Imogene threw her head back and laughed. “Thanks, but you’re one girl who has nothing to fear.” She glanced appreciatively, professionally, at Marjorie. “Well, he has good reason. You’re terribly sweet.” The boiling over of the coffee interrupted Marjorie’s answer. Imogene called from behind the screen that hid Noel’s tiny pantry and gas burner, “Cream? Sugar?”
“Black.”
“Ah, a coffee lover, like me.” She brought out two steaming cups.
Marjorie noticed that there were no rings on the girl’s bony hands. “Are you—are you the Imogene Noel told me about? The one who married an oil man?”
Imogene’s lips twisted cynically. “Oil man, of sorts. We’ve busted up. I’m back looking for work.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry about. One of those things. Fun while it lasted, and all that,” Imogene said gaily. She sipped, crouching over the cup. She had slant eyes and a charming slow smile; one of those lucky girls, Marjorie thought, who walked around inside a body like jewelers’ work, every detail perfect, and none of it her own doing. It was like being born rich. Her legs through the slit in the housecoat were dazzlingly long and lovely. She had minimized her one defect, a big jaw, by piling the beautiful red hair full on the head, rouging the cheeks high, and broadening the mouth a bit beyond the natural line. There was a faint coarseness about Imogene. Perhaps it lay in the very excellence of makeup, the shrewdness of hair arrangement. Marjorie’s eyes kept moving to the open suitcase full of underwear. Imogene said, “I’m getting out of here tomorrow, so friend Noel won’t be dispossessed any more. I didn’t want to get involved in hotel bills, you know, before I was sure I had work.”
“I suppose you do modelling.”
“Well, I’m more a singer, really, but the modelling pays the bills, you might say. Gosh, things are awful in this town. I thought Roosevelt was supposed to fix the depression. Why, I’ve never seen it so dead. Will you excuse me, honey, while I finish dressing? I’m late.”
“Go right ahead.”
Imogene’s slip, her shoes, her stockings, were all expensive and smart. Nothing could have been more conservative, yet more designed to set off her voluptuous figure, than the hand-tailored black suit and the mannish black hat. She put on her clothes with little waste motion, chattering about her singing career, the unreliability of coaches, the high price of vocal arrangements, and the miserable state of the night-club trade. Dressed, she somehow looked coarser than before. She rapped at the bathroom door. “Hey, have you drowned? I’m off.”
The door opened and Noel looked out, unshaven and pale, dressed in moccasins, corduroy pants, and his old black turtle-neck sweater. He said, “What are you going to do about breakfast? Hi, Marge.”
“Oh, I’ll get a bite uptown. I’m late. That kid never did come with the butter and eggs. I thought that’s who Marjorie was, but it wasn’t.”
“Had I known, I’d have brought some,” Marjorie said. She was watching them like a detective, trying to guess from inflections, gestures, and looks what had really been happening in this apartment for four days. She was sick with tension. Her arms tingled; her fingers were cold as a dead man’s.
“It’s just as well,” Noel said, yawning. “I don’t feel the least bit like eggs, and I know exactly what I do want. I want some whiskey and oysters.”
Imogene laughed. “You! I thought you’d gotten over those habits. Whiskey and oysters!” She turned to Marjorie. “How about that for a breakfast?—By the way, Noel, I’ve already explained to Margie that you’re sleeping upstairs with Van Renheim while I use your place. So she won’t be breaking the crockery over your head.”
Noel grinned, glancing at Marjorie. “Why did you do that? You should have let her stew. Jealousy’s good for some girls.”
“Well, I’ve got my reputation to think about now, you know, being an old married woman with a kid, and all. Though I must say, now that I’m back, it all seems like a dream. Well—” She opened the door. “Nice meeting you, Margie. ’Bye, Noel, hope you enjoy your whiskey and oysters. You might shave, at least, seeing you’ve got company, you bum. See you tonight, maybe. Let’s see, have I got the key? Yes. ’Bye.”
