There Are Smiles

At the busy corner of Fifth Avenue and Forty-sixth Street there was, last summer, a traffic policeman who made you feel that he didn’t have such a terrible job after all. Lots of traffic policemen seem to enjoy abusing you, sadistic complex induced by exposure to bad weather and worse drivers, and, possibly, brutal wives. But Ben Collins just naturally appeared to be having a good time whether he was scolding you or not; his large freckled face fairly beamed with joviality and refused to cloud up even under the most trying conditions.

It heartened you to look at him. It amused you to hear him talk. If what he said wasn’t always so bright, the way he said it was.

Ben was around thirty years old. He was six feet four inches tall and weighed two hundred and eighteen pounds. This describes about eighty percent of all the traffic officers between Thirty-second Street and the Park. But Ben was distinguished from the rest by his habitual good humor and⁠—well, I guess you’d have to call it his subtlety.

For example, where Noonan or Wurtz or Carmody was content with the stock “Hey! Get over where you belong!” or “Where the hell do you think you’re going?” Ben was wont to finesse.

“How are you, Barney?” he would say to a victim halted at the curb.

“My name isn’t Barney.”

“I beg your pardon. The way you was stepping along, I figured you must be Barney Oldfield.”

Or, “I suppose you didn’t see that red light.”

“No.”

“Well, what did you think the other cars was stopped for? Did you think they’d all ran out of gas at once?”

Or, “What business are you in?”

“I’m a contractor.”

“Well, that’s a good, honorable business and, if I was you, I wouldn’t be ashamed of it. I’d quit trying to make people believe I was in the fire department.”

Or, “How do you like London?”

“Me? I’ve never been there.”

“I thought that’s where you got the habit of driving on the wrong side of the street.”

Transgressions at Ben’s corner, unless they resulted seriously, were seldom punished beyond these sly rebukes, which were delivered in such a nice way that you were kind of glad you had done wrong.

Off duty he was “a big good-natured boy,” willing to take Grace to a picture, or go over to the Arnolds’ and play cards, or just stay at home and do nothing.

And then one morning in September, a dazzingly new Cadillac roadster, blue with yellow trimmings, flashed down from the north, violating all the laws of common sense and of the State and City of New York. Shouts and whistles from Carmody and Noonan, at Forty-eighth and Forty-seventh, failed to check its crazy career, but Ben, first planting his huge bulk directly in its path, giving the driver the choice of slackening speed or running into him, and then, with an alertness surprising in one so massive, sidestepping and jumping onto the running-board, succeeded in forcing a surrender at the curb halfway between his post and Forty-fifth Street.

He was almost mad and about to speak his mind in words beginning with capitals when he got his first look at the miscreant’s face. It was the prettiest face he had ever seen and it wore a most impudent, ill-timed, irresistible smile, a smile that spoiled other smiles for you once for all.

“Well⁠—” Ben began falteringly; then recovering something of his stage presence: “Where’s your helmet?”

She made no reply, but continued to smile.

“If you’re in the fire department,” said Ben, “you ought to wear a helmet and a badge. Or paint your car red and get a sireen.”

Still no reply.

“Maybe I look like a bobby. Maybe you thought you was in London where they drive on the left side of the street.”

“You’re cute,” she said, and her voice was as thrilling as her smile. “I could stay here all morning and listen to you. That is I could, but I can’t. I’ve got a date down on Eighth Street and I’m late for it now. And I know you’re busy, too. So we mustn’t keep each other any longer now. But I’d like to hear your whole line some day.”

“Oh, you would!”

“Where do you live?”

“At home.”

“That isn’t very polite, is it? I was thinking you might live in the Bronx⁠—”

“I do.”

“⁠—and that’s on the way to Rye, where I live, so I might drive you.”

“Thanks. When I die, I want to die of old age.”

