I Can Get It for You Wholesale (34 page)

“The idea is to suck it around the sides, near the cracker,” I said, “so it shouldn’t run over on your hands and clothes.”

She laughed a little.

“I’m afraid I won’t—” she began.

“Oops,” I said, grabbing it out of her hand quickly. “Watch it. You almost had it all over your dress, there.”

She took out a handkerchief and brushed away a small spot that had landed on her hem.

“Weren’t you ever out to Coney Island before?” I asked.

She shook her head.

“What?”

“That’s right,” she said. “I was born in the Bronx.”

“Oh, well, that accounts for it,” I said.

Hell, that could account for anything.

“Me,” I said, “I was born on the East Side. Coney Island? This used to be heaven to me.”

“I guess that’s why I don’t know how to eat custard,” she said with a laugh.

Look at her! She learned how to talk!

“Here’s how,” I said, holding the cone far out toward her. “I’ll hold it and you lick at it till you had enough. All right?”

She nodded quickly and leaned forward to peck at the mound of loose ice cream that kept melting and running down the sides.

“Enough?” I said.

“Enough,” she said, wiping her mouth delicately with her handkerchief.

I threw the rest of the cone away and took her arm.

“Let’s go.”

We walked for a few minutes until a shooting gallery struck my eye.

“Uh-oh,” I said. “Here’s where we’re stopping for a while.”

I paid for two clips and leaned my elbow on the counter. I’d pumped out a dozen shots before I noticed that she hadn’t touched her gun.

“Say, aren’t you shooting?”

She laughed and showed the white teeth that always looked so startlingly hard between her full lips.

“I’m afraid I don’t know how, Harry,” she said.

“C’mere,” I said, taking her arm and pulling her toward me. “You hold the gun like this, and rest your elbow here.”

I got behind her and put one arm around her left side, to help her support the gun, and my other arm around her right side, to help her with the trigger.

“Now you look through this little dingus here, this V. That’s right. Till you see that little raised point, that little dot at the end of the gun—that’s it—till you see that dot right smack in the center of the notch in the V. Get it?”

She nodded, her eyes squinting and her lips parted.

“Then you hold it that way, the raised dot in the middle of the V, and point it, without letting that dot get out of the

V, at anything you want to hit. How about that bell there? No, take something easy. Take one of those ducks, the white ones. That’s it. Now you keep that dot in the middle of the V pointed right at that duck and then you pull the trigger—like this.”

The slight recoil of the gun threw her back against me, gently, and her cheek brushed mine. I didn’t want to believe it, but right then I wouldn’t have taken the short end of any bet, no matter what the odds, that I wasn’t
blushing
!

“Now try it yourself,” I said.

“Did we hit it?” she asked.

“I—uh—hell,” I said, laughing, “I forgot to look.”

I picked up the gun and said, “We better try it again, then. And this time,
you
sight it and pull the trigger. I’ll just help you hold it.”

I put my arms around her again, steadying the gun, and feeling her warm body against me. Just before she pulled the trigger her body tensed up and the shot went cockeyed.

“Here,” I said, “you better try it all by yourself. You certainly can’t do any worse than with me helping you.”

I dropped another quarter on the counter and the man handed me another loaded gun.

“Now just do as I told you,” I said, “and shoot for the same things I do. I’ll call them out to you.”

We stood at the counter together for a half hour, side by side, pumping away at swinging targets, bells, candles, moving ducks, clay pipes, until she could actually hit something once out of five or six tries. I waited until she knocked down one of the ducks moving across a small pond in the middle of the gallery, and put my hand on her gun.

“This is a good place to quit,” I said, “on a hit. My back aches already. How about yours?”

She stood up and placed both hands far back on her hips and stretched, with a pained smile on her face.

“Oh, my!” she said. “That
hurts
.”

“I know just the thing for that,” I said, winking.

“Yeah, what?”

“A hot dog.”

“For a
backache
?”

“Sure,” I said. “The idea is to eat enough of them till you get a bellyache, and then you don’t feel the backache.”

“Oh, Harry!” she laughed.

I laughed, too. But I couldn’t help wondering what the hell I was finding so funny in a joke as lousy as that one.

