Ain't Angie Awful!

Front matter

AIN’T ANGIE AWFUL! GELETT BURGESS

COME WITH HIM? YOU COULDN’T HAVE MELTED HER OFF WITH AN ACETYLENE BLAST

Copyright 1918 JUDGE Copyright 1923 DORRANCE & COMPANY

I. Adventure of the Six-Cent Store

Ain’t Angie Awful!

CHAPTER I

THE ADVENTURE OF THE SIX-CENT STORE

IN the good old days when girls wore ears and lacquered their faces only in the privacy of their own homes, Angela Bish held the proud position of 23rd assistant gum-chewer in a six-cent store. Also, between times, she sold hardware very hard—such as cast-iron screwdrivers, tin saws, imitation hammers, and gimlets that wouldn’t gim.

All day long behind the counter she stood on one leg or the other, and sometimes on all of them; and the longer she stood, the less she could stand it.

Black was Angela’s hair, and her black eyes were black. Now some, says Confucius, are born with black eyes, and some acquire black eyes; but Angela’s ebon orbs were a birthday present from her dear, dead, fat father. Angela’s dress was equally black, if not blacker; her finger-nails were all pronounced brunettes. But, in those days, all her thoughts were blonde.

Angela thought, for instance, that if a man kissed her it would within four minutes be followed by a perfervid proposal of marriage. At this time Angie’s mind was not very strong. She was only thirteen years old, going on sixteen, and never yet had that funny face been kissed by mankind. Men had grabbed at her, of course, and even pecked at her lips; but no one yet had landed a base hit. Always she had struck them out.

Here’s a little pathetic bit about Angie, now we’re on the subject. Timidly, in private, ofttimes she would take down a photograph of Fairas Dougblanks, and lick it lovingly. Did he respond? Nay, he did but laugh at her—that same old lithographic grin. How cruel life can be, at times, to the working girl!

Don’t you already feel, dear reader, that you know Angela Bish? Can’t you almost see her lack of any real womanliness? If not, begin the tale again, and this time please pay more attention. You may have missed that part about her crass brass bangles, her semi-diamond rings, and that hungry-sad Childs’ Restaurant expression of hers. Did I tell you that her ears were pointed? Well, they were not.

No one, in those dank days, had ever called Angie a Vimp. But that wasn’t her fault. Already she had got one job as a movie actress, but she was discharged because she hated having her photograph taken. Even as you and I she said she’d rather go to a dentist. Angie, in fact, didn’t know what a Vimp might be. Neither do I. But I think Angie wasn’t one of them; and I’m quite positive she wasn’t two. We both feel, don’t we, that she was far, far too young.

A straight orphan was Angela Bish, yet the neighbors said she was always ’round. All that she remembered of her father was that, while he was only a few weeks old, he had died while trying, with considerable success, to boil his own head, believing it to be a turnip—a red turnip, which, in fact, it almost was by the time it was rescued from the soup kettle. The Bishes could eat no chowder that day.

Her mother—everyone right here will kindly shed a tear—was a woman. Only a woman, that is all, and yet it is through such noble creatures that life and love are possible. Let us pray. … From this disagreeable old half-washed harridan Angie inherited her sex which was, at least, so far, female, and a wild old goldfish who looked like William Jennings Bryan in a globular glass globe.

But hurry, reader, hurry; don’t stop to ask why! We must get us back to the shop to see our lovely heroine hard at work, the arctic zone of that hairy head wondering how to kindle the ardent temperament of her customers.

And especially she marked with indelible attention the pretty plaid Mister with purple spots and a beautiful half-burnt cigar who stood breathing puffs of peppermint into her fascinated face. How eagerly, when he picked up a hammer, she wondered how that would strike him! And when he turned with a sneer to the chisels and scissors she was in agony lest he should cut her dead. But six-cent cutlery is dull—as dull as our own (surely we may now call her so) Angela Bish. The can-openers would have done far better to give her an opening.

Her hero only bought a paper of one-ounce tacks to put in his friend’s dog food, and passed out of Angie’s young life.

