The Vertical City Read online

  THE VERTICAL CITY

  In the most vertical city in the world men have run up their dreamsand their ambitions into slim skyscrapers that seem to exclaim at theaudacity of the mere mortar that sustains them.

  Minarets appear almost to tamper with the stars; towers to impalethe moon. There is one fifty-six-story rococo castle, built from thefive-and-ten-cent-store earnings of a merchant prince, that shootsupward with the beautiful rush of a Roman candle.

  Any Manhattan sunset, against a sky that looks as if it might give tothe poke of a finger, like a dainty woman's pink flesh, there marches asilhouetted caravan of tower, dome, and the astonished crests of officebuildings.

  All who would see the sky must gaze upward between these rockets offrenzied architecture, which are as beautiful as the terrific can everbe beautiful.

  In the vertical city there are no horizons of infinitude to rest theeyes; rather little breakfast napkins of it showing between walls andup through areaways. Sometimes even a lunchcloth of five, six, or maybesixty hundred stars or a bit of daylight-blue with a caul of sunshineacross, hoisted there as if run up a flagpole.

  It is well in the vertical city if the eyes and the heart have a liftto them, because, after all, these bits of cut-up infinitude, asmany-shaped as cookies, even when seen from a tenement window and to theaccompaniment of crick in the neck, are as full of mysterious alchemyover men's hearts as the desert sky or the sea sky. That is why, upthrough the wells of men's walls, one glimpse of sky can twist the soulwith--oh, the bitter, the sweet ache that lies somewhere within theheart's own heart, curled up there like a little protozoa. That is, ifthe heart and the eyes have a lift to them. Marylin's had.

  * * * * *

  Marylin! How to convey to you the dance of her! The silver scheherazadeof poplar leaves when the breeze is playful? No. She was far nimblerthan a leaf tugging at its stem. A young faun on the brink of a pool,startled at himself? Yes, a little. Because Marylin's head always had alistening look to it, as if for a message that never quite came throughto her. From where? Marylin didn't know and didn't know that she didn'tknow. Probably that accounted for a little pucker that could sometimesalight between her eyes. Scarcely a shadow, rather the shadow of ashadow. A lute, played in a western breeze? Once a note of music,not from a lute however, but played on a cheap harmonica, had caughtMarylin's heart in a little ecstasy of palpitations, but that doesn'tnecessarily signify. Zephyr with Aurora playing? Laughter holding bothhis sides?

  How Marylin, had she understood it, would have kicked the high hat offof such Miltonic phrasing. Ah, she was like--herself!

  And yet, if there must be found a way to convey her to you more quickly,let it be one to which Marylin herself would have dipped a bow.

  She was like nothing so much as unto a whole two dollars' worth oflittle five-cent toy balloons held captive in a sea breeze and tuggingtoward some ozonic beyond in which they had never swum, yet strained sonaturally toward.

  That was it! A whole two dollars' worth of tugging balloons.Red--blue--orange--green--silver, jerking in hollow-sided collisions,and one fat-faced pink one for ten cents, with a smile painted on oneside and a tear on the other.

  And what if I were to tell you that this phantom of a delight of aMarylin, whose hair was a sieve for sun and whose laughter a streamer ofit, had had a father who had been shot to death on the underslingingof a freight car in one of the most notorious prison getaways everrecorded, and whose mother--but never mind right here; it doesn't matterto the opening of this story, because Marylin, with all her tantalizingcapacity for paradox, while every inch a part of it all, was not at alla part of it.

  For five years, she who had known from infancy the furtive Bradstreet ofsome of the vertical city's most notorious aliases and gang names, andwho knew, almost by baptism of fire, that there were short cuts to aneasier and weightier wage envelope, had made buttonholes from eightuntil five on the blue-denim pleat before it was stitched down the frontof men's blue-denim shirts.

  At sweet sixteen she, whose mother had borne her out of wed--well,anyway, at sweet sixteen, like the maiden in the saying, she had neverbeen kissed, nor at seventeen, but at eighteen--

  It was this way. Steve Turner--"Getaway," as the quick lingo of thestreet had him--liked her. Too well. I firmly believe, though, thatif in the lurid heat lightning of so stormy a career as Getaway's thebeauty of peace and the peace of beauty ever found moment, Marylinnestled in that brief breathing space somewhere deep down within thenoisy cabaret of Getaway's being. His eyes, which had never doneanything of the sort except under stimulus of the horseradish which heate in quantities off quick-lunch counters, could smart to tears at thethought of her. And over the emotions which she stirred in him, andwhich he could not translate, he became facetious--idiotically so.

  Slim and supine as the bamboo cane he invariably affected, he would waitfor her, sometimes all of the six work-a-evenings of the week, untilshe came down out of the grim iron door of the shirt factory where sheworked, his one hip flung out, bamboo cane bent almost double, and, inhis further zeal to attitudinize, one finger screwing up furiously ata vacant upper lip. That was a favorite comedy mannerism, screwing atwhere a mustache might have been.

  "Getaway!" she would invariably admonish, with her reproach all in theinflection and with the bluest blue in her eyes he had ever seen outsideof a bisque doll's.

  The peculiar joy, then, of linking her sweetly resisting arm into his;of folding over each little finger, so! until there were ten tendrilsat the crotch of his elbow and his heart. Of tilting his straw "katy"forward, with his importance of this possession, so that the back of hishead came out in a bulge and his hip, and then of walking off with her,so! Ah yes, so!

