The Only Poet (19 page)

‘I said to Jim: “Who's that with Bert Ansell?” And he says: “A sucker like Bert, I guess.” And I says: “Well, he looks cute anyhow.” And Jim says: “Oh, is that so! Is that so!” And I knew enough to lay off. But I went on looking at them out of the corner of my eye. And I could see that they were looking at me. And I saw the kid asking Bert Ansell who I was and who Jim was and I saw Bert telling him. He went on telling him for a helluva long time and I knew he must be telling all about Jack Spencer and maybe a lot before that. So I says: “For God's sake, Jim, aren't you never going to dance with me no more? I feel blue.” But as we stood up to dance the music stopped and I heard the kid say all high and excited: “Gee, it must be great to have money!” And I knew Jim was right. He was a sucker like Bert. You don't get no rich man beginning like that. Jim didn't begin to play till he had his money, and he found having money means you can play. You don't get none of them making their money because they want to play.

‘But I didn't care. All the better for me if he felt that way. If he had been looking for a good girl, that wouldn't have made it my lucky day. So I just peacocked about the place, and when Jack Spencer came in, I acted up and grabbed Jim's arm like I was afraid, and I jiggled my diamond bracelets and made them sparkle, and I was just the world's expensive vamp. And the kid ate it with a spoon. I watched him whenever I dared, and I could just see him shaking his rattle and saying: “This is the life!” Gosh, he was such a kid.

‘Then next day I called up Bert Ansell, and told him I was throwing a cocktail party that afternoon at six, and he could come. And I says: “Oh, and who's your kid friend you were at the Plantation with last night?”

‘And he says: “That's Martin Vesey. They call him the Lucky Boy in his home town.”

‘“And where's that?” says I.

‘“Penaranda, California,” says he.

“‘I never heard of it,” says I.

‘“Neither did any one else,” he says. “It's a water-tank, and the church where Martin's minister father preaches, and a kennel where a yellow dog sleeps when it's driven out of the next town.” The dirty dog – I found out afterwards it was his own home-town too!

‘“Why'd they call him ‘Lucky Boy'?” says I.

‘“Because he looked like having more chance than the rest of the inhabitants of leaving Penaranda,” says he.

‘“What's he doing in New York?” says I.

‘“He started some coupon-selling business to do with railroad tickets in Los Angeles, and James P. Birkett of this town thought there might be something to it, and sent for him to hear his say-so. And now James P. Birkett don't think there is much to it, and don't care a damn what happens to him, but the poor boob can't bring himself to go back to Los Angeles.”

‘“That's as may be,” says I, “but you bring him along to my party.”

‘But when Bert came in, he came alone. And when I asked him about the kid, he bursts out laughing and says: “He told me to tell you he was coming in two years' time.”

“‘What's he mean by that?” I says.

“‘I guess he means that in two years' time he's coming along with a truckload of diamond bracelets,” says he.

“‘I guess that means he won't ever come,” I says. I was kind of peeved, but I wasn't broken-hearted. You know how it is when you're young, and something happens nearly every day. You don't break your heart over nothing.

‘Then I began to drop out. You do, when you're over thirty. It can't last. It wasn't so bad, mind you, but it wasn't like it used to be. Jim Melcher had gone long ago – he was with a red-haired girl who was in a cabaret; and after him there was Bill Spennings, but he went too; and a good job too, for he was pretty mean. I still had fellas I went around with, but none of them top-notchers, nothing big. I didn't know quite what to do. You don't, you know. It wasn't that I hadn't any money; I got some bonds and a lot of jewellery. I could live comfortably, though not how I used to; but what are you going to do with yourself? That's what got me.

‘It's funny just about the time I was beginning to worry about all this I met Bert Ansell and I said to him: “Well, it's three years and your kid friend hasn't been to see me yet.”

‘He laughs and says: “I guess he won't ever come and see you with that truckload of diamond bracelets now. He fancies himself as a big operator, but it just stays a fancy.”

‘And I says: “Why'd they call him Lucky Boy, then? I won't give up hope.”

