The Betrayal

I

AFTERNOONS Margie sat mostly at the window, watching what was happening on Twenty-eighth Street. Sometimes she took the campstool and sat on the pavement near the doorway downstairs with whatever tenant was there. Once in a while she even played games with some of the kids. Although she had been married for nearly a year, she was n’t so much past the age of the older kids. She was nineteen, a smallboned, white-skinned girl with red hair that Bill did n’t want her to cut. This afternoon she was crazy to go over to the Twenty-third Street movie, but she was going to wait for Bill to come home, when the two of them could go over after supper. Bill was a hack driver who had been on the night run before they were engaged. Now he worked during the day and made good money, even though he did n’t own his cab.

With half her attention on the tabloid spread before her on the wide window sill, she missed some of the happenings on the street, and not until the key turned in the lock did she realize that someone was coming into the flat.

‘Say— ’ she started; then she saw it was Bill. She jumped up, smiling. ‘You must of hacked for a millionaire to be coming home at this hour.’ She threw her arms around him and kissed his mouth. The way he kissed back made her realize there was something funny going on. She looked up at him, her face pert and puzzled.

‘We’ve gone out on strike, kid,’ he said, and sat down without taking off his cap.

‘You mean like the guys with the sandwich signs in front of places?’

He smiled without parting his lips. ‘Just about.’

‘Don’t you hack while you’re on strike? ’

‘No. That’s what you do when a hackman strikes . . . you don’t hack.’

‘Well,’ she said dubiously. Then her face brightened. She put her arms around him for a moment. ‘ It’s a vacation, ain’t it? We can go around during the day together. Say, it’s another honeymoon.’

‘Yeh, let’s call it that. Only for the first couple of days I’m going to have to be kind of busy around our headquarters.’

His round good-natured face became solemn. He put his hand to his forehead and rubbed it as though he were wiping away a stain.

‘ You ain’t worried because you won’t get paid for a couple of days, are you, Bill?’

‘No, kid, I was just wondering if it would come out our way.’

‘Come on.’ She tugged at his hand, pulling it from his forehead. ‘Don’t be a Gloomy Gus. To-morrow’s another day, ain’t it? Worry then.’

But although he smiled back at her and although he kissed her and although he ate supper, he could n’t take her to the movies that night. There was to be a big mass meeting of hackmen. He had to leave before she’d finished washing the dishes. She went alone to the movie, and when she came home she found Missis Holohan and little Loretta sitting in front with the young fellow who was now their roomer. Missis Holohan said Bill was n’t home yet, so Margie was going to go up and get the campstool, only the roomer insisted that she take his chair. He sat on a newspaper at her feet. Margie had seen the roomer a couple of times before, but she had never been properly introduced to him. He was a young fellow, tall, with a graceful way of sitting and standing. His narrow blue eyes and his overlong upper lip and the way the words came from his mouth would have given him away for a Harp, even if his name had n’t been Boyle.

Margie told them the plot of the movie and then she told them about Bill being on strike. Doubtfully Missis Holohan shook her head over it, just as she had shaken it earlier in the evening when she had heard the news elsewhere.

‘They’ll only be getting it worse,’ she said with sorrow. ‘ I can’t figure out what they want to be doing it for, excepting for the devilment that’s in all of them.’

‘They want more dough in their kick and better hours,’ said Boyle authoritatively. ‘Believe me, it’s coming to them. I know. I drove a cab myself when I was working my way through college,’

Missis Holohan and little Loretta looked at him with respect; but Margie was n’t going to let him snoot them about going to college.

‘The college of hard knocks, I bet,’ she said.

Boyle grinned. ‘I got my second degree there,’ he said.

‘But you pinned the medals on yourself, I bet,’ said Margie.

Missis Holohan and little Loretta laughed; and Boyle tilted back his head so that he could look up in Margie’s face.