  MARYLIN _(who had the mysterious little jerk in her laugh of a veryyoung child_): "Getaway, you're the biggest case!"

  GETAWAY _(wild to amuse her further_): "Hocus pocus, Salamagundi! Ismell the blood of an ice-cream sundae!"

  MARYLIN _(hands to her hips and her laughter full of the jerks_):"Getaway, stop your monkeyshines. The cop has his eye on you!"

  GETAWAY _(sobered):_ "C'm on!"

  Therein lay some of the wonder of her freshet laughter. Because toMarylin a police officer was not merely a uniformed mentor of the law,designed chiefly to hold up traffic for her passing, and with his nightstick strike security into her heart as she hurried home of short,wintry evenings. A little procession of him and his equally dreadbrother, the plain-clothes man, had significantly patrolled the days ofher childhood.

  Once her mother, who had come home from a shopping expedition with theinside pocket of her voluminous cape full of a harvest of the sheerestof baby things to match Marylin's blond loveliness--batiste--a wholebolt of Brussels lace--had bitten the thumb of a policeman until ithung, because he had surprised her horribly by stepping in through thefire escape as she was unwinding the Brussels lace.

  Another time, from her mother's trembling knee, she had seen her fatherin a crowded courtroom standing between two uniforms, four fingerspeeping over each of his shoulders!

  A uniform had shot her father from the underpinnings of the freightcar. Her mother had died with the phantom of one marching across herdelirium. Even opposite the long, narrow, and exceedingly respectablerooming house in which she now dwelt a uniform had stood for severaldays lately, contemplatively.

  There was a menacing flicker of them almost across her eyeballs, soclose they lay to her experience, and yet how she could laugh whenGetaway made a feint toward the one on her beat, straightening up intoexaggerated decorum as the eye of the law, noting his approach, focused.

  "Getaway," said Marylin, hop-skipping to keep up with him now, "why hasold Deady got his eye on you nowadays?"

  Here Getaway flung his most Yankee-Doodle-Dandy manner, collapsinginward at his extremely thin waistline, arms akimbo, his step designedto be a mincing one, and his voice as soprano as it could be.

  "You don't know the half of it, dearie. I've been slapp
ing granny'swrist, just like that. Ts-s-st!"

  But somehow the laughter had run out of Marylin's voice. "Getaway," shesaid, stopping on the sidewalk, so that when he answered his face mustbe almost level with hers--"you're up to something again."

  "I'm up to snuff," he said, and gyrated so that the bamboo cane looped acircle.

  She almost cried as she looked at him, so swift was her change of mood,her lips trembling with the quiver of flesh that has been bruised.

  "Oh, Getaway!" she said, "get away." And pushed him aside that she mightwalk on. He did not know, nor did she, for that matter, the rustlingthat was all of a sudden through her voice, but it was almost one ofthose moments when she could make his eyes smart.

  But what he said was, "For the luvagod, whose dead?"

  "Me, in here," she said, very quickly, and placed her hand to her flimsyblouse where her heart beat under it.

  "Whadda you mean, dead?"

  "Just dead, sometimes--as if something inside of me that can't get outhad--had just curled up and croaked."

  The walk from the shirt factory where Marylin worked, to the long, leanhouse in the long, lean street where she roomed, smelled of unfastidiousbedclothes airing on window sills; of garbage cans that repulsed evenhigh-legged cats; of petty tradesmen who, mysteriously enough, withaerial clotheslines flapping their perpetually washings, worked andsweated and even slept in the same sour garments. Facing her there onthese sidewalks of slops, and the unprivacy of stoops swarming withenormous young mothers and puny old children, Getaway, with a certainfox pointiness out in his face, squeezed her arm until she could feelthe bite of his elaborately manicured finger nails.

  "Marry me, Marylin," he said, "and you'll wear diamonds."

  In spite of herself, his bay-rummed nearness was not unpleasant to her."Cut it out--here, Getaway," she said through a blush.

  He hooked her very close to him by the elbow, and together they crossedthrough the crash of a street bifurcated by elevated tracks.

  "You hear, Marylin," he shouted above the din. "Marry me and you'll weardiamonds."

  "Getaway, you're up to something again!"

  "Whadda you mean?"

  "Diamonds on your twenty a week! It can't be done."

  His gaze lit up with the pointiness. "I tell you, Marylin, I can promiseyou headlights!"

  "How?"

  "Never you bother your little head how; O.K., though."

  "_How_, Getaway?"

  "Oh--clean--if that's what's worrying you. Clean-cut."

  "It _is_ worrying me."

  "Saw one on a little Jane yesterday out to Belmont race track. Afist-load for a little trick like her. And sparkle! Say, every time thatlittle Jane daubed some whitewash on her little nosie she gave thatgrand stand the squints. That's what I'm going to do. Sparkle you up!With a diamond engagement ring. Oh boy! How's that? A diamond engagementring!"

  "Oh, Getaway!" she said, with her hand on the flutter of her throat andclosing her eyes as if to imprison the vision against her lids. "A purewhite one with lots of fire dancing around it." And little Marylin, whodidn't want to want it, actually kissed the bare dot on her left ringfinger where she could feel the burn of it, and there in the crowdedstreet, where he knew he was surest of his privacy with her, he stole akiss off that selfsame finger, too.