“Oh, I’m not a bad driver, really. I do like to go fast, but I’m careful. In Buffalo, where we lived before, the policemen all knew I was careful and they generally let me go as fast as I wanted to.”

“This ain’t Buffalo. And this ain’t no speedway. If you want to go fast, stay off Fifth Avenue.”

The girl looked him right in the eye. “Would you like that?”

“No,” said Ben.

She smiled at him again. “What time are you through?”

“Four o’clock,” said Ben.

“Well,” said the girl, “some afternoon I may be going home about then⁠—”

“I told you I wasn’t ready to die.”

“I’d be extra careful.”

Ben suddenly realized that they were playing to a large staring audience and that, for once, he was not the star.

“Drive on!” he said in his gruffest tone. “I’m letting you go because you’re a stranger, but you won’t get off so easy next time.”

“I’m very, very grateful,” said the girl. “Just the same I don’t like being a stranger and I hope you won’t excuse me on that ground again.”

Which remark, accompanied by her radiant smile, caused Mr. Collins, hitherto only a bathroom singer, to hum quite loudly all the rest of his working day snatches of a gay Ohman and Arden record that his wife had played over and over the night before.

His relief, Tim Martin, appeared promptly at four, but Ben seemed in no hurry to go home. He pretended to listen to two new ones Tim had heard on the way in from Flushing, one about a Scotchman and some hotel towels and one about two Heebs in a night club. He managed to laugh in the right place, but his attention was on the northbound traffic, which was now none of his business.

At twenty minutes past four he said goodbye to Martin and walked slowly south on the east side of the street. He walked as far as Thirty-sixth, in vain. Usually he caught a ride home with some Bronx or north suburban motorist, but now he was late and had to pay for his folly by hurrying to Grand Central and standing up in a subway express.

“I was a sucker!” he thought. “She probably drove up some other street on purpose to miss me. Or she might have came in on one of them cross streets after I’d walked past it. I ought to stuck at Forty-fourth a while longer. Or maybe some other fella done his duty and had her locked up. Not if she smiled at him, though.”

But she wouldn’t smile like that at everybody. She had smiled at him because she liked him, because she really thought he was cute. Yes, she did! That was her regular line. That was how she had worked on them Buffalo fellas. “Cute!” A fine word to use on a human Woolworth Building. She was kidding. No, she wasn’t; not entirely. She’d liked his looks as plenty other gals had, and maybe that stuff about the fire department and London had tickled her.

Anyway, he had seen the most wonderful smile in the world and he still felt warm from it when he got home, so warm that he kissed his wife with a fervor that surprised her.

When Ben was on the day shift, he sometimes entertained Grace at supper with an amusing incident or two of his work. Sometimes his stories were pure fiction and she suspected as much, but what difference did it make? They were things that ought to have happened even if they hadn’t.

On this occasion he was wild to talk about the girl from Rye, but he had learned that his wife did not care much for anecdotes concerning pretty women. So he recounted one-sided arguments with bungling drivers of his own sex which had very little foundation in fact.

“There was a fella coming south in a 1922 Buick and the light changed and when it was time to go again, he thought he was starting in second, and it was reverse instead, and he backed into a big Pierce from Greenwich. He didn’t do no damage to the Pierce and only bent himself a little. But they’d have held up the parade ten minutes talking it over if I hadn’t bore down.

“I got the Buick fella over to the curb and I said to him, ‘What’s the matter? Are you homesick?’ So he said what did I mean, homesick, and I said, ‘Well, you was so anxious to get back to wherever you come from that you couldn’t even wait to turn around.’

“Then he tried to explain what was the matter, just like I didn’t know. He said this was his first trip in a Buick and he was used to a regular gear shift.

“I said, ‘That’s fine, but this ain’t no training-camp. The place to practice driving is four blocks farther down, at Forty-second. You’ll find more automobiles there and twicet as many pedestrians and policemen, and besides, they’ve got streetcars and a tower to back into.’

