“Oh yes for fifteen tousand.” He squeezed her hand and then took his arms away. “Viens ma petite on va rentrer.”
Once inside the shop he took both her plump hands. “Ernestine when we get married?”
“Next month.”
“I no wait zat long, imposseeble.... Why not next Wednesday? Then I can help you make inventory of stock.... I tink maybe we can sell this place and move uptown, make bigger money.”
She patted him on the cheek. “P’tit ambitieux,” she said through her hollow inside laugh that made her shoulders and her big bust shake.
They had to change at Manhattan Transfer. The thumb of Ellen’s new kid glove had split and she kept rubbing it nervously with her forefinger. John wore a belted raincoat
and a pinkishgray felt hat. When he turned to her and smiled she couldn’t help pulling her eyes away and staring out at the long rain that shimmered over the tracks.
“Here we are Elaine dear. Oh prince’s daughter, you see we get the train that comes from the Penn station.... It’s funny this waiting in the wilds of New Jersey this way.” They got into the parlorcar. John made a little clucking sound in his mouth at the raindrops that made dark dimes on his pale hat. “Well we’re off, little girl.... Behold thou art fair my love, thou art fair, thou hast dove’s eyes within thy locks.”
Ellen’s new tailored suit was tight at the elbows. She wanted to feel very gay and listen to his purring whisper in her ears, but something had set her face in a tight frown; she could only look out at the brown marshes and the million black windows of factories and the puddly streets of towns and a rusty steamboat in a canal and barns and Bull Durham signs and roundfaced Spearmint gnomes all barred and crisscrossed with bright flaws of rain. The jeweled stripes on the window ran straight down when the train stopped and got more and more oblique as it speeded up. The wheels rumbled in her head, saying Man-hattan Tran-sfer. Man-hattan Tran-sfer. Anyway it was a long time before Atlantic City. By the time we get to Atlantic City ... Oh it rained forty days ... I’ll be feeling gay.... And it rained forty nights.... I’ve got to be feeling gay.