  "I'll make their eyes hang out on their cheeks like grapes when they seeyou coming along, Marylin."

  "I love them because they're so clear--and clean! Mountain water that'sbeen filtered through pebbles."

  "Pebbles is right! I'm going to dike you out in one as big as a pebble.And poils! Sa-y, they're what cost the spondulicks. A guy showed me astring of little ones no bigger than pimples. Know what? That littlestring could knock the three spots out of a thousand-dollar bond--I meanbill!"

  It was then that something flashed out of Marylin's face. A shade mighthave been lowered; a candle blown out.

  "Getaway," she said, with a quick little dig of fingers into hisforearm, "you're up to something!"

  "Snuff, I said."

  "What did you mean by that word, 'bond'?"

  "Who built a high fence around the word 'bond'?"

  "Bonds! All that stuff in the newspapers about those messengersdisappearing out of Wall Street with--bonds! Getaway, are you mixed upin that? Getaway!"

  "Well, well! I like that! I had you doped out for fair and warmerto-day. The weather prophet didn't predict no brainstorm."

  "That's not answering."

  "Well, whadda you know! Miss Sherlock Holmes finds a corkscrew in thewine cellar and is sore because it's crooked!"

  "Getaway--answer."

  "Whadda you want me to answer, Fairylin? That I'm the master mind behindthe--"

  "It worries me so! You up in Monkey's room so much lately. You think Idon't know it? I do! All the comings and goings up there. Muggs Towerssneaking up to Monkey's room in that messenger boy's suit he keepswearing all the time now. He's no more messenger boy than I am. Getaway,tell me, you and Muggs up in Monkey's room so often? Footsteps up there!Yours!"

  "Gawalmighty! Now it's my footsteps!"

  "I know them! Up in Monkey's room, right over mine. I know how you sneakup there evenings after you leave me. It don't look nice your going intothe same house where I live, Getaway, even if it isn't to see me. Itdon't look right from the outside!"

  "Nobody can ever say I wanted to harm a hair of your little head. I evenlook the other way when I pass your door. That's the kind of a modestviolet I am."

  "It's not that, but the looks. That's the reason, I'll bet, if thetruth's known, why Monkey squirmed himself into that room over mine--tohide your comings and goings as if they was to see me."

  "Nothing of the kind!"

  "Everything--up there--worries me so! Monkey's room right over mine.My ceiling so full of soft footsteps that frighten me. Iknow your footsteps, Getaway, just as well as anything. Theball-of-your-foot--squeak! The-ball-of-your-foot--squeak!"

  "Well, that's a good one! The-ball-of-me-foot--squeak!"

  "Everybody tiptoeing! Muggs! Somebody's stocking feet! Monkey's. Stepsthat aren't honest. All on my ceiling. Monkey never ought to have renteda room in a respectable house like Mrs. Granady's. Nobody but genteelyoung fellows holding down genteel jobs ever had that room before.Monkey passing himself off as Mr. James Pollard, or whatever it is hecalls himself, just for the cover of a respectable house--or of me, forall I know. You could have knocked me down with a feather the first timeI met him in the hall. If I did right I'd squeal."

  "You would, like hell."

  "Of course I wouldn't, but with Mrs. Granady trying to run a respectablehouse, only the right kind of young fellows and girls rooming there,it's not fair. Monkey getting his nose into a house like that andhatching God knows what! Getaway, what do you keep doing up in thatroom--all hours--you and all the pussyfooters?"

  "That's the thanks a fellow gets for letting a straight word like'marry' slip between his teeth; that's the thanks a fellow gets forhonest-to-God intentions of trying to get his girl out of a shirtfactory and dike her out in--"

  "But, Getaway, if I was only sure it's all straight!"

  "Well, if that's all you think of me--"

  "All your big-gun talk about the ring. Of course I--I'd like it. Howcould a girl help liking it? But only if it's on the level. Getaway--yousee, I hate to act suspicious all the time, but all your new silk shirtsand now the new checked suit and all. It don't match up with yourtwenty-dollar job in the Wall Street haberdashery."

  Then Getaway threw out one of his feints of mock surprise. "Didn't Itell you, Fairylin? Well, whadda you know about that? I didn't tell her,and me thinking I did."

  "What, Getaway, what?"

  "Why, I'm not working there any more. Why, Gawalmighty couldn't havepleased that old screwdriver. He was so tight the dimes in his pocketused to mildew from laying. He got sore as a pup at me one day justbecause I--"

  "Getaway, you never told me you lost that job that I got for you out ofthe newspaper!" />
  "I didn't lose it, Marylin. I heard it when it fell. Jobs is likevaccination, they take or they don't."

  "They never take with you, Getaway."

  "Don't you believe it. I'm on one now--"

  "A job?"

  "Aw, not the way you mean. Me and a guy got a business proposition on.If it goes through, I'll buy you a marriage license engraved on solidgold."

  "What is it, then, the proposition?"

  "Can't you trust me, Marylin, for a day or two, until it goes through?Sometimes just talking about it is enough to put the jinx on a goodthing."

  "You mean--"

  "I mean I'm going to have money in my pockets."

  "What kind of money?"

  "Real money."

  "_Honest_ money?"

