Seventh Avenue

by Norman Bogner

  “Are we going to eat?” Eva asked.

  “Only if you promise to kiss me with garlic on my breath.”

  “Ah, Jay, have a heart.”

  Jay wrapped his arm around her and pecked her on the cheek.

  “I love her. What can I do?”

  “You don’t need my advice.” Fredericks gave a deep, throaty, Hershey syrup chuckle.

  “Hey, Topo,” Jay called, catching sight of the manager. “Hey ladrone.”

  “Ey, Jaya.” Topo walked across the room with his hand extended. The creases on the back of his neck were like the inspiration of a mozarella cheese sculptor. He removed his tinted steel-framed glasses, gave them a blow and reached for a cocktail napkin to wipe them. “Ey, Jaya. Good to see yuh! Wha kin I do?”

  Jay introduced him to Fredericks and Eva, forced a drink on him, and he sat down next to Eva.

  “Topo, fix us something beautiful to burn our kischkas out, Mr. Fredericks’s got an ulcer, and he wants to play Russian Roulette with it.”

  Topo rattled off a menu of Palermese comestibles that could blow a safe.

  “And two bottles of Chianti, but not the stuff you dilute with vinegar.”

  “Ey, Jaya. Would I do that to yuh?”

  “I’m kidding. We’ll have the back table.”

  Eva watched him move a couple of after-movie diners, spaghetti and all, and under protest, to another table.

  They had three more rounds of drinks, exchanged pleasantries, accepted an invitation to go to Miami and spend a week on Fredericks’ yacht. They nibbled hot breadsticks until the shrimps diabolo and clams à la casino were placed before them.

  “It’s marvelous,” Fredericks said, “if I survive.”

  “I’ll bet you’re wondering why I wanted to see you?”

  “To ask me to be the best man at your wedding?”

  “Apart from that?”

  “You like my company.”

  “I love it. With the single exception of F.D.R., there’s no one I’d rather be with. I’ll tell you. You’re building, Doug. In Long Island and Westchester. You’ve got five sites altogether.”

  “You’re pretty well informed.”

  “I gave Warner fifty bucks.”

  “I’ll have to get rid of him.”

  “Whoever you go to, I’ll get to, so he’s just as useless as the rest.”

  “So we’ve ascertained that I’m building.”

  Jay squeezed Eva’s hand under the table and rested it on her thigh.

  “Anyone ask you about stores yet?”

  Fredericks gulped a clam down, smacked his lips approvingly, poured some wine for Eva, and said:

  “It’s a great way to die.”

  “That’s really why he brought you here,” she said.

  “C’mon, Doug.”

  “What makes a potentially nice young man such a hard nut?” he asked Eva.

  “Who do you mean? You or Jay?”

  “My protection,” Jay said.

  “I can see that I’m in for it. Walked into a trap. Old Douglas Fredericks walked into a trap. I didn’t make that mistake when I was younger.”

  “You’ve made too much money, Doug.”

  “So here I sit in Brooklyn, getting my brains picked by a youngster. Let me tell you something, Jay. The Fourteenth Street store didn’t mean a thing to me. I could have let it stay empty for ten years without its having any effect on my affairs, but I liked you, so I gave you a chance. You’ve improved the property. That goes without saying. But what we’re talking about now involves quite a substantial investment. We’re not talking about $500-a-year rent and split the difference. The properties you’re referring to can bring in something like a quarter of a million a year in rent, and quite frankly with all due respect to your business acumen, the type of operation you run hurts the big boys. In every one of these sites, there’s accommodation for a department store. They wouldn’t be interested for a minute if you came in. And I don’t want to break one large store into a dozen small ones. So I’m afraid you’re out.”

  Jay grasped Eva’s knee tighter. He drained his glass of wine in a single gulp and refilled their glasses while the waiter put down an enormous platter of chicken cacciatore.

  “I hoped,” Jay said, “that you would’ve had more faith in me.”

  “Why, I’ve got all the faith in the world in you, but this isn’t your kind of deal.”

  “I’d like it to be.”

  “Well, possibly in the future we can do something together.”

  Topo strolled by with another bottle of Chianti, and Jay beckoned him to sit. Fredericks gave him a supercilious smile and told him how good the food was. Topo agreed.