The door closed. Noel and Marjorie confronted each other across the familiar room. The scent of Imogene’s hyacinth perfume drifted in the air between them. Noel leaned in the doorway of the bathroom with a yawn and a smile. “Well, how are you? Can I offer you a matzo?”
“Don’t be so clever.”
“I mean it. I have them.” He brought a box of matzos from behind the screen, and rattled it at her. “I’ve been eating ’em, fried with eggs and sausages, all week. Developed a great yen for them at your house. How about some more coffee and a matzo? Damn kid never did come with the butter.”
“No, thanks. I see what you meant about Imogene. She’s really beautiful.”
“You should have seen her when she was eighteen. Three years in Oklahoma have made her pretty leathery, to my taste, and duller than ever. But she’s a good kid.” He yawned again, and slumped on the bed. “I’m really falling apart. Even a cold shower does nothing to me, just makes my lips blue and leaves me sleepy.”
“Haven’t you had enough sleep?”
“Very little, past four days. Been on a reading and writing jag. These things happen to me.”
“Is that why you haven’t been at Paramount? I thought you must be sick.”
He looked amused. “Has Sam been after you?”
“I’ve just come from lunch with him.”
“Gad! The Save-Noel-from-Himself Club in emergency session. Well, what’s the diagnosis? Rigor mortis of the conscience? I’m hungry as hell. Come on, let’s go out and eat. Oh, you just had lunch. Well, watch me eat, then.” He got up, put on the threadbare brown overcoat, and regarded himself wryly in the mirror. “Are you sure you want to be seen with such a tramp?”
“You’ve looked better, I’ll say that—”
The telephone buzzed at that moment, a faint frustrated noise. They glanced at each other. It buzzed again and again. Marjorie, putting on her coat, said, “Aren’t you going to answer it?”
“There’s nobody I want to hear from—now that you’re with me, my love. Who can it be? Sam, or my folks. Let it ring.”
“Funny,” she said, staring at the buzzing phone.
“What now?”
“If Imogene’s using the apartment, what’s the point of muffling the bell?”
His wide-eyed blank look lasted only a second. He burst out laughing. “Skip it, will you? If Imogene and I were living in sin, she’d tell you or I would, it means nothing to either of us. She’s out all day and half the night on her rounds, or whatever queer things she does. I still work down here. I’ve been working like a dog, eighteen hours a day.”
“Doing what?”
“Writing something that will shake the world. Come along, I’ll tell you about it.”
Marjorie felt absurdly like a movie character snooping for clues at a murder scene. There were ashtrays on the night tables at either side of the bed. They had not recently been emptied. In the ashtray on the side near the window, the butts were all red with lipstick. In the other ashtray the butts were white. Both trays were equally full.
“Do you know you’re standing there like a sleepwalker?” Noel said. “Come on, I’m starving.”
It was impossible to ask him about the ashtrays. It was too low, too humiliating; it was comical. She could grin, thinking about it. And yet she was in such pain she could hardly breathe. She followed him out, and down the stairs.
Chapter 29. BRIEF CAREER OF AN EVANGELIST
“Gad, smell this air!” Noel stood at the top of the street steps, breathing deeply. “Who’s growing jonquils on Eleventh Street? Why didn’t you tell me it was so warm? I don’t need a coat.”
“I don’t think it’s warm,” Marjorie said. “I’m cold.”
“Another April,” Noel said. He took her arm and they walked down the steps.
“You know, there’s nothing to do in New York, really, when the year turns like this. People just let it happen, and go about their business, in and out of the turnstiles. In Paris, or even in Mexico City, it would be a kind of holiday. Everybody’d be out strolling, young couples kissing on street corners, pushcarts with flowers everywhere—”
“I think I prefer the New York style,” Marjorie said. “I like to do my kissing in private.”
“You don’t much like the whole process, public or private,” Noel said. “If you could back God into an argument in a restaurant—as you’re about to back me—you’d want to know why He couldn’t think of a less messy way to keep the race going.”
“I’m not eager for any arguments, Noel. In fact why don’t you just have breakfast somewhere by yourself? I’ll go home. I came down here because I thought you might be sick.”