We had some hot dogs and potato chips and grape juice before she cried quits.

“Why, this is only the beginning,” I said. “Come on, have some more.”

“I can’t,” she said. “Honest, I’m full.”

“Well, then,” I said, “you’ll just have to sit and watch me. And take my word for it, Ruthie, it’s no fun watching me eat. You better get something, too.”

She put her hand to her mouth and shook her head.

“Oh, I can’t, Harry,” she said. “I couldn’t eat another thing.”

“Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you,” I said.

She began to laugh as I downed a hamburger and an ice cream sandwich on waffles.

“Goodness,” she said, “what a combination! And it’s not kosher, either, you know, Harry. Ice cream and meat.”

I pretended to be shocked.

“You mean it? Gee, that’s terrible. Well, I’ll just have to cut out the ice cream, then.”

After a few more items, she began to look worried.

“Harry,” she said, “I really think you ought to stop. You’ll ruin your stomach.”

“I know it,” I said, “but do I love this junk!”

“But Harry—”

“All right,” I said, “no more. Come on.”

“Where to?”

“Steeplechase, the funny place, where, if I remember correctly, my dear Ruthie, for a fifty-cent combination ticket, you can ride on fifty—yes, sir, no less than fifty—fifty separate and distinct rides. You can try the—”

“Oh, Harry, I don’t know if—”

“What’s the matter, little girl? You aren’t scared, are you?”

She nodded quickly, looking up at me from under lowered brows.

“Holy smoke,” I said, and let out a loud laugh. I slapped my thigh and put my arm around her, squeezing her to me gently. “Come on. Now we’re first going to have fun.”

She held back a little, but I pulled her along, laughing and kidding her.

The next hour was so fast and giddy I couldn’t keep track of it. We tried everything on the combination tickets, and some we paid to try again. At first she was scared stiff, holding my arm tightly and screaming in a low voice when we hit the turns or the dips. But gradually she got used to it and even went down the biggest drop on the Sky Ride with a happy laugh.

When we got out on the boardwalk again it was almost midnight. We stood there, catching our breath, and laughing at each other for no good reason.

“I must look a sight,” she said, trying to straighten her hair.

“Here’s a mirror,” I said.

We stood in front of a chewing-gum vending machine and I held her hat and purse while she combed her hair and straightened her dress.

“My,” she said when she finished. “That feels better.”

I put my arm through hers and we walked back toward Stillwell Avenue. But this time we were on the outside of the boardwalk, the side near the water, and the crowd, moving at the other side near the concessions, a mere thirty or so feet from us, seemed far enough away to be almost out of sight. We could hear the barkers and the music and the moving people, but the low rolling of the waves on the beach seemed louder.

“Let’s rest for a few minutes,” I said.

We sat down on one of the benches that faced the water and I lit a cigarette.

“Tired?” I said.

“A little,” she said.

“We’ll just sit for a while,” I said, “and then we’ll go home. This place isn’t so bad at night. But it’s terrible during the day. At night you can’t see the dirt.”

She didn’t say anything.

“Maybe you want a drink or something?”

She shook her head.

“Sure you don’t want anything?”

“Well—” she said.

“Well what? Come on. Just say it and I’ll get it for you.”

“I guess it’s silly in a way,” she said slowly, looking out at the ocean carefully. “But I just thought I’d like to—”

She stopped.

“You’d like to what, Ruthie?”

“When you go out with other girls,” she said, still looking ahead of her carefully, “do you—I mean, Harry, do you take them here, to Coney Island?”

I dropped my cigarette and ground it out carefully.

“Why, I guess so,” I said. “Once in a while, I suppose. I mean, not lately. I’ve been too busy in my business. But I guess once in a while—I mean, it’s—Say,” I said, turning to face her, “what’s on your mind, anyway?”

“Nothing,” she said; then, quickly, “maybe I’m a fool, Harry, but you know what I wanted to do? Once, just to see, well, just to see what it’s like, I’d like to go to a night club.”

“A night club?”

“Yes.”

“What does a nice girl like you want to do in one of those joints?” I said. “There’s nothing to see. You just sit around and drink and maybe watch some dumb toma—some dumb dames without much clothes on dance and sing and maybe—well, that’s about all. What do you want to go to one of those places for?”

