in!" he says. "Tell
Alice I'll be right up!"

I hung up the phone.

"Well," I says to the wife, "I got bad news for you."

"Who was it?" she asks, droppin' the knittin' layout on the floor.

"That trick relative of yours," I tells her. "He's comin' up here for
dinner again, so I guess I'll go down to the corner and play a little
pinochle."

"You ought to be the weather man," says the wife, "you're such a rotten
guesser! You ain't goin' nowheres. You're gonna stay here and help
entertain Alex."

"Entertain him?" I says. "What d'ye think I am--a trained seal or
somethin'?"

"Don't kid yourself!" she says. "You ain't even makin' the money I
could get with a trained seal! You gotta stop this pinochle thing--you
don't see Alex wastin' his time playin' pinochle with a lotta loafers!"

"You bet you don't!" I comes back. "You'll never see Alex playin' no
game where they's a chance of the other guy winnin'! He wouldn't bet
zero was cold! And don't be callin' my friends loafers--every one of
them guys is successful business men!"

"That mob you hid out in here one night looked like a lotta plumbers to
me!" she says. "Any man who sits up half the night playin' cards is a
loafer!"

"One of them loafers I while away my time with lives in the next flat,"
I says, "and the dumbwaiter door is wide open."

"I don't care," says the wife, flushin' all up. "Let him hear me!"

"I ain't stoppin' him," I says. "But you don't want it to get rumored
all over New York that you and me is quarrelin', do you?"

The wife's answer is nothin'. She walks over to the window and looks
out on Manhattan, doin' a soft shoe dance with one toe on the floor.
If bein' good lookin' was water, she'd be Niagara Falls. You've seen
her picture many a time on a can of massage cream--which she never
touched in her life! The label claims it was this stuff that put her
over, but she don't know whether rouge is for red cheeks or measles.
They ain't a day goes by without some movie company pesterin' her to
sign up, and she can write her own ticket when it comes to salary.
Well, I'm in dutch again, but I don't care! This here knockout is wed
to me, and they ain't _nothin'_ can give me the blues!

"Listen!" I says. "Honey, we only been wed ten years--and here we are
scrappin' _already_!"

She turns on the weeps and I'm across the floor like a startled rabbit.
We come to terms in about five minutes, and as far as a disinterested
stranger