BAYARD DUCKS HIS PAST
First place, Swifty Joe should have let the subject drop. Anyway, he needn't have come paradin' into the front office in his gym suit to show me his nutty theory of how Young Disko landed that knockout on the Australian in the breakaway.
"Turn over!" says I. "You're on your back! He couldn't have done anything of the kind."
"Couldn't, eh?" growls Swifty. "Ahr-r-r-r chee! Couldn't give him the shoulder on the jaw! Ain't I seen it done? Say, lemme show you——"
"Show nothing!" says I. "I'm tellin' you it was a right hook the kid put him out with, from chancery. Now see!"
With that I sheds my coat, gets Swifty's neck in the crook of my left elbow, swings him round for a side hip-lock, and bends his head forward.
"Now, you South Brooklyn kike," I goes on, maybe more realistic than I meant, "I got you right, ain't I? And all I got to do is push in a half-arm jolt like this, and——"
Well, then I looks up. Neither of us has noticed her come in, hadn't even heard the knob turn; but standin' there in the middle of the room and starin' straight at us is a perfectly good female lady.
That don't half tell it, either. She's all lady, from the tips of her double-A pumps to the little gray wing peekin' over the top of her dingy gray bonnet. One of these slim, dainty, graceful built parties, with white, lacy stuff at her wrists and throat, and the rest of her costume all gray: not the puckered-waist, half-masted skirt effects all the women are wearin' now. I can't say what year's model it was, or how far back; but it's a style that seems just fitted to her: maybe one that she's invented herself. Around thirty-five, I should judge she was, from the little streak of gray runnin' through her front hair.
What got me, though, was the calm, remote, superior look that she's givin' us. She don't seem nervous or panicky at all, like most women would, breakin' in on a roughhouse scene like that. She don't even stare reprovin', but stands there watchin' us as serene as if we wa'n't anything more'n pictures on a movie sheet. And there we was, holdin' the pose; me with my right all bunched for action, and Swifty with his face to the mat. Seemed minutes we was clinched there, and everything so still you could hear Swifty's heavy breathin' all over the room.