No, at this epoch, Angela knew as little of flirting as did the Swami Vivekananda, or Carrie Chapman Catt. For in those dull pre-tango days ladies wore low-necked gowns only in the evening; and, save for mere feet, they had no visible means of support. Men, to virtuous Angela, were just a queer kind of women who wore pants and mustaches and hard hats, who smoked cigars, and, if they saw fit, married one. And yet Angie, pure as was her heart, longed wildly to be wild. Every girl does; in fact, if not in fancy. That’s why they are called girls.

We now come to the morning of Angela’s first adventure. Early was she awakened and cheerily by eight pounds of plaster falling from the ceiling upon her face, neck and suburbs. As usual, the vaudeville team in the room above were practising the shimmy dance and massaging each other with their feet. It always bored Angie, this time more than usual. She yawned, rose and went to work combing the lime powder from her ears and nostrils.

“Oh, I’m going to have good luck today!” she exclaimed, as the toothbrush went through the locks of her glossy hair. Poor child! She had found only seven cockroaches in the water pitcher. It takes so little to make a young girl happy!

An aged egg she fried in a sardine tin, over a candle, now, and washed it down with a baked ham and the northeastern half of an English plum pudding with champagne sauce, left over from her frugal little dinner of the night before. For her dessert—only the candle-end; and you know yourself how tasteless candles are, without sugar. Next, after oiling herself all over with butter, she wriggled into her blue sausage skirt, and put on her hat. It looked like a cuspidor, but it wasn’t. Angela never wore them.

Then it was that her great moment came. For years and years she had tried every morning, before the mirror, and every time she had failed. Today something seemed to snap in her—it must have been her conscience strings—and without the slightest effort she discovered that she could say it.

“Damn!”

Sobbing, half with regret, Angela knew that her childhood was over. She was free, free!—free to break hearts and pocketbooks, free to wear long red earrings forever and forever—perhaps afterwards; who knows! In the ecstasy of ewomancipation she drank half a bottle of cologne and smoked two whole Chinese punk sticks. She was free, free!

Joyously she set out for the six-cent store, on the corner of 13th and 25th Streets, West.

Who would have suspected that, diagonally above that little turn, there beat a heart filled with naughty joy? Back of those black eyes were thinks that would have made Rabelais weep. Yes, such was Angie that morning, if not sucher.

And behold, at 11.11, again He appeared where the hard hardware counter concealed the southern half of our little friend A. Bish. Her hero! The same plaid suit with the same dear spots, the same half-smoked cigar, the same sweet old breath, embalmed in peppermint, as per always.

SHE GAVE HIM A LITTLE TWO-FOR-FIVE SMILE

Over the top she cast her eyes. He caught them.

“I say, girlie, how much are these?”

“Can’t you read? Everything on this counter is six cents.”

“What, everything?”

“Yes, everything!” How simple are the truly great dramatic moments of life.

A red light flared in his eyes. “Then I’ll take you!"

For a moment, perhaps for only a jiffy, Angie swooned. Love’s hour had struck ONE! Then, ringing up his six cents, she gave a last look about at these to-be-forgot- ten scenes of her infancy, and calmly wrapped herself up in brown paper.

“Here you are,” she said, firmly knotting the string about her waist. What she meant was, “Here I am!” But he understood. At such moments there is little need for words. One’s instinct speaks.

In another minute he was outside the store, and Angie, trembling like a kangaroo with the flu, felt herself being carried down, down, down into the Subway. Then all was dark, dark!

Three hours later, in a gorglorious apartment on the 101st floor of the Asdorf Waltoria, Angela regained consciousness, although her brain still reeled with the stupefying fumes of peppermint and romance. Her hero was gloating over his happy victim. Strewn about the room she counted several thousand cigar butts.

“Who are you?” she murmured loudly, “and why hast you took me here?”

“I am a manufacturer of tobacco ashes,” was his reply, “and I need somebody to sift them and pack them into silver cans.”

“WHY HAST THOU BROUGHT ME HERE?”

But life, dear reader, is not always one unbroken rosary of rapture. Not at all, or seldom. Some pearls are tears. Wherefore Angela’s virtue was to remain to bore her for many, many years. Hardly had she begun rapturously to fear the worst, when came a loud rap at the door. Her hero turned pale, but, hastily and yet resolutely donning a pair of purple suspenders, he flung wide the portal.

