The Key to Nicholas Street Page 2

  “You mean,” Mrs. A finally said, “that you gave up a job that paid you ten thousand a year to become a deck-hand on the ferry here?”

  He meant it all right. And it also meant that instead of having to play week-end performances at 159 and 161 he could become a permanent boarder there. And did, or so close to it that you could hardly tell the difference.

  When I told the big deal to Bob he knew right off that something serious must have happened in New York and that the Monster had been let out of his job there, but hard.

  “And,” said Bob, “whatever happened there he’s washed up in that line. So he’ll take whatever handout comes along until he can marry Miss Ballou, and then he can settle down and let her support him the way he figures he’s entitled to.”

  Bob had been making meat deliveries to the Ballou and gotten to know her pretty well, and I had a feeling that the prospects he had worked out for the Chaves did not strike him as very hard to take. I told him so.

  “Well,” said my hero, “there is a woman who would be very easy to take. Looks, brains, and money—and she knows how to treat a man.”

  It turned out that when he had mentioned to her that it tangled up his delivery schedule not to find her in, she had just up and given him a key to the side door of the house. “If I don’t answer the bell, just put the stuff in the freezer,” she said, and here was lover boy walking around with milady’s key in his hip pocket!

  That was when I made arrangements to take care of any deliveries to be made next door, whether or not anyone answered the bell. After all, this Macek boy may not be the only thing in pants worth looking at in Sutton, but he is going to do until something better comes along, which means, I might say, until death do us part.

  CHAPTER TWO

  When I pulled up the window shade sure enough there was Mr. Bennauer across the street working away with the lawn mower, and either he has twenty-twenty vision behind those thick glasses or else he has a radar system built into the lawn mower, because as soon as I rested my hands on the sill and leaned out of the window he slowed up his work and let his eyes sort of wander toward me. I left him still looking for the clouds that weren’t there while I got ready for the morning’s business.

  There would be breakfast for the family to be ready at nine, the water heater at the Ballou’s had to be started up since she said she’d be back from the city sometime today, the beds to make, and a little bit of sewing to do on the outfit I was going to wear to the ball game. In between all that, I would bet my molars, Bettina would somehow need to have a slip shortened, Dick would need a button sewed on his shirt collar, and Mr. A would have me hunting up fresh rags that he needed for his painting. The only one, as ever, who would show any consideration would be Mrs. A, who would bear down on the rest until they would leave me alone to get done with the work that had to be done. Every day she drew up a plan of the next day’s work down to the last button, and she was a stickler for seeing it done right on the dot.

  I knew that the cotton house dress I had put on had shrunk in the last washing, and when I took a good look in the pier glass I could tell it had shrunk even more than I had realized. But need I say that a cotton house dress that has shrunk does not have to be a liability when it has a square neckline and is tied back just a little tighter than usual? So I decided to make the most of it, and after shoving the feet into my sling pumps that had about one more week left in them, and grabbing my towel and toothbrush, I headed downstairs.

  The bedroom doors on the second floor were all closed, and I thought that for a godsend the whole family was still asleep and I would have the bathroom for myself instead of having to use the one in the cellar, but when I got near the bathroom I heard voices inside. I looked around and then took a couple of steps toward the door, but it was hard to make out what was being said. From the voices I could tell it was Bettina and Mrs. A, and from the hard whispering that was going on it was easy to tell that all was not quiet on the Nicholas Street front, but only a few words came through.

  Bettina said something about, “An affair with her!” and then Mrs. A said, “I couldn’t tell you! I couldn’t! It would have hurt you too much! Don’t you see how it hurts you now!” and I started to get the picture. Somehow or other, Miss Innocence had caught on that when the Chaves and the Ballou were clocking time next door they weren’t just discussing the best method of braising a roast, and, naturally, it must have hit hard.

  “All this time!” Bettina said. “All this time!” and then she started to cry, with Mrs. A saying, “Please, baby,” but obviously not able to make things any better.