  “Maybe you come again?” he suggested.

  “I wouldn’t be at all surprised.”

  “Did you know that Topo’s quite an expert - if you’ll forgive me mentioning this at dinner - on sewerage problems?”

  Topo shook his mozarella head, speared a cold shrimp and sipped a glass of wine with the aplomb of a Roman count, Fredericks glanced from one to the other, somewhat nonplussed, and said to Eva: “Jay’s really rather extraordinary.”

  Somewhat in a quandary herself, she turned to Jay.

  “What’re you talking about, Jay?”

  “Well, I’ll explain. You’ve gone into the property business as of this afternoon, Eva.”

  “Is this some kind of joke?”

  “No, you’re going to build shopping centers in Hempstead, Larchmont, Rockaway, White Plains, and Great Neck.”

  Fredericks shoved his plate away angrily and rose.

  “I think this has gone far enough. If you’ll excuse me.”

  “Doug, relax. You haven’t heard the whole story, and as so much is at stake, you ought to want to listen. You see, I’ve got some bad news. Your building permission is going to be refused. Something about inadequate sewerage on those sites. The State Building Commission will have to look into the matter and official bodies can be terribly slow, but in any case they’ll probably decide in your favor with the proviso that you bear some of the costs, probably the bulk, of providing new sewerage. Do you know much about sewerage contractors?”

  Fredericks’ face was a study in burnt ash: “Okay, get on with it.”

  “Well, a firm that calls itself Topo Contractors are the biggest in the business.”

  Topo tittered and Fredericks glared at him.

  “Do we have to discuss this in front of a restaurant waiter?”

  “Manager,” Topo, a bit hurt, corrected him.

  “Well, Topo Contractors is Mr. Topo, so I thought it might be a good idea to bring you two together to see if we could all iron out our differences.”

  “Mr. Fredericks, more wine?” Topo said, all affability.

  Fredericks sneered at him.

  “What the hell’s this all about?”

  “Jay, I don’t get it,” Eva said.

  “Simple. The sites that you’ve taken an option on, or rather that I’ve taken in your name, have, according to Topo Contractors, adequate sewerage, which means you can build once you provide plans. Doug isn’t so lucky with his sites, so he’ll just have to wait. And when he finally does get the go-ahead, he’ll have to use Topo Contractors because nobody else will tender for it. Most of the other firms don’t feel they could compete with Topo, and he’s got an awful lot of work on his hands so it might take him five or six years to do the job.”

  “That’s ridiculous; they’ve got to be ready in twelve months at the latest,” Fredericks said hotly. “I’ve committed myself.”

  “That’s why I thought we ought to meet over a drink and dinner.”

  Fredericks pushed the table away from him and slid out.

  “You’re not going to get away with a goddamned stunt like this. I’ll see you in hell first.”

  “If I’m not there, start without me. In the meantime, let’s make it Rumpelmayer’s at the St. Moritz tomorrow about one. Give you the night to think over the situation.”

>   Fredericks tore out of the restaurant and Jay rolled his head from side to side, laughing triumphantly. Topo clasped Jay’s hand as though it were a pearl and grinned through brown-stained crooked teeth.

  “He’s such a smart boy. We gonna make money.”

  “I don’t take any credit - your people did all the work.”

  “But issa your idear.”

  They parted without kissing, but Topo was under his spell.

  They sat in the car under a lamppost opposite Eva’s apartment. The light in the living room was still on, and every now and then they saw Herbie come to the window, survey the street, and finding it deserted except for the drone of a lonely car unsettling the quiet, he would shrug his shoulders and return to the Saturday Evening Post to pass the time. They sat for fully half an hour without talking, for Eva was both puzzled and shocked by Jay’s tactics. She had no sympathy for Fredericks, but something inside her, a small voice, which her physical passion for Jay could not silence, told her that she must speak up. It wasn’t so much that she was outraged, but that she had been forced to wear moral blinkers; although she could justify the deception she had perpetrated against her husband on the grounds of love - and she wondered vaguely if it was simply sex, but this was too painful to accept - there seemed something particularly odious about Jay this evening; not only a total divorce from the simple plane of human emotion, but also some uncontrollable lust that could be fed only by using other people.

  “It’s late,” she said finally.

  “Huh?”