  "Honest-to-God money. And I'm going to dike you out. That's my idea.Pink! That's the color for you. A pink sash and slippers, and one ofthem hats that show your yellow hair right through it, and a laceumbrella and--"

  "And streamers on the hat! I've always been just crazy for streamers ona hat."

  "Red-white-and-blue ones!"

  "No, just pink. Wide ones to dangle it like a basket."

  "And slippers with real diamond buckles."

  "What do you mean, Getaway? How can you give me real diamond shoebuckles--"

  "There you go again. Didn't you promise to trust me and my new businessproposition?"

  "I do, only you've had so many--"

  "You do--_only!_ Yah, you do, only you don't!"

  "I--You see--Getaway--I know how desperate you can be--when you'recornered. I'll never forget how you--you nearly killed a cop--once! Oh,Getaway, when I think back, that time you got into such trouble with--"

  "Leave it to a woman, by Jove! to spoil a fellow's good name, if she hasto rub her fingers in old soot to do it."

  "I--I guess it is from seeing so much around me all the time that it'sin me so to suspect."

  "Oh, it's in you all right. Gawalmighty knows that!"

  "You see, it's because I've seen so much all my life. That's why it'sbeen so grand these last years since I'm alone and--and away from it.Nothing to fear. My own little room and my own little job and me notgetting heart failure every time I recognize a plain-clothes man on thebeat or hear a night stick on the sidewalk jerk me out of my sleep.Getaway, don't do anything bad. You had one narrow escape. You'refinger-printed. Headquarters wouldn't give you the benefit of a doubt ifthere was one. Don't--Getaway!"

  "Yah, stay straight and you'll stay lonesome."

  "Money wouldn't make no difference with me, anyway, if everything elsewasn't all right. Nothing can be pink to me even if it is pink, unlessit's honest. That's why I hold back, Getaway--there's things in youI--can't trust."

  "Yah, fine chance of you holding back if I was to come rolling up toyour door in a six-cylinder--"

  "I tell you, no! If I was that way I wouldn't be holding down the sameold job at the factory. I know plenty of boys who turn over easy money.Too easy--"

  "Then marry me, Marylin, and you'll wear diamonds. In a couple of days,when this goes through, this deal with the fellows--oh, _honest_ deal,if that's what you're opening your mouth to ask--I can stand up besideyou with money in my pockets. Twenty bucks to the pastor, just likethat! Then you can pick out another job and I'll hold it down for you.Bet your life I will--Oh--here, Marylin--this way--quick!"

  "Getaway, why did you turn down this street so all of a sudden? Thisisn't my way home."

  "It's only a block out of the way. Come on! Don't stand gassing."

  "You-thought-that-fellow-on-the-corner-of-Dock-Street-might-be-a-plain-clothes-man!"

  "What if I did? Want me to go up and kiss him?"

  "Why-should-you-care, Getaway?"

  "Don't."

  "But--"

  "Don't believe in hugging the law, though. It's enough when it hugsyou."

  "I want to go home, Getaway."

  "Come on. I'll buy some supper. Steak and French frieds and some Frenchpastry with a cherry on top for your little sweet tooth. That's the kindof a regular guy I am."

  "No. I want to go home."

  "All right, all right! I'm taking you there, ain't I?"

  "Straight."

  "Oh, you'll go straight, if you can't go that way anywhere but home."

  They trotted the little detour in silence, the corners of her mouthwilting, he would have declared, had he the words, like a field flowerin the hands of a picnicker. Marylin could droop that way, so suddenlyand so whitely that almost a second could blight her.

  "Now you're mad, ain't you?" he said, ashamed to be so quicklyconciliatory and trying to make his voice grate.

  "No, Getaway--not mad--only I guess--sad."

  She stopped before her rooming house. It was as long and as lean andas brown as a witch, and, to the more fanciful, something even of theriding of a broom in the straddle of the doorway, with an empty flagpolejutting from it. And then there was the cat, too--not a black one withgold eyes, just one of the city's myriad of mackerel ones, with chewedear and a skillful crouch for the leap from ash to garbage can.

  "I'm going in now, Getaway."

  "Gowann! Get into your blue dress and I'll blow you to supper."

  "Not to-night."

  "Mad?"

  "No. I said only--"

  "Sad?"

  "No--tired--I guess."

  "Please, Marylin."

  "No. Some other time."

  "When? To-morrow? It's Saturday! Coney?"

  "Oh!"

  He thought he detected the flash of a dimple. He did. Remember, she wasvery young and, being fanciful enough to find the witch in the face ofher rooming house, the waves at Coney Island, peanut cluttered as theywere apt to be, told her things. Silly, unrepeatable things. Nonsensethings. Little secret goosefleshing things. Prettinesses. And then theshoot the chutes! That ecstatic leap of heart to lips and the feelingof folly down at the very pit of her. Marylin did like the shoot thechutes!

  "All right, Getaway--to-morrow--Coney!"

  He did not conceal his surge of pleasure, grasping her small hand inboth his. "Good girlie!"

  "Good night, Getaway," she said, but with the inflection of somethingleft unsaid.

  He felt the unfinished intonation, like a rocket that had never droppedits stick, and started up the steps after her.

  "What is it, Marylin?"

  "Nothing," she said and ran in.

