# Kept Woman/Chapter 4

The road to City Island leads through Fordham, past the Bronx Zoo, and on out through dark, tree-lined silences. Carl Feldman had suggested a ride, and this one in particular because he was well known in one of the roadhouses along the way and they could get a drink. He sat with May in the back seat. Her hat was off and she lay with her head against Carl's shoulder. She spoke rarely, only breaking her silence to say, "Don't."
Lillian was beside Hubert Scott. He paid little attention to her because he was driving, and Hubert Scott took his driving seriously. When it was necessary for him to get somewhere in a great hurry he would occasionally do thirty miles, but it had to be on the open road.
"Say, Hubert, we're blocking traffic," Carl remarked. "What's the matter?"
"We ain't going to a fire, Carl. What's the use of hurrying? I always figure that it's best to take it easy and live longer."
"What's the use of you living long? The way you drive you won't get many places if you live to be a thousand."
"Don't be razzing me. I'll get you there safe."
Carl said no more. There was no use. Hubert Scott ​didn't believe that any car would do over forty miles an hour and he wasn't sure that even that could be accomplished; he'd never tried. It was too dangerous.
"What kind of a car is this?" Lillian asked. She couldn't tell by looking at it. She was unacquainted with the insignia and distinctive features that marked the different makes.
"This is a Packard, little girl," responded Hubert.
Lillian did know that a Packard wasn't in the same social class with a Chevrolet or a Ford. She looked at Hubert with a new respect.
"Pretty swell," she breathed.
"Oh, it's a good boat," he responded carelessly. "I've never had a bit of trouble with it."
Carl and May were lighting cigarettes. "Want one, Lillian?" Carl asked.
"Yes, please."
Carl lit it for her and passed it over. He sat back then and began to talk to May in a low tone.
"Pull down that shade, will you, Carl?" Hubert requested. "The lights from those cars back there flash on my mirror and darn near blind me."
Carl pulled down the little shade over the back window. Lillian wondered how a person could drive comfortably without knowing if anything was in back. Hubert must be a pretty good driver. She was short of conversational material; so perhaps that would be a good line to work on.
"You drive beautifully," she said. "But I suppose you know that."
"Well, I don't know," he admitted modestly. "I've ​had a lot of people tell me that I was the only one they could ever drive with and feel comfortable. But I say it's only common sense and keeping your eyes open. You know Joseph L. Heidingsfelder, the millionaire?"
No, Lillian didn't.
"Well, I mean, you've seen his name in the papers?"
Lillian hadn't. "Oh, yes," she said, "I've seen his name in the papers."
"Well, he's been a friend of the family's for years. He's an old fellow now. He's a card. Funny as the devil. Only last week he says to me, 'Hubert, I wish you would come over and take me for a ride some day. Here I am with a string of eleven cars and I never get a ride.' I says, 'Well, Joseph L.'—I always call him Joseph L.—'why don't you get a good chauffeur?' And he says, 'They're all too reckless. I'm spoiled after driving with you.'"
"I'm spoiled too," said Carl. "I've got bunions on my can from sitting so long. No fooling, Hubert, May's nervous from the way you're poking along."
"She'd better be nervous than dead," Hubert replied, solemnly. "Look at all the collisions you read about in the papers. No careful drivers ever get into them."
"Say, don't kid yourself that you're careful, big boy. You're too slow to be careful. You know crawling on a motor road is as dangerous as speeding."
"Well, I don't crawl. When you're not going any place in particular twenty miles is plenty."
"Oh, don't bother about it," said May. "We'll get there in time."
​"There" was a large white frame house. The veranda was gay with red and blue bulbs and a huge sign on the lawn announced that they had Mal Gobel's Joy Boys playing music within. Also chicken and waffles at two-fifty per plate.
Carl stretched while Hubert locked the car. May put her hat on and Lillian leaned over and pulled up her stockings. Round garters were always letting your stockings slip and wrinkle.