Alas, there stood there, there did, with evil in his eyes, Mr. Burleson T. Woodrow, the proprietor of the six-cent store.

With evil in his eyes he cried the one word, “Give her back, you robber! Give her back!”

And, so saying this, he held before the Hero’s horrified gaze a small lead token. A little thing it was, small and round, hardly littler than a glass eye; but it had power to change Angela’s destiny. With one long, swift glance, she saw that her doom was sealed. Back she must go, back to the slavery of the hard, hard, hardware counter again. In one moment all her innocent dreams of vice had gefled.

“Oh, dammit!” she whispered.

HE FLUNG WIDE THE PORTAL

How little we know when a new accomplishment may prove useful!

For B. T. Woodrow held, in that large lobster-like hand, a counterfeit six-cent piece!

II. Adventure of the Peanivorous Rit

CHAPTER II.

THE ADVENTURE OF THE PEANIVOROUS RIT

ANGELA was now only sixteen. But what does that matter, when one is young! She held a responsible position in a Swedish match factory. She it was who, when the matches were all finished, dipped the tips in water to make sure they would not light.

Would I might describe her sloe-black, fast-black hair, her high-brow eyebrows, her nice cool high-school eyes whose pupils were always playing truant whenever she winked. But I see you are not listening. You want me to resume the offensive, with a capital offense.

Well then, although Angie was as happy as a fried egg, her friend Conscience had begun to tell her, “You’re another!”

For the Soul, beloved brethren, hath also its traffic cops, warning us at all life’s crossroads, “GO” or “STOP.” But somehow, whenever Angie’s conscience showed green she was apt to see red.

“Fat gentlemen with side whiskers,” it was now whispering, “who present young girls with popcorn and peanuts on the Elevated trains are nice, but naughty.” But, though he had his neck shaved, he was wealthy, and could evidently afford it. If, then, he choose to drop buttered popcorn

and peanuts down the back of her neck, why shouldn’t she accept the gifts in the spirit in which they were given? For they were given in the very highest of spirits.

Angela’s view of life, you see, was a little cross-eyed. She should, of course, have kicked him gently in the face and then called upon the handiest marine hard by to finish him up and spit him out the window. If she couldn’t find a marine—and sometimes one can’t, although they are the first to fight—she might, at the nearest jewelers, at least have got an aquamarine.

But instead, she gave him a little two-for-five smile (you should have seen one of her large 85c ones, when she was lapping up a cucumber sundae!) and coyly mentioned telephone number. It wasn’t hers, really though; it belonged to the undertaker on ground floor—and that was a funny thing, too, for Angie had often said she wouldn’t be found dead in his shop.

One day the undertaker who was always undertaking people, undertook to call her down to the phone. Angie always hated to be called down, but condescending she descended. It was her fat friend; she knew it was, because she could smell peanuts in the receiver.

“Say, meet me at the Ritz, will you, Peacho? Right away!”

Angela frowned. But it wasn’t that, upon such short acquaintance, he called her by her botanical name. It wasn’t that something seemed to be stirring and moaning inside the coffin on which she sat. It wasn’t even that the undertaker was listening, as usual, for he wasn’t; he was drinking as usual—embalming fluid. No—“the Ritz”—it was something that often happened when she tried to think—a sudden rush of mud to the head.

“But what are rits?” she faltered. “Is it a breakfast food, or something like a Yonker?”

“Oh, take a taxi, and ask the engineer. Hurry!” and he had hung up before she could say Jack Dempsey. She hadn’t time even to think of saying it. It didn’t occur to her till hours afterwards.

She didn’t take a taxi, but a taxi took her to the hotel whose bills towered high over the adjacent roofs. There she paid the chauffeur—’twas all she had—a compliment. The poor girl could ill afford it, seriously ill; she had now but two left, and no more coming in till Saturday!

But she was going to meet a man! This time love’s guerdon would be hers! Angie thought a guerdon was some kind of a locket or lavalliere, perhaps even with diamond chips in it!

