U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [485]
-331-That Sunday Mr. A took her out to lunch at the Hotel Pennsylvania and afterwards she managed to get him to drive her over to Margolies' studio. She guessed the young Jewish boy wasn't so wel off and thought Mr. A might just as wel pay for a set of photographs. Mr. A was sore about going because he'd gotten his big car out and wanted to take her for a drive up the Hudson. Anyway he went. It was funny in Margolies'
studio. Everything was hung with black velvet and there were screens of different sizes in black and white and yel ow and green and silver stand-ing al over the big dusty room under the grimy skylights. The young man acted funny too, as if he hadn't expected them.
"Al this is over," he said. "This is my brother Lee's studio. I'm attending to his clientele while he's abroad. . . . My interests are in the real art of the fu-ture.""What's that?" asked Mr. A, grumpily clipping the end off a cigar as he looked around for a place to sit down.
"Motionpictures. You see I'm Sam Margolies. . . . You'l hear of me if you haven't yet." Mr. A sat down grouchily on a dusty velvet model-stand. "Wel , make it snappy. . . . We want to go driv-ing". Sam Margolies seemed sore because Margo had just come in her streetclothes. He looked her over with his petulant grey eyes for a long time.
"I may not be able to do anything . . . I can't create if I'm hurried. . . . I had seen you stately in Spanish black." Margo laughed. "I'm not exactly the type."
"The type for a smal infanta by Velasquez." He had a definite foreign accent when he spoke earnestly. "Wel , I was married to a Spaniard once. . . . That was enough of Spanish grandees and al that kind of thing to last me a lifetime.""Wait, wait," said Sam Margolies, walking al round her. "I see it, first in streetclothes and then . . ." He ran out of the room and came back with a black lace shawl. "An infanta in the court of old Spain."
-332-"You don't know what it's like to be married to one," said Margo. "And to live in a house ful of noble spick relatives."
While Sam Margolies was posing her in her street-clothes Mr. A was walking up and down fidgeting with his cigar. It must have been getting cloudy out because the overhead skylight grew darker and darker. When Sam Margolies turned the floodlights on her the skylight went blue, like on the stage. Then when he got to posing her in the Spanish shawl and made her take her things off and let her undies down so that she had nothing on but the shawl above the waist, she noticed that Mr. A had let his cigar go out and was watching intently. The reflection from the floodlight made his eyes glint. After the photographer was through, when they were
walking down the gritty wooden stairs from the studio, Mr. A said, "I don't like that guy . . . makes me think of a pimp."
"Oh, no, it's just that he's very artistic," said Margo.
"How much did he say the photographs were?"
"Plenty," said Mr. A.
In the unlighted hal that smelt of cabbage cooking somewhere, he grabbed her to him and kissed her.
Through the glass front door she could see a flutter of snow in the street that was empty under the lamps. "Aw, to hel with him," he said, stretching his fingers out across the smal of her back. "You're a great little girl, do you know it? Gosh. I like this house. It makes me think of the old days."
Margo shook her head and blinked. "Too bad about our drive," she said. "It's snowing.""Drive hel ," said Mr. A. "Let's you and me act like we was fond of each other for tonight at least. . . . First we'l go to the Meadowbrook and have a little bite to drink. . .
. Jesus, I wish I'd met you before I got in on the dough, when I war livin' in bedbug al ey and al that sort of thing."
-333-She let her head drop on his chest for a moment. "Char-ley, you're number one," she whispered. That night he got Margo to say that when Agnes took Frank out to his sister's house