‘I’ve been all around, that’s a fact,’ he said amiably. ‘I’ve been a cowpuncher on the Panhandle and a hashslinger in Chicago and a real-estate operator in Florida. I’ve sailed six of the seven seas.’

Margie laughed, looking down at his upturned face. ‘What do you do?’ she asked. ‘Take it in the arm?’

‘You don’t believe me? I can tell you where to write and they’ll tell you.’ He shoved up the sleeve of his shirt and exposed his forearm that bulged surprisingly for the lean rest of him. He flicked his thin fingers against it. ‘See that? That’s what sailors get in Tampico — that’s a Mex place.’

Missis Holohan and little Loretta peered over with Margie to see again the blue outline of the heart with the words Semper Fidelis tattooed within.

‘What’s it mean?’ asked Margie.

‘One of my girls,’ said Boyle.

‘Black or white?’ said Margie.

‘Kidding aside,’ answered Boyle, ‘it means “always faithful.” That’s been the motto of the Boyles for over seven hundred years, and, if you don’t believe the Boyles go back that far, you can look them up in Burke’s Peerage.’

From the radio in the Goetzes’ flat came an announcement of the hour. Missis Holohan cried out sharply to little Loretta: —

‘Well, if it is n’t after your bedtime! I’m giddy as a goose.’

As little Loretta went into the house, Margie stood up. ‘I guess it ain’t right for royalty to be sitting on the pavement,’ she said, almost as though she were sore at something. ‘Thanks for the chair, Lord Boyle.’

‘Going in already, Margie?’ asked Missis Holohan.

‘I ain’t going to sit up all night for Bill.’ And, a little more loudly than necessary, she added: ‘He probably figures on sleeping late in the morning. It’s going to be just like a vacation, you know, kind of a second honeymoon for us now.’

But Boyle never said a word, giving her the long stare out of his narrow blue eyes.

II

He might as well be hacking night and day, she told herself, angry now instead of tearful as she had been the first night Bill did n’t show up for supper. She would n’t even market for two now, and she did n’t have the appetite to cook just for herself. She would munch cold stuff out of the ice chest and go down to sit before the doorway with anybody who was there, Missis Holohan or even that fresh roomer of hers. Until four nights ago she had never seen Boyle sit down there. Now he was there every night, sometimes in the afternoon, chewing the rag about all the things he had done. Sometimes when she went upstairs she had to laugh out loud at the tall tales he pulled. But he was as good as a show — better, if you had to go to the movies all alone, with your husband more interested in a bunch of men than in you.

This evening she did n’t go down in a house dress the way the others did. She dressed as though she were going out somewhere and, even as she set the campstool down where the light of the street lamp would n’t hit her, she pretended not to notice Boyle. Then she affected surprise. ‘Hello. You here?’

When the older kids wanted her to walk to the corner with them for icecream cones, she went off with them, her air aggressive, as though someone had advised her not to go. Boyle was still sitting there when she came back, stretching the long bow for the benefit of everyone around. About eleventhirty, the tenants started going in. She was almost surprised to find herself still there, alone with the fresh guy. She’d hardly said a word to him all evening, and, for once, he was n’t saying much.

The street became quiet. The radios were turned off. The cats rattling the garbage and the heavy trucks rocking by were almost the only sounds. She looked at Boyle, at last uneasy at his silence. As he opened his mouth she almost put her finger to her lips as though there were need to caution him that they could be overheard by any of the neighbors upstairs with their windows wide open.

Boyle’s voice was low. ‘ Well, how’s your second honeymoon getting along? ’ he said.

With a convulsive movement she reached out her hand and slapped the side of his face. ‘That’s none of your business,’ she said furiously. The echo of the slap seemed to follow her words; and hearing it, or remembering it, she rushed into the house, forgetting even to pick up her campstool.

Upstairs in the flat, she stood in the dark with her hands over her face. Hot and bitter, the tears only tormented her further. Instead of going to bed, she sat at the window, waiting for Bill. Each time she heard footsteps and was disappointed by them, the tight choked feeling inside mounted.