The Joy Boys were actually there. Five slim, bored-looking young men playing for one lone couple who did not even justify the Joy Boys' existence by dancing in time to their music. Besides the dancing couple there was a party of three at a table by the window. The management had optimistically crowded the place with tables; so there was plenty to choose from. Carl fancied a table by the orchestra stand. Hubert would have liked to sit overlooking the veranda where he could watch the car, but Carl had a flair for getting his way.
A waiter appeared. Carl eyed him with disfavor. "Where's Johnnie?" he asked.
"Johnnie's not here any more. Bought himself a place on the Lincoln Highway. Can I do anything for you?"
"I don't know. We'd like a drink."
"Sure thing. What's it going to be?"
"I'd like a ginger-ale highball," said Carl and looked questioningly at the others.
"Me too," said Hubert.
"Could I get an old-fashioned?" asked May. "I'd like that."
The waiter nodded.
​"I'll take one," said Lillian.
The waiter departed. The four at the table sat gloomily silent. There didn't seem to be anything that anybody wanted to say. After a minute of drumming his fingers thoughtfully on the table Carl spoke.
"You can always have a good time if you know the right places to go," he said. "Now a stranger in town would never find a place like this."
"That's right," Hubert agreed.
"Still, if you know a place like this and can make friends in it," Carl went on, "you're all right. See, I can get a drink here any time at all. Come to think of it, prohibition is a joke, ain't it?"
He addressed his question to Lillian. She was on her mettle. May's boy friend was asking her a serious question. Now was the moment to say something smart and scathing of the Eighteenth Amendment.
"Yeh, it's a joke all right," she said after a moment's thought.
"Damn right, it's a joke," Carl snapped at her as though she had been responsible for prohibition and after months of argument he had forced her to admit its failure.
"I don't know what's funny about it," said May. "If it's a joke it ought to be funny. Before prohibition my old man used to spend half of his pay in the corner saloon on a Saturday night and come home cock-eyed to my old lady. Now liquor is so expensive and so damn lousy that he spends all his pay for it and my old lady has to have the doctor in every Sunday morning for him."
​Hubert laughed. "That's a good one," he said, appreciatively.
May glared at him. "You wouldn't think it was so good," she said, "if you had to put up with him."
"Yeh," Carl mourned, "prohibition is rotten."
The waiter brought the drinks and distributed them. May grasped hers swiftly and firmly. Her small hands fluttered excitedly about the business of stirring the drink. She was ready for another before Lillian had half finished.
"Hey, don't be such a tank, kid," Carl protested. "You'll be running your old man a race for first honors."
"That's foolish," she said, "and you know it. I only drink to be sociable. I don't even like the God-damned stuff. I never drank till I went out with you and I only started then because I didn't want to be a wet blanket. Me a tank, no less! I couldn't be. I don't like liquor. I could stop drinking right now, only everybody else drinks, so I don't see no sense in me stopping."
Lillian's eyes rested wonderingly on May. That flare-up had been very unreasonable, she thought. Surely Carl's little joke didn't call for all that.
The waiter was at the table again.
"Another round," said Carl.
"Not for me," May told the waiter.
"Aw, come on, May," Hubert soothed her. "Carl was only fooling."
May sulked and Carl said nothing.
"One old-fashioned and two highballs," the waiter droned and started away.
​"Wait," May called. She turned to Carl. "I'll take another," she said, "if you'll promise not to call me a tank again."
"I'll promise nothing," said Carl. "I don't care if you don't take another."
"All right then. I'll have another for spite."
The waiter smiled and went away.
Mal Gobel's Joy Boys were at it again. They were playing the reckless, lovable song from the season's hit show, Charlot's Revue.
Something magnificent and breathless about the lyric. A realness, a beauty. No song ever written sets its period more deftly. The lunch-room with its yellow lights, its white-aproned waiter, its marble table tops. The city outside, the newsboys shouting the morning papers at midnight, the honking taxi horns. The boy and girl smiling serenely and happily into each other's eyes across their orders of fried egg sandwiches and coffee.