  Well, we may all be sisters under the skin, but there are times when I would like to take one of the sisters and shake her until her teeth rattle. That is when some man steps out of line to prove that after all he is still a man, and lets you have it right in the face. And you take it!

  So you can guess my feelings when after everything in the bathroom just turned to tears and I went downstairs, and there sound asleep on the living-room couch was the Chaves! He lay stretched out like mama’s little lamb, his shirt and shoes and socks were thrown on the floor, if you please, and it didn’t need any Sherlock Holmes to know he had been there for the night.

  He had that nasty habit, too, of waking up all of a sudden and wide awake all at once, so that while I was looking at him he opened both eyes and stared right into my face. Then still without saying a word he dug around with his hand under the couch cushions and pulled out a cigarette case. He took out a cigarette, put it in his mouth, and held out his hand toward me.

  “Match,” he said, just like that.

  That was the time for me to put up my nose at him and walk off. But what did little Junie find herself doing? Like something that the Mad Scientist has just finished working on she not only got a pack of matches from the end table, but lit one and held it so that Casanova could get a light without straining himself.

  He blew out some smoke and then said, “Going to the game?”

  I said that considering Bob was going to pitch I would certainly be at the game.

  “Do you still think he’s big-league material?” asked the Chaves.

  I told Mr. District Attorney that anyone with a twelve and two record even in a semi-pro league could certainly do as well in the majors as some of the characters who were already there, although from their records it was hard to tell why.

  “Well, you’re wrong,” said the Chaves. “And if you want to know why, I’ll give you two reasons to start with.”

  “I’m sure you will, Mr. Chaves,” I said.

  “First of all,” said he, not even taking note of the chill I was giving him, “he doesn’t know how to field his position, and he’d be bunted right out of any league where they really play ball. And second, he doesn’t know how to sit on his temper.”

  There was just enough truth in this to hurt, because it is Bob’s argument that he is being paid to pitch and the other eight men around him are being paid to field, and what happened the week before on account of this was that when he was a little slow in covering first base on a grounder through the right side the runner ran right over him, and Bob naturally threw the ball away to take a swing at the man. Trust the Chaves to see Bob play one game and then write a book about it.

  I told him that in so many words, but he only lay there looking at his cigarette as if now that he had gotten the big news off his chest his mind was a million miles away. Then suddenly he said, “Junie, do you ever dream of being a model? A famous model with all the agencies running after you, and your picture on one magazine cover after another? Or Hollywood? Do you think that some day you might be right there in Hollywood working for a big studio with the whole world at your feet?”

  I learned long ago that when you talked to the Chaves you had to be quick on your feet because you never knew what part of the field the ball would be coming from next, but this was even worse than usual.

  First Bob and the big leagues, and now me and Hollywood! If
anyone really wanted to know why the Chaves was let out of his fancy job in the city it would never take more than a few lines of fast talk with him to Tell All.

  As a matter of fact, now and then while parading the body beautiful before the pier glass I had found it interesting to think of breaking into the big time as many another female has done with less to offer than I. Modeling never had much appeal for me, but there is a lot to be said about the silver screen as a life’s work. After all, they are always looking for fresh talent, with the old-timers steadily aging at the rate of twenty-four hours a day, and if a girl chooses to meet them halfway she can hardly be blamed if she strikes them as being a new Lana Turner. I mention this because Bob and others have happened to point out my resemblance to her more than once.

  But, of course, I would never mention any of this to Bob, who is very strong in his opinion that when a girl has majored in domestic science for four years in Sutton High she ought to be stuck with domestic science as her life’s work, either for pay or for pleasure, and I certainly didn’t think it was any business of the Chaves, which is what I told him.

  “But,” he prodded, “what if I told you that if you gave me an honest answer I could tell you how happy you’d be all your life. Or, for that matter, how unhappy.”