“I said, ‘You won’t never learn nothing in a desert like this.’ You ought to heard the people laugh.”

“I can imagine!” said Grace.

“Then there was a Jordan, an old guy with a gray beard. He was going to park right in front of Kaskel’s. He said he wouldn’t be more than half an hour. I said, ‘Oh, that’s too bad! I wished you could spend the weekend.’ I said, ‘If you’d let us knew you was coming, we’d have arranged some parties for you.’ So he said, ‘I’ve got a notion to report you for being too fresh.’

“So I said, ‘If you do that, I’ll have you arrested for driving without your parents’ consent.’ You ought to have heard them laugh. I said, ‘Roll, Jordan, roll!’ You ought to have heard them.”

“I’ll bet!” said Grace.

Ben fell into a long, unaccustomed silence.

“What are you thinking about?”

It came out against his better judgment. “There was a gal in a blue Cadillac.”

“Oh! There was! What about her?”

“Nothing. Only she acted like it was her Avenue and I give her hell.”

“What did you say to her?”

“I forget.”

“Was she pretty?”

“I didn’t notice. I was sore.”

“You!”

“She all but knocked me for a corpse.”

“And you probably just smiled at her.”

“No. She done the smiling. She smiled⁠—” He broke off and rose from the table. “Come on, babe. Let’s go to the Franklin. Joe Frisco’s there. And a Chaplin picture.”

Ben saw nothing of the blue Cadillac or its mistress the rest of that week, but in all his polemics he was rehearsing lines aimed to strengthen her belief in his “cuteness.” When she suddenly appeared, however, late on the following Tuesday afternoon, he was too excited to do anything but stare, and he would have lost an opportunity of hearing her enchanting voice if she hadn’t taken the initiative. Northbound, she stopped at the curb a few feet above his corner and beckoned to him.

“It’s after four,” she said. “Can’t I drive you home?”

What a break! It was his week on the late shift.

“I just come to work. I won’t be off till midnight.”

“You’re mean! You didn’t tell me you were going to change.”

“I change every week. Last week, eight to four; this week, four to twelve.”

“And next week eight to four?”

“Yes’m.”

“Well, I’ll just have to wait.”

He couldn’t say a word.

“Next Monday?”

He made an effort. “If you live.”

She smiled that smile. “I’ll live,” she said. “There’s an incentive.”

She was on her way and Ben returned to his station, dizzy.

“Incentive, incentive, incentive,” he repeated to himself, memorizing it, but when he got home at half past one, he couldn’t find it in Grace’s abridged Webster; he thought it was spelled with an s.

The longest week in history ended. A little before noon on Monday the Cadillac whizzed past him going south and he caught the word “later.” At quitting time, while Tim Martin was still in the midst of his first new one about two or more Heebs, Ben was all at once aware that she had stopped right beside him, was blocking the traffic, waiting for him.

Then he was in her car, constricting his huge bulk to fit it and laughing like a child at Tim’s indelicate ejaculation of surprise.

“What are you laughing at?”

“Nothing. I just feel good.”

“Are you glad to be through?”

“Yes. Today.”

“Not always?”

“I don’t generally care much.”

“I don’t believe you do. I believe you enjoy your job. And I don’t see how you can because it seems to me such a hard job. I’m going to make you tell me all about it as soon as we get out of this jam.”

A red light stopped them at Fifty-first Street and she turned and looked at him amusedly.

“It’s a good thing the top is down,” she said. “You’d have been hideously uncomfortable in one more fold.”

“When I get a car of my own,” said Ben, “it’ll have to be a Mack, and even then I’ll have to hire a man to drive it.”

“Why a man?”

“Men ain’t all crazy.”

“Honestly, I’m not crazy. Have I come near hitting anything?”

“You’ve just missed everything. You drive too fast and you take too many chances. But I knew it before I got in, so I can’t kick.”

