You Can't Go Home Again (55 page)

George called for his check and gave the man some money. He took it and in a moment returned with the change. He pocketed his tip and said: “Thank you, sir.” Then as George said good night and started to get up and leave, the waiter hesitated and hung round uncertainly as if there was something he wanted to say but scarcely knew whether he ought to say it or not.

George looked at him inquiringly, and then, in a rather embarrassed tone, the waiter said:

“Mr. Webber…there’s…something I’d like to talk over with you sometime…I—I’d like to get your advice about something—that is, if you have time,” he added hastily and almost apologetically.

George regarded the waiter with another inquiring look,-in which the man evidently read encouragement, for now he went on quickly, in a manner of almost beseeching entreaty:

“It’s—it’s about a story.”

The familiar phrase awakened countless weary echoes in Webber’s memory. It also resolved that hard and honest patience with which any man who ever sweated to write a living line and to earn his bread by the hard, uncertain labour of his pen will listen, as an act of duty and understanding, to any other man who says he has a tale to tell. His mind and will wearily composed themselves, his face set in a strained smile of mechanical anticipation, and the poor waiter, thus encouraged, went on eagerly:

“It’s—it’s a story a guy told me several years ago. I’ve been thinking about it ever since. The guy was a foreigner,” said the waiter impressively, as if this fact was enough to guarantee the rare colour and fascinating interest of what he was about to reveal. “He was an Armenian,” said the waiter very earnestly. “Sure! He came from over there!” He nodded his head emphatically. “And this story that he told me was an
Armenian
story,” said the waiter with solemn emphasis, and then paused to let this impressive fact sink in. “It was a story that he knew about—he told it to me—and I’m the only other guy that knows about it,” said the waiter, and paused again, looking at his patron with a very bright and feverish eye.

George continued to smile with wan encouragement, and in a moment the waiter, after an obvious struggle with his soul, a conflict between his desire to keep his secret and to tell it, too, went on:

“Gee! You’re a writer, Mr. Webber, and you know about these things. I’m just a dumb guy working in a restaurant—but if I could put it into words—if I could get a guy like you who knows how it’s done to tell the story for me—why—why”—he struggled with himself, then burst out enthusiastically—“there’d be a fortune in it for the both of us!”

George felt his heart sink still lower. It was turning out just as he knew it would. But he still continued to smile pallidly. He cleared his throat in an undecided fashion, but then said nothing. And the waiter, taking silence for consent, now pressed on impetuously:

“Honest, Mr. Webber—if I could get somebody like you to help me with this story—to write it down for me the way it ought to be-I’d—I’d”—for a moment the waiter struggled with his lower nature, then magnanimity got the better of him and he cried out with t he decided air of a man who is willing to make a generous bargain and stick to it—“I’d go fifty-fifty with him! I’d—I’d be willing to give him half!...And there’s a fortune in it!” he cried. “I go to the movies and I read
True Story Magazine
—and I never seen a story like it! It’s got ‘em all beat! I’ve thought about it for years, ever since the guy told it to me—and I know I’ve got a gold mine here if I could only write it down!...It’s—it’s----”

Now, indeed, the waiter’s struggle with his sense of caution became painful to watch. He was evidently burning with a passionate desire to reveal his secret, but he was also obviously tormented by doubts and misgivings lest he should recklessly give away to a comparative stranger a treasure which the other might appropriate to his own use. I I is manner was very much that of a man who has sailed strange seas and seen, in some unknown coral island, the fabulous buried cache of forgotten pirates’ plundering, and who is now being torn between two desperate needs—his need of partnership, of outward help, and his imperative need of secrecy and caution. The fierce interplay of these two powers discrete was waged there on the open battlefield of the waiter’s countenance. And in the end he took the obvious way out. Like an explorer who will take from his pocket an uncut gem of tremendous size and value and cunningly hint that in a certain place he knows of there are many more like it, the waiter decided to tell a little part of his story without revealing it.

“I—I can’t tell you the whole thing to-night,” he said apologetically. “Some other night, maybe, when you’ve got more time. But just to give you an idea of what’s in it”—he looked round stealthily to make sure he was in no danger of being overheard, then bent over and lowered his voice to an impressive whisper—“just to give you an idea, now—there’s one scene in the story where a woman puts an advertisement in the paper that she will give a ten-dollar gold piece and as much liquor as he can drink to any man who comes round to see her the next day!” After imparting this sensational bit of information, the waiter regarded his patron with glittering eyes. “Now!” said the waiter, straightening up with a gesture of finality. “You never heard of anything like that, did you? You ain’t never seen
that
in a story!”