We now come to the party of the second part—a rather entertaining Friday Night party, from 8 till 10.

He was large and blond; rather blond than large, though he was large, too—too large. Tanned by the fierce tropical rays of the electric light, his honest, leather-beaten features and even portions of his face and visage showed him to be a strap-hanger of more than usual vigor—one who could step on a dozen feet at once, not including his own.

In full view of the audience, he was eating eight peanuts, with nothing up his sleeves and a silk hat. As he ate, he breathed; and as he breathed, he ate. Long practise had enabled him to do both at once. But he couldn’t do both and be surprised at the same time. He had to stop something, so he stopped breathing—for lo, Angela was before him, the love light in her ears.

“Here I be!” she cried. It was a grammatic moment.

He gave her one look. But then, he was always giving her things. He had been generous from the first. Not content with that, he gave her a cuff on the jaw. It was one of his best cuffs, too.

“You are late, girl! Come up to my room on the fourth story, the only story, unfortunately, with a happy ending. It is in the East wing, near the wishbone. Follow me!”

Did it bode murder, or marriage? Angie hardly cared. All she knew was that she was beautiful and desperate and slightly bowlegged; and heaven helping her, she would make this man her slave. If heaven wouldn’t help her, it would be hell.

How they ever got up to the room she never knew—so why should I—or you? Perhaps they crawled up the mail chute. Perhaps they were carried up on a tray, disguised as two near-gin rickeys and a liverwurst sandwich. But they are in the room already and we’ll have to hurry to catch up to them.

At last she was alone with him and two dozen mouse-traps. They were all arranged upon the bed, all different nationalities, though most of them were females. Why had he set a trap for her in this lonely place? As both her hands were in her muff she could not shut her eyes and thus conceal her blushes.

“Now here is my best seller,” he went on as if nothing had happened, which, in fact, it had. He displayed a small silver contraption looking like the skull of a rheostat. “This is devised for the use of ladies who are afraid of mice. Just attach it to the garter, and it catches them on the way up, thus rendering it unnecessary to mount a chair or other quadruped. You, my dear, are to peddle them; you will have all rights north of Fifth Avenue. You have brains and temperament and freckles, and should do well. I have picked you out of the whole of New York, but I shall return you. Now here is another, a trap with a chain to be fastened to the wall, grand piano or anything heavy, like a mortgage, or afternoon caller. You see, little one? The mouse, when caught, can neither pull the trap into his hole, nor the hole into his trap. You will work on a commission, say a captain’s, or, if you do well, a major’s.”

But Angela Bish had a soul above . She would catch larger game; and the wealthy peanut-eater, whose victims strewed the floor, not to speak of shuddering peanuts yet to be eaten, pale with fear, had the makings of a he-husband. Her chance had come.

With a scarlet cry she hurled herself into his arms, and, by the hard-boiled kiss she gave him he perceived, too late, that she was virtuous. Amazed, shocked, he wrenched

himself free and burst out of the room, weeping like a cow.

And alas, Angie, in her excitement—she had hardly known what excitemeant before—had sprung the trap, and behold, she now found herself firmly held by the left ear at the end of a long silver chain. Struggle as she might or might not, she could not escape. She couldn’t even get away. The room was filled with wails and peanuts. No one came.

THE PLUMBER, WHO CUT OFF HER EARS WITH HIS TIN SHEARS, HARDLY KNEW HER To drown her sorrow she began eating the peanuts feverishly.

It was hours before they found her. She had aged terribly. The plumber, who cut off her ear with his tin shears, hardly knew her. But then, he had never seen her before, and we must forgive him; besides, peanuts change one considerably, especially when eaten without a spoon.

III. Adventure of the Fascinating Face

CHAPTER III.

THE ADVENTURE OF THE FASCINATING FACE

IT was Spring in New York. Don’t you just love stories that begin that way—or do you prefer Autumn? It was spring in New York, nevertheless. It was Spring, also, on Avenue B. Indeed it often is, at that time of year. Bright red flannels were burgeoning on the clothes lines, and on the fire-escapes the milk bottles lent their vivid note of blue. Aye, it was Spring for kiddies and frisky puppy dogs; but it was Spring no more for the late Tom-cat in the area. Alas, he had not yet been removed by the Board of Health!