“There isn’t room for you to, anyway. Do you want to get out?”

“No.”

“I doubt if you could. Where do you live?”

“Hundred and sixty-fourth, near the Concourse,” said Ben.

“How do you usually go home?”

“Like this.”

“And I thought I was saving you from a tiresome subway ride or something. I ought to have known you’d never lack invitations. Do you?”

“Hardly ever.”

“Do the people ask you all kinds of questions?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry. Because I wanted to and now I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“You must be tired of answering.”

“I don’t always answer the same.”

“Do you mean you lie to people, to amuse yourself?”

“Sometimes.”

“Oh, that’s grand! Come on, lie to me! I’ll ask you questions, probably the same questions they all ask, and you answer them as if I were a fool. Will you?”

“I’ll try.”

“Well, let’s see. What shall I ask first? Oh, yes. Don’t you get terribly cold in winter?”

He repeated a reply he had first made to an elderly lady, obviously a visitor in the city, whose curiosity had prompted her to cross-examine him for over twenty minutes on one of the busiest days he had ever known.

“No. When I feel chilly, I stop a car and lean against the radiator.”

His present interviewer rewarded him with more laughter than was deserved.

“That’s wonderful!” she said. “And I suppose when your ears are cold, you stop another car and borrow its hood.”

“I’ll remember that one.”

“Now what next? Do you ever get hit?”

“Right along, but only glancing blows. I very seldom get knocked down and run over.”

“Doesn’t it almost kill you, standing on your feet all day?”

“It ain’t near as bad as if it was my hands. Seriously, Madam, I get so used to it that I sleep that way nights.”

“Don’t the gasoline fumes make you sick?”

“They did at first, but now I can’t live without them. I have an apartment near a public garage so I can run over there any time and re-fume myself.”

“How tall are you?”

“Six feet ten.”

“Not really!”

“You know better, don’t you? I’m six feet four, but when women ask me, I tell them anything from six feet eight to seven feet two. And they always say, ‘Heavens!’ ”

“Which do you have the most trouble with, men drivers or women drivers?”

“Men drivers.”

“Honestly?”

“Sure. There’s fifty times as many of them.”

“Do lots of people ask you questions?”

“No. You’re the first one.”

“Were you mad at me for calling you cute the other day?”

“I couldn’t be mad at you.”

A silence of many blocks followed. The girl certainly did drive fast and Ben might have been more nervous if he had looked ahead, but mostly his eyes were on her profile which was only a little less alluring than her smile.

“Look where we are!” she exclaimed as they approached Fordham Road. “And you live at a Hundred and sixty-fourth! Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t notice.”

“Don’t get out. I’ll drive you back.”

“No, you won’t. I’ll catch a ride. There’s a fella up this way I want to see.”

“You were nice to take a chance with me and not to act scared. Will you do it again?”

“Whenever you say.”

“I drive in once a week. I go down to Greenwich Village to visit my sister. Generally on Mondays.”

“Next Monday I’ll be on the late shift.”

“Let’s make it the Monday after.”

“That’s a long ways off.”

“The time will pass. It always does.”

It did, but so haltingly! And the day arrived with such a threat of rain that Ben was afraid she wouldn’t come in. Later on, when the threat was fulfilled and the perils of motoring trebled by a steady drizzle and slippery pavements, he was afraid she would. Prudence, he knew, was not in her makeup and if she had an engagement with her sister, nothing short of a flood would prevent her keeping it.

Just before his luncheon time, the Cadillac passed, going south. Its top was up and its squeegee flying back and forth across the front glass.

Through the rain he saw the girl smile and wave at him briefly. Traffic was thick and treacherous and both must keep their minds on it.

It was still drizzling when she reappeared and stopped for him at four.

“Isn’t this a terrible day?” she said.

“Not now!”

She smiled, and in an instant he forgot all the annoyance and discomfort of the preceding hours.