“I’ve never been, that’s all,” she said. “I suppose you’re right, though, Harry. Forget it. I just thought—”

Forget it was right. But like a damn fool I was already checking my list mentally, trying to remember one that wasn’t too conspicuous. And on top of that an idea about Babushkin, something that I’d been trying to puzzle out for days, suddenly came to me. One moment I was trying to think of how I could avoid taking Ruthie Rivkin to a night club. The next moment a knotty problem about the office came to me, all solved, on a silver platter. Hell, I had to be grateful, didn’t I?

“If you really
want
to,” I said.

She shrugged, slightly embarrassed.

“I was just wondering,” she said. “Other girls, they seem to get—”

“All right,” I said suddenly, “come on. I’ll take you.”

We walked off the boardwalk at the next street and got into a taxi. I gave the driver the Fifty-Second Street address. We sat together quietly during the long ride, but I didn’t touch her. When we drew up in front of the place I paid the driver and prayed like hell that nobody I knew would recognize me.

We went in and I asked the waiter for a small table at one side.

“What’ll you have, Ruthie?”

“I don’t want anything,” she said, looking about her.

I ordered steak sandwiches and beer, but she didn’t touch hers. I watched her as I ate.

“Not much to see, is there?” I said.

She shook her head, still staring about her with a puzzled expression on her face.

I glanced around quickly myself. The place was crowded, but I didn’t recognize anybody. A Cuban band in long-sleeved shirts began to play. Some of the musicians stood up, shaking gourds and rattles and showing their white teeth as they grinned. A thin, dark-haired girl in a low-cut dress came out from somewhere and stood in front of them, singing in a language I didn’t understand, and wiggling her hips and her tits in a way that nobody could fail to understand.

“That’s all there is to these places?” Ruthie said.

“That’s all,” I said. “Just what you see. Some of them are bigger, of course, and more expensive. But that’s all. When you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.”

She still had the puzzled frown on her face.

“Then what is it, Harry, that these other girls—when they get taken out by a fellow—he takes them to—?”

She stopped and took a sip of water.

“What is it what?” I said.

“Oh, nothing,” she said. “I guess I
was
being silly, asking you to take me to a place like this.”

“Why, there’s nothing wrong, Ruthie. I could take you any place you want. You want to go to another night club? Come on, I’ll show you another one.”

“No, that’s all right, Harry,” she said quickly. “I don’t want to go to any more. If you don’t mind, Harry, I’d like to go home now.”

“Sure,” I said, “come on.”

In the taxi I put my arm across the back of her seat and let my hand stroke the soft warm flesh of her cheek. But that’s as far as I went. At her door we both got out.

“Wait for you, bud?” the taxi driver said.

“No,” I said, and paid him.

We stood on the doorstep for a few moments, without speaking.

“Well,” she said, finally, “I had a lovely time. Thanks, Harry.”

“I’m glad you did,” I said, taking her hand.

“Well—” she said awkwardly.

I dropped her hand. I felt scared as hell.

“I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” I said suddenly. “Suppose I call you up in a day or so? All right?”

That’s how you scare the pants off a girl!

“All right,” she said, smiling quickly.

“Good night, Ruthie,” I said.

“Good night, Harry,” she said, and ran up the steps lightly.

I walked up the block slowly. When I reached the first lamp-post I stopped and said, “Jesus Christ!”

What the hell was the matter with me? With a dame like that I’d actually had a good time!

O
N MY WAY TO
my private office I stopped at the bookkeeper’s desk.

“Good morning, Mr. Bogen.”

“Morning, Miss A. How are the collections?”

“Fine, Mr. Bogen. Look.”

She held up a batch of checks. I took them and leafed through for a glimpse of the larger amounts. They were there.

“Anybody slow with us?”

“Just a couple, Mr. Bogen, but they’re small ones.”

“Well, get after them. What’s to-day, the thirteenth?” I looked behind me at the calendar.

“That’s right, Mr. Bogen, the thirteenth.”

“Well, even if the mails are slow, their checks should’ve been in by now. Send them a letter or two, and if they don’t come through with them, turn them over to Golig for collection. He knows what to do with those birds.”