Ain't Angie Awful!/Chapter 9
CHAPTER IX.
THE ADVENTURE OF THE MOZAMBIQUE MONKEYS
NOBODY loves me!” How many a maid has wailed the words, or vainly tried to scratch them on the window pane with her $4.50 rhinestone ring.
“Nobody loves me!” The saddest exclamation in any language including the Scandinavian, excepting “Please Remit!”
“Nobody loves me!” So wept Angela Bish, and it was true. Nobody but the flies, the mosquitoes. For the heat was hot on Avenue B; and her bedroom seemed more full of bed than usual—bed and hairpins. And on the wall paper the eczema seemed to be getting worse. About the bureau it was quite, quite bald.
Lonely? Angie yearned and yawned for male society with the ravenous appetite of a man-eating shark. But men were shy of Angie; very shy, for men. They got rid of her quickly, as if she were a lead quarter.
Yes, Angie was full of lonelitude. What she wanted was Someone to murmur soft, sweet, sticky things in her hair, and to let her lay her loving skull on his vest pocket beside the fountain pen—His fountain pen!—while, in the gloaming, they read together “How to be Happy, though Sober.”
This was her dream; but alas, dreams go. And when they go, they usually go by contraries. And so, Angie had long been saving up for a phonograph. That seemed to be the only virtuous way she could ever be thrilled by hearing a smooth-shaven voice passionately baritoning to her “You are the very gooiest girl in all the glad New York!”
In her fond impatience she had already purchased this classic song-record; and she had thirty-one cents saved up in her mustache cup for the phonograph. Often, in the longing, lingering evenings, she sadly attempted to play the disc herself with a cambric needle. But it was unsatisfactory. Finally, in despair, she threw it out the window, and hit a Scandinavian tinsmith. He seemed to be so much struck by her that it consoled her a little.
But not much. Melancholy came back with the mosquitoes, both male and female. Yet how dangerous it is to meddle with Fate! In Angela’s anguish she had said she wanted to die; and the very next day, sure enough, she was tickled to death. For when, after washing her hands, she started to wipe them on the evening paper that she had always found so dry, lo, her eyes fell on these glad tidings, under the heading, “Girls Wanted; Female”
JIMP Girlene wanted with bow legs to play on harp with toes. Apply B. Squimp, Cafe Noir.
TuThuSat3t.
Angie burst into a loud smile. Why, she was made for the place! Her mirror had told her so confidentially many a time, as old friends will, when the news is disagreeable. And didn’t she dimly recall when a mere baby having played with her toes? Surely with a little practice and a pair of violet stockings she could do it again.
She happened, at present, to be just out of harps, but she sat down and tried a few minor chords on the radiator, and succeeded in eliciting considerable applause from the retired bean-boiler in the next room. That is, she thought it was applause till the cuspidor came sailing through the transom. Even the undertaker on the ground floor tiptoed up in black gloves to tell her that she was interfering with his business. She was making noise enough, he said, to awaken the dead. So Angie played on in diminished thirds.
Bright and early that evening, when moon and men were full, she interviewed B.
FINDING THAT SHE COULD RIDE THE HARP SAFELY HE SET HER RIGHT TO WORK
Angie’s luck at last had turned. But don’t get excited about it—that’s not always a good sign. Milk often turns, too, and nobody gives three cheers about it.
But it was wonderful, when she began to play, how sure-footed she was! Her harp seemed half human, half divine. As for Angie, she seemed half human, half monkey. How merrily she leaped from string to string! How her toes twinkled, as she ran from chord to chord, and vice versâ. Soon she was the pedicure of all eyes. For Angela, though only faintly pretty, had a beautiful sole. True, it was somewhat blistered; but, at such a time even fallen arches are beautiful. Look at the Temple of Diocletian, for instance.
What cared Angie, then, though she had worn the skin off eleven or twelve toes! Had not men acclaimed her daring feet? Why, even the Mozambique Monkeys were telling their tails of her skill!
Lame but happy, Angie tottered home. If she had been friends with the undertaker she would have asked him to embalm her feet; they felt like hot Frankfurters with mustard. You must have seen them—Frankfurters—but think of being them! But Angie fell asleep and dreamed that she was married to a Chilean chiropodist who made her dance on sandpaper. At the beatified expression of her face and neck the mosquitoes laughed heartily, all night long.