When she heard Bill at the door, she ran to put her arms tight around him, and she did n’t feel sore at anything any more. Bill squeezed her, too.

‘You waiting up for the old man, kid? ’ he said fondly. Then he untwined her arms and sat down with a long tired sigh.

‘I just wanted to get a look at you,’ she said, her voice a little unsteady, ‘You ought to wear a red rose or something in your buttonhole so I can recognize you.’

‘I know it’s tough on you, Margie.’ He sighed again. ‘It ain’t a circus for me, either.’

‘Why don’t you settle it up, then?’ she said passionately. ‘ Why can’t you, you know, fix it up and go back to work? You can’t keep it up forever!’

‘It suits me, it suits me fine,’ said Bill, ‘only there’re a few little things we want before we go back.’

Margie walked to the window and looked down at the street; then, realizing that she was looking at the doorway, she hastily turned around.

‘If it’s going on, then,’ she cried out, ‘why can’t you stay home once in a while? Ain’t there anybody else can do whatever it is you’re doing all the time?’

‘There’re others,’ he said. ‘There ain’t enough of them. I spoke six places to-night — yeh, I’m getting to be quite the oraytor. There’re others who do the same, only, as the fellow says, not enough of them.’

‘What difference would one less make if you quit working yourself like a horse for them?’

‘It ain’t them, Margie, it’s us’ He paused. ‘All I can ask you, kid, is to be patient. The cops are giving us the works. That’s bad enough. They’re workers like ourselves, just chancing to be wearing different suits; but they don’t see it that way.’

‘The next thing you’ll be laid up in some hospital,’ she said bitterly.

‘The worst of it is the scabs. Even some of our own boys have turned yellow enough to scab.’ He sighed once more. ‘You can’t always blame them, the ones with kids and all that, but we got to try to keep them from running out.’

‘Well, you got a family, too, ain’t you? You got a wife. If you ain’t around to be with me, there’s no telling what — ’ She broke off, frightened at her words. Quickly she said: ‘What do you mean by a scab?’

‘They’re the rats that take strikers’ jobs. If someone’s running my cab, see, he’s a scab.’

‘I get it.’ Margie turned back to the window and looked down at the street. A truck lumbered past before she said, without turning, ‘Say, did you happen to see the campstool downstairs? I forgot and left it.’

III

The next evening Margie sat before the doorway, talking to Pearl Rosen as she nursed her newest. When Pearl took the baby in to put it to bed, Margie was left alone. She kept thinking of last night and how lively it had been, but, after smacking him, she could n’t blame him for not showing up. Just as she had decided to go up and sit at her own window, Boyle came along, tall and graceful and cool as a cucumber. He stood right in front of her.

‘I’ve been waiting at the comer for the mamma to go inside,’ he said.

‘I did n’t see you there,’ said Margie in a high little voice.

He leaned toward her, pitching his voice low. ‘If any other broad did to me what you did, they’d have been counting a hundred before she got up.’ He dropped his tabloid on the pavement and sat beside her.

‘I did n’t mean to do it.’ Margie spoke stiffly. ‘I got a quick temper.’

‘I know why you did it,’ he said softly, giving her a long look.

‘No, you don’t. I did it because I ain’t having anyone rib Bilk’

‘Who was ribbing Bill?’ The surprise in his voice was manifestly artificial. ‘I’d like to meet him. I think Bill and I would get along swell.’

‘Oh, you do, do you? What makes you think you’re Bill’s type?’

‘I think we got something in common.’

‘Sure, you live in the same house.’

‘You,’ he said between his teeth.

She did n’t want to stop him from talking that way; she felt as though she could sit there, holding his stare, for hours. But she spoke. ‘If Bill heard you talk that way, it’d be you they’d count a hundred for.’

‘Think so? I used to be a boxer. I can take on Bill any time. Maybe that’s what it’s coming to.’

