U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [64]
"To hel with Uncle Sam's tin ships. Coming home soon."
It wasn't signed but she knew the writing. It worried her. Jerry Burnham sat at the telephone switchboard going over the pages as she finished them. Now and then he went out to the washroom; when he came back each
time a hot breath of whisky wafted across the office. Janey was nervous. She typed til the little black letters squirmed before her eyes. She was worried about Joe. How could he be coming home before his enlistment was up? Some--153-thing must be the matter. And Jerry Burnham moving restlessly round on the telephone girl's seat made her uncomfortable. She and Alice had talked about the danger of staying in an office alone with a man like this. Late like this and drinking, a man had just one idea. When she handed him the next to the last sheet his eye, bright and moist, caught hers. "I bet you're tired, Miss Wil iams," he said. "It's a darned shame to keep you in like this and Saturday night too.""It's quite al right, Mr. Burnham," she said icily and her fingers chirruped. "It's the damned old baywindow's fault. He chewed the rag so much about politics al day, nobody could get any work done.""Wel , it doesn't matter now," said Janey. "Noth-ing matters any more. . . . It's almost eight o'clock. I had to pass up a date with my best girl . . . or there-abouts. I bet you passed up a date too, Miss Wil iams."
"I was going to meet another girl, that's al .""Now I'l tel one . . ." He laughed so easily that she found her-self laughing too. When the last page was done and in the envelope, Janey got up to get her hat. "Look, Miss Wil iams, we'l drop this in the mail and then you'd better come and have a bite with me."
Going down in the elevator Janey intended to excuse herself and go home but somehow she didn't and found herself, everything aflutter inside of her, sitting cool y down with him in a French restaurant on H Street.
"Wel , what do you think of the New Freedom, Miss Wil iams?" asked Jerry Burnham with a laugh after he'd sat down. He handed her the menu. "Here's the score-card . . . Let your conscience be your guide."
"Why, I hardly know, Mr. Burnham."
"Wel , I'm for it, frankly. I think Wilson's a big man
. . . Nothing like change anyway, the best thing in the world, don't you think so? Bryan's a big bel owing
blatherskite but even he represents something and even
-154-Josephus Daniels fil ing the navy with grapejuice. I think there's a chance we may get back to being a democracy
. . . Maybe there won't have to be a revolution; what do you think?" He never waited for her to answer a question, he just talked and laughed al by himself. When Janey tried to tel Alice about it afterwards the things Jerry Burnham said didn't seem so funny, nor the food so good nor everything so jol y. Alice was pretty bitter about it. "Oh, Janey, how could you go out late at night with a drunken man and to a place like that and here I was crazy anxious . . . You know a man like that has only one idea . . . I declare I think it was heartless and light . . . I wouldn't have thought you capable of such a thing.""But, Alice, it wasn't like that at al ," Janey kept saying, but Alice cried and went round looking hurt for a whole week; so that after that Janey kept off the subject of Jerry Burnham. It was the first disagree-ment she'd ever had with Alice and it made her feel bad. Stil she got to be friends with Jerry Burnham. He
seemed to like taking her out and having her listen to him talk. Even after he'd thrown up his job at Dreyfus and Carrol , he sometimes cal ed for her Saturday afternoons to take his job at Dreyfus and Carrol , he sometimes cal ed for her Saturday afternoons to take her to Keith's. Janey arranged a meeting with Alice out in Rock Creek Park but it wasn't