18
After nine months and two weeks George quit his job at the public radio station, writing news. It was a grim place, joyless, competitive for no reason as there was little to compete for, and he’d wearied of trying and failing to get difficult stories into the six-minute newscasts. They in turn had wearied of his weariness and let him take unemployment.
Unemployment, he could pay his rent. Plus he still had the two hundred dollars a month from his mother’s trust. Something in fact had bumped it up—he wasn’t clear on the details. It was two hundred and nineteen now.
He was adrift, his schedule was askew, he was not sleeping most nights. Marina was in Washington just finishing her master’s degree in foreign affairs. She came back to New York most weekends. They would marry when she was done with a last summer course, in September, in Seattle. For now, he walked.
Fulton Street to the water, east of his apartment a few blocks. Down by the fish market. You could smell not just the fish but the mob around the place. Large men inappropriately dressed standing around not looking like they had any good reason to be standing there but who were standing there anyway, not concerned with good reasons or the lack of them. They seemed purposeful. They spoke to one another in groups of three or four with restrained animation and sour looks, like the bettors at an OTB parlor. The reason: never enough payoff. The standard payoff was not enough.
The market proper was a long two-story metal-awning’d structure on the waterfront with stalls inside, belonging to the various fishmongers. Outside a large parking area for the trucks, cobblestone and wood. Three in the morning, it was hopping, which was why George walked there when he’d been out and sleep was a long way off. The buyers came between two and five.
Mr. Langland! Greetings!
The voice came from behind him, his recognition of it a half second behind the shock that made him jump: it was Arthur Townes. He bowed, with his old tongue-in-cheek formality.
You scared the shit out of me, George said. Jesus fucking Christ.
Four in the morning on the waterfront? You’re nervous? Yes, yes? Whatever for, Mr. Langland? There’s nothing to fear. Look at those nice men there. They’ll help you.
They’ll help me overboard, George said.
Well, yes, that is the case.
What are you doing here? George said.
Well, I have a camera. So yes, I am taking pictures. With the camera. Or—but wait—it would be reasonable to conclude I’m taking pictures, yes? Right? Uh-huh. You however do not have a camera. So what are you taking?
I’m taking the air, George said.
Fishy air, Arthur said. And these stones of the roadway. Do you notice how greasy? Animal fats so saturate the atmosphere they precipitate onto the cobblestones and macadam. You’re breathing the stuff now.
I did notice that, yes, George said. What are you shooting?
I am trying to shoot the fish, the men with the fish, the piles of ice with the fish strewn upon them, yes, very cool stuff, uh huh, okay? Very cool. The fish. But the problem is, or I should say the repeated problems are, the large gentlemen with heavily voweled last names who frown upon such goings-on. They don’t want anything recorded for posterity, shall we say? No pictures, right? No pictures, pal, that is. Don’t forget to say pal. You can understand. So I move through quickly and shoot surreptitiously but one of them just promised to tear my arms off and take my camera if he saw me again so I’m engaged in, in, in—what should I call it? Strategic withdrawal. Like in Vietnam.
Wise, George said.
I tried to explain I’m testing a new film for Kodak. It’s true. A superfast film for low light. Thirty-two hundred ASA. It’s pushed, of course. The film’s actually more like between eight hundred and a thousand real speed but still. Thirty-two hundred on the box. A whole new world. I’m one of the people they’ve given it to with all the specs, shoulders and whatnot—
George thought about asking, but did not ask, what a shoulder was.
So the gentlemen of the vowels were not moved. This place would be ideal, I said. Not moved. Kodak! I said. Rochester. This was when he threatened to pull my arms out of my sockets, which was, I said, you know, extreme. That’s extreme.
He was likely aiming for extreme, George said.
Uh huh, uh huh, he was, right, yes, Arthur said. Just so. Very extreme. You know you need your own longshoreman-type hook to work here? Yes, indeed. It’s true. I tried. I came down one night to get a job and perhaps take pictures around that. But no no. You must have your own hook. The requisite hook as it were. Strict requirement.
