Gigolo | Page 3

his seal ring, crying: "Oo,
lookit, how big it is for me, even my thumb!" He called this "pawing a
guy over"; and the lint ladies he designated as "thread pickers."
No; it can't be classified, this powerful draw he had for them. His
conversation furnished no clue. It was commonplace conversation,
limited, even dull. When astonished, or impressed, or horrified, or
amused, he said: "Ken yuh feature that!" When emphatic or
confirmatory, he said: "You tell 'em!"
It wasn't his car and the opportunities it furnished for drives, both
country and city. That motley piece of mechanism represented such an
assemblage of unrelated parts as could only have been made to
coördinate under Nick's expert guidance. It was out of commission
more than half the time, and could never be relied upon to furnish a
holiday. Both Miss Bauers and Miss Ahearn had twelve-cylinder
opportunities that should have rendered them forever unfit for travel in
Nick's one-lung vehicle of locomotion.
It wasn't money. Though he was generous enough with what he had,
Nick couldn't be generous with what he hadn't. And his wage at the
garage was $40 a week. Miss Ahearn's silk stockings cost $4.50.
His unconcern should have infuriated them, but it served to pique. He
wasn't actually as unconcerned as he appeared, but he had early learned
that effort in their direction was unnecessary. Nick had little
imagination; a gorgeous selfishness; a tolerantly contemptuous liking

for the sex. Naturally, however, his attitude toward them had been
somewhat embittered by being obliged to watch their method of driving
a car in and out of the Ideal Garage doorway. His own manipulation of
the wheel was nothing short of wizardry.
He played the harmonica.
Each Thursday afternoon was Nick's half day off. From twelve until
seven-thirty he was free to range the bosky highways of Chicago.
When his car--he called it "the bus"--was agreeable, he went awheel in
search of amusement. The bus being indisposed, he went afoot. He
rarely made plans in advance; usually was accompanied by some
successful telephonee. He rather liked to have a silken skirt beside him
fluttering and flirting in the breeze as he broke the speed regulations.
On this Thursday afternoon in July he had timed his morning job to a
miraculous nicety so that at the stroke of twelve his workaday garments
dropped from him magically, as though he were a male (and reversed)
Cinderella. There was a wash room and a rough sort of sleeping room
containing two cots situated in the second story of the Ideal Garage.
Here Nick shed the loose garments of labour for the fashionably tight
habiliments of leisure. Private chauffeurs whose employers housed
their cars in the Ideal Garage used this nook for a lounge and smoker.
Smitty, Mike, Elmer, and Nick snatched stolen siestas there in the rare
absences of the manager. Sometimes Nick spent the night there when
forced to work overtime. His home life, at best, was a sketchy affair.
Here chauffeurs, mechanics, washers lolled at ease exchanging
soft-spoken gossip, motor chat, speculation, comment, and occasional
verbal obscenity. Each possessed a formidable knowledge of that
neighbourhood section of Chicago known as Hyde Park. This
knowledge was not confined to car costs and such impersonal items,
but included meals, scandals, relationships, finances, love affairs,
quarrels, peccadillos. Here Nick often played his harmonica, his lips
sweeping the metal length of it in throbbing rendition of such sure-fire
sentimentality as The Long, Long Trail, or Mammy, while the others
talked, joked, kept time with tapping feet or wagging heads.
To-day the hot little room was empty except for Nick, shaving before

the cracked mirror on the wall, and old Elmer, reading a scrap of
yesterday's newspaper as he lounged his noon hour away. Old Elmer
was thirty-seven, and Nicky regarded him as an octogenarian. Also, old
Elmer's conversation bored Nick to the point of almost sullen
resentment. Old Elmer was a family man. His talk was all of his
family--the wife, the kids, the flat. A garrulous person, lank, pasty,
dish-faced, and amiable. His half day off was invariably spent tinkering
about the stuffy little flat--painting, nailing up shelves, mending a
broken window shade, puttying a window, playing with his pasty little
boy, aged sixteen months, and his pasty little girl, aged three years.
Next day he regaled his fellow workers with elaborate recitals of his
holiday hours.
"Believe me, that kid's a caution. Sixteen months old, and what does he
do yesterday? He unfastens the ketch on the back-porch gate. We got a
gate on the back porch, see." (This frequent "see" which interlarded
Elmer's verbiage was not used in an interrogatory way, but as a period,
and by way of emphasis. His voice did not take the rising inflection as
he uttered it.) "What does