U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [418]
carvingknife and stabbed her five times in the public square. She began to giggle when she got that far and George began to laugh. "I know it sounds funny to you
. . . but it wasn't so funny for her. She died right there without any clothes on in front of everybody."
"Wel , I guess we'l have to see what we can do," said George, "to keep you away from that carvingknife." What they did was to go over to Matanzas on the Hershey electriccar and get a room at a hotel. They had supper there and a lot of ginfizzes and George, who'd told her he'd leave her to come over the next day just in time for the boat, got romantic over the ginfizzes and the moon-light and dogs barking and the roosters crowing. They
-251-went walking with their arms round each other down the quiet chalkycolored moonstruck streets, and he missed the last car back to Havana. Margo didn't care about anything except not to be alone in that creepy empty whitewal ed hotel with the moon so bright and everything. She liked George anyway.
The next morning at breakfast he said she'd have to let him lend her another fifty so that she could go back first-class and she said honestly she'd pay it back as soon as she got a job in New York and that he must write to her every day.
He went over on the early car because he had to be at the office and she went over later al alone through the glary green countryside shril ing with insects, and went in a cab right from the ferry to the boat. George met her there at the dock with her ticket and a little bunch of orchids, the first she'd ever had, and a rol of bil s that she tucked into her purse without counting. The stewards seemed awful surprised that she didn't have any baggage, so she made George tel them that she'd had to leave home at five minutes'
notice because her father, who was a very wealthy man, was sick in New York. She and George went right down to her room, and he was very sad about her going away and said she was the loveliest girl he'd ever seen and that he'd write her every day too, but she couldn't fol ow what he was saying she was so scared Tony would come down to the boat looking for her. At last the gong rang and George kissed her desperate hard and went ashore. She didn't dare go up on deck until she heard the engineroom bel s and felt the shaking of the boat as it began to back out of the dock. Out of the port-hole, as the boat pul ed out, she got a glimpse of a dapper dark man in a white suit, that might have been Tony, who broke away from the cops and ran yel ing and waving his arms down to the end of the wharf.
Maybe it was the orchids or her looks or the story about
-252-her father's il ness, but the captain asked her to his table and al the officers rushed her, and she had the time of her life on the trip up. The only trouble was that she could only come on deck in the afternoon because she only had that one dress. She'd given George a cable to send so when they got to New York Agnes met her at the dock. It was late fal and Margo had nothing on but a light summer dress, so she said she'd set Agnes up to a taxi to go home. It was only when they got into the cab that she noticed Agnes was wearing black. When she asked her why Agnes said Fred had died in Bel evue two weeks before. He'd been picked up on Twentythird Street deaddrunk and had died there without coming to. "Oh, Agnes, I knew it . . . I had a premonition on the boat," sobbed Margo.
When she'd wiped her eyes she turned and looked at
Agnes. "Why, Agnes dear, how wel you look," she said.
"What a pretty suit. Has Frank got a job?""Oh, no," said Agnes. "You see Miss Franklyn's teashops are doing quite wel . She's branching out and she's made me man-ageress of the new branch on Thirtyfourth Street at sev-entyfive dol ars a week. Wait til you see our new apart-ment just off the Drive. . . . Oh, Margie, you must have had an awful time."
"Wel ," said Margo, "it was pretty bad. His people are pretty wel off and prominent and al that but it's hard to get on to their ways. Tony's a bum and I hate him more than anything in the world. But after al it was quite an experience . . . I wouldn't have missed it."