“Okay, you go on home. That’s a good idea. I’ve got a lot of thinking to do.”
“About us?”
“No, indeed. About my work.”
“What are you working on, more songs?”
“No, something else.”
“Look, whatever it is, if it’s so important that you have to take time off from work, don’t you think out of common courtesy you ought to let Sam Rothmore know?”
“I’m uncommonly uncourteous, sweetie. That’s an old story.” He paused in front of a little French restaurant in the cellar of a brownstone house. “They make fine onion omelets, and the bread is real bread… But I want those oysters. Come on.”
She said after walking in silence, “You should know better than anybody in the world that I don’t regard sex as something messy. That’s a vile thing to say to me.”
“Don’t let it rankle. It was just a bum joke.”
“You’re being very strange.”
“Am I? I wasn’t aware of it. This breeze, this April breeze… it has the edge of a scythe in it. Time’s passing, baby, did you know that? You’re a big girl. Little Marjorie’s all gone. Dr. Shapiro, where art thou? Here’s where I’m having breakfast. Are you going home?”
“Why—it’s just a saloon. What can you eat in a saloon?”
“They have very good oysters.” The wan sunlight on his face showed a few gray bristles in the blond stubble on his cheek. She had never noticed them before. He needed a haircut. He grinned at her scrutiny, stoop-shouldered, his thick long hair stirring in the breeze. “Debating whether to sit down in public with this panhandler, hey?”
“Maybe I’ll come in for a little while.”
“Well, what a pleasant surprise.” He led her through the saloon, where a couple of morose men in overalls were drinking beer, to a back room, and sat on a bench under the window at a little table covered by a soiled red and white checked cloth. “Couldn’t ask for more privacy, could you, for giving me a going-over?”
“What is this place?” Marjorie looked around with distaste at the bare brown-painted walls, the disorderly tables and chairs, the naked lamps, and the cardboard beer advertisements in the window. The sour smell of beer was very strong. “I thought I knew all your haunts—”
An old fat woman came from the barroom, wiping her hands on her apron. Noel ordered oysters and a double Canadian whiskey, and the woman waddled out.
“Good Lord, I thought you were fooling. You can’t have that for breakfast,” Marjorie said. “You’ll kill yourself. Have some cornflakes or something.”
“Best breakfast in the world,” Noel said. “Cornflakes, if you want to know, are what’s poisoning America, and causing the rise in mental disorders. You know what cornflakes are, don’t you? Didn’t I ever tell you how cornflakes got started?”
She was not in the mood for one of his crazy improvisations, though usually she found them very funny. “No, but I wish you’d order some cornflakes right now, if you can get them in this hole, instead of whiskey and oysters.”
“Well, dear, it was a cold March evening in 1899 in Chicago, outside one of the big flour mills. There was this pile of refuse big as a mountain in the yard of that mill, the waste products of years, and years, and years, of milling. Well, there came a knock on the door of the president of this mill’s office. When he went to open it, there was this little ragged old man outside. He had a long bushy beard stained with tobacco juice, and a tattered old burlap sack over his shoulder. And this old man whined, all scrunched over, ‘Mister, can I please have some of that junk off that pile in your back yard?’ The president said, ‘I don’t know what you want it for. Hogs refuse to eat it. But sure, you’re welcome to it, all you want.’ The old man said, ‘Okay, mister, I sure thank you. That’s all I wanted to hear.’ He straightened up and walked into the yard, tearing off the beard as he went—he was really only eighteen years old—and he took out a whistle and blew it. In about five seconds a fleet of a hundred and forty-seven wagons drawn by dray horses came galloping into that yard. Margie, they cleared away that mountain of rubbish before you could have smoked a cigarette. They didn’t leave a grain. That eighteen-year-old boy became the cornflakes king. When he died he owned that flour mill and four more besides. He left seven billion dollars in cash to his wife. In fact, he was the finest example of the hard-fisted young American industrialist anybody has ever seen. We all ought to be more like him, especially me, instead of coming late to work, and eating whiskey and oysters for breakfast. Nevertheless, and you can stand me up against a wall and shoot me if you want, I don’t give a good goddamn for cornflakes, and I never will.” The woman had returned and was setting the whiskey and oysters in front of him. “Ah, these look fine, Mrs. Kleinschmidt. Well, Margie, that’s how it happened that Imogene Normand opened my door this morning, instead of me. I feel you’re entitled to this explanation.”