What was Angela Bish thinking of as she gazed so perpendicularly out the casement? Was it of love or lobsters, of lingerie, or Charlie Chaplin? No. There was only one thing Angie ever thought much about—nothing. She was thinking about it now. She had been thinking about it so long that her wrist was asleep.

Angie was quite a young lady, now. She was a quarter to eighteen. Her feet by this time were fully grown, and in other ways she was getting a figure. Occasionally for a whole minute at a time her mouth was not ajar. Beautiful? Well, hardly that. Angie looked too much as if she had been packed all the winter in a trunk, with camphor balls to keep the moths out of her circulation. Still, if anyone liked that sort of girl, Angie was just about the sort of girl one would simply hate.

The trouble was that nobody seemed to like that sort of girl. They wanted one with fewer elbows, and more eyelashes—one who didn’t boil over with frenzied yearning whenever a man passed her way. No one had ever made love to Angie, no one had ever even proposed. Angie always managed to propose first. No, Angie had never been hugged; she showed it plainly in every gesture. Yet she had the temperament of a mustard plaster. You see, if any man had ever hugged Angie, he would be hugging her yet. She would never have let go. But instead, he is hugging some other girl, less Angelic, someone with removable fins.

All these things had made Angie a woman-hater. But what true womanly woman is not?

Angie had had no breakfast that morning, Angie had not had, and she was feeling a little tropical in the inskirts of her equator. Late the evening before she had found, outside the inside of Delmonico’s, lo, a bill-of-fare, thrown out the window, probably, by some bill-collector. Hungry and worried, she had devoured the whole menu from the date to the final period. … It must have been the Chignons sous cloche that had disagreed with her. Undoubtedly the dinner card had not been quite fresh.

So Angie had to walk down town on an empty stomach. If it had been anyone’s else stomach it wouldn’t have been so hard; but to have to walk on her own—without rubbers—was very rough on a proud, sensitive girl, especially when slightly cross-eyed.

A demonstrator of mackintoshes was Angie. All day long she sat in a red one and a happy smile under a shower of real water in a shop window, regarding the passers-by. It was a bit damp, the mackintoshes not being really as waterproof as they were advertised, but as Angie already had water on the knees she didn’t mind it. She sat and just thought about zeros, and how soon she’d get married. How many, many husbands peered at her through the plate glass and longed for a wife as silent as Angie! But Angie never knew. If she had she would have burst a blood vessel.

For this work Angie received two dollars a week and all the water she wanted to drink, free. Seeing so many men, she was never lonely. The only thing she disliked about it was having to sleep on the radiator all night; but she simply had to get dry enough to go to work the next morning, and after all, her radiator was one of the softest in New York. Every situation, however, has its little drawbacks anyway; even a Bank President has to get used to the drafts.

Now among the faces that stared at Angie, wondering if indeed she were human, or only a gently smiling vegetable, was one so covered with whiskers that at first she could hardly tell whether it was a man or a woman. But oh, those eyes! Angie thought them capital I’s. Gazing at them, she felt just as if she were going over Niagara Falls in a barrel. Then she would wake up to find her mackintosh was leaking in a new place, and she was only half drowned, after all.

Now, to some, Love comes slowly, like a coat of tan growing ever deeper. But to others it strikes as suddenly as lightning, permeating one’s whole being like a sneeze. To Angie love came not only quickly but always; and, if denied expression it soon developed into convulsions which often proved fatal.

The third time she saw The Face, Angie plunged through the plate glass window with a nice scream and threw herself into his arms. But, alas, he had already disappeared!

This depressed her; she felt like a chocolate éclair that has fallen into an ash barrel—that is, almost as bad—as bad as a vanilla éclair, at any rate. She would be revenged; she would find that Face and face it. Then she would woo him like a siren, only not quite so loud, and when at last he was acclimated to her vampire love she would sit on him hard. Perhaps, indeed, she might begin by sitting on him—it would depend upon what else he had on his lap. Any- way, she would make him suffer even as she had suffered, even if she had to marry him to do it.

But where was the Face? That was the interrogation point!

