taking an apartment together in Knickerbocker Village, four blocks from the Venice. They live quietly. Rosie, a taciturn, sad-eyed woman, looks after property left by her husband. Besides her interest in the Venice, this property includes a number of lots along the boardwalk in Coney and an ancient red-brick tenement at 9 James Street, a block from the Venice . This tenement has sixteen cold-water flats, all occupied by unmarried Chinese men. Jeanie, a handsome young woman, boasts that she has gone to the West Coast and back ten times while working in vaudeville as an acrobatic dancer. Now and then she spells Mazie in the cage at the Venice.
Mazie’s hours would kill most women. She works seven days a week, seldom taking a day off, and is usually on duty from 9:30 A.M. until 11 P.M. Her cage is not much more spacious than a telephone booth, but she long ago learned how to make herself comfortable in it. She sits on two thick pillows in a swivel chair and wears bedroom slippers. In summer she keeps an electric fan, aimed upward, on the floor, replacing it in winter with an electric heater. When the weather is especially cold she brings her dog, Fluffy, an old, wheezy Pomeranian bitch, to the theatre. She lets Fluffy sleep in her lap, and this keeps both of them warm. Mazie makes change as automatically as she breathes, and she finds time for many domestic chores while on duty. She mends clothes, puts red polish on her fingernails, reads a little, and occasionally spends half an hour or so cleaning her diamonds with a scrap of chamois skin. On rainy days she sends out for her meals, eating them right in the cage. She uses the marble change counter for a table. Once, hunched over a plate of roast-beef hash, she looked up and said to a visitor, ‘I do light housekeeping in here.’ When she gets thirsty she sends an usher across the street to the King Kong Bar & Grill for a cardboard container of beer. She used to keep a bottle of Canadian whiskey, which she calls ‘smoke,’ hidden in her cash drawer, but since an appendix operation in 1939 she has limited herself to celery tonic and beer.
There are two cluttered shelves on one wall of her cage. On the bottom shelf are a glass jar of ‘jawbreakers,’ a kind of hard candy which she passes out to children, a clamshell that serves as an ashtray, a hind leg of a rabbit, a stack of paper towels, and a box of soap. When a bum with an exceptionally grimy face steps up to buy a ticket, Mazie places a couple of paper towels and a cake of soap before him and says, ‘Look, buddy, I’ll make a bargain with you. If you’ll take this and go in the gents’ room and wash your face, I’ll let you in free.’ Few bums are offended by this offer; most of them accept willingly. Occasionally she gives one fifteen cents and sends him to a barber college on Chatham Square for a shave and a haircut. If she is in a good humor, Mazie will admit a bum free without much argument. However, she says she can tell a bum by the look in his eyes, and ordinary citizens who have heard of her generosity and try to get passed in outrage her. ‘If you haven’t got any money,’ she tells such people, ‘go steal a watch.’
On Mazie’s top shelf is a pile of paper-backed books, which includes ‘Old Gipsy Nan’s Fortune Teller and Dream Book,’ ‘Prince Ali Five Star Dream Book,’ and ‘Madame Fu Futtam’s Spiritual Magical Dream Book.’ Mazie is deeply interested in dreams, although at times she seems a little ashamed of it. ‘A dream just means you et something that didn’t agree with you,’ she sometimes says, rather defiantly. Nevertheless, she makes a practice of remembering them and spends hours hunting through her books for satisfactory interpretations. Also on her top shelf are a rosary, some back numbers of a religious periodical called the
Messenger of the Sacred Heart
, and a worn copy of ‘Spiritual Reflections for Sisters,’ by the Reverend Charles J. Mullaly, S. J., which she
Mazie’s hours would kill most women. She works seven days a week, seldom taking a day off, and is usually on duty from 9:30 A.M. until 11 P.M. Her cage is not much more spacious than a telephone booth, but she long ago learned how to make herself comfortable in it. She sits on two thick pillows in a swivel chair and wears bedroom slippers. In summer she keeps an electric fan, aimed upward, on the floor, replacing it in winter with an electric heater. When the weather is especially cold she brings her dog, Fluffy, an old, wheezy Pomeranian bitch, to the theatre. She lets Fluffy sleep in her lap, and this keeps both of them warm. Mazie makes change as automatically as she breathes, and she finds time for many domestic chores while on duty. She mends clothes, puts red polish on her fingernails, reads a little, and occasionally spends half an hour or so cleaning her diamonds with a scrap of chamois skin. On rainy days she sends out for her meals, eating them right in the cage. She uses the marble change counter for a table. Once, hunched over a plate of roast-beef hash, she looked up and said to a visitor, ‘I do light housekeeping in here.’ When she gets thirsty she sends an usher across the street to the King Kong Bar & Grill for a cardboard container of beer. She used to keep a bottle of Canadian whiskey, which she calls ‘smoke,’ hidden in her cash drawer, but since an appendix operation in 1939 she has limited herself to celery tonic and beer.
There are two cluttered shelves on one wall of her cage. On the bottom shelf are a glass jar of ‘jawbreakers,’ a kind of hard candy which she passes out to children, a clamshell that serves as an ashtray, a hind leg of a rabbit, a stack of paper towels, and a box of soap. When a bum with an exceptionally grimy face steps up to buy a ticket, Mazie places a couple of paper towels and a cake of soap before him and says, ‘Look, buddy, I’ll make a bargain with you. If you’ll take this and go in the gents’ room and wash your face, I’ll let you in free.’ Few bums are offended by this offer; most of them accept willingly. Occasionally she gives one fifteen cents and sends him to a barber college on Chatham Square for a shave and a haircut. If she is in a good humor, Mazie will admit a bum free without much argument. However, she says she can tell a bum by the look in his eyes, and ordinary citizens who have heard of her generosity and try to get passed in outrage her. ‘If you haven’t got any money,’ she tells such people, ‘go steal a watch.’
On Mazie’s top shelf is a pile of paper-backed books, which includes ‘Old Gipsy Nan’s Fortune Teller and Dream Book,’ ‘Prince Ali Five Star Dream Book,’ and ‘Madame Fu Futtam’s Spiritual Magical Dream Book.’ Mazie is deeply interested in dreams, although at times she seems a little ashamed of it. ‘A dream just means you et something that didn’t agree with you,’ she sometimes says, rather defiantly. Nevertheless, she makes a practice of remembering them and spends hours hunting through her books for satisfactory interpretations. Also on her top shelf are a rosary, some back numbers of a religious periodical called the
Messenger of the Sacred Heart
, and a worn copy of ‘Spiritual Reflections for Sisters,’ by the Reverend Charles J. Mullaly, S. J., which she
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