“If we leave the top up, you’ll get stoop-shouldered, and if we take it down, we’ll be drowned.”

“Leave it up. I’m all right.”

“Do you mind if we don’t talk much? I feel quiet.”

He didn’t answer and nothing more was said until they turned east at Mount Morris Park. Then:

“I could find out your name,” she said, “by remembering your number and having somebody look it up. But you can save me the trouble by telling me.”

“My name is Ben Collins. And I could learn yours by demanding to see your driver’s license.”

“Heavens! Don’t do that! I haven’t any. But my name is Edith Dole.”

“Edith Dole. Edith Dole,” said Ben.

“Do you like it?”

“It’s pretty.”

“It’s a funny combination. Edith means happiness and Dole means grief.”

“Well,” said Ben, “you’ll have plenty of grief if you drive without a license. You’ll have it anyway if you drive fast on these kind of streets. There’s nothing skiddier than car-tracks when it’s raining.”

They were on upper Madison and the going was dangerous. But that was not the only reason he wanted her to slow down.

Silence again until they were on the Concourse.

“Are you married?” she asked him suddenly.

“No,” he lied. “Are you?”

“I will be soon.”

“Who to?”

“A man in Buffalo.”

“Are you stuck on him?”

“I don’t know. But he wants me and my father wants him to have me.”

“Will you live in Buffalo?”

“No. He’s coming here to be my father’s partner.”

“And yours.”

“Yes. Oh, dear! Here’s a Hundred and sixty-fourth and I mustn’t take you past it today, not in this weather. Do you think you can extricate yourself?”

He managed it with some difficulty.

“I don’t suppose I’ll see you again for two weeks.”

“I’m afraid not,” she said.

He choked down the words that wanted to come out. “Miss Dole,” he said, “take my advice and don’t try for no records getting home. Just loaf along and you’ll be there an hour before your supper’s ready. Will you? For that guy’s sake in Buffalo?”

“Yes.”

“And my sake, too.”

Gosh! What a smile to remember!

He must walk slow and give himself a chance to calm down before he saw Grace. Why had he told the girl he wasn’t married? What did she care?

Grace’s greeting was a sharp command. “Take a hot bath right away! And wear your bathrobe afterwards. We won’t be going anywhere tonight.”

She and Mary Arnold had been in Mount Vernon at a card-party. They had got soaked coming home. She talked about it all through supper, thank the Lord!

After supper he tried to read, but couldn’t. He listened awhile to the Ohman and Arden record which his wife couldn’t get enough of. He went to bed, wishing he could sleep and dream, wishing he could sleep two weeks.

He was up early, early enough to look at the paper before breakfast. “Woman Motorist Killed By Streetcar in Bronx.” His eyes felt funny as he read: “Miss Edith Dole, twenty-two, of Rye, was instantly killed when the automobile she was driving skidded and struck a streetcar at the corner of Fordham Road and Webster Avenue, the Bronx, shortly after four thirty yesterday afternoon.

“Grace,” he said in a voice that was not his own, “I forgot. I’m supposed to be on the job at seven this morning. There’s some kind of a parade.”

Out of the house, alone, he talked aloud to himself for the first time since he was a kid.

“I can’t feel as bad as I think I do. I only seen her four or five times. I can’t really feel this bad.”

Well, on an afternoon two or three weeks later, a man named Hughes from White Plains, driving a Studebaker, started across Forty-sixth Street out of turn and obeyed a stern order to pull over to the curb.

“What’s your hurry?” demanded the grim-faced traffic policeman. “Where the hell do you think you’re going? What’s the matter with you, you so-and-so!”

“I forgot myself for a minute. I’m sorry,” said Mr. Hughes. “If you’ll overlook it, I’ll pick you up on my way home and take you to the Bronx. Remember, I give you a ride home last month? Remember? That is, it was a fella that looked like you. That is, he looked something like you. I can see now it wasn’t you. It was a different fella.”