For weeks she searched—but it was like trying to find a needle in a smokestack. There seemed to be so many, many whiskers in New York, but they never had that Certain Something that made her feel so all-overish. She was, therefore, in no very gilded frame of mind when, one evening, she sat down on a Fifth Avenue curbstone to rest. She simply had to get rested or arrested—she didn’t care which.

For a while she was so amused watching the children and old gentlemen getting run over by automobiles that she didn’t see the person seated beside her. Except for his eyebrows his face was quite nude. His hands also were naked, and he was thoughtfully eating unsalted five-dollar bills.

Such rich food might disagree with him, thought Angie; but she didn’t really care. One gets so used to gluttony in a large city that one takes it quite easily. And strangely, too, she felt no vertigo such as usually overcame her when she found herself in the same block with a live man. Her heart was broken. If only that Face were broken, instead!

And still he said no word; his face was too full of currency. It was not till he began speaking that he spoke.

“I am a stranger in Manhattan,” he remarked, “and this is the cheapest and best meal I have eaten here for several years. I was enjoying it in my simple Flushing fashion till you came. But you have taken away my appetite. If you don’t return it, I’ll call a policeman.”

No man had ever spoken to her so kindly, few had ever spoken at all. There was something, too, about the way he shoved her into the gutter that moved her strangely. But she was in no mood for flirtation, or, indeed, for anything mere. At another time she might have loved that man—in a gondola, perhaps, or an obbligato or an arpeggio, or, in fact, in any of those picturesque places you see in the movies. But it was not so to be. She heard only these cruel whiskers that had deceived her; she saw only that lying voice.

But already a policeman was approaching her on care-worn feet.

Blushing to the roots of her tonsils, Angie fled, she knew not where.

Hardly had she got there, however, when a sudden thought struck her like a falling safe. Wasn’t there something strangely familiar about that man—or was there? The way he had aimed his nose at her—the way he had sighed through his ears—what was it? Or wasn’t it? And if not, why not?

And then it all came over her and overcame her. … She stopped, looked, listened. But alas, two alases! He was gone. In acute despair she leaned sadly against a newspaper and began to weep—great, wonderful weeps.

He, who had seemed so vice versâ, was he not, indeed, by way of being The Face? She had, in fact, almost recognized it. Why why, now!

It was a close shave!

IV. Adventure of the Mad Paper-Hanger

CHAPTER IV.

THE ADVENTURE OF THE MAD PAPER-HANGER

NOT long did Angela Bish remain in her mackintoshes. She had tasted Romance à la subway.

For two days, now, she had winked, in the 199th Street Station, at a melancholy man in a slimy overcoat whose beard was full of big white blobs. He had smiled at her, she fancied; although, between you and me and the chewing-gum distributing machine, the red paint of which was being hungrily licked off by a half-starved tot, it may have been that misery, alas, too often draws only a smile from the thoughtless.

Be that as it may, let us return to life as it is lived north of 11th Street.

Angie lived on the memory of that smile all day; and at night she warmed it over for supper. Already life had changed for Angie; and, inversely, Angie had changed for life.

The third day, greatly daring, she returned his grin in even better condition than she had found it.

THAT EMBRACE WAS A REVELATION OF RAPTURE TO ANGIE, WHO STILL HAD AN AMATEUR RATING

Another instinct, and she was in his arms. Isn’t human nature wonderful, Gertrude? At one moment you are in heaven waited on by pink angels, and the next, some one has tried to borrow four dollars—and succeeded. And then, when your spirits are covered with green mold and infested with crawling things, lo, a friend appears out of Nowhere and offers you a position as companion to a beautiful and wealthy young French girl at a salary of $3,000 a month and cigarettes. Isn’t that true? Anyway, I’ll say so.

But I was speaking, you may remember, of our foolish heroine.

That embrace was a revelation of rapture to Angie, who still had an amateur rating. How beardy his beard was!—and his hands were soft and cold and moist. At first she thought they were raw oysters. She had always loved oysters, always would. She was happier than she had been since she ate her first hair sandwich. Nevertheless, we must not leave her too long in the embrace of an imperfect stranger.