Like an ice hook? A short gaffe? With a handle?
What you say, Arthur said. From your mellifluous tongue.
You need to have one or two? George said. I remember seeing guys with two of them carrying blocks of ice to the fishing boats.
Oh, only one.
Of course I have no idea where to get even one.
Marine supplies, Mr. Langland. Marine supplies. Or your professional-type hardware provider. I recommend Point Lookout. If you want me to pick one up for you I’ll be going out there to take pictures, I should say relatively soon.
I’m okay, George said. No cargo hook for now. You want to get a coffee?
Get coffee? Yes. You have a location?
Up Fulton, George said.
Oh, that place, yes.
They set off.
Arthur said, Note you’re a New Yorker now, but not I, I’m still from the Midwest.
How’s that?
You said get a coffee. But I said, would say, will say, get coffee. Or more like, have coffee. You and I will go out for coffee. No a.
I’m trying to think Connecticut.
That’s the distant past, Arthur said. And you’re from an interesting location linguistically. The linguistic group breaks at the Connecticut River, you know. East of, west of. East of is New England. West of is still largely Middle Atlantic. The Franklin Roosevelt accent. Buckley has it. And everything else too, Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, Long Island, and that funny Philadelphia-to–Maryland Shore accent where they say new for no and wutter for water.
I grew up on the Connecticut River. Astraddle it.
Sounds uncomfortable.
Only mildly. Until the teen years.
Indeed.
They sat in the diner. No one associated with the management or service staff moved a muscle to attend to them.
What are you up to, Arthur? George said. Arthur’s beard had more gray visible in it. And he’d gained weight, he had a significant belly. All of it fit with the man’s otherworldly strangeness. The bizarre internal logic of his speech.
I take pictures. Largely at night. Days I’m in the photocopy business still. But I’m to have a show! Did I tell you? No, of course I didn’t tell you, I haven’t seen you.
He told George about the feet. He’d spent a year taking black-and-white pictures in the subway, of women’s feet. One of the shots, one of his first in the series, before he had really decided it was to be a series, ended up on the cover of Aperture. A woman’s somewhat dirty feet in sandals. Now it was to be a show. Probably in early ’86, possibly as late as April. Gallery in SoHo, none of this Avenue A nonsense. He was working on the prints now.
Exhibition quality, he said. Quite difficult. The art is like thirty percent in the taking and seventy percent in the printing and the printing is harder. W. Eugene Smith, you know, Gene Smith? I mean, c’mon, Gene Smith—he spent a week on one print. A week! And they’re large! Sixteen and eighteen and twenty inches, by twenty-four. That size. So would you think costly? You would be correct. The gallery pays. And then takes it from the sales of course. Come to my studio I’ll show you some prints.
He gave George the address, the expectable hours. A second-floor studio on Franklin Street.
Near the towers, George said.
Right there, Arthur said. Did you know there’s a man recording them? A sound artist. They have artists’ spaces in there, you can apply to the New York Stat
e Council on the Arts. Yes, yes. Because they have two gigantic buildings with a hundred stories each and the Port Authority can’t rent the space. So this one guy has wired up the windows and records the creaks, the groans and sway. I’ve heard it. Distant whale calls, right? Like that.
Then he pulled out a notebook. This was what it was like hanging out with Arthur: George had forgotten.
I’ve been collecting adjectives ending in ly, Arthur said. Contrary to the notion that such words ending in ly are all adverbs. They are not. These are adjectives.
He began to recite from his pages:
Burly curly jolly silly chilly smelly, let’s see… willy-nilly. Now, there was a tough one. But yes it was, it was yes, an adjective. Also an adverb. But an adjective yes. Qualifies.
Otherwordly, George said.
Well, that’s really worldly you don’t need other but okay.
Okay, George said. No willy-nilly contradiction from me.