  The window in her little rear room with the zigzag of fire escape acrossit was already full of dusk. She took off her hat, a black straw with alittle pink-cotton rose on it, and, rubbing her brow where it had left ared rut, sat down beside the window. There were smells there from a citybouquet of frying foods; from a pool of old water near a drain pipe;from the rear of a butcher shop. Slops. Noises, too. Babies, traffic,whistles, oaths, barterings, women, strife, life. On her veryown ceiling the whisper of footsteps--of restless comings andgoings--stealthy comings and goings--and then after an hour,suddenly and ever so softly, the ball-of-a-foot--squeak!The-ball-of-a-foot--squeak!

  Marylin knew that step.

  And yet she sat, quiet. A star had come out. Looking up at the napkin ofsky let in through the walls of the vertical city, Marylin had learnedto greet it almost every clear evening. It did something for her. Itwas a little voice. A little kiss. A little upside down pool of lightwithout a spill. A little of herself up there in that beyond--thatlittle napkin of beyond that her eyes had the lift to see.

  * * * * *

  Who are you, whose neck has never ached from nine hours a day, six daysa week, of bending over the blue-denim pleat that goes down the frontof men's shirts, to quiver a supersensitive, supercilious, and superiornose over what, I grant you, may appear on the surface to be the omeletof vulgarities fried up for you on the gladdest, maddest strip ofcarnival in the world?

  But it is simpler to take on the cold glaze of sophistication than toremain simple. When the eyelids become weary, it is as if littlered dancing s
hoes were being wrapped away forever, or a very tightheartstring had suddenly sagged, and when plucked at could no longerplong.

  To Marylin, whose neck very often ached clear down into her shoulderblade and up into a bandeau around her brow, and to whom city wallswere sometimes like slaps confronting her whichever way she turned, herenjoyment of Coney Island was as uncomplex as A B C. Untortured by anyawarenesses of relative values, too simple to strive to keep simple,unself-conscious, and with a hungry heart, she was not a spectator, halfashamed of being amused. She _was_ Coney Island! Her heart a shoot thechutes for sheer swoops of joy, her eyes full of confetti points, thesurf creaming no higher than her vitality.

  And it was so the evening following, as she came dancing down thekicked-up sand of the beach, in a little bright-blue frock, mercerizedsilk, if you please, with very brief sleeves that ended right up in thejolliest part of her arm, with a half moon of vaccination winking outroguishly beneath a finish of ribbon bow, and a white-canvas sport hatwith a jockey rosette to cap the little climax of her, and by no meansleast, a metal coin purse, with springy insides designed to hold exactlyfifty cents in nickels.

  Once on the sand, which ran away, tickling each step she took, herspirits, it must be admitted, went just a little crazily off. Thewindow, you see, where Marylin sewed her buttonholes six days the week,faced a brick wall that peeled with an old scrofula of white paint.Coney Island faced a world of sky. So that when she pinched Getaway'snose in between the lips of her coin purse and he, turning a doublesomersault right in his checked suit, landed seated in a sprawl of mockdaze, off she went into peals of laughter only too ready to be released.

  He bought her a wooden whirring machine, an instrument of noise that,because it was not utilitarian, became a toy of delicious sound.

  They rode imitation ocean waves at five cents a voyage, their only _malde mer_, regret when it was over. He bought her salt-water taffy, andwhen the little red cave of her mouth became too ludicrously full of thepully stuff he tried to kiss its state of candy paralysis, and instantlyshe became sober and would have no more of his nonsense.

  "Getaway," she cried, snapping fingers of inspiration, "let's go inbathing!"

  "I'll say we will!"

  No sooner said than done. In rented bathing suits, unfastidious, if youwill, but, pshaw! with the ocean for wash day, who minded! Hers a littleblue wrinkly one that hit her far too far, below the knees, but her headflowered up in a polka-dotted turban, that well enough she knew boundher up prettily, and her arms were so round with that indescribablesoftiness of youth! Getaway, whose eyes could focus a bit when he lookedat them, set up a leggy dance at sight of her. He shocked her a bit inhis cheap cotton trunks--woman's very old shock to the knobby knees andhairy arms of the beach. But they immediately ran, hand in hand, downthe sand and fizz! into the grin of a breaker.

  Marylin with her face wet and a fringe of hair, like a streak ofseaweed, down her cheek! Getaway, shivery and knobbier than ever,pushing great palms of water at her and she back at him, only lessskillfully her five fingers spread and inefficient. Once in the water,he caught and held her close, and yet, for the wonder of it, almostreverentially close, as if what he would claim for himself he must keepintact.

  "Marry me, Marylin," he said, with all the hubbub of the ocean aboutthem.

  She reached for some foam that hissed out before she could touch it.

  "That's you," he said. "Now you are there, and now you aren't."

  "I wish," she said--"oh, Getaway, there's so much I wish!"

  "What do you wish?"

  She looked off toward the immensity of sea and sky. "I--Oh, I don'tknow! Being here makes me wish--Something as beautiful as out there iswhat I wish."

  "Out where?"

  "There."

  "I don't see--"

  "You--wouldn't."

  And then, because neither of them could swim, he began chasing herthrough shallow water, and in the kicked-up spray of their own merrimentthey emerged finally, dripping and slinky, the hairs of his forearmslashed flat, and a little drip of salt water running off the tip of herchin.