  That was the Chaves for you! At eight-thirty Sunday morning, lying on the couch, cigarette ashes already piling up on his bare chest, Bettina crying her heart out upstairs, and him playing games to find out if Junie will still be smiling when her hair has turned to silver.

  “I’m very sorry, Mr. Chaves,” I said, mixing the sugar and the poison just right, “but I’m afraid we’ll have to continue this interesting little talk some other time. I have a houseful of work to do, including making up your bed and straightening your bedroom before the family comes down, so if you don’t mind I’ll just have to tear myself away.”

  He looked at me with his eyes half closed, and I could see he was taking very good notice of the house dress.

  “Junie,” he said, “you add a note to Nicholas Street that it must have been crying for a long, long time.” And with that compliment I let matters end then and there. They talk about a woman’s having to get in the last word!

  I was a little surprised to see out of the kitchen window that Mr. A was working away at his painting already and, from the mess around him, working for some time. I decided to beat him to the gun for once, and after I washed up I found a few clean linen rags and went out into the yard. He was sitting there when I went up to him, and not working at it, but just staring at the painting.

  It was a picture of the garage at the end of the alley between 161 and 159, a two-car job which Mr. A shared with the Ballou. And while I will admit that it was not a bad-looking garage, as garages go it certainly didn’t make much of a picture as you could see with half an eye. It took me a second look to even see what it was all about, all the colors were wrong and too bright, and the whole thing was more like a set of boxes and lines than any garage you ever saw.

  There was a time when Mr. A had just started painting, as a matter of fact, when he wasn’t bad at all. But that was before the Ballou had started giving him advice on how to do it, and the next thing you know he was turning out stuff like some of the wild stuff she used to do in her spare time, and which was hanging all over the walls at 159.

  I don’t know anything about art, of course, but I do know what I like, and it wasn’t anything you’d see in 159 or, for that matter, anything that Mr. A had lately taken to storing in the storage room right behind my room in the attic. And what got me was that the pictures the Ballou did for the magazines were so good that you knew it wasn’t just bad painting that went into the other stuff.

  I handed Mr. A the rags, which he took without even appearing to notice me, and I was thankful for that since sometimes he would try to pin me down as to exactly what I thought of some picture he was doing. That kind of thing now, on top of the little workout with the Chaves, would have been just too much, so I steered back to the kitchen double-quick. But, as I saw watching him through the window, he never did bother about the rags or the painting either right then. Just sat there staring at the garage, or it could have been the Ballou’s house just beyond, as quiet as a mummy. Which, thought I, made it clear that Bettina’s troubles had not been restricted to the bathroom.

  CHAPTER THREE

  In my opinion there is nothing more ridiculous than a person who has something really bothersome on the mind, but who is going to be brave and keep it from the world. How much better, say I, just to speak your little piece and clear the atmosphere once and for all.

  If I ever needed anything to bear me out on this it was right there at that breakfast table. Bettina and Mrs. A, both of them with their faces the same shade as the tablecloth, spent the mealtime bravely trying to pass little bits of conversation back and forth, but none of it made any sense; Mr. A sat looking at the wall the same way he had been looking at the garage; and Dick, of course, had to report late, and then only after Mrs. A sent me upstairs three times to call him. He rounded out the picture very nicely by grabbing the Sunday paper and wading through it right there at the table until Mrs. A told him to please stop.

  And, of course, in the middle of all this sat the Monster as calm as you please, like somebody who had no idea of what he had started or what was going on around him. In honor of the occasion he had borrowed Mr. A’s razor and shaved himself, and was wearing a clean sports shirt which I recognized as Dick’s both because it was too big, and because I had ironed it two days before.

  The talk around the merry board was something to listen to.

  “Dick, dear,” said Mrs. A to the Prince, who sat there with his nose in the paper, “I want you to put that paper down this instant, and eat something.”

  “I’m not hungry,” said Dick dear. “And will you please leave me alone.”

