Читать книгу The Bishop's Jaegers - Thorne Smith - Страница 8

In quite another quarter of the city Aspirin Liz heaved her generous bulk out of bed and wearily dragged a pair of tent-like bloomers over enough body to make two of Yolanda’s.

Grunting comfortably as she reached for the kettle sequestered in a dark closet, she proceeded to make herself some coffee. Also she found time to take a couple of aspirins, for which she was well named. These little duties being performed, and a shirt and flowered dressing gown added to her toilette, she collapsed in a chair and gloomily considered a hole that had but recently appeared in her bloomers. True, they were old bloomers, but still that hole had no right to be where it was. And it was not the first time either.

As Aspirin Liz regarded this new evidence of the bloomers’ unworthiness her heart was filled with bitterness and indignation against the low-lives who had made the bloomers as well as the dirty dogs who had tricked her into buying them.

“Never put enough reinforcement into the damn things,” she grumbled to herself, little realizing that hers was a figure that demanded more in the line of reinforcement than either the looms or sewing machines could profitably afford to supply. “Always busting out in a fresh spot like one of those all-fired Holland dykes.”

Idly her mind drifted back through the years until she saw again a small boy thrusting some part of his body through a hole in a dyke. Just what part of his body it was remained a little vague to Aspirin Liz, but she was reasonably sure it was either an arm or a leg or a foot. It might even have been a finger to begin with, and later on an arm. She knew the little boy had not stuck his head through the hole, because her own common sense, of which she had a lot, convinced her that no little boy could have been as big a damn fool as all that.

She had always liked that story as a child. Game little beggar, that boy. As she had progressed through life, she had kept her eyes peeled for such a youth but had never come across one, although she had met many who had played games, and not very nice games at that. Even then they had cheated.

There was hardly anything Aspirin Liz did not know about men, and even less to their credit. They drank and cursed and treated women like hell and left the place all messed up. The more work you did for a man, the more things he could think up for you to do. If God had only made men more like animals, more like dogs, for instance, without any too much brains, things would be a great deal easier for women. But unfortunately men had brains, mean, bad-acting brains that kept interfering with the business of living. Women could handle their bodies all right, but the devil himself could not deal with a man’s brains.

Aspirin Liz picked up last night’s newspaper and broodingly considered a salaciously illustrated underwear advertisement.

“Wouldn’t have lasted a minute in my day,” she told herself as she studied the delicate lines of a pair of step-ins. “Yanked ’em clean off you, they would. Nowadays everything’s so fancy. Didn’t need all that nonsense when I was a girl. God knows nothing could have been more discouraging than those long, dangling, iron-clad, rock-girt flannels I grew up in, yet everybody seemed to do pretty well in spite of ’em. Drawers were drawers in those days. And when you took ’em off you knew you had ’em off. No two ways about it. Now take these makeshift bloomers....”

It does not really matter where Aspirin Liz took her makeshift bloomers. She was always taking them somewhere. This morning, as on every morning, she had a bit of a headache. Perhaps a spot of gin would help. She took one. If it did not help her head it did at least make her solitary existence a little more endurable. Another cup of coffee and a fag. Liz yawned and stretched her heavy frame.

Once she had been an artist’s model and very much in demand, very much in the front of things. Now ... oh, hell, a woman couldn’t keep her figure always. Use it while you have it and then forget it. So said Liz.

But she could never quite forget the figure of her heyday, for what it had once been was still hanging in several New York galleries she occasionally visited when all other comforts failed.

“Got to find a needle and thread,” muttered Aspirin Liz, “and do something about these bloomers before the whole damn dyke pours through. Game little nipper, that kid was. Must have been his leg.”