  Until long after the sun went down they lay drying on the sand, herhair spread in a lovely amber flare, and, stretched full length on hisstomach beside her, he built a little grave of sand for her feet. Andthe crowd thinned, and even before the sun dipped a faint young moon,almost as if wearing a veil, came up against the blue. They were quietnow with pleasant fatigue, and, propped up on his elbows, he spilledlittle rills of sand from one fist into the other.

  "Gee! you're pretty, Marylin!"

  "Are I, Getaway?"

  "You know you are. You wasn't born with one eye shut and the otherblind."

  "Honest, I don't know. Sometimes I look in the mirror and hope so."

  "You've had enough fellows tell you so."

  "Yes, but--but not the kind of fellows that mean by pretty what _I_ meanby pretty."

  "Well, this here guy means what you mean by pretty."

  "What do you mean by pretty, Getaway?"

  "Pep. Peaches. Cream. Teeth. Yellow hair. Arms. Le--those little holesin your cheeks. Dimples. What do I mean by pretty? I mean you by pretty.Ain't that what you want me to mean by pretty?"

  "Yes--and no--"

  "Well, what the--"

  "It's all right, Getaway. It's fine to be pretty, but--notenough--somehow. I--I can't explain it to you--to anybody. I guesspretty isn't the word. It's beauty I mean."

  "All right, then, anything your little heart desires--beauty."

  "The ocean beauty out there, I mean. Something that makes you hurtand want to hurt more and more. Beauty, Getaway. It's something youunderstand or something you don't. It can't be talked. It sounds silly."

  "Well, then, whistle it!"

  "It has to be _felt_."

  "Peel me," he said, laying her arm to his bare bicep. "Some littlegladiator, eh? Knock the stuffings out of any guy that tried to take youaway from me."

  She turned her head on its flare of drying hair away from him. The beachwas all but quiet and the haze of the end of day in the air, almost inher eyes, too.

  "Oh, Getaway!" she said, on a sigh, and again, "Getaway!"

  His reserve with her, at which he himself was the first to marvel,went down a little then and he seized her bare arm, kissing it, almostsinking his teeth. The curve of her chin down into her throat, as sheturned her head, had maddened him.

  "Quit," she said.

  "Never you mind. You'll wear diamonds," he said, in his sole phraseologyof promise. "Will you get sore if I ask you something, Fairylin?"

  "What?"

  "Want one now?"

  "Want what?"

  "A diamond."

  "No," she said. "When I'm out here I quit wanting things like that."

  "Fine chance a fellow has to warm up to you!"

  "Getaway!"

  "What?"

  "What did you do last night, after you walked home with me?"

  "When?"

  "You know when."

  "Why, bless your heart, I went home, Fairylin!"

  "Please, Getaway--"

  "Home, Fairy."

  "You were up in Monkey's room last night about eleven. Now think,Getaway!"

  "Aw now--"

  "You were."

  "Aw now--"

  "Nobody can fool me on your step. You tiptoed for all you were worth,but I knew it! The-ball-of your-foot--squeak! The-ball-of-yourfoot--squeak!"

  "Sure enough, now you mention it, maybe for a minute around eleven, butonly for a minute--"

  "Please, Getaway, don't lie. It was for nearly all night. Comings andgoings on my ceiling until I couldn't sleep, not because they were sonoisy, but because they were so soft. Like ugly whispers. Is Monkey thefriend you got the deal on with, Getaway?"

  "We just sat up there talking old times--"

  "And Muggs, about eleven o'clock, sneaking up through the halls, dressedlike the messenger boy again. I saw him when I peeked out of the door tosee who it was tiptoeing. Getaway, f
or God's sake--"

  He closed over her wrist then, his face extremely pointed. It was a bonyface, so narrow that the eyes and the cheek bones had to be pitchedclose, and his black hair, usually so shiny, was down in a bang now,because it was damp, and to Marylin there was something sinister in thatdip of bang which frightened her.

  "What you don't know don't hurt you. You hear that? Didn't I tell youthat after a few days this business deal--_business_, get that?--will beover. Then I'm going to hold down any old job your heart desires. Butfirst I'm going to have money in my pockets! That's the only way to makethis old world sit up and take notice. Spondulicks! Then I'm going tocarry you off and get spliced. See? Real money. Diamonds. If you weren'tso touchy, maybe you'd have diamonds sooner than you think. Want onenow?"

  "Getaway, I know you're up to something. You and Monkey and Muggs aretied up with those Wall Street bond getaways."

  "For the luvagod, cut that talk here! First thing I know you'll have mein a brainstorm too."

  "Those fake messenger boys that get themselves hired and, instead ofdelivering the bonds from one office to another--disappear with them.Muggs isn't wearing that messenger's uniform for nothing. You and Monkeyare working with him under cover on something. You can't pass a cop anymore without tightening up. I can feel it when I have your arm. You'vegot that old over-your-shoulder look to you, Getaway. My father--had it.My--mother--too. Getaway!"

  "By gad! you can't beat a woman!"

  "You don't deny it."

  "I do!"

  "Oh, Getaway, I'm glad then, glad!"

  "Over-the-shoulder look. Why, if I'd meet a plain-clothes this minuteI'd go up and kiss him--with my teeth in his ear. That's how much I gotto be afraid of."

  "Oh, Getaway, I'm so glad!"

  "Well, then, lay off--"

  "Getaway, you jumped then! Like somebody had hit you, and it was only akid popping a paper bag."

