Gladiator - Philip Wylie (readnow .TXT) 📗

French and she brought me up kind of decent. Well.⁠ ⁠…” The little outward turning of her hands, the shrug of her shoulders.

“Don’t worry, Charlotte. I won’t let them eat you. Tomorrow I’ll set you up to a decent room and we’ll go out and find some jobs here.”

“You don’t have to do that, mister. I’ll make out. All I needed was a square and another day.”

Charlotte sighed and smoked a cigarette with her coffee. Then they went out on the street and mixed with the throng. The voices of a score of barkers wheedled them. Hugo began to feel gay. He took Charlotte to see the strong man and watched his feats with a critical eye. He took her on the roller coaster and became taut and laughing when she screamed and held him. Then, laughing louder than before, they went through Steeplechase. She fell in the rolling barrel and he carried her out. They crossed over moving staircases and lost themselves in a maze, and slid down polished chutes into fountains of light and excited screaming. Always, afterwards, her hand found his arm, her great dark eyes looked into his and laughed. Always they turned toward the other men and girls with a proud and haughty expression that pointed to Hugo as her man, her conquest. Later they danced. They drank more beer.

“Golly,” she whispered, as she snuggled against him, “you sure strut a mean fox trot.”

“So do you, Charlotte.”

“I been doin’ it a lot, I guess.”

The brazen crash of a finale. The table. A babble of voices, voices of people snatching pleasure from Coney Island’s gaudy barrel of cheap amusements. Hugo liked it then. He liked the smell and touch of the multitude and the incessant hysteria of its presence. After midnight the music became more aggravating⁠—muted, insinuating. Several of the dancers were drunk. One of them tried to cut in. Hugo shook his head.

“Gee!” Charlotte said, “I was sure hopin’ you wouldn’t let him.”

“Why⁠—I never thought of it.”

“Most fellows would. He’s a tough.”

It was an introduction to an unfamiliar world. The “tough” came to their table and asked for a dance in thick accents. Charlotte paled and accepted. Hugo refused. “Say, bo, I’m askin’ for a dance. I got concessions here. You can’t refuse me, see? I guess you got me wrong.”

“Beat it,” Hugo said, “before I take a poke at you.”

The intruder’s answer was a swinging fist, which missed Hugo by a wide margin. Hugo stood and dropped him with a single clean blow. The manager came up, expostulated, ordered the tough’s inert form from the floor, started the music.

“You shouldn’t ought to have done it, mister. He’ll get his gang.”

“The hell with his gang.”

Charlotte sighed. “That’s the first time anybody ever stuck up for me. Jeest, mister, I’ve been wishin’ an’ wishin’ for the day when somebody would bruise his knuckles for me.”

Hugo laughed. “Hey, waiter! Two beers.”

When she yawned, he took her out to the boulevard and walked at her side toward the shabby house. They reached the steps, and Charlotte began to cry.

“What’s the matter?”

“I was goin’ to thank you, but I don’t know how. It was too nice of you. An’ now I suppose I’ll never see you again.”

“Don’t be silly. I’ll show up at eight in the morning and we’ll have breakfast together.”

Charlotte looked into his face wistfully. “Say, kid, be a good guy and take me to your hotel, will you? I’m scared I’ll lose you.”

He held her hands. “You won’t lose me. And I haven’t got a hotel⁠—yet.”

“Then⁠—come up an’ stay with me. Honest, I’m all right. I can prove it to you. It’ll be doin’ me a favor.”

“I ought not to, Charlotte.”

She threw her arms around him and kissed him. He felt her breath on his lips and the warmth of her body. “You gotta, kid. You’re all I ever had. Please, please.”

Hugo walked up the stairs thoughtfully. In her small room he watched her disrobe. So willingly now⁠—so eagerly. She turned back the covers of the bed. “It ain’t much of a dump, baby, but I’ll make you like it.”

Much later, in the abyss of darkness, he heard her voice, sleepy and still husky. “Say, mister, what’s your name?”

In the morning they went down to the boulevard together. The gay debris of the night before lay in the street, and men were sweeping it away. But their spirits were high. They had breakfast together in a quiet enchantment. Once she kissed him.

“Would you like to keep house⁠—for me?” he asked.

“Do you mean it?” She seemed to doubt every instant that good fortune had descended permanently upon her. She was like a dreamer who anticipated a sombre awakening even while he clung to the bliss of his dream.

“Sure, I mean it. I’ll get a job and we’ll find an apartment and you can spend your spare time swimming and lying on the beach.” He knew a twinge of unexpected jealousy. “That is, if you’ll promise not to look at all the men who are going to look at you.” He was ashamed of that statement.

Charlotte, however, was not sufficiently civilized to be displeased. “Do you think I’d two-time the first gent that ever worried about what I did in my spare moments? Why, if you brought home a few bucks to most of the birds I know, they wouldn’t even ask how you earned it⁠—they’d be so busy lookin’ for another girl an’ a shot of gin.”

“Well⁠—let’s go.”

Hugo went to one of the largest side shows. After some questioning he found the manager. “I’m H. Smith,” he said, “and I want to apply for a job.”

“Doin’ what?”

“This is my wife.” The manager stared and nodded. Charlotte took his arm and rubbed it against herself, thinking, perhaps, that it was a wifely gesture. Hugo smiled inwardly and then looked at the sprawled form of the manager. There, to that seamy-faced and dour man who was almost unlike a human being, he was going to offer the first sale