"Want to dance?" Carl asked May.
She answered him by standing up and holding her arms awkwardly toward him. They glided out upon the vacant floor. Hubert and Lillian watched them for a while, then turned to each other.
"I don't dance," he confessed.
​"I think it's a waste of time myself," she returned promptly.
"Well, I don't know about that."
"Maybe I am wrongish."
"But still—"
"Yeh, but still—"
They looked at each other and Lillian burst out laughing. Lillian always made it a practice to laugh when there threatened to be a lull in the conversation. That is, of course, a conversation for two. Silence would make her appear dumb and unable to think of anything to say; so she laughed, and the laughter gave her a superior position. It always worked out so.
"What are you laughing at?" Hubert asked.
"Oh, nothing," she replied with an effort.
"What's so funny? Let me in on it."
"Oh, I can't." A handkerchief leaped to her hand from some unlikely spot, and wiping her eyes, she made a brave attempt to control herself. It proved no use. She was off again in a moment.
Hubert became uncomfortable. What was she laughing at? What had he said or done? "Say, what's the joke?"
"Oh, I can't tell you." The handkerchief flew to her eyes again. She tried once more to control her merriment. This time she was successful. She breathed a faint, weak "Oh, dear" and regained a polite and quiet demeanor. It had worked. She had now convinced him that she knew all sorts of amusing things which she couldn't possibly share with an outsider. And too, there still persisted a sneaking notion that perhaps she had ​been laughing at him. Hubert felt very unimportant and outside the know.
"Drink up," he commanded in an effort to prove that he really was somebody.
"Oh, sooner or later. Not just now. I'll get tight and start throwing things."
"Is that what you do when you drink too much?"
"Sure."
"Well, I don't mind. I'm strong enough to stop you or I'll pay for anything you break. How's that?"
"That's fine." She was laughing again. Not uproariously as before, but enough to alarm Hubert.
"Say," he said, hoping to curb her laughter. "What's your name? I didn't get it when May said it."
"Lillian Cory."
"Great. I'll call you Lil."
"I can't say that I care for that. It sounds kind of saloonish."
"Do you think so? My mother's name was Lily and everybody called her Lil."
"Guess I made a social error."
"Oh, no," he insisted generously. "I'm not like that. I always say that a guy that's sensitive has a guilty conscience."
"Well, I'm sensitive."
"You are not."
"Honest, I'm terribly sensitive. The least thing hurts my feelings."
She was joking. He could tell by the way she smiled at him that she didn't mean it.
"You're a great little kidder, aren't you?"
​"Me? I should say not."
"I like you."
"That's nice. I like you too."
"Do you work?"
"No, I just stand around a department store eight hours a day."
"Which store?"
"The same one that May works in."
"Oh. Can I meet you tomorrow night and take you to dinner?"
"I should say not."
"Why not?"
"Oh, there are reasons."
"What are they?"
"I can't think of any, but there must be some."
"I'll be outside the employees' entrance at closing time."
"I won't hold my breath till you come."
"Honest, I'll be there."
"Will you really?" Lillian's voice was mockingly entreating.
"Sure I will," he replied; then he saw that she was kidding him again. "That is, if I don't see a girl I like better," he added.
"Oh, if you don't come I'll sicken and die of relief."
"I'll be there," he said briskly. His tone said, "Come now, let's be serious."
But Lillian was laughing again and Carl and May were coming back to the table.
"Let's have something to eat," May suggested as she sat down.
​"Not here," Carl objected. "The food's rotten."
"Well, where will we go, Carl? I'm game for anything." Two drinks always had made Hubert game for anything.
Everybody fell silent. That was a problem. Where would they go for something to eat?
"How about Arras Inn?" said Lillian.
"Why Arras Inn?" May had to be sold the idea.