George, after a baffled pause, admitted feebly that he had not. Then, when the waiter continued to regard him feverishly, with a look that made it plain that he was supposed to say something more, he inquired doubtfully whether this interesting event had really happened in Armenia.

“Sure!” cried the waiter, nodding vigorously. “That’s what I’m telling you! The whole thing happens in Armenia!” He paused again, torn fiercely between his caution and his desire to go on, his feverish eyes almost burning holes through his questioner. “It’s—it’s—” he struggled for a moment more, then surrendered; abjectly—“well, I’ll tell you,” he said quietly, leaning forward, with his hands resting on the table in an attitude of confidential intimacy. “The idea of the story runs like this. You got this rich dame to begin with, see?”

He paused and looked at George inquiringly. George did not: know what was expected of him, so he nodded to show that his min had grasped this important fact, and said hesitatingly:

“In Armenia?”

“Sure! Sure!” The waiter nodded. “This dame comes from over there—she’s got a big pile of dough—I guess she’s the richest dame in Armenia. And then she falls for this guy, see?” he went on. “He’s nuts about her, and he comes to see her every night. The way the guy told it to me, she lives up at the top of this big house—so every night the guy comes and climbs up there to see her—oh, a hell of a long ways up”—the waiter said—“thirty floors or more!”

“In Armenia?” George asked feebly.

“Sure!” cried the waiter, a little irritably. “That’s where it all takes place! That’s what I’m telling you!”

He paused and looked searchingly at George, who finally asked, with just the proper note of hesitant thoughtfulness, why the lover had had to climb up so far.

“Why,” said the waiter impatiently, “because the dame’s old man wouldn’t let him in! That was the only way the guy could get to her! The old man shut her up way up there at the top of the house because he didn’t want the dame to get married!...But then,” he went on triumphantly, “the old man dies, see? He dies and leaves all his dough to this dame—and then she ups and marries this guy!”

Dramatically, with triumph written in his face, the waiter paused to let this startling news soak into the consciousness of his listener. Then he continued:

“They lived together for a while—the dame’s in love with him—and for a year or two they’re sitting pretty. But then the guy begins to drink—he’s a booze hound, see?—only she don’t know it—she’s been able to hold him down for a year or two after they get married…Then he begins to step out again…The first thing you know he’s staying out all night and running round with a lot of hot blondes, see?...Well, then, you see what’s coming now, don’t you?” said the waiter quickly and eagerly.

George had no notion, but he nodded his head wisely.

“Well, that’s what happens,” said the waiter. “The first thing you know the guy ups and leaves the dame and takes with him a lot of her dough and joolry…He just disappears—just like the earth had opened and swallowed him up!” the waiter declared, evidently pleased with his poetic simile. “He leaves her cold, and the poor dame’s almost out of her head. She does everything—she hires detectives—she offers rewards—she puts ads in the paper begging him to come back…But it’s no use—she can’t find him—the guy’s lost…Well, then,” the waiter continued, “three years go by while the poor dame sits and eats her heart out about this guy…And then”—here he paused impressively, and it was evident that he was now approaching the crisis—“then she has an idea!” He paused again, briefly, to allow this extraordinary accomplishment on the part of his heroine to be given due consideration, and in a moment, very simply and quietly, he concluded: “She opens up a night club.”

The waiter fell silent now, and stood at ease with his hands clasped quietly before him, with the modest air of a man who has given his all and is reasonably assured it is enough. It now became compellingly apparent that his listener was supposed to make some appropriate comment, and that the narrator could not continue with his tale until this word had been given. So George mustered his failing strength, moistened his dry lips with the end of his tongue, and finally said in a halting voice:

“In—in Armenia?”

The waiter now took the question, and the manner of its utterance, as signs of his listener’s paralyzed surprise. He nodded his head victoriously and cried:

“Sure! You see, the dame’s idea is this—she knows the guy’s a booze hound and that sooner or later he’ll come to a place where there’s lots of bar-flies and fast women. That kind always hang together—sure they do!...So she opens up this joint—she sinks a lot of dough in it—it’s the swellest joint they got over there. And then she puts this ad in the paper.”