“What’s the matter with you?” Marjorie said. Noel was drinking the rye neat. “I’m beginning to think that isn’t your first drink today.”
“No indeed,” Noel said, “but I trust I’m coherent.”
“Well, yes, very much so, only a little too gay or something, all things considered.”
Noel dipped two oysters at once in horseradish and tomato sauce, and ate them. “Exquisite. I was dying for these.”
“Lord, you must be hungry.” He was cramming a handful of oyster crackers into his mouth. “That cornflakes story is very interesting, dear, but I don’t quite see how it explains everything about Imogene.”
“Don’t you?”
“No. Not that it matters. I think it’s nice of you to give her the room and put yourself out like that, but I’m not surprised. You’re always painting yourself blacker than you are.”
He stopped wolfing the oysters, and looked narrowly at her. “You know, you’re always saying I’m a mystery, but you’re twice as mysterious to me. You absolutely baffle me. I’ve known you intimately for a year, and I’m still not sure whether you’re incredibly naïve or as smart as a snake.”
“What have you been working on, Noel? Or don’t you want to talk about it?”
He lit a cigarette and idly picked up a greasy box from the bench. It was full of chess pieces. He pulled out a black knight and the white king, and placed them in the red and white squares on the tablecloth so that the knight was attacking the king. “I like this place. Most evenings and some afternoons you can pick up a chess game with one Village character or another—a boozed-up poet, a communist, a book critic, a painter, or just a plain precious nobody with an avant-garde magazine under his arm. The talk is more interesting than the chess. I bait them. You’d swear I was all worked up over Kafka, or John Strachey, or Alfred Adler, or whatever, and all the time I’m fighting to keep from rolling off the bench laughing. It’s a great diversion when you’re dull.”
“You enjoy that kind of thing because you’re such a horrible intellectual snob,” Marjorie said. “You like to see the little creatures crawling at your feet.”
“Do you really want to know what I’ve been working on?”
“I’m dying to know.”
He p
ut his hand on the back of her neck, and caressed her briefly. His eyes were very bright. “I wish—well, no use wishing, is there?” He picked up the whiskey. “You’re responsible for the whole thing, you know, this tangent I’m off on. Next time you talk to Sam Rothmore admit your guilt, at least. You touched it all off by dragging me to that seder.” He drank off the contents of the glass. Marjorie had never seen him drink this way. It appalled her to watch raw spirits disappear into him like water. He did not cough or even blink. His speech was quite precise, if anything, slightly more so than when he was sober, and he was holding himself very erect. He was silent, moving the white king idly from square to square in the tablecloth, and pursuing it with the black horse. Then he said with sudden gloom, “I don’t know, this involves considerable baring of the soul, which offends the only modesty I have. But, what the hell! We’ll all be dead in a few years. I don’t know why I take myself so seriously.”
“Noel, what’s it all about?” He had worked Marjorie into a fever of inquisitiveness.
“If you laugh I’ll sock you. I came away from that evening at your home—you know, the seder—with the perfectly sober idea that I might become a rabbi.” He grinned at her amazed look. “It’s true. That is, I didn’t have the idea when I left your house. I walked the streets all night, going from one bar to another, drinking and walking on. I walked down to the Village from your house. It’s about five miles, you know. Working from saloon to saloon, it took me until dawn. Kid, it was a nerve crisis the like of which I’ve never known. Something exploded in my subconscious. It’ll be a long time before I hoot down the idea of ancestral memory again, and all that—You’re looking at me like a fish. Does all this strike you as insane?”
“I guess I look like a fish when I’m enthralled,” Marjorie said. “For God’s sake, go on.”