The Big Town | Page 6

thirty places to-morrow night where you can get all you want in any one of them."
"Let's pass up the other twenty-nine," I says.
"But that isn't the idear," he said. "What makes we New Yorkers sore?is to think they should try and wish a law like that on Us. Isn't this supposed to be a government of the people, for the people and by the people?"
"People!" I said. "Who and the hell voted for prohibition if it wasn't the people?"
"The people of where?" he says. "A lot of small-time hicks that couldn't buy a drink if they wanted it."
"Including the hicks," I says, "that's in the New York State legislature."
"But not the people of New York City," he said. "And you can't tell me it's fair to spring a thing like this without warning on men that's got their fortunes tied up in liquor that they can't never get rid of now, only at a sacrifice."
"You're right," I said. "They ought to give them some warning. Instead of that they was never even a hint of what was coming off till Maine went dry seventy years ago."
"Maine?" he said. "What the hell is Maine?"
"I don't know," I said. "Only they was a ship or a boat or something named after it once, and the Spaniards sunk it and we sued them for libel or something."
"You're a smart Aleck," he said. "But speaking about war, where was you?"
"In the shipyards at South Bend painting a duck boat," I says. "And where was you?"
"I'd of been in there in a few more weeks," he says. "They wasn't no slackers in the Big Town."
"No," said I, "and America will never forget New York for coming in on our side."
By this time the gals was both giving me dirty looks, and we'd eat all we could get, so we paid our checks and went back in our car and I felt kind of apologetic, so I dug down in the old grip and got out a bottle of bourbon that a South Bend pal of mine, George Hull, had give me the day before; and Griffin and I went in the washroom with it and before?the evening was over we was pretty near ready to forget national boundaries and kiss.
The old bourb' helped me save money the next morning, as I didn't care for no breakfast. Ella and Kate went in with Griffin and you could of knocked me over with a coupling pin when the Mrs. come back and reported that he'd insisted on paying the check. "He told us all about himself," she said. "His name is Francis Griffin and he's in Wall Street. Last year he cleared twenty thousand dollars in commissions and everything."
"He's a piker," I says. "Most of them never even think under six figures."
"There you go!" said the Mrs. "You never believe nothing. Why shouldn't he be telling the truth? Didn't he buy our breakfast?"
"I been buying your breakfast for five years," I said, "but that don't prove that I'm knocking out twenty thousand per annum in Wall Street."
Francis and Katie was setting together four or five seats ahead of us.
"You ought to of seen the way he looked at her in the diner," said the Mrs. "He looked like he wanted to eat her up."
"Everybody gets desperate in a diner these days," I said. "Did you and Kate go fifty-fifty with him? Did you tell him how much money we got?"
"I should say not!" says Ella. "But I guess we did say that you wasn't doing nothing just now and that we was going to New York to see Life, after being cooped up in a small town all these years. And Sis told him you'd made us put pretty near everything in bonds, so all we can spend is eight thousand a year. He said that wouldn't go very far in the Big Town."
"I doubt if it ever gets as far as the Big Town," I said. "It won't if he makes up his mind to take it away from us."
"Oh, shut up!" said the Mrs. "He's all right and I'm for him, and I hope Sis is too. They'd make a stunning couple. I wished I knew what they're talking about."
"Well," I said, "they're both so reserved that I suppose they're telling each other how they're affected by cucumbers."
When they come back and joined us Ella said: "We was just remarking?how well you two young things seemed to be getting along. We was wondering what you found to say to one another all this time."
"Well," said Francis, "just now I think we were discussing you. Your sister said you'd been married five years and I pretty near felt like calling her a fibber. I told her you looked like you was just out of high school."
"I've