The Man With the Golden Arm by Nelson Algren Read Free Book Online Page A

off his bitter mouth as if fearing to miss a single word.
    Frankie noticed that John’s hair, thin as it was, had been parted so precisely in the middle it must have taken him ten minutes before the mirror to achieve the part. His comb hand trembled, even as Frankie watched, when reaching for his glass. The girl kept her own glass out of his reach. John’s own had certainly been emptied too often and Frankie heard her pleading, under the rise and fall of the uproar about them, to pick up his hat and come home with her, he had had enough.
    Drunkie John never had enough. ‘The nuthouse is the best place for you,’ he began shouting at her for some reason, ‘babies your age ’r hoppin’ up ’n down out there!’ He reached for her glass just as she drew it back, his hand struck hers and sent the whisky trickling down the front of her flowered cotton dress.
    ‘Have your own way then, have your own way,’ she placated him, not even knowing what way he wished to have next: her days were made up trying to guess what he might want next, a thing John could never tell himself. For he was a man with certain fancies on his mind. Once he’d gotten Molly drunk in here and had decided that what he really wanted to do next was ‘to make the people laugh’ by pinning her dress up to the small of her back. She had staggered blindly about trying to unpin it while the barflies had snickered and she herself had laughed in a loose self-derision.
    The next day John would have nothing to do with her, she had made such an exhibition of herself, how could a man like himself ever face his friends again?
    John was as unpredictable as the weather in the streets. Sometimes he told her to put on her coat and leave him forever. And the minute she had it on would demand that she strip and get into bed right away, he was going to show her what a bull she had for a man. But once in bed the years of boozing would betray him and he would succeed only in showing her what a freak she had.
    A good kicking around was what she had coming then, making a freak of a decent sort like himself. For he never used his hands on her. It was always a businesslike kick with the toe of his outworn dancing pumps, delivered not so much in rage as with a certain matter-of-factness, even a kind of contentment.
    ‘Don’t say you won’t, ’ he warned her about something or other now. ‘Don’t never say you won’t nothin ’.’
    ‘Just drink up,’ Molly pleaded, ‘the people ’r watchin’.’ She was trying to fit the nipple of a little blue balloon into the brown beer bottle beside her glass.
    ‘What you doin’ here anyhow?’ he wanted to know as if only now realizing who she was. Then grinned slyly, bringing his face so close to her own that she drew back abit. ‘You gettin’ drunkie too, honey?’ he asked insinuatingly, as if meaning that there was a great deal more between them than just getting drunk together again; and began shaking her by both shoulders in an access of drunken humor. ‘Now you’re a big-time entertainer!’
    She protested with strained laughter. ‘Johnny! Stop it!’
    ‘Start singin’ ’n dancin’ ’n somethin’! Makin’ the people laugh! That’s right! Make the people laugh!’ He added reprovingly: ‘I can’t do it all myself, honey.’
    ‘Give that kid somethin’,’ Frankie told Sparrow, ‘I took her to a dance when she was fourteen ’n Soph slapped her face for goin’ around wit’ older men. I was twenty-one, I guess.’ He pushed Sparrow’s change toward Sparrow. ‘Put a dime in the juke ’n give her a dime to sing along with it, she used to be singin’ all the time.’
    Sparrow cocked his head to one side, studying Frankie dubiously. ‘Give it to the kid yourself, I don’t interfere in fam’ly situations.’
    Frankie rose, handed a dime to Molly, and Drunkie John slapped it out of her hand.
    ‘ I pervide fer her,’ he told Frankie. ‘Who sent for you?’ He really wanted to know. He wanted to know