U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [482]
"Like those awful twins in Miami."
They didn't see anything of Tony until, one Sunday
night that Sam Margolies was coming to the house for the first time, he turned up drunk at about six o'clock and said that he and Max Hirsch wanted to start a polo school and that he had to have a thousand dol ars right away.
"But, Tony," said Agnes, "where's Margie going to get it? . . . You know just as wel as I do how heavy our expenses are." Tony made a big scene, stormed and cried and said Agnes and Margo had ruined his stage career and that now they were out to ruin his career in pictures.
-405-"I have been too patient," he yel ed, tapping himself on the chest. "I have let myself be ruined by women." Margo kept looking at the clock on the mantel. It was nearly seven. She final y shel ed out twentyfive bucks and told him to come back during the week. "He's hitting the hop again," she said after he'd gone. "He'l go crazy one of these days.""Poor boy," sighed Agnes, "he's not a bad boy, only weak."
"What I'm scared of is that that heinie'l get hold of him and make us a lot of trouble. . . . That bird had a face like state's prison . . . guess the best thing to do is get a lawyer and start a divorce.""But think of the pub-licity," wailed Agnes. "Anyway," said Margo, " Tony's got to pass out of the picture. I've taken al I'm going to take from that greaser." Sam Margolies came an hour late. "How peaceful," he was saying. "How can you do it in delirious Hol ywood?"
"Why, Margie's just a quiet little workinggirl," said Agnes, picking up her sewingbasket and starting to sidle out. He sat down in the easychair without taking off his white beret and stretched out his bowlegs towards the fire.
"I hate the artificiality of it.""Don't you now?" said Agnes from the door. Margo offered him a cocktail but he said he didn't drink. When the maid brought out the dinner that Agnes had worked on al day he wouldn't eat anything but toast and lettuce. "I never eat or drink at mealtimes. I come only to look and to talk.""That's why you've gotten so thin," kidded Margo. "Do you remember the way I used to be in those old days? My New York period. Let's not talk about it. I have no memory. I live only in the present. Now I am thinking of the picture you are going to star in. I never go to parties but you must come with me to Irwin Harris's tonight. There wil be people there you'l have
'to know. Let me see your dresses. I'l pick out what you bught to wear. After this you must always let me come
-406-when you buy a dress." Fol owing her up the creaking stairs to her bedroom he said, "We must have a different setting for you. This won't do. This is suburban." Margo felt funny driving out through the avenues of palms of Beverly Hil s sitting beside Sam Margolies. He'd made her put on the old yel ow eveningdress she'd bought at Piquot's years ago that Agnes had recently had done over and lengthened by a little French dressmaker she'd found in Los Angeles. Her hands were cold and she was afraid Margolies would hear her heart knocking
against her ribs. She tried to think of something funny to say but what was the use, Margolies never laughed. She wondered what he was thinking. She could see his face, the narrow forehead under his black bang, the pouting lips, the beaklike profile very dark against the streetlights as he sat stiffly beside her with his hands on his knees. He stil had on his white flannels and a white stock with a diamond pin in it in the shape of a golfclub. As the car turned into a drive towards a row of bright tal frenchwindows through the trees he turned to her and said, "You are afraid you wil be bored. . . . You'l be surprised. You'l find we have something here that matches the foreign and New York society you are accustomed to." As he turned his face towards her the light glinted on the whites of his eyes and sagging pouches under them and the wet broad lips. He went on whispering squeezing her hand as he helped her out of the car. "You wil be the most elegant woman there but only as one star is brighter than the other stars." Going into the door past the butler Margo caught her-self starting to giggle. "How you do go on," she said.