Big Money (71 page)

“Oh, that's ancient history now,” said Eveline Johnson sharply. “I'm working on a plan to bring over the ballet . . . turn it into something American. . . . I'll tell you about it sometime.”

“Oh, Eveline, did the screenstar come?” asked Ada, giggling.

“Oh, yes, they always come.” Eveline Johnson sighed. “She's beautiful. . . . You must meet her.”

“Of course anybody in the world would come to your parties, Eveline.”

“I don't know why they should . . . they seem just too boring to me.” Eveline Johnson was ushering them through some sliding doors into a highceilinged room dusky from shaded lights and cigarettesmoke where they were swallowed up in a jam of welldressed people talking and making faces and tossing their heads over cocktail glasses. There seemed no place to stand so Mary sat down at the end of a couch beside a little marbletopped table. The other people on the couch were jabbering away among themselves and paid no attention to her. Ada and the hostess had disappeared behind a wall of men's suits and afternoongowns.

Mary had had time to smoke an entire cigarette before Ada came back followed by George Barrow, whose thin face looked flushed and whose adamsapple stuck out further than ever over his collar. He had a cocktail in each hand. “Well well well, little Mary French, after all these years,” he was saying with a kind of forced jollity. “If you knew the trouble we'd had getting these through the crush.”

“Hello, George,” said Mary casually. She took the cocktail he handed her and drank it off. After the other drinks she'd had it made
her head spin. Somehow George and Ada managed to squeeze themselves in on the couch on either side of Mary. “I want to hear all about the coalstrike,” George was saying, knitting his brows. “Too bad the insurgent locals had to choose a moment when a strike played right into the operators' hands.” Mary got angry. “That's just the sort of remark I'd expect from a man of your sort. If we waited for a favorable moment there wouldn't be any strikes. . . . There never is any favorable moment for the workers.”

“What sort of a man is a man of my sort?” said George Barrow with fake humility, so Mary thought. “That's what I often ask myself.” “Oh, I don't want to argue . . . I'm sick and tired of arguing. . . . Get me another cocktail, George.”

He got up obediently and started threading his way across the room. “Now, Mary, don't row with poor George. . . . He's so sweet. . . . Do you know, Margo Dowling really is here . . . and her husband and Rodney Cathcart . . . they're always together. They're on their way to the Riviera,” Ada talked into her ear in a loud stage whisper. “I'm sick of seeing movie actors on the screen,” said Mary, “I don't want to see them in real life.”

Ada had slipped away. George was back with two more cocktails and a plate of cold salmon and cucumbers. She wouldn't eat anything. “Don't you think you'd better, with all the drinks?” She shook her head. “Well, I'll eat it myself. . . . You know, Mary,” he went on, “I often wonder these days if I wouldn't have been a happier man if I'd just stayed all my life an expressagent in South Chicago and married some nice workinggirl and had a flock of kids. . . . I'd be a wealthier and a happier man today if I'd gone into business even.” “Well, you don't look so badly off,” said Mary. “You know it hurts me to be attacked as a labor faker by you reds. . . . I may believe in compromise but I've gained some very substantial dollarsandcents victories. . . . What you communists won't see is that there are sometimes two sides to a case.”

“I'm not a partymember,” said Mary.

“I know . . . but you work with them. . . . Why should you think you know better what's good for the miners than their own tried and true leaders?” “If the miners ever had a chance to vote in their unions you'd find out how much they trust your sellout crowd.”

George Barrow shook his head. “Mary, Mary . . . just the same headstrong warmhearted girl.”

“Rubbish, I haven't any feelings at all any more. I've seen how it works in the field. . . . It doesn't take a good heart to know which end of a riotgun's pointed at you.”

“Mary, I'm a very unhappy man.”

“Get me another cocktail, George.”

Mary had time to smoke two cigarettes before George came back. The nodding jabbering faces, the dresses, the gestures with hands floated in a smoky haze before her eyes. The crowd was beginning to thin a little when George came back all flushed and smiling. “Well, I had the pleasure of exchanging a few words with Miss Dowling, she was most charming. . . . But do you know what Red Haines tells me? I wonder if it's true. . . . It seems she's through; it seems that she's no good for talkingpictures . . . voice sounds like the croaking of an old crow over the loudspeaker,” he giggled a little drunkenly. “There she is now, she's just leaving.”

