U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [422]
But the boy she liked best in the house was a Cuban named Tony Garrido, who played the guitar for two
South Americans who danced the maxixe in a Broadway cabaret. She used to pass him on the stairs and knew al about it and decided she had a crush on him long before they ever spoke. He looked so young with his big brown eyes and his smooth oval face a very light coffeecolor with a little flush on the cheeks under his high long cheekbones. She used to wonder if he was the same color al over. He had polite bashful manners and a low grownup voice. The first time he spoke to her, one spring evening when she
-184-was standing on the stoop wondering desperately what she could do to keep from going up to the room, she knew he was going to fal for her. She kidded him and asked him what he put on his eyelashes to make them so black. He said it was the same thing that made her hair so pretty and golden and asked her to have an icecream soda with him.
Afterwards they walked on the Drive. He'talked Eng-lish fine with a little accent that Margie thought was very distinguished. Right away they'd stopped kidding and he was tel ing her how homesick he was for Havana and how crazy he was to get out of New York, and she was tel ing him what an awful life she led and how al the men in the house were always pinching her and jostling her on the stairs, and how she'd throw herself in the river if she had to go on living in one room with Agnes and Frank Mandevil e. And as for that Indian, she wouldn't let him touch her not if he was the last man in the world. She didn't get home until it was time for Tony to go downtown to his cabaret. Instead of supper they ate some more icecream sodas. Margie went back happy as a lark. Coming out of the drugstore, she'd heard a woman say to her friend, "My, what a handsome young couple." Of course Frank and Agnes raised Cain. Agnes cried and Frank lashed himself up into a passion and said he'd punch the damn greaser's head in if he so much as laid a finger on a pretty, pure American girl. Margie yel ed out that she'd do what she damn pleased and said everything mean she could think of. She'd decided that the thing for her to do was to marry Tony and run away to Cuba with him.
Tony didn't seem to like the idea of getting married much, but she'd go up to his little hal bedroom as soon as Frank was out of the house at noon and wake Tony up and tease him and pet him. He'd want to make love to her but she wouldn't let him. The first time she fought
-185-him off he broke down and cried and said it was an insult and that in Cuba men didn't al ow women to act like that.
"It's the first time in my life a woman has refused my love." Margie said she didn't care, not til they were married and had gotten out of this awful place. At last one after-noon she teased him til he said al right. She put her hair up on top of her head and put on her most grownuplook-ing dress and they went down to the marriagebureau on the subway. They were both of them scared to death when they had to go up to the clerk; he was twentyone and she said she was nineteen and got away with it. She'd stolen the money out of Agnes's purse to pay for the license. She almost went crazy the weeks she had to wait for Tony to finish out his contract. Then one day in May, when she tapped on his bedroom door he showed her two hundred dol ars in bil s he'd saved up and said, "Today we get married. . . . Tomorrow we sail for La 'Avana. We can make very much money there. You wil dance and I wil sing and play the guitar." He made the gesture of playing the guitar with the thinpointed fingers of one of his smal hands. Her heart started beating hard. She ran downstairs. Frank had already gone out. She scribbled a note to Agnes on the piece of cardboard that had come back from