And about a year later he comes to see me, after all, just like he said. I went out one afternoon for my walk in the park because I was beginning to worry about reducing and when I came in my coloured girl says: “Mr Martin Vesey called up and says he's coming to see you at six.”

‘Well, I just could have dropped down dead. I felt terribly excited, as if I'd been crazier about him than I'd thought I was – which was silly, as I'd only seen him once. And I was just wild to know what had happened. I had to call up Jack Spencer about some business advice. They all like you to come to them for business advice after the whole thing's over and the feeling's died down; it kind of makes them feel powerful and as if you hadn't been able to do well for yourself after they fired you, and so I did it right then. And at the end of it I said quite kind of casual:

‘“Do you know anything about a boy called Martin Vesey who's been doing things on Wall Street?”

‘He bursts out laughing and says: “Aw, forget it.”

‘I says: “But hasn't he been cleaning up a whole pile there lately?”

‘“Yes,” says he, “he's made a whole pile out of Grand Carfax Uniteds; but remember,” says he, “that a stopped clock tells the right time one minute in the day, but that don't make it a good clock.”

‘“I'll remember that,” says I.

‘Well, at six o'clock he came. He stood and looked at me with his great grey eyes laughing and a waist on him that made you want to run your arms down his body. I says to myself: “Somehow you don't look like a rich man to me.” And he says to me: “You asked me to call.” And then we both burst out laughing. And I settled him down in a chair and gave him a cocktail and took a good look at him.

‘He'd got a grand suit on him, the kind that Jim Melcher and Jack Spencer and Bill Spennings wear, and he'd studs and cuff-links like the kind they wear and shoes like what they wear and I guessed he's gone to live in an apartment like they have and hired an English valet like they do. I was what comes after the suits and the studs and the cuff-links and the shoes and the apartments and the English valets; and he hadn't noticed that I wasn't what a rich man would go after any longer; that I'd been out of fashion for three years. And that wasn't the kind of mistake a rich man would make. I guessed Jack Spencer was right saying what he did.

‘I felt so strongly I almost cried when he said to me after we'd been to a show the next night: “You know I'm a rich man now.”

‘“Is that so? Is that so?” says I, trying to kid him along.

‘“It's so, and it ain't no wonder,” says he. “The people in my town called me Lucky Boy ever since I was a kid.”

‘“Is that so? Is that so?” says I.

‘“Can't you say nothing but ‘Is that so?'” says he, laughing at me. “Can't you talk but just like a parrot?”

‘“Maybe I don't only want to talk when I'm with you,” says I, for I saw he was terribly shy and I felt as if I wanted to snatch at a good time with him in case something happened and it all went wrong. And then he kissed me and it was all grand. Gee, and the diamond bracelet he gave me as his first present! It half made that joke about the truckload come true.

‘We had a fine time. He used to take me around to all the places Jack Spencer and Jim Melcher and the rest used to take me. Everybody got to know me and my Lucky Boy and he made me get a silver dress and a silver cloak like what I was wearing that first time he ever saw me. I guess he was sore because the Plantation had been padlocked; he'd have given his eyeteeth to go and give Christopher a bigger tip than the biggest tip he thought Jim could ever have given him and sat at that table. And I guess I gave him a good time. I ain't so old, really. Look at me – it don't hurt the eyes. It's only that I'm out of fashion. That's the kind of thing that spoils the pleasure of a rich man so that he can't see your looks or notice how loving you are. But he wasn't like that. That was one of the ways I knew he wasn't like a rich man.

‘And I got scared stiff because he didn't seem to care for anything so much as he did for being a rich man. Nights he used to tell me about how he'd made little bits of dollars and dimes out in Penaranda when the other kids never saw a cent. And he was so darned proud of that nickname of his, “Lucky Boy”. I don't suppose the folks who gave it meant a thing more than that they felt heaps better for seeing his lovely-looking eyes, but he'd been reading those success magazines and he figured out they meant that he was all set to be a millionaire. And I used to kid myself maybe there was something in it and anyway he'd made this packet out of Grand Carfax Uniteds and that would carry him along. But he was spending that packet as fast as a drunken sailor and anyway he had the look of someone that's got something coming to them. I seen it before in girls. A new showgirl blows in, some girl that's just come to New York from way out in Kansas or Texas, and everybody's saying, “Oh, isn't she the cutest thing!” and you just see that she's got something coming to her. All the men she cares for will treat her like a dog and she won't get no money and she'll get sick. Well, Lucky Boy had that look to me. My heart's turned over sometimes when he's left me, turning at the door to wave goodbye to me, smiling and kind of glittering with his own good looks.