  "You get on my nerves. You'd make a cat nervous, with your suspecting!The more a fellow tries to do for a girl like you the less--Look herenow, you got to get the hell out of my business."

  She did not reply, but lay to the accompaniment of his violentnervousness and pinchings into the sand, with her face still away fromhim, while the dusk deepened and the ocean quieted.

  After a while: "Now, Marylin, don't be sore. I may be a rotten egg someways, but when it comes to you, I'm there."

  "I'm not sore, Getaway," she said, with her voice still away from him."Only I--Let's not talk for a minute. It's so quiet out here--so full ofrest."

  He sat, plainly troubled, leaning back on the palms of his hands anddredging his toes into the sand. In the violet light the tender line ofher chin to her throat still teased him.

  Down farther along the now deserted beach a youth in a bathing suit wasplaying a harmonica, his knees hunched under his chin, his mouth andhand sliding at cross purposes along the harp. That was the silhouetteof him against a clean sky, almost Panlike, as if his feet might becloven.

  What he played, if it had any key at all, was rather in the mood ofChopin's Nocturne in D flat major. A little sigh for the death of a day,a sob for the beauty of that death, and a hope and ecstasy for the newday yet unborn--all of that on a little throbbing mouth organ.

  "Getaway," cried Marylin, and sat up, spilling sand, "that's it! That'swhat I meant a while ago. Hear? It can't be talked. That's it on themouth organ!"

  "It?"

  "It! Yes, like I said. Somebody has to feel it inside of him, just likeI do, before he can understand. Can't you feel it? Please! Listen."

  "Aw, that's an old jew's-harp. I'll buy you one. How's that?"

  "All right, I guess," she said, starting off suddenly toward thebathhouse.

  He was relieved that she had thrown off the silence.

  "Ain't mad any more, are you, Marylin?"

  "No, Getaway--not mad."

  "Mustn't get fussy that way with me, Marylin. It scares me off. I've hadsomething to show you all day, but you keep scaring me off."

  "What is it?" she said, tiptoe.

  His mouth drew up to an oblique. "You know."

  "No, I don't."

  "Maybe I'll tell you and maybe I won't," he cried, scooping up a handfulof sand and spraying her. "What'll you give me if I tell?"

  "Why--nothing."

  "Want to know?"

  But at the narrowing something in his eyes she sidestepped him, stoopingdown at the door of her bathhouse for a last scoop of sand at him.

  "No," she cried, her hair blown like spray and the same breeze carryingher laughter, guiltless of mood, out to sea.

  On the way home, though, for the merest second, there recurred thepuzzling quirk in her thoughtlessness.

  In the crush of the electric train, packed tightly into the heart ofthe most yammering and petulant crowd in the world--home-going pleasureseekers--a youth rose to give her his seat. A big, beach-tanned fellowwith a cowlick of hair, when he tipped her his hat, standing up off hisright brow like a little apostrophe to him, and blue eyes so very wideapart, and so clear, that they ran back into his head like aisles withlittle lakes shining at the ends of them.

  "Thank you," said Marylin, the infinitesimal second while his hat andcowlick lifted, her own gaze seeming to run down those avenues of hiseyes for a look into the pools at the back.

  "That was it, too, Getaway! The thing that fellow looked--that Icouldn't say. He said it--with his eyes."

  "Who?"

  "That fellow who gave me this seat."

  "I'll break his face if he goo-goos you," said Getaway, who by this timehad a headache and whose feet had fitted reluctantly back into patentleather.

  But inexplicably, even to herself, that night, in the shadow of thestoop of her witch of a rooming house, she let him kiss her lips. Hisfirst of her--her first to any man. It may have been that suddenly shewas so extremely tired--tired of the lay of the week ahead, suggested bythe smells and the noises and the consciousness of that front box pleat.

  The little surrender, even though she drew back immediately, was wine tohim and as truly an intoxicant.

  "Marylin," he cried, wild for her lips again, "I can't be held off muchlonger. I'm straight with you, but I'm human, too."

  "Don't, Getaway, not here! To-morrow--maybe."

  "I'm crazy for you!"

  "Go home now, Getaway."

  "Yes--but just one more--"

  "Promise me you'll go straight home from here--to bed."

  "I promise. Marylin, one more. One little more. Your lips--"

  "No, no--not now. Go--"

  Suddenly, by a quirk in the dark, there was a flash of something downMarylin's bare third finger, so hurriedly and so rashly that it scrapedthe flesh.

  "That's for you! I've been afraid all day. Touchy! Didn't I tell you?Diamonds! Now will you kiss me? Now will you?"

  In the shadow of where she stood, looking down, it was as if she gazedinto a pool of fire that was reaching in flame clear up about her head,and everywhere in the conflagration Getaway's triumphant "Now will you!Now will you!"

  "Getaway," she cried, flecking her hand as if it burned, "where did youget this?"

  "It's for you, Fairylin, and more like it coming. It weighs a carat anda half. That stone's worth more than a sealskin jacket. You're going tohave one of those, too. Real seal! Now are you sore at me any more? Nowyou've a swell kick coming, haven't you? Now! Now!"

  "Getaway," she cried behind her lit hand, because her palm was to hermouth and above it her eyes showing the terror in their whites, "wheredid you get this?"

  "There!" he said, and kissed her hotly and squarely on the lips.