A hush had fallen over the room. Through the dizzy swirl of cigarettesmoke Mary saw a small woman with blue eyelids and features regular as those of a porcelain doll under a mass of paleblond hair turn for a second to smile at somebody before she went out through the sliding doors. She had on a yellow dress and a lot of big sapphires. A tall bronzefaced actor and a bowlegged sallowfaced little man followed her out, and Eveline Johnson talking and talking in her breathless hectic way swept after them.

Mary was looking at it all through a humming haze like seeing a play from way up in a smoky balcony. Ada came and stood in front of her rolling her eyes and opening her mouth wide when she talked. “Oh, isn't it a wonderful party. . . . I met her. She had the loveliest manners . . . I don't know why, I expected her to be kinda tough. They say she came from the gutter.”

“Not at all,” said George. “Her people were Spaniards of noble birth who lived in Cuba.”

“Ada, I want to go home,” said Mary.

“Just a minute . . . I haven't had a chance to talk to dear Eveline. . . . She looks awfully tired and nervous today, poor dear.” A lilypale young man brushed past them laughing over his shoulder at an older woman covered with silver lamé who followed him, her scrawny neck, wattled under the powder, thrust out and her hooknose quivering and eyes bulging over illconcealed pouches.

“Ada, I want to go home.”

“I thought you and I and George might have dinner together.” Mary was seeing blurred faces getting big as they came towards her, changing shape as they went past, fading into the gloom like fish opening and closing their mouths in an aquarium.

“How about it? Miss Cohn, have you seen Charles Edward Holden around? He's usually quite a feature of Eveline's parties.” Mary hated George Barrow's doggy popeyed look when he talked. “Now there's a sound intelligent fellow for you. I can talk to him all night.”

Ada narrowed her eyes as she leaned over and whispered shrilly in George Barrow's ear. “He's engaged to be married to somebody else. Eveline's cut up about it. She's just living on her nerve.”

“George, if we've got to stay . . .” Mary said, “get me another cocktail.”

A broadfaced woman in spangles with very red cheeks who was sitting on the couch beside Mary leaned across and said in a stage whisper, “Isn't it dreadful? . . . You know I think it's most ungrateful of Holdy after all Eveline's done for him . . . in a social way . . . since she took him up . . . now he's accepted everywhere. I know the girl . . . a little bitch if there ever was one . . . not even wealthy.”

“Shush,” said Ada. “Here's Eveline now. . . . Well, Eveline dear, the captains and the kings depart. Soon there'll be nothing but us smallfry left.”

“She didn't seem awful bright to me,” said Eveline, dropping into a chair beside them. “Let me get you a drink, Eveline dear,” said Ada. Eveline shook her head. “What you need, Eveline, my dear,” said the broadfaced woman, leaning across the couch again, “. . . is a good trip abroad. New York's impossible after January . . . I shan't attempt to stay. . . . It would just mean a nervous breakdown if I did.”

“I thought maybe I might go to Morocco sometime if I could scrape up the cash,” said Eveline.

“Try Tunis, my dear. Tunis is divine.”

After she'd drunk the cocktail Barrow brought Mary sat there seeing faces, hearing voices in a blank hateful haze. It took all her attention not to teeter on the edge of the couch. “I really must go.” She had hold of George's arm crossing the room. She could walk very well but she couldn't talk very well. In the bedroom Ada was helping her on with her coat. Eveline Johnson was there with her big hazel eyes and her teasing singsong voice. “Oh, Ada, it was sweet of you to come. I'm afraid it was just too boring. . . . Oh, Miss French, I so wanted to talk
to you about the miners . . . In ever get a chance to talk about things I'm really interested in any more. Do you know, Ada, I don't think I'll ever do this again. . . . It's just too boring.” She put her long hand to her temple and rubbed the fingers slowly across her forehead. “Oh, Ada, I hope they go home soon. . . . I've got such a headache.”

“Oughtn't you to take something for it?”

“I will. I've got a wonderful painkiller. Ask me up next time you play Bach, Ada . . . I'd like that. You know it does seem too silly to spend your life filling up rooms with illassorted people who really hate each other.” Eveline Johnson followed them all the way down the hall to the front door as if she didn't want to let them go. She stood in her thin dress in the gust of cold wind that came from the open door while George went to the corner to get a cab. “Eveline, go back in, you'll catch your death,” said Ada. “Well, goodby . . . you were darlings to come.” As the door closed slowly behind her Mary watched Eveline Johnson's narrow shoulders. She was shivering as she walked back down the hall.

