The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [73]
was prison coming to him, and no rap for her. Therefore he killed her, he said, "So another guy wouldn't live rich with her off my troubles." Einhorn saved the clippings from the papers. "You see what he says--'live rich'? Living rich was what it was with her. I can tell you." He wanted me to know he could. He could tell me indeed, and there were few people "etter placed than I to hear it from him. "Poor Lollie!" "Ah, poor, poor kid!" he said. "But I think she was bound to die like that, Augie. She had a Frankie-and-Johnny mentality. And when I knew her she was beautiful. Yes, she was rich." All white-headed, and shrunken some from his former size, he told me about her with fervor. "They say she was getting sloppy toward the end, and greedy about money. That was bad. There's trouble enough from f----. She was made to have a violent thing happen to her. The world doesn't let hot blood off easy." Wrapped and planted in this was an appeal to me to remember his hot blood. My services to him had put me in some sinking positions--he wanted to know what thought I had of them, maybe; or, humanly enough, whether I would celebrate them with him. Oh, the places where pride won't make a stand! What I was particularly bidden to recall in this talk was the night of my graduation from high school. The Einhoms had been extremely kind to me. A wallet with ten dollars in it was my present from the three of them, and Mrs. Einhorn came to the graduation exercises with Mama and the Kleins and Tambows that February night. Afterward there was a party at the Kleins', where I was expected. I drove Mama home from the assembly--I didn't have my name in the evening program, like Simon, but Mama was pleased and smoothed my hand as I was leading her upstairs. Tillie Einhorn waited below in the car. "You go to your party," she said as I was taking her back to the poolroom. My having finished high school was of immense importance in her eyes, and she honored me extraordinarily, in the tone she took. She was a warm woman, in most matters very simple, she wanted to give me some sort of blessing, and my "education" had, I think, suddenly made her timid of me. So we drove in the black and wet cold to the poolroom, and she said several times over, "Willie says you got a good head. You'll be a teacher yourself." And then she crushed up against me in her sealskin coat, belonging to the good days, to kiss me on the cheek, and had the happy tears of terribly deep feeling to wipe from her face before we went into the poolroom. Behind this, probably, was my "orphancy," and the occasion woke it up. We were dressed in our best; Mrs. Einhorn even gave off a perfume, in the car, from her silk scarf and dress established with silver buttons on her breast. We crossed the wide sidewalk to the poolroom. Below, the windows, as required by law, were curtained, and above, the rods of the signs writhed in their colors in the wet. The crowd in the poolroom was small tonight because of graduation. So you could hear the kissing of the balls from the farthest cavelike lights and soft roaring of green tables, and the fat of wieners on the grill. Dingbat came from the back, holding the wooden triangular ball rack, to shake hands. "Augie is going to a party by Klein," said Mrs. Einhom. "Congratulations, son," said Einhom with state manners. "He's going, Tillie, but not right away. I have a treat for him first. I'm taking him to a show." "Willie," she said, disturbed, "let him go. Tonight it's his night." "Not just a neighborhood movie, but to Mc Vicker's, a stage show with little girls, trained animals, and a Frenchman from the Bal Tabarin who stands on his head on a pop bottle. How does that sound to you, Augie? Like a good thing? I planned it out a week ago." "Sure, that's all right. Jimmy said the party would run late, and I can go after midnight." "But Dingbat can take you, Willie. Augie wants to be with young people tonight, not with you." "If I'm going out Dingbat is needed here and will stay here," said Einhom and shook off her arguments. I wasn't so intoxicated with its being