IV
Paul went down into the subway in a daze; so distraught was he that he dropped a real nickel into the turnstile.
Five or six thousand per year! He didn't know anybody who made such a royal salary. He knew, by hearsay, that such lucky fellows existed; he supposed that the towering buildings of lower New York must house a number of them. He had heard that movie actors made a million dollars per year apiece, but such large sums meant nothing to him—as, in all probability, they mean nothing to many movie actors. Men in banks, where money is visible in heaps, made no such salaries; he knew a paying-teller in a Harlem bank who sat amid currency like ajunkman amid bundles of old newspapers, and he made per week only twenty-three dollars.
But, if he could only get it, what couldn't he do with five or six thousand per year! Why, he couldn't waste time working if he was ever to spend so much money; his uncle had shown sense there. For ten dollars per week he could get a large and sunny room in a swell apartment, with hot and cold water, steam heat, electric light, and breakfast optional. He would have a belted dressing-gown—five dollars in Sonnenthal's—and a smoking table with Virginia and Turkish and English cigarettes. After his optional breakfast he would lay off in an easy chair, and read three or four newspapers—he had never had time to read newspapers thoroughly. He would smoke cigarettes, yawning and tapping his mouth, and glancing occasionally through the window to see ordinary people hurrying about their work.
If the day was fine he would take a stroll down Seventh Avenue—he pictured the apartment as situated on Seventh Avenue—and in the afternoon he would take in a matinee; the best matinees in Harlem could be taken in complete for a dollar. When the show was done he would stroll and saunter some more, across One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street, slapping his stick jauntily against his faultlessly creased trouser-leg, watching common working people exuding wearily from stores and offices and lofts, nodding slightly to his friends. He would dine at a Greek restaurant, a rotisserie, at a secluded little table beneath a pink shade, waving the obsequious waiter and the menu away, and ordering the Regular Dinner like a lord.
He would invite fellows to his rooms—he did not see that he could utilize more than one room, but rooms would be the right word. He would have a square-face of gin in his rooms—he could get it for two and a half, and the real stuff—and he would have rye, and a bottle of pale and smoky Scotch.
But all this would not exhaust five or six thousand per year. Sometimes he would go to other fellows' rooms, and would drink free of their rye and their Scotch. He would have a lot of money left over, week after week.
Well—he could play the ponies! He had always wanted to play the ponies, but the game had been too rich for his blood. But five or six thousand per year would be ample. It would be more than he could use. Why, even fifty per week would be wonderful; that would be three times the salary on which he had been managing to get along. He didn't know any fellow who was making fifty per week. He would be as snug inside it as a worm inside a nut. But——
He had to get it. Even if he was modest enough to be satisfied with it, he would not get it until he had earned it. What had possessed his old fool of an uncle to stick such a joker in? Why, Paul could not begin to earn fifty per week in a month of Sundays! Spend it? Well, yes, there was some chance of that. But earn it? Get some miserable tight-wad of an employer to put into his glad hand five big, crinkly, glistening, vividly green ten-dollar bills every Saturday? He could see him doing it—yes, he could!
So, sunk in an April state of mind, alternating glorious sunshine and overcast weather, he arrived at One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street again, walked west, toward the Belvedere. He did not know why he was going there; but there was one person who knew something about him, one person who had caught a glimpse of him, one person upon whom he had not imposed a fictitious Paul Manley.
The pleasant-faced cashier was just going to lunch. Paul lifted his hat; she was passing him with a curt nod when she noticed that his face was troubled.
"Listen," he said, "could I talk to you a little bit? I want to ask you something. Can I take you to lunch?"
"If you let me pay my own."
"Oh, sure, that will be all right! Let's go over to the Palace cafeteria; that's a nice place and they got tables for ladies."
He escorted her into the lunchroom, and took off his hat when he sat down. The numerous unaccompanied men in the place wore their hats.
"Let's have some of that ox-tail braise," he suggested. "It's nice here. It's made out of the tail of an ox."
"Maybe," she said. "We have it in our house on Mondays, ox-tail soup—my mother makes it out of the neck of a chicken!"
They laughed. "Two ox-tail braises," ordered Paul.
"Listen," he said, after they had exchanged introductions, "An uncle of mine died, and left me a big fortune!"
"You always have a new one, Mr. Manley," she said with expectant smile. "Well, go ahead and spring it."
"Spring what?"
"The joke! Or am I supposed to ask something? Who is your uncle, or what did he die of, or something like that? I'm awful slow, Mr. Manley."
"This ain't a joke. Well, it is a kind of a joke, too. Read over this letter, and then I'll tell you about it."
She read the letter, and then he told her about it. "So now you see what I'm up against. Where in heck am I to pull down five or six thousand per year?"
"Oh, you could do it if you put your mind down to it. What do you work at?"
"Well, just now I am not working. To tell you the truth, I got canned yesterday. I was working over in Hepp's Bargain Basement, and the boss got me sore, and I got right up and told him where he got off. You know I got a hot temper."
"What were you getting?"
"Seventeen dollars."
"That's not much for a fellow like you. Don't you know any trade?"
"Nothing better than selling shoes."
He spoke in a low tone of voice, glancing guardedly about him to see that he was not overheard. Mingled with his humiliation, he felt a certain rare pleasure in telling this girl the truth; but he was quite content to enjoy this pleasure at her expense only, and would probably have been very unhappy if it had been broadcasted that Paul Manley had been fired from a job which paid seventeen dollars a week.
"Oh, I can get another job easily enough," he said. "I've had so many jobs that I know about what to say. It's always easier to get a job than to hold it, is my experience."
She stared at him in reflection. "Do you know what I would do, if I were you?"
"That's just what I'm asking."
"Then listen here. You're going to get as much money as you're earning a year and a half from now, isn't that so? Very well. Now what are you going to earn it at? The thing you know best is selling shoes. But if you go into a shoe store and ask for a job, they're going to ask where you worked last, and then it will come out that you were fired. You will start off with a black eye. The best thing you can do is to go right back to Hepp's, and ask for your job back."
"I should say not! Me ask that old crab for a job?"
"Supposing he is an old crab, what do you care? All you want is to work up to a good salary, isn't it? And you are not going to stay there for good. If you stayed there for a year and a half, and worked up to a good salary, then he would be sorry to lose you, and you could get right up and tell him to keep his old job!"
"Do you really think he would be sorry to lose me?" asked Paul doubtingly.
"Why, certainly! And that would be some satisfaction, wouldn't it?"
"Well, I guess he will not give me the job back. He didn't know how to appreciate a man, Hepp didn't!"
"You are worrying too much about Mr. Hepp, and what he thinks. Will you go around and ask him for the job back?"
"I would not do it for anybody else in the world, but I will," he said, bowing his high spirit. "Since you ask me to, Miss Hazeltine! I will give Hepp one more chance!"