face . . . maybe your friends . . .”

“You lay off of them, do you hear?” Margo burst out. Queenie was blubbering, “You should have bought us return tickets to New York. Another time you remember that. Never leave the homeplate without a return ticket.”

Tony took them home to the hotel in a taxi and insisted on paying for it. He made a big scene saying goodnight. “Little Margo, if you never see me again, remember I loved you. . . . I shall keel myself.” As they went up in the elevator they could see him still standing on the sidewalk where they had left him.

In the morning they were waked up by a bellboy bringing an envelope on a silver tray. It was a letter to Margo from Tad. The handwriting was an awful scrawl. All it said was that the trip was off because the tutor had come and they were going to have to pick up Dad in Palm Beach. Enclosed there were five twenties. “Oh, goody goody,” cried Queenie, sitting up in bed when she saw them. “It sure would have been a long walk home. . . . Honest, that boy's a prince.” “A damn hick,” said Margo. “You take fifty and I take fifty. . . . Lucky I have an engagement fixed up in Miami.” It was a relief when Queenie said she'd take the first train back to little old New York. Margo didn't want ever to see any of that bunch again.

They hadn't finished packing their bags when there was Tony at the door. He sure looked sick. Margo was so nervous she yelled at him, “Who the hell let you in?”

Tony let himself drop into a chair and threw back his head with his eyes closed. Queenie closed up her travelingbag and came over and looked at him. “Say, that bozo looks half-starved. Better let me order up some coffee or something. . . . Was he really your husband like he said?”

Margo nodded.

“Well, you've got to do something about him. Poor boy, he sure does look down on his uppers.”

“I guess you're right,” said Margo, staring at them both with hot dry eyes.

She didn't go down to Miami that day. Tony was sick and threw up everything he ate. It turned out he hadn't had anything to eat for a week and had been drinking hard. “I bet you that boy dopes,” Queenie whispered in Margo's ear.

They both cried when it was time for Queenie to go to her train. “I've got to thank you for a wonderful time while it lasted,” she said. Margo put Tony to bed after Queenie had gone off to her train. When they objected down at the desk she said he was her husband. They had to register again. It made her feel awful to have to write down in the book Mr. and Mrs. Antonio de Garrido. Once it was written it didn't look so bad though.

It was three days before Tony could get up. She had to have a doctor for him. The doctor gave him bromides and hot milk. The room was seven fifty a day and the meals sent up and the doctor and medicine and everything ran into money. It began to look like she'd have to hock the ring Tad had given her.

It made her feel like she was acting in a play living with Tony again. She was kind of fond of him after all, but it sure wasn't what she'd planned. As he began to feel better he began to talk confidently about the magnificent act they could put on together. Maybe they could sell it to the cabaret she'd signed an engagement with in Miami. After all Tony was a sweettempered kind of a boy.

The trouble was that whenever she went out to get her hair curled or something, she'd always find one of the bellhops, a greasylooking blackhaired boy who was some kind of a spick himself, in the room with Tony. When she asked Tony what about it he'd laugh and say, “It is nothing. We talk Spanish together. That is all. He has been very attentive.” “Yes, very,” said Margo. She felt so damn lousy about everything she didn't give a damn anyway.

One morning when she woke up Tony was gone. The roll of bills in her pocketbook was gone and all her jewelry except the solitaire diamond she wore on her finger was gone too. When she called up the desk to ask if he'd paid the bill they said that he had left word for her to be called at twelve and that was all. Nobody had seen him go out. The spick bellhop had gone too.

All that Margo had left was her furcoat and fifteen cents. She didn't ask for the bill, but she knew it must be about fifty or sixty bucks. She dressed thoughtfully and carefully and decided to go out to a lunchroom for a cup of coffee. That was all the breakfast she had the price of.

Outside it was a warm spring day. The sunshine glinted on the rows of parked cars. The streets and the stores and the newsstands had a fresh sunny airy look. Margo walked up and down the main stem of Jacksonville with an awful hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach. She looked in haberdashery store windows and in the windows of cheap jewelers and hockshops and read over carefully all the coming attractions listed at the movingpicture houses. She found herself in front of a busstation. She read the fares and the times buses left for Miami and New Orleans and Tallahassee and Orlando and Tampa and Atlanta, Georgia, and Houston, Texas, and Los Angeles, California. In the busstation there was a lunch counter. She went in to spend her fifteen cents. She'd get more for the ring at a hockshop if she didn't barge in on an empty stomach, was what she was thinking as she sat down at the counter and ordered a cup of coffee and a sandwich.