Mary reeled, suddenly feeling drunk in the cold air and Ada put her arm round her to steady her. “Oh, Mary,” Ada said in her ear, “I wish everybody wasn't so unhappy.”

“It's the waste,” Mary cried out savagely, suddenly able to articulate. Ada and George Barrow were helping her into the cab. “The food they waste and the money they waste while our people starve in tarpaper barracks.” “The contradictions of capitalism,” said George Barrow with a knowing leer. “How about a bite to eat?”

“Take me home first. No, not to Ada's,” Mary almost yelled. “I'm sick of this parasite life. I'm going back to the office tomorrow. . . . I've got to call up tonight to see if they got in all right with that load of condensed milk. . . .” She picked up Ada's hand, suddenly feeling like old times again, and squeezed it. “Ada, you've been sweet, honestly you've saved my life.”

“Ada's the perfect cure for hysterical people like us,” said George Barrow. The taxi had stopped beside the row of garbagecans in front of the house where Mary lived. “No, I can walk up alone,” she said harshly and angrily again. “It's just that being tiredout a drink makes me feel funny. Goodnight. I'll get my bag at your place tomorrow.” Ada and Barrow went off in the taxicab with their heads together chatting and laughing. They've forgotten me already, thought Mary as she made her way up the stairs. She made the stairs all right but
had some trouble getting the key in the lock. When the door finally would open she went straight to the couch in the front room and lay down and fell heavily asleep.

In the morning she felt more rested than she had in years. She got up early and ate a big breakfast with bacon and eggs at Childs on the way to the office. Rudy Goldfarb was already there, sitting at her desk.

He got up and stared at her without speaking for a moment. His eyes were red and bloodshot and his usually sleek black hair was all over his forehead. “What's the matter, Rudy?”

“Comrade French, they got Eddy.”

“You mean they arrested him.”

“Arrested him nothing, they shot him.”

“They killed him.” Mary felt a wave of nausea rising in her. The room started to spin around. She clenched her fists and the room fell into place again. Rudy was telling her how some miners had found the truck wrecked in a ditch. At first they thought that it had been an accident but when they picked up Eddy Spellman he had a bullethole through his temple.

“We've got to have a protest meeting . . . do they know about it over at the Party?”

“Sure, they're trying to get Madison Square Garden. But, Comrade French, he was one hell of a swell kid.” Mary was shaking all over. The phone rang. Rudy answered it. “Comrade French, they want you over there right away. They want you to be secretary of the committee for the protest meeting.” Mary let herself drop into the chair at her desk for a moment and began noting down the names of organizations to be notified. Suddenly she looked up and looked Rudy straight in the eye. “Do you know what we've got to do . . . we've got to move the relief committee to Pittsburgh. I knew all along we ought to have been in Pittsburgh.”

“Risky business.”

“We ought to have been in Pittsburgh all along,” Mary said firmly and quietly.

The phone rang again.

“It's somebody for you, Comrade French.”

As soon as the receiver touched Mary's ear there was Ada talking and talking. At first Mary couldn't make out what it was about. “But, Mary darling, haven't you read the papers?” “No, I said I hadn't. You mean about Eddy Spellman?” “No, darling, it's too awful, you re
member we were just there yesterday for a cocktail party . . . you must remember, Eveline Johnson, it's so awful. I've sent out and got all the papers. Of course the tabloids all say it's suicide.” “Ada, I don't understand.” “But, Mary, I'm trying to tell you . . . I'm so upset I can't talk . . . she was such a lovely woman, so talented, an artist really. . . . Well, when the maid got there this morning she found her dead in her bed and we were just there twelve hours before. It gives me the horrors. Some of the papers say it was an overdose of a sleeping medicine. She couldn't have meant to do it. If we'd only known we might have been able to do something, you know she said she had a headache. Don't you think you could come up, I can't stay here alone I feel so terrible.” “Ada, I can't. . . . Something very serious has happened in Pennsylvania. I have a great deal of work to do organizing a protest. Goodby, Ada.” Mary hung up, frowning.