“Why, you old two-timer!” Herbert exclaimed, and turned on him with mock indignation. “Braggin’ to me about your blondes and red-heads, and then boastin’ that you’re a family man! Why, you----”
“Nah-h,” said John, “I never done no such thing. I wasn’t talkin’ about now—but then! That’s when I had ‘em—forty years ago.”
“Who?” said Herbert innocently. “Your wife and children?”
“Ah-h,” said John disgustedly, “get along with you. You ain’t goin’ to get my goat. I’ve forgot more about life than you ever heard of, so don’t think you’re goin’ to make a monkey out of me with your smart talk.”
“Well, you’re makin’ a big mistake this time, Pop,” said Herbert with an accent of regret. He had drawn on the neat grey trousers of his uniform, adjusted his broad white stock, and now, half squatting before the mirror, he was carefully adjusting the coat about his well-set shoulders. “Wait till you see ‘em—these two blondes. I picked one of ‘em out just for you.”
“Well, you needn’t pick out any for me,” said John sourly. “I got no time for such foolishness.”
At this point Henry, ‘the night doorman, came hurriedly in from the stairway and began rattling the key in his locker door.
“What do you say, pal?” Herbert turned to him and cried boisterously. “I leave it to you. Here I get Pop all dated up with a couple of hot blondes and he runs out on me. Is that treatin’ a guy right or not?”
Henry did not answer. His face was hard and white and narrow, his eyes had the look and colour of blue agate, and he never smiled. He took off his coat and hung it in the locker.
“Where were you?” he said.
Herbert looked at him, startled.
“Where was I when?” he said.
“Last night.”
“That was my night off,” said Herbert.
“It wasn’t our night off,” said Henry. “We had a meetin’. They was askin’ about you.” He turned and directed his cold eyes towards the old man. “And you, too,” he said in a hard tone. “You didn’t show up either.”
Old John’s face had frozen. He had shifted his position and begun to drum nervously and impatiently with his old fingers upon the side of the elevator. This quick, annoyed tapping betrayed his tension, but his eyes were flinty as he returned Henry’s look, and there was no mistaking his dislike of the doorman. Theirs was, in fact, the mutual hostility that is instinctive to two opposite types of personality.
“Oh yeah?” John said in a hard voice.
Henry answered briefly: “Yeah.” And then, holding his cold look levelled like a pointed pistol, he said: “You come to the union meetin’s like everybody else, see? Or you’ll get bounced out. You may be an old man, but that goes for you like it does for all the rest.”
“Is that so?” said John sarcastically.
“Yeah, that’s so.” His tone was flat and final.
“Jesus!” Herbert’s face was red with crestfallen embarrassment, and he stammered out an excuse. “I forgot all about it—honest I did! I was just goin’----”
“Well, you’re not supposed to forget,” said Henry harshly, and he looked at Herbert with an accusing eye.
“I—I’m all up on my dues,” said Herbert feebly.
“That ain’t the question. We ain’t talkin’ about dues.” For the first time there was indignant passion in the hard voice as he went on earnestly: “Where the hell do you suppose we’d be if everybody ran out on us every time we hold a meetin’? What’s the use of anything if we ain’t goin’ to stick together?”
He was silent now, looking almost sullenly at Herbert, whose red face had the hang-dog air of a guilty schoolboy. But when Henry spoke again his tone was gentler and more casual, and somehow it suggested that underneath his hard exterior he had a genuine affection for his errant comrade.
“I guess it’s O.K. this time,” he said quietly. “I told the guys you had a cold and I’d get you there next time.”
He said nothing more, and began swiftly to take off his clothes.
Herbert looked flustered but relieved. For a moment he seemed about to speak, but changed his mind. He stooped and took a final appraising look at himself in the small mirror, and then, walking quickly towards the elevator with a return of his former buoyancy, he said:
“Well, Pop, O.K.—let’s go!” He took his place in the car and went on with a simulation of regret: “Too bad you’re goin’ to miss out on the blondes, Pop. But maybe you’ll change your mind when you get a look at ‘em.”
“No, I won’t change my mind, neither,” said John with sour implacability as he slammed the door. “About them or about you.”
Herbert looked at the old man and laughed, the pink spots in his cheeks flushed with good humour, his lively eyes dancing.