The Vertical City | Page 5

like light.
"Oh," she said, "sable! That's my fur, Loo. I've never owned any, but
ask Alma if I don't stop to look at it in every show window. Sable!"
"Carrie--would you--could you--I'm not what you would call a
youngster in years, I guess, but forty-four isn't--"
"I'm--forty-one, Louis. A man like you could have younger."
"No. That's what I don't want. In my lonesomeness, after my mother's
death, I thought once that maybe a young girl from the West, nice girl
with her mother from Ohio--but I--funny thing, now I come to think
about it--I never once mentioned my little mother's sable coat to her. I
couldn't have satisfied a young girl like that, or her me, Carrie, any
more than I could satisfy Alma. It was one of those mamma-made
matches that we got into because we couldn't help it and out of it before
it was too late. No, no, Carrie, what I want is a woman as near as
possible to my own age."
"Loo, I--I couldn't start in with you even with the one little lie that

gives every woman a right to be a liar. I'm forty-three, Louis--nearer to
forty-four. You're not mad, Loo?"
"God love it! If that ain't a little woman for you! Mad? Why, just your
doing that little thing with me raises your stock fifty per cent."
"I'm--that way."
"We're a lot alike, Carrie. For five years I've been living in this hotel
because it's the best I can do under the circumstances. But at heart I'm a
home man, Carrie, and unless I'm pretty much off my guess, you are,
too--I mean a home woman. Right?"
"Me all over, Loo. Ask Alma if--"
"I've got the means, too, Carrie, to give a woman a home to be proud
of."
"Just for fun, ask Alma, Loo, if one year since her father's death I
haven't said, 'Alma, I wish I had the heart to go back housekeeping.'"
"I knew it!"
"But I ask you, Louis, what's been the incentive? Without a man in the
house I wouldn't have the same interest. That first winter after my
husband died I didn't even have the heart to take the summer covers off
the furniture. Alma was a child then, too, so I kept asking myself, 'For
what should I take an interest?' You can believe me or not, but half the
time with just me to eat it, I wouldn't bother with more than a cold
snack for supper, and everyone knew what a table we used to set. But
with no one to come home evenings expecting a hot meal--"
"You poor little woman! I know how it is. Why, if I so much as used to
telephone that I couldn't get home for supper, right away I knew the
little mother would turn out the gas under what was cooking and not eat
enough herself to keep a bird alive."
"Housekeeping is no life for a woman alone. On the other hand, Mr.
Latz--Louis--Loo, on my income, and with a daughter growing up, and
naturally anxious to give her the best, it hasn't been so easy. People
think I'm a rich widow, and with her father's memory to consider and a
young lady daughter, naturally I let them think it, but on my
seventy-four hundred a year it has been hard to keep up appearances in
a hotel like this. Not that I think you think I'm a rich widow, but just the
same, that's me every time. Right out with the truth from the start."
"It shows you're a clever little manager to be able to do it."
"We lived big and spent big while my husband lived. He was as shrewd

a jobber in knit underwear as the business ever saw, but--well, you
know how it is. Pneumonia. I always say he wore himself out with
conscientiousness."
"Maybe you don't believe it, Carrie, but it makes me happy what you
just said about money. It means I can give you things you couldn't
afford for yourself. I don't say this for publication, Carrie, but in Wall
Street alone, outside of my brokerage business, I cleared eighty-six
thousand last year. I can give you the best. You deserve it, Carrie. Will
you say yes?"
"My daughter, Loo. She's only eighteen, but she's my shadow--I lean
on her so."
"A sweet, dutiful girl like Alma would be the last to stand in her
mother's light."
"But remember, Louis, you're marrying a little family."
"That don't scare me."
"She's my only. We're different natured. Alma's a Samstag through and
through. Quiet, reserved. But she's my all, Louis. I love my baby too
much to--to marry where she wouldn't be as welcome as the day itself.
She's precious to me, Louis."
"Why, of course!