  Somehow, with the ring off her finger and in a little pool of its lightas it lay at his feet, where he stood dazed on the sidewalk, Marylinwas up the stoop, through the door, up two flights, and through herown door, slamming it, locking it, and into her room, rubbing and halfcrying over her left third finger where the flash had been.

  She was frightened, because for all of an hour she sat on
the end of thecot in her little room trembling and with her palms pressed into hereyes so tightly that the darkness spun. There was quick connection inMarylin between what was emotional and what was merely sensory. Sheknew, from the sickness at the very pit of her, how sick were her heartand her soul--and how afraid.

  She undressed in the dark--a pale darkness relieved by a lighted windowacross the areaway. The blue mercerized dress she slid over a hanger,covering it with one of her cotton nightgowns and putting it intocareful place behind the cretonne curtain that served her as clothescloset. Her petticoat, white, with a rill of lace, she folded away. Andthen, in her bare feet and a pink-cotton nightgown with a blue birdmachine-stitched on the yoke, stood cocked to the hurry of indistinctfootsteps across her ceiling, and in the narrow slit of hallwayoutside her door, where the stairs led up still another flight,the-ball-of-a-foot--squeak! The sharp crack of a voice. Running.

  "Getaway!" cried Marylin's heart, almost suffocating her with a dreadfulspasm of intuition.

  It was all so quick. In the flash of her flung-open door, as her headin its amber cloud leaned out, Getaway, bending almost double overthe upper banister, his lips in his narrow face back to show a whiteterribleness of strain that lingered in the memory, hurled out an armsuddenly toward two men mounting the steps of the flight below him.

  There was a shot then, and on the lower flight one of the men, withan immediate red mouth opening slowly in his neck, slid downstairsbackward, face up.

  Suddenly, from a crouching position beside her door, the secondfigure shot forward now, with ready and perfect aim at thealready-beginning-to-be-nerveless figure of Getaway hanging over thebanister with the smoking pistol.

  By the reaching out of her right hand Marylin could have deflected thatperfect aim. In fact, her arm sprang toward just that reflex act, thenstayed itself with the jerk of one solid body avoiding collision withanother.

  So much quicker than it takes in the telling there marched acrossMarylin's sickened eyes this frieze: Her father trailing dead from theunderslinging of a freight car. That moment when a uniform had steppedin from the fire escape across the bolt of Brussels lace; hermother's scream, like a plunge into the heart of a rapier.Uniforms--contemplating. On street corners. Opposite houses. Those fourfingers peeping over each of her father's shoulders in the courtroom.Getaway! His foxlike face leaner. Meaner. Black mask. Electric chair.Volts. Ugh--volts! God--you know--best--help--

  When the shot came that sent Getaway pitching forward down thethird-floor flight she was on her own room floor in a long and mercifulfaint. Marylin had not reached out.

  * * * * *

  Time passed. Whole rows of days of buttonholes down pleats that wereoften groped at through tears. Heavy tears like magnifying glasses. Andthen, with that gorgeous and unassailable resiliency of youth, lightertears. Fewer tears. Few tears. No tears.

  Under the cretonne curtain, though, the blue mercerized frock hungunworn, and in its dark drawer remained the petticoat with its rill oflace. But one night, with a little catch in her throat (it was the lastof her sobs), she took out the sport hat, and for no definite reasonbegan to turn the jockey rosette to the side where the sun had not fadedit.

  These were quiet evenings in her small room. All the ceiling agitationhad long ago ceased since the shame of the raided room above, and Muggs,in his absurd messenger's suit, and Monkey marching down the threeflights to the clanking of steel at the wrists.

  There were new footsteps now. Steps that she had also learned to know,but pleasantly. They marched out so regularly of mornings, invariablyjust as she was about to hook her skirtband or pull on her stockings.They came home so patly again at seven, about as she sat herself down toa bit of sewing or washing-out. They went to bed so pleasantly. Thud,on the floor, and then, after the expectant interval of unlacing, thudagain. They were companionable, those footsteps, almost like reverentialmarching on the grave of her heart.

  Marylin reversed the rosette, and as the light began to go sat downbeside her window, idly, looking up. There was the star point in herpatch of sky, eating its way right through the purple like a diamond,and her ache over it was so tangible that it seemed to her she couldalmost lift the hurt out of her heart, as if it were a little imprisonedbird. And as it grew darker there came two stars, and three, and nine,and finally the sixty hundred.

  Then from the zig of the fire escape above, before it twisted down intothe zag of hers, there came to Marylin, through the medley of citysilences and the tears in her heart, this melody, on a jew's-harp:

  If it had any key at all, it was in the mood of Chopin's Nocturne in Dflat major. A little sigh for the death of a day, a sob for the beautyof that death, and the throb of an ecstasy for the new day not yet born.

  Looking up against the sheer wall of the vertical city, on the ledge offire escape above hers, and in the yellow patch of light thrown out fromthe room behind, a youth, with his knees hunched up under his chin, andhis mouth and hand moving at cross purposes, was playing the harmonica.

  Wide apart were his eyes, and blue, so that while she gazed up, smiling,as he gazed down, smiling, it was almost as if she ran up the fireescape through the long clear lanes of those eyes, for a dip into thelittle twin lakes at the back of them.

  And--why, didn't you know?--there was a lift of cowlick to the rightside of his front hair, as he sat there playing in the twilight, thatwas exactly the shape of an apostrophe!