But, no matter how happy a Thursday may be, the next day is sure to be Friday. Angie’s toes were still so rare that she was forced to crawl to the Café Noir on her hands and knees. She felt a bit conspicuous, but no one had ever noticed her before, and she was touched. Many people touched her. Benevolent old gentlemen in fur collars poked kindly at her with their canes and wept. “Somebody’s daughter, perhaps,” they said, “who knows!” Then they stepped over her and went their way.
She was somewhat annoyed, however, when crossing the street, by the way full grown automobiles strolled across her spine. It hurt her to think they could be so hard 
“SOMEBODY’S DAUGHTER PERHAPS,” THEY SAID, “WHO KNOWS”
and careless. Even when they were mere Fords it hurt her.
The Manicured Mozambiques had already grown very fond of Angie, and when she arrived, so picturesque in mud and blushes, they did their best to make her feel at home. The leader, an elderly ape, placed in her chair a nice, comfortable cushion—it was of fly paper with the soft side up—and the trombone hospitably offered her a peanut.
When Angie bit it open, she found it stuffed with a toothsome but energetic black beetle. But, despite her fatigue, Angie was not hungry.
Little things like that, however, show how even the higher mammals can be affected by innocence and idiocy and other things with small black i’s like Angie’s. It is a beautiful thought, but beautiful thoughts are like church steeples—one cannot dwell on them long.
Have you ever, dear reader, met a person you seem to have known before in some strange, mysterious existence—before you were divorced, perhaps, or when you were in jail, or living in Chicago? It gives you eerie chilblains up and down your spine, as if some one were walking on your cradle. Well, Angie had such a feeling, that night, when she looked at the gentleman in green burlap opposite her. He was thinking, and winking, and drinking mucilage through a quill.
At first she thought she was attracted to him merely because he was throwing kisses at her—kisses and spaghetti—you know how that always intrigues one—but later she was sure that either he was her Affinity, or else she owed him money—perhaps both. It gave her a sweetly uncomfortable embarrassment, like that of an Episcopal clergyman who finds his pockets filled with molasses.
When, however, at 3 a. m., he followed her out of the Café, wildly beckoning, she knew he was after her. The very way he grabbed her arm told her that he was one who would not hesitate to lay hands upon her if he dared.
She turned upon him like a fish hook, like a piece of sewing silk when a man tries to thread a needle. But in her heart, she was already crying “Kamerad!” Already she could see their marriage certificate framed in a decoration of dropsical cupids, and her name spelled wrong . . . she could hear herself replying, “You bet I will!” . . . She closed her eyes with both hands. . . . Perhaps . . . Perhaps, to their happy Hoboken home, with a live linoleum in the kitchen, and quartered oak carpets, Little Children might come to bless them—and have mumps —and pour hot chocolate into the grand piano . . . perhaps . . . per . . .
“Fly with me!”
Then it was true—true! Every girl who has ever been abducted or has been to the movies, knows that delicious alarm. It is much like bathing in champagne for the first time; one doesn’t know whether one will be drunk, or drowned. One is aware only of the expense. So Angie struggled, and was struggled at . . . until a red table cloth was thrown over her head, and she was intoxified by love. Then all was dark—as dark as the inside of a lead pencil.
Angie was dreaming she was being kissed by Lloyd George, when she was awakened by a fly philandering across her upper lip. She was alone in a circus tent with her captor and the fly. The latter she instantly recognized as one she had known quite intimately, on Avenue B. The former was just as unknown as usual. The heat was intense, as it sometimes is in tents; and somewhere in the middle distance she could distinctly hear a Fat Woman eating cream with a ladle. A clock struck Four. Angie felt that it was long past three o’clock.
“Where were you born?” demanded he to which we have already referred.
This was a strange question, thought Angie. Some, indeed, had asked her When she was born, but most asked merely Why. She was a strange girl, especially to strangers.
“In Mozambique?”
Angie trembled like a guava jelly. But she could not tell a lie; no one can with a mouth full of table cloth.
“Come here!” He fairly uttered the words. And then, seizing her hand, he gazed at it like a palmist giving a fifty-cent reading. But not so lovingly.
“My word,” he exclaimed, at last, “you are not manicured! Have you got the face to say you are not a monkey—and with that face?”
With a pitiful slob the proprietor of the Side Show of Freaks rushed out of the tent, leaving it there with Angie and the fly. For a moment the Fat Woman stopped eating, and even the fly turned pale. . . .
And Angie, poor Angie, so thusly duped, gazing sadly at her finger nails, so rich in real estate, realized too late that the way to a man’s heart is through the Beauty Parlor.
For no man could make a monkey of Angie; she hadn’t enough brains. And besides, monkeys, like poets, are born, not made.