‘ You were everything, were n’t you? ’ she said, trying to make her tones sarcastic.

‘You don’t believe me? Look at my ear.’

She leaned over. She had not noticed before that it was misshapen, it was so small and set so close to his head.

‘Touch it, cupcake,’ he said. ‘It won’t bite.’

Slowly she put out her finger and touched his ear, and when he shivered it was as though she had known he would shiver. Slowly she withdrew her finger.

‘Don’t do that again,’ he said in an odd voice.

‘I guess you did n’t ask me to,’ she said, and her voice matched his own.

Boyle dug his hand into his coat pocket. ‘Come in the hall a minute; I got something to show you.’

She followed him in, to the dark place beneath the stairs where the older kids necked wit h their boy friends. And when he put his arms around her and pulled her close to him she shut her eyes and forgot to worry about someone coming down the stairs or to remember Bill.

After that, Boyle kept begging her to let him into the fiat; but she drew the line at that. Neither would she go walking with him or to the movies. It was bad enough to let him kiss her, but she was n’t going to have the neighbors thinking things and pitying Bill for something that had n’t happened.

‘Can’t you quit talking about Bill?’ he would say. ‘We only got a little while together. The strike will be over, and then you won’t let me see you any more.’

‘That’s right. I won’t,’ she would answer defiantly, as though the strong indifferent words could cancel the loss of him.

‘ You would n’t have the guts to run off with me.’

‘That ain’t guts, when it’s Bill I love.’ But at night, when Bill came home from his meetings and his rallies, she pretended to be asleep so as not to talk to him with her head full of Boyle.

‘I would n’t want to hurt anyone you care for, cupcake,’ he’d say. ‘You stay with Bill now. Some day you’ll come to me.’

‘Where? In Siam, where you’ll be emperor or something?’

‘Wherever I am, you ’ll always know. There won’t be a week of your life you won’t hear from me. Maybe it’ll only be a postcard or a telegram, giving my address.’

‘That’ll be nice for Bill.’

‘You’ll know who they’re from without my name. I’ll sign them Semper Fidelis, always faithful. And whenever you decide, I ’ll be waiting for you.’

There was Boyle, always faithful, with his long blue eyes, willing to wait around just to catch sight of her; and her own husband coming home later each night, either too tired to talk or hashing over stuff she could n’t understand. The strike was ten days old. She was beginning to wonder where the rent money would come from — not that she was worried.

That was the evening, after the others had gone upstairs, she told Boyle she’d spend the next day with him. She put it on a playful basis: they’d go to Coney — she had n’t had a swim for a long time — and get some sun. Even when he held her in his arms and she was dizzy with his kisses, in the dark part of the hallway, she told herself that she was only going because she wanted some fun. Bill would have taken her on his day off if things were different. It was just going to Coney with Bilks substitute.

But, lying awake in bed that night, she knew from the sorrowful tremulous feeling inside her that it was more than taking an excursion, that she did n’t know what might happen; that she did n’t care, or did care — in the wrong way, Boyle’s way. When Bill came home, she pretended to be asleep; and when he lay beside her she had to restrain herself from weeping. It might be the last time she’d even be in the flat, the last time she ’d see Bill. Sad and uncertain and excited, she fell asleep as it became light.

They were to meet at the B. M. T. station on Twenty-third, so that none of the neighbors could see them go off together. On the way over she bought herself a new pair of white shoes, not caring that it left her only fifty cents. She preened herself in the reflection of a plate-glass shop window, pleased with her nice fresh dress and the way her red hair curled out from the saucy hat. Then, holding her head high so that no one could guess that her nerves were on edge, she took her stand on the corner. As she had planned, she was ten minutes late.