George was not sure that he had heard aright, but the waiter was looking at him with an expression of such exuberant elation that he took a chance and said:

“What ad?”

“Why,” said the waiter, “this come-on ad that I was telling you about. You see, that’s the big idea—that’s the plan the dame dopes out to get him back. So she puts this ad in the paper saying that any man who comes to her joint the next day will be given a ten-dollar gold piece and all the liquor he can drink. She figures that will bring him. She knows the guy is probably down and out by this time and when he reads this ad he’ll show up…And that’s just what happens. When she comes down next morning she finds a line twelve blocks long outside, and sure enough, here’s this guy the first one in the line. Well, she pulls him out of the line and tells the cashier to give all the rest of ‘em their booze and their ten bucks, but she tells this guy he ain’t gonna get nothing. ‘What’s the reason I ain’t?’ he says—you see, the dame is wearing a heavy veil so he don’t recognise her. Well, she tells him she thinks there’s something phoney about him—gives him the old line, you know—tells him to come upstairs with her so she can talk to him and find out if he’s O.K…Do you get it?”

George nodded vaguely. “And then what?” he said.

“Why,” the waiter cried, “she gets him up there—and then”—he leaned forward again with fingers resting on the table, and his voice sank to an awed whisper—”
she—takes—off—her—veil!
”

There was a reverential silence as the waiter, still leaning forward with his fingers arched upon the table, regarded his listener with bright eyes and a strange little smile. Then he straightened up slowly, stood erect, still smiling quietly, and a long, low sigh like the coming on of evening came from his lips, and he was still. The silence drew itself out until it became painful, and at length George squirmed wretchedly in his chair and asked:

“And then—then what?”

The waiter was plainly taken aback. He stared in frank astonishment, stunned speechless by the realisation that anybody could be stupid.

“Why”—he finally managed to say with an expression of utter disillusion—“that’s
all!
Don’t you see? That’s all there is! The dame takes off her veil—he recognises her—and there you are!...She’s found him!...She’s got him back!...They’re together again!...
That’s
the story!” He was hurt, impatient, almost angry as he went on: “Why, anybody ought to be able to see----”

“Good night, Joe.”

The last waitress was just going out and had spoken to the waiter as she passed the table. She was a blonde, slender girl, neatly dressed Her voice was quiet and full of the casual familiarity of her daily work and association; it was a pleasant voice, and it was a little tired. Her face, as she paused a moment, was etched in light and shadow, and there were little pools of violet beneath her clear grey eyes. Her face had the masklike fragility and loveliness, the almost hair-drawn fine-MSS, that one often sees in young people who have lived in the great city and who have never had wholly enough of anything except work and their own hard youth. One felt instantly sorry for the girl, because one knew that her face would not long be what it was now.

The waiter, interrupted in the flood of his impassioned argument, had been alittle startled by the casual intrusion of the girl’s low voice turned towards her. When he saw who it was, his manner changed at once, and his own seamed face softened a little with instinctive and unconscious friendliness.

“Oh, hello, Billie. Good night, kid.”

She went out, and the sound of her brisk little heels clacked away on the hard pavement. For a moment more the waiter continued to look after her, and then, turning back to his sole remaining customer with a queer, indefinable little smile hovering in the hard lines about his mouth, he said very quietly and casually, in the tone men use to speak of things done and known and irrecoverable:

“Did you see that kid?...She came in here about two years ago and got a job. I don’t know where she came from, but it was some little hick town somewhere. She’d been a chorus girl—a hoofer in some cheap road show—until her legs gave out…You find a lot of ‘em in this game—the business is full of ‘em…Well, she worked here for about a year, and then she began going with a cheap gigolo who used to come in here. You know the kind—you can smell ‘em a mile off—they stink. I could’ve told her! But, hell, what’s the use? They won’t listen to you—you only get yourself in dutch all round—they got to find out for themselves—you can’t teach ‘em. So I left it alone—that’s the only way…Well, six or eight months ago, some of the girls found out she was pregnant. The boss let her out. He’s not a bad guy—but, hell, what can you expect? You can’t keep ‘em round a place like this when they’re in that condition, can you?...She had the kid three months ago, and then she got her job back. I understand she’s put the kid in a home somewhere. I’ve never seen it, but they say it’s a swell kid, and Billie’s crazy about it—goes out there to see it every Sunday…She’s a swell kid, too.”