"Because nobody else seems to have thought of a place and Arras Inn is in my neighborhood and I can duck right home after I'm fed."
"All right," said May. "That's fair enough."
Carl called for the check and he and Hubert fell to wrangling pleasantly over it.
"This is my party."
"The hell you say."
"You can pay next time."
"You pay next time."
"His money's no good, waiter."
"Hey, look, I got the right amount here. You'll have to break a twenty."
"All right. I'll pay down at Arras Inn." Hubert retired only after the waiter had marched away with Carl's money. He felt cheated. What's the use of having fifteen thousand dollars if some other guy is going to pay for your drinks?
They filed out of the roadhouse. Mal Gobel's Joy Boys looked very cross at their departure. The Joy Boys' lives were lonely ones.
The ride back to Inwood was the same as the one to the roadhouse. Except that May didn't say "Don't." ​Hubert drove at twenty miles an hour and Lillian smoked and thought what she would order at Arras Inn. Lobster for choice. But suppose they didn't have lobster? A club sandwich, maybe. Or a chicken salad.
"Are you hungry?" Hubert asked her.
"Sort of."
"Well, when you get to that place you picked out, I want you to order anything you like. Anything at all now. Don't pay any attention to the prices."
"What makes you think I would?"
"Oh, I can tell your kind. You're the backward type."
"Hubert is reading her palm," Carl said.
"He's good at it, too," May whispered. "She's very backward. Not up to tenth year intelligence yet."
"Sh. She'll hear you."
"That would be awful, wouldn't it?"
Arras Inn was on Broadway, a few doors off Two Hundred and Seventh Street. It was a long, narrow place with latticed walls and colored lamp shades. There was music, singing, and once or twice a fire to vary the monotony.
There was lobster. Everybody ordered lobster. Little talking was done as the party chewed small, thin claws and delved hopefully into large, fat claws. Hubert had mayonnaise all over his mouth. Lillian didn't think it very becoming. She wanted to tell him to use his napkin, but she was afraid it would make him angry. She kept her eyes resolutely turned away from him.
The waiter came and carried away the shells. Lillian ventured a look at Hubert. There was still some mayonnaise down in the corner of his mouth. Lillian ​felt that she could be sick. She had eaten too much mayonnaise herself to be left wholly untouched by the sight of some smeared on the corner of a person's mouth. May came to the rescue.
"Big boy," she said, "wipe your mouth and if your nose needs blowing for God's sake blow it before it starts to show."
Hubert wiped his mouth.
Everybody lit cigarettes.
"I have to go home," Lillian said, "as soon as I finish this."
"Mother waiting up?" Hubert asked.
"Sure, my grandmother too."
Hubert congratulated himself. He was getting to understand her. He could tell that that time she wasn't joking. Her eyes had been perfectly serious. She did have a mother and a grandmother with whom she lived.
"I'll take you home as soon as you're ready," he said.
"We'll wait here," said May. "You can come back and pick us up."
"Now there's no sense to that," Carl protested. "We can just as well go when Lillian goes. She only lives around the corner. You'll only have another minute to linger here and what do you want to linger for anyhow?"
"Oh, I don't know."
"Just to make a little extra trouble. Come on. Lillian's ready to go now."
"All right." May got into her coat sulkily.
The waiter brought the check and Hubert paid it, ​choosing to break a hitherto unrevealed fifty-dollar bill in preference to the twenty which he had allowed them all to gaze upon at the roadhouse.
Lillian wished that Carl and May had decided to stay at Arras Inn while Hubert took her home. She wanted to see if he would mention anything more about meeting her the following day. She felt sure that he wouldn't speak of it in front of the others. And he didn't.
"Good night," Lillian said as she climbed out of the Packard.
"Good night," each of the others responded. Nobody added a single extra word.
It was all very gloomy.
"He won't be there tomorrow evening," Lillian said to herself.
But he was.