U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [453]
When they got to her door, he said could he come up and before she could stop herself she'd said yes, if he acted like a gentleman. He said that wasn't so easy with a girl like her but he'd try and they were laughing and scuffling so in front of her door she dropped her key. They both stooped to pick it up. When she got to her feet flush-ing from the kiss he'd given her, she noticed that the man sitting al hunched up on the stairs beside the elevator was Tony.
"Wel , goodnight, Cliff, thanks for seeing a poor little workinggirl home," Margo said cheerily.
Tony got to his feet and staggered over towards the open door of the apartment. His face had a green pal or and his clothes looked like he'd lain in the gutter al night.
"This is Tony," said Margo. "He's a . . . a relative of mine . . . not in very good repair." Cliff looked from one to the other, let out a low whistle and walked down the stairs.
"Wel , now you can tel me what you mean by hanging around my place. . . . I've a great mind to have you ar-rested'for a burglar." Tony could hardly talk. His lip was bloody and al
puffed up. "No place to go," he said. "A gang beat me up." He was teetering so she had to grab the sleeve of his filthy overcoat to keep him from fal ing. "Oh, Tony," she said,
"you sure are a mess. Come on in, but if you pul any
-337-tricks like you did last time . . . I swear to God I'l break every bone in your body." She put him to bed. Next morning he was so jittery she had to send for a doctor. The sawbones said he was suffer-ing from dope and exposure and suggested a cure in a sanatorium. Tony lay in bed white and trembling. He cried a great deal, but he was as meek as a lamb and said yes, he'd do anything the doctor said. Once he grabbed her hand and kissed it and begged her to forgive him for hav-ing stolen her money so that he could die happy. "You won't die, not you," said Margo, smoothing the stiff black hair off his forehead with her free hand. "No such luck." She went out for a little walk on the Drive to try to decide what to do. The dizzysweet clinging smel of the paraldehyde the doctor had given Tony for a sedative had made her feel sick.
At the end of the week when Charley Anderson came
back from Detroit and met her at the place on Fiftysecond Street for dinner, he looked worried and haggard. She came out with her sad story and he didn't take it so wel . He said he was hard up for cash, that his wife had every-thing tied up on him, that he'd had severe losses on the market; he could raise five hundred dol ars for her but he'd have to pledge some securities to do that. Then she said she guessed she'd have to go back to her old engage-ment as entertainer at the Palms at Miami and he said, swel , if she didn't look out he'd come down there and let her support him. "I don't know why everybody's got to thinkin' I'm a lousy mil ionaire. Al I want is get out of the whole business with enough jack to let me settle down to work on motors. If it hadn't been for this sonofabitchin'
divorce I'd been out long ago. This winter I expect to clean up and get out. I'm only a dumb mechanic anyway."
"You want to get out and I want to get in," said Margo, looking him straight in the eye. They both laughed to-gether. "Aw, let's go up to your place, since the folks are
-338-away. I'm tired of these lousy speakeasies." She shook her head, stil laughing. "It's swarming with Spanish rela-tives," she said. "We can't go there." They got a bag at his hotel and went over to Brooklyn in a taxi, to a hotel where they were wel known as Mr. and Mrs. Dowling.
On the way over in the taxi she managed to get the ante raised to a thousand. Next day she took Tony to a sanatorium up in the
Catskil s. He did everything she said like a good little boy and talked about getting a job when he got out and about honor and manhood. When she got back to town she cal ed up the office and found that Mr. A was back in Detroit, but he'd left instructions with his secretary to get her her ticket and a drawingroom and fix up everything about the trip to Miami. She closed up her apartment and the office attended to storing the furniture and the packing and everything.