  Bettina didn’t like the tone used. “Don’t you dare raise your voice to mother,” she said.

  This, naturally, was the cue for the Chaves.

  “In a free country,” he said, “if a man wants to read a newspaper at the table …”

  “Why don’t you mind your own business!” said Bettina, who had evidently come a long, long way from her starry-eyed days.

  “That,” said the Chaves, “is one of those rude chestnuts which contradicts everything civilization is moving toward. Rather, I would say, ‘Ask not for whom the bell tolls’…”

  That brought even Mr. A to attention. “What?” he said.

  “I was about to say,” the Chaves explained, “that if I were Dick I would excuse myself from the table and go read the Sunday paper to my heart’s content elsewhere. In fact, I think it is the duty of every citizen on Sunday …”

  Young Richard didn’t wait for any more. He threw his napkin down on the table and walked out of the room, and the look that Mrs. A gave the Chaves was just a dotted line with daggers on it. She opened her mouth to say something and then shut it and looked at little me, who was carefully dusting crumbs from the table cloth.

  “Junie,” she said, “if you started the dishes now you won’t keep Bob waiting when he calls, will you, dear?”

  “I guess not,” said I, figuring that I wouldn’t be missing anything with my ear against the kitchen door.

  As it turned out I was wrong for once. Although I almost rubbed a blister on my ear against the door whatever was being said was kept down to a mumble until all of a sudden Mr. A suddenly said, “Matt!” so loud and angry that I almost jumped back from the door.

  There are times when a girl is driven to the danger point, and that was one if ever was. Finally, I pushed open the door a crack, just enough to see the Chaves standing beside Mr. A’s chair holding Mr. A by the shoulder and obviously trying to explain something to him. And, thought I, just from looking at Mr. A’s back it was easy to tell that he wasn’t making much headway at it. Then Mr. A flung away the arm and walked very fast out of the room while the Chaves stood there, tak
en aback for the first time in his life, I daresay, with the womenfolk staring at him from their chairs, their faces deathly white. The three of them were frozen like that so dead quiet and still that I could hear my own heart thumping, and suddenly the Chaves made a sweeping gesture with his arm as if to tell the both of them to go you know where and walked out just like Mr. A had.

  It was all this that had my mind in such a whirl that it wasn’t until I turned the hot water on my stack of dishes that I remembered I hadn’t even taken care of the Ballou’s heater next door! There was a woman who liked nothing so much as to stew in a tub of water hot enough to boil the skin right off you, and what with the time it would take to get the fire going in the heater and get the tank hot up to the top I would have to work double-quick to get things ready in time for milady’s arrival.

  She had given me the key to 159 for the side door at the head of the cellar steps, and, naturally, it would have to be hanging on the hook by my dresser where I always left it. I cut up the stairs to the attic like an Olympic sprinter, and right there at the top of the stairs was pulled up short by something brand-new: for the first time since I had come to the house the door to the attic was tight shut. And not only shut, as I found out when I grabbed the knob and twisted it, but locked!

  You can imagine my surprise when I say that not only was the attic door always kept hooked back against the wall, but that I had never known up to that moment that there was even a key to lock it with anywhere around.

  You can think the wildest things at a moment like that, and what was the first thing that went through my head but that Mrs. A had somehow noticed me with my ear to the kitchen door and was using this way to let me know that my services were no longer required. Which was followed by about eight other thoughts all just as ridiculous, but every one of them calculated to get me into the same mood that the rest of the family was already enjoying.

  Finally, I gave the door just one good kick to show it what I thought of it, and then I headed for downstairs to report to Mrs. A. If there was any key to the attic—and there certainly must be, or else the door was stuck so tight it would take a house wrecker to get it open—she would either have it or know where to lay hands on it. That meant the two long flights down again, and back to the kitchen where, as I suspected, Mrs. A was stacking the rest of the dishes for me. I spoke my piece, and her jaw actually dropped.