Every morning around one o'clock I got the package of waybills for the freight that had come in on the Richard Peck from the shipping clerk and footed it up to the Red Building. The trip took me more than half an hour and I had to make it twice, for another boat, the Chester Chapin, docked at 2:30 a.m. On the way I passed the side street where the girls hung out and soon got to know them. They used to sit outside when the nights were warm and there was no work. I got acquainted with the cops on the beat, too. They were all Irish.
I usually hurried on the way up with the waybills and took my time coming back so that I could bum cigaretts off the girls, being short of cash as I was saving up to buy a new suit of clothes with shoulder-supremacy like the tallymen wore. The suit I had bought from Connelly was threadbare by this time, and held in reserve for special occasions. The girls used to kid me about the way my clothes were cut and about my Irish brogue, but they were good girls, ready to share what they had with you when they knew that you had no spare nickels.
One night as I was passing, a girl called German Suzy, with red hair and a gold tooth, who some times gave me cigarettes, ran out after a man calling him names and grabbed him by the arm. From what she said I understood he had tried to slip her a phoney halfdollar. He tried to shake her off but she hung onto him, screaming at him. When he saw the other girls crowding around he socked German Suzy in the mouth and broke her gold tooth. When I saw that I got mad and jumped at the man, but something hit me hard between the eyes and I saw stars. When I fell I hit my head. I saw two things before I passed out: my waybills flying in the air and German Suzy pull her skirts up to her waist and land a kick in the man's privates that lifted him onto his toes before he dropped.
When I came to I was in a hall bedroom with a hunk of raw meat over my eye. Three or four girls were in the room, among them, German Suzy—without her gold tooth. My first thought was the waybills.
"Take it easy," Suzy said. "The waybills is in the Red Building."
"All of them...how did they get there?" I said, sitting up.
"Me and Suzy and Rose-Marie," said a girl with a boil on her nose. "An' we made that popeyed night clerk sign for them, so all is jake!"
She shoved the receipt in my face.
The halfdollar was phoney right enough. From what I heard later, the fellow who tried to pass it was something to look at by the time the girls got through with him. A cop came along in the end and rescued him.
There were three small houses of sooty red brick that stood in a row on the side street. Two of them had the windows boarded up with To Let signs on them. Once or twice, on the way home in the morning after working overtime, I had seen a little old lady with a black shawl and bonnet and spectacles come out of the house in the middle, number 7, with a network market bag over her arm. Once, after I got the waybills from the first boat and started for the Red Building I saw a girl sitting on the doorstep. She was knitting a sweater, and as I passed looked up and smiled at me. She had blond hair with a tinge of gold in it and she had a look of my mother about the eyes. I waved to her and said hello.
"Hello yourself," she said and smiled again.
She had nice teeth. I hurried on, so that I would have time to stop and talk to her on the way back. When I turned the corner I began to run and only let up when I got to the Red Building. I handed the waybills to the clerk and started out.
"What's the hurry, kid, you're ahead of time, stick around," he said.
But I was already out of the door, and I ran most of the way back. Before I got to the corner where the house was I slowed up to get my breath. German Suzy passed me and gave me a cigarette, but I did not feel like smoking then and stuck it in my breast pocket. Farther on, I could see the girl with the light of the street lamp in front of the door shining on her hair.
"You're up late," I said to her.
"I'm a regular night owl," she said, smiling at me. "Did you catch the train?"
Then I realized she had seen me starting to run, and I wondered if she had understood why. She was sitting in the doorway, the door was open and she was leaning back against the doorjamb. The little hallway behind her had white wallpaper with red flowers on it and there was a gas chandelier and a coat-rack at the end of the hall with an enlarged photograph on either side of it of a woman in a bonnet and a man with a big moustache, in gilt frames. I noticed these things because I was curious to see what the house she lived in was like inside. She made room for me beside her and laid her knitting on her knees. I felt like starting a conversation but I could not think of anything to talk about.
"Fine night," I said.
She said nothing, just kept on looking at me with that smile.
"Been here long?" I asked.
She shook her head.
"Five days, tomorrow."
"First time I've seen you," I said.
"Working overtime."
She began to knit again. I took the cigarette from my pocket and felt for a match. Then it occurred to me to offer it to her.
"It's your last," she said.
"No, no," I said, "I've a package in my desk."
I lit the cigarette for her.
"Here every night?" I asked.
She nodded.
Well," I said, "I've got to get back to work. See you again."
She gave me her hand.
"Thanks for the smoke," she said.
I got back to the office and started in copying a huge pile of waybills....I thought that two-thirty boat would never got in....
On my next trip the door of the little house was closed. The fan light showed that the gas chandelier in the hall was still lit, and there was a light in the window over the door. But the blind was drawn.
On the way back I saw a man coming out of the house.
Twenty hours to the minute had passed since I had seen her last. I gave her a package of cigarettes that had cost me the best part of a quarter, and a piece of cake wrapped in tissue paper that Mrs. G.B. had slipped in with my sandwiches as a surprise.
"For me?" she said raising her brows.
"For you," I said.
"God bless you, I'm dying for a smoke," she said. "Sit down.
I tapped my bundle of waybills. It was a good halfhour's walk to the Red Building.
"In twenty minutes I'll be with you," I said and started to run not caring whether she saw me or not this time....
"My word, you didn't take long," she said when I got back.
"I won the hundred yards, two-twenty and quartermile two years straight at school, and there were fellows of eighteen running against me," I boasted, and sat down.
"What age are you now?"
"I'll be seventeen in January."
"And this is September." She shook her head. "What a kid you are!"
"I am not," I said.
"Oh, yes, you are, and that's why I like you."
When she said that I had a very nice feeling and became more at ease. I kept looking at her and she was smiling. Then I said:
"You know, if I'd had a sister I bet she'd have looked like you, only with dark hair."
"You don't say," she said. "Why?"
"You have eyes like my mother. Look."
I got out a pocketbook Captain French had given my father for Christmas and handed her a little picture of my mother I always had with me. She looked at it for a long time, covering the lower part of the face with her finger ....The eyes had the same expression and were placed like her own.
"Isn't she a darling," she said. "Gee, I wish I did look like her. But she's so young!"
"She died before I was thirteen," I said.
She laid her hand over mine and held it there.
"Just when you needed her most," she said. And then she leaned over and kissed me....
"Listen," I said, "I've got to go. Guess you'll be in bed by the time I make my next trip—two-fortyfive?"
"Never can tell ahead," she said. "Bye-bye."
When I passed her street on the way back she was not on the steps. The fanlight of number 7 was dark. There was a light in the window over the door. But the blind was drawn.