Very good, yes, Mr. Langland.
That would be churl… ish.
Not so good, Mr. Langland. You mean surly.
I mean contumely, George said.
Arthur practically jumped. Mr. Langland! The rare noun! Chaucer called it a sin, you know. Contemptuous speech—yes. But it reminds me of comely. And lovely. You are brilliant. Wasted on the fish market clearly. We should discuss your future.
No way. It’s almost five in the fucking morning, what do you want? George said.
I want it all, Arthur said. All of it. Don’t you? As long as it doesn’t require money. I refuse to make money.
An interesting question, what George wanted. He contemplated answering it and his first thought was that his life was suspended in amber at the moment. He’d been going uptown on Friday mornings that spring and summer to have late breakfast and play softball well into the cooling of the afternoon with some of the old Spectator crowd that showed up that summer to play in the pickup games down by the river in the park. When he could, George claimed first base, or third. Sometimes he was forced into the outfield. Older black guys, young Dominicans made up the rest of the crowd. The Dominican kids in particular often were serious ballplayers. They had bat speed, the line drives came singing off their swings like cannon shots. The games went late into the afternoon, and the sunlight over the Hudson became deadly in the field. Playing short center George once saw a line drive contact the bat and instantly disappear, a black dot that within two feet of launch was obliterated in a blinding white light of the sun; he moved to where he thought it would be, not many steps from his position, and he didn’t see it again until it was about four feet away from his face; he got his glove up in time to catch it, a feat accomplished by what he privately considered a miracle of adrenalized self-defense, but for which he quietly accepted kudos from his team. The muscular kid who’d hit it said, Nice catch, man. It’s blind out there.
* * *
ONE MORNING IN late May, Marina back from DC, they walked west from his place, then down and around the Battery, to an ongoing gathering on the West Side called Art on the Beach—it was on the gritty sand landfill behind the Trade Towers where he’d seen the fireworks—where he’d met Anna—and so here he was again, this time in daylight. Marina knew about Anna, she knew more about his exes than he knew about hers, a lot more, and she had more exes than he did; she knew he’d met Anna here on July Fourth that year; now he was with her, Marina, looking at oddball sculptures and tableaux vivant, including one with a young woman in an evening gown and some chunks of concrete. Probably from the old highway, which the city had finally gotten around to tearing down.
How long do you stay here? George asked the woman.
She adjusted her gown, pushed her chin higher in the air. As long as I can, she said. Six hours sometimes.
Food, bathroom?
I’m a camel, she said. A slight turn of her body indicated she didn’t wish to talk any longer. This was art after all.
George and Marina wandered off.
It demeans the art, to have to explain it, Marina said.
I was asking more for her to explain herself, George said.
Same thing. Or worse. She must have friends who bring her food and water.
She’s a camel, George said. She doesn’t need food and water.
George liked best the arrangements of metals and wire that looked just slightly more intentional than trash. A pyramid of sand dotted with used shoes, like an overcrowded shoe burial mound. Various jerry-rigged weathervanes, scrap metal pinwheels. Art imitating toys.
If one could manage to be puerile and angry at the same time, George said, you’d have this.
What you’re describing is a tantrum, Marina said.
A tantrum in black jeans, George said.
19
That July, George met Burke, answering an ad from the Voice classifieds, a guy looking for help running a coffee truck. Promised signif cash inc. wknds. Burke was a tall guy, about six two, giving off a sense of energy and amused cynicism. The thing he was not cynical about was coffee. He had big plans for coffee but he needed capital and the way to make it was to do a couple of years of selling off a truck. He had the truck. Low overhead, high returns. He had to garage the truck and gas it and, with some frequency it seemed, fix the engine; those were his expenses outside buying the coffee and bakery items and on weekends sandwiches and fruit. George accompanied him to the scorching Brooklyn ball fields on Saturdays and Sundays in July and August. The day started at six to prep the truck and be at the ball fields by 8:30. Generally done at four. He gave George Mondays off but he worked seven days himself; weekdays, he worked outside various outer-borough city office buildings, schools with summer classes in session, near City College: places where it would have been a hike to go get coffee and a piece of pound cake.