Presently she began to feel funny, stuck there with everyone looking at her as though she’d been stood up. She started sauntering past stores and looking into their windows, turning her head now and then toward the comer. When she came upon a clock, she saw that it was thirty minutes past the appointed hour. She hurried back to the corner. This time she stayed there, forgetting to be selfconscious, as she prodded her memory for the exact words Boyle and she had exchanged. It certainly had been the Twenty-third Street B. M. T.; she could have sworn it was. She went down the subway stairs. She came back. Maybe something had happened. Maybe he was back at the house right now, standing in front, waiting for her. She looked up at the Metropolitan Tower clock. It was three quarters of an hour past the time. Now she was certain he was at the house. The thing to do was to hurry back, but she would n’t take a street car across Twenty-third because maybe it was only something that had made him late and he’d be coming east on Twenty-third himself.

Just as she was waiting for the red light to get her across Sixth Avenue, she saw him. Sitting there, big as life he was, behind the wheel of a slowly cruising taxicab. For a moment his narrow blue eyes beneath the cap visor met hers. They shifted away almost in the same moment.

With her heart pumping so that it seemed to shake her entire body, she stamped her foot. ‘Scab!’ she shouted in a loud violent voice. ‘Scab! Dirty rotten scab!’ She never knew what she picked up from the gutter to throw at him. The missile did not touch him; he had already stepped on the gas and was far up Sixth.

She did n’t care what the people thought of her. All the way home, almost running, she muttered: ‘Scab — dirty rotten scab.’

When she got to the house, she went right up to Missis Holohan’s flat.

‘You know what that roomer of yours is?’ she shouted. ‘He’s a scab! You should n’t let a rat like that in this house. Dirty, dirty scab!’

Missis Holohan was distressed. But when she tried to talk it over, Margie banged out of the flat and into her own. There she threw herself on the bed, never thinking of her nice fresh dress, and began to cry, furiously at first, thumping her fists against the mattress, pathetically and wearily afterward. Presently she fell asleep.

She had been asleep for nearly three hours when the door opened. It woke her and she ran out, eyes red, hair disheveled. It was Bill.

‘Oh, Bill,’ she cried, ‘I must be a sight! I got so sore, finding out that Bovle is a scab.’

‘Boyle?’ said Bill.

‘Missis Holohan’s roomer. I saw him on the street, and I got so mad I yelled it at him at the top of my voice, and I threw something at him, too. “Dirty rotten scab!” I yelled, and I did n’t care who heard me.’ She came up to him and nestled her head against his shoulder. ‘You did n’t think I cared much about what you were fighting for; but now you know.’

‘Sure I did, kid.’ He patted her arm. ‘I thought you’d be on your old man’s side, whatever it was.’

‘I’ll go out and shout it at every one of them and throw things at them, too! I told Missis Holohan she should n’t let him stay there.’ Her eyes flashed.

‘That’s the spirit, Margie. Only it’s all over now. It was arbitrated half an hour ago. We go back on the job.’

’You do? Say, all of you must be glad!’ She was gladdest, she thought. Everything would go back to where it had been. Having it settled at this minute could n’t be better. It wiped out everything, even the — She closed her mind against this thrust of memory. ‘Let’s celebrate, Bill. I’ll get some beer. It’s cold.’

She ran out to the kitchen and threw cold water over her face before taking the bottles from the ice chest. When she came back with the beer, she saw that Bill was sitting in her chair by the window, his head down on his crossed arms, his shoulders bowed in the most desolate way.

Her hands and feet seemed as chill as the bottles. He knew. Someone had told him lies. Some snoopy old gossip had told him. She put down the things in her hands and ran toward him.

‘There wasn’t a thing to it, Bill.’ She pressed against his mournful shoulders. ‘I could n’t see him for the dust. It was just that I did n’t know what to do with myself. We kidded around, honest to God, Bill—’ She halted, afraid of what she might see as he slowly turned around his tired, despairing face. There were tears in his eyes, and for a moment he was unable to make sounds with his working lips.

‘They sold us out, kid,’ he said at last, heavily. ‘I can’t help feeling this way. They sold us out.’ He put his head back on his arms.