You Play the Black & the Red Comes Up Up Read Online Free PDF

from the pitcher, and lifted it to hide my face. Out of the comer of my eye, I saw the cops come in. They came tearing in, three cops in khaki uniforms, with their guns ready.
     
    I didn't make a move, because I knew if I tried it my knees would cave in on me.
     
    They made a dash right for the back of the hall. I had to get up and look round the booth. Everyone else was standing and looking. It would have looked funny if I hadn't. All of a sudden I saw a fellow in the back of the room light out and go head-first through the window. The cops went after him.
     
    Right off I figured I'd better get moving; only just then the other woman showed up. Anyhow, I couldn't have walked a block, the way I felt.
     
    This other woman was the same kilter as the first— plumpish and about thirty-five and they'd both decided to be blondes. They were both slopped to the gills. I figured I would be safer there than out on the street alone.
     
    "This is my girl friend, Pat," the first one said. "Pat, this is my old boy friend. We used to know each other back in Chicago—think of that."
     
    They were both drunk as a ringtailed filly. Neither one knew what it was all about, and since no one else seemed to have seen me come in I figured I was just as safe with them as anywhere else. So I just kept them talking.
     
    They were both from Camden, New Jersey. They told me they'd lived in the same apartment house, and they'd become friends. Their husbands had become friends, too. Now both the men had gone to Reno to get divorces. The husbands had sent the girls on to the Coast for a vacation while they got the divorces. It all seemed fixed up nice and friendly.
     
    We stayed there, drinking beer, until they were both rolling. They began to argue.
     
    "This is my boy friend. He's my boy friend," the first kept saying. "He's going to take me home."
     
    "Where'm I gonna sleep?" Pat asked. She couldn't keep her eyes straight.
     
    "You call up the Walt Whitman and order a suite," the other kept saying.
     
    They were both so drunk they didn't know what they were doing, so we blew. They had a Buick outside, a swell new Buick. They were too drunk to drive, so I got the keys away from them and they told me how to take them home. They'd keep saying, "Now round the next corner—no. No, that's wrong. Go back two blocks, then round the corner." I'll tell you, if I hadn't been so dead on my feet, it would have been funny.
     
    We finally got to the place down on the beach front. I had to lug them up somehow to the apartment.
     
    "Look, we'll both sleep in Pat's bed, and you stay in my bed," the first one said.
     
    I said I'd beat it, but they both started yelling. So I figured anyhow I didn't want to be out on the streets that night— me with my clothes like a bum's—the same working clothes I'd walked off the shift in back at the zinc smelter—and my week's growth of beard, and feeling like I'd pass out if I walked one more step.
     
    So I stayed there.
     
    That's how come I took up with Mamie Block—it was on account of that guy and the holdup and ducking the cops. That's how I took up with her.
     
    Chapter Four
    TOO TIRED TO RUN
     
    I t was nearly noon when I woke. I had been dead to the world. Mamie brought me breakfast to bed on a tray— orange juice and toast and boiled eggs and bacon.
     
    "I didn't know if you liked your eggs too soft," she said, "so I did them medium."
     
    I didn't care how they were. I was hungry. She watched me eat. She looked cheerfu l and up on her toes and differ ent from the night before. She was all clean and shining and her hair brushed back and a ribbon tied round it the way school-kids do, and she had on a pair of red beach pajamas.
     
    "Don't you have any hang-over?" I asked her.
     
    "Not me, boy friend," she grinned. "I can take it."
     
    "I always get 'em."
     
    "I don't. I can take it."
     
    "Where's Pat?" I asked her.
     
    "Her?" She sniffed. "She got up and went out. Good rid dance to her."
     
    She