I have a two-burner Bundt, he said, and an old espresso machine from one of the criolla places on Atlantic Avenue. They have them uptown on the West Side. You went to Columbia? Plenty of them. Floridita, you know?
George knew most of them but couldn’t remember that one.
Where’s Floridita? he said.
Up like 127th Street, Burke said.
I know that place, George said. It’s gigantic, huge.
They make money, man. Weekends at one, two, three a.m.? That place is filled, man. To the brim. They got like ten waitresses on the tables, another twenty staff going, still making money. Anyway I got the machine for the Brooklyn and Bronx crowds and the uptown people, make a lot of cafecitos. You know the Spanish?
Yeah. I even know cortado—
Cortado! That’s good. Anyway the Bundts are for the American coffee. It’s a good roast.
It was quite possible—likely—Burke was on speed, it occurred to George later.
Cubans take the most sugar, he said. You see a guy using a lot of sugar, really a lot—you know, Cubano. We’re also gonna get for Saturdays and Sundays some pork and chicken sandwiches and plaintain chips and ices and a case full of cold soda. We’ll get potato chips for the Irish, a lot of Irish in those games. The Italians will eat the ices. I brought out beer one time, made a lot of money that day but it was illegal, I was fucking on edge the whole day looking for cops plus fights ended up breaking out so I killed that.
One of the idiosyncracies of the business was that Burke had landed on a supply of ten thousand coffee cups and no lids.
I paid thirty-five dollars for the cups, he said. Guy wanted fifty, I got him down. I said, I know it’s ten thousand cups but they got no fucking lids, man.
Eventually he found a supplier with the right lids; he bought a thousand at a time—for twelve dollars. That the lids were costing him three and a half times what the cups cost made him a little insane. He spoke of it frequently as one might a recent epidemic or invasion by an occupying army.
The cups came secondhand, George said. The lids didn’t. Seems pretty straightforward.
Do you even understand what it is to have a lid that costs so much more than the cup? Burke said. H
e addressed this question with a look of horror, always. There were other horrors as well: they carried in the truck four big sugar dispensers but soon were down to three, having discovered that if you filled them up someone would steal them—sugar had gotten expensive. They’d had to chase a guy down for what would have been a second dispenser loss. So they only filled them up two inches at a time and had to keep filling them through the day. This was George’s job. After writing news for public radio. Burke yelled, Sugar! when one of the steel-topped glass jars neared empty.
Burke was obsessed by the coffee. He wanted better and better brands. They’d stay at each field a half hour or an hour or right through if the business stayed good—these fields generally ran three or four games a day from nine in the morning with the last game starting at four p.m. Burke had the schedules for the leagues and planned out the day on a Brooklyn map he had to replace three times during the season, they took such a beating. He’d pencil in the fields and times and figure out whether it was worth it to drive around or stick to one big field for the whole day. If he picked one field and it was slow he had the map ready and could move on. There were licenses and permits he was supposed to have; George came to understand he had none of them.
They made a lot of cash, which compensated for the dangers involved.
I’m looking for a kind of partner, Burke told him at the end of summer.
George had been saving his two hundred and nineteen dollars a month since he’d been working plus he’d collected unemployment while being paid in cash, and he wasn’t spending much: the advantage of working so many hours being that he was either unavailable or too tired to spend what he made.
I have two grand in the bank, George said. About. If we keep making money I can go in on something for five thousand by next spring.
Okay, Burke said. I’m guessing now that will be like a ten or twelve percent share. Plus you are part of the sweat. We’ll negotiate it. Maybe fifteen percent whatever. I’m going to open a string of cafés. They will make money.
* * *
Crazy Sorrow Page 20