‘And my heart did turn over and it darn nearly stopped when one day he was standing like that with his hand on the doorknob and he suddenly remembered something and he pulls the door to and he says:

‘“Oh, I'm forgetting something! I'm sending a clerk down to you about noon with some stock you got to sign your name to. They're preference stock in Western Waybath Oilfields and that's what's going to make you and me our second pile.”

‘Then he comes back to me and kneels down beside me and kisses me again and says:

‘“Aren't you glad you got a Lucky Boy?”

‘“Have you taken advice?” I said.

‘He looked at me as if he might act ugly. “Advice be damned!” says he; and I saw right there how I could lose him.

‘The minute I thought Jim Melcher would be back at his office I called him up and I asked him for advice the same as I usually do. And then I asked:

‘“Do you know anything about Western Waybath Oilfields?”

‘He bursts out laughing. “You spend the money you want to spend on them on Scotch. It won't be any more wasted, in the long run and it'll make you a whole lot happier.”

‘“But a friend of mine –” says I.

‘He cuts in. “I know. It's a tip for the suckers. But there isn't a thing in it.”

‘Then an idea came into my head. “Could I sell them short?”

‘Says he: “I doubt if you could. There aren't enough suckers to set the market moving by taking the tip.”

‘Says I: “Don't worry about that. I'll guarantee the suckers, all right. And that's my game.” So that morning I went out and sold some of my jewellery and I went down to my brokers and told them what I wanted to do. I was right back when Lucky Boy's clerk came down with the stock.

‘Gee, it broke my heart to see how that kid loved this new deal of his. I used to say to him, “Baby, it ain't right to have your whole mind set on one thing like this,” and he used to jolly me about it and go out and buy something. My Lord, how he could spend! I guess he had exaggerated ideas of the way rich men spend money. Some of them don't. And anyway, I've had things bought for me and I don't get any kick out of it any more. But he bought dandy things for himself. I liked him to do that. Did you feel that pyjama jacket you picked up in there? All his things are good like that. And they ought to be. There ain't silk good enough for that skin of his. And he had some jewellery, lovely studs for the evening and a watch as thin as notepaper. Well, he loved all that buying and he loved the thing itself. He used to say to me: “Listen, they don't take me seriously as a big operator, but you wait till next week! You just wait till next week!” And I would feel sick in my stomach.

‘Next week came. And it was just what I expected. There were three days that were just plain unadulterated hell, when he used to call up and say in a kind of shamed, grinning way, trying to make out it was all grand: “It's me, it's your Lucky Boy. Oh, it's all fine. But it ain't going the way I want it to just yet.” And then there came a time when he didn't call up at all, and if I called up he wouldn't speak to me. So I had to send a message by my maid to say that I had been taken dangerously ill; the doctor wanted him along at once. And when he'd come and he was in my arms crying like a baby, my telephone rang and I picked it up and said: “Yes, it's me, Mr Sayers. Oh, indeed, Mr Sayers; will you please ring off, Mr Sayers. I've a friend here who's ill –” which Sayers must have thought darned chilly, as he had called up to tell me I'd made twenty-five thousand dollars on the deal up to date.

‘Well, he was pretty miserable for the next few weeks. We used to dine out a lot in the old way, just to show folks he'd a lot more than what he'd lost and sometimes that would cheer him up. The music would get him and then he always liked being with me. I guess he's awfully fond of me. But when we got home he'd cry most nights. There isn't anything he really cares about except being a rich man.

‘After a bit he seemed to get better and I began to think I'd be able to talk to him about spending less money. Because I knew he must have a bit left – he'd made a terrible lot of money on that first Grand Carfax Uniteds deal.