  “Busy counting your money?”

  He laughed: he could afford the luxury.

  “No, just trying to figure out what I’d do in Fredericks’ position.”

  “You’ll outsmart yourself.”

  “He’d go to see his lawyer, and his lawyer is my lawyer. He made the marriage.”

  “You’re really having a good time tonight.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Not important.”

  “Sure it is. Come on.”

  “Would it matter?”

  He put his arm around her and forced her to him. He was a bit surprised when she resisted, and he kissed her against her will.

  “Good night.” She opened the door, and he reached across her lap and forced her to close it. “I want to go . . .”

  “That sounds awfully final.”

  “Okay, if you want to know: you made me sick tonight. The way you treated that man. And why did you have to involve me?”

  “I had to take the options in your name.”

  “Why didn’t you ask me about it?”

  “I wasn’t interested in your opinion and I thought there was enough between us for me not to have to ask. It was business in any case. Maybe not very nice, but then again Fredericks isn’t a very nice man. He didn’t get where he is by winning popularity contests. He’s cut plenty of throats in his day. Today he doesn’t have to.” He loosened his tie and had difficulty catching his breath. “Christ, look at me. A little while ago, I was a bum living on the East Side, and now I’m a somebody, or starting to be one. I come from nothing . . . no background, no letters of introduction, no special favors. All by myself. You wouldn’t have talked to me, then.”

  “You’ve got a lot of excuses for yourself. I’m not God, so you don’t have to defend yourself to me. What I’m worried about is the kind of effect it’s going to have on us - this callousness of yours. It’s as though every decent emotion you have dies inside and what comes out is hate.”

  “Eva . . . Eva . . . Please, please, don’t say that to me.”

  She couldn’t believe what was happening: he was shaking.

  “Jay! Jay! Stop, darling, stop.”

  “I love you. I’ve never had this kind of feeling. It eats me up.”

  Her momentary revulsion was displaced by a wave of sympathy, part of it exclusively for herself. She had been drawn into his life by a force greater than herself - the irresistible impulse to destruction that had been created by his cannibalistic hunger for her - and she recognized this from the first afternoon that he had taken her, against her will, but not against her inclination. In her husband’s bed - a bed that had never been a theater of love or desire, but still a bed, in which two people shared a hostile intimacy; Jay’s sperm had stained the sheets of an unsuspecting and defenseless creature whose only desire had been to make her happy. She had felt afterwards as though she had been eaten by worms and after that she had grown to like the feeling because the terror of it - the worms on her breasts, tearing away at her nipples - had made her feel dynamic, a well of infinite depth and darkness that was life. She cradled Jay’s head in her arms and soothed him. Then with a clairvoyance that amazed her he said: “How do you think I feel when you go back to him? To his bed . . . ! Stealing my manhood.”

  “Who’s stealing what?” she said softly.

  “I haven’t stolen you from him: he never had you.”

  She sighed fitfully; the discussion, like a bout of lovemaking, had drained her, and her body was limp and exhausted.

  “Oh, Jay, what’s going to happen to us?”

  “I’m going to marry you if I have to kill your husband.”

  She let him kiss her on the cheek.

  “Make sure I’m still alive afterwards.”

  Rhoda was waiting up for him. He saw her perched on three pillows with an Ellery Queen in her hand, a bowl of gnawed fruit by her side and a chocolate stain across her lips. He went over to Neal and covered him. His breathing was raspy, but he was sleeping soundly.

  Rhoda pointed guiltily to the fruit bowl when he came in.

  “I got bored and well - I had a ball.”

  “Better than taking pills - they can kill you.”

  “Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea, huh? Make things a lot easier for you.”

  “The minute I walk in, you start. I’m tired . . .”

  “She gave you a workout?”

  “Aw Rhoda, cut it out. I met Fredericks tonight at the Bedford.”

  “Fredericks?” incredulous. “The landlord? What for?”

  “To talk business.”

  “What kinda business?”

  He slipped off his jacket and threw it on a chair which was losing horsehair, and was Rhoda’s idea of an antique.

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “That’s you to a T. Why bother to explain to her - she’s only some idiot I live with.” She paused, her eyes darting nervously from side to side. “Tell me the truth. He’s asking us to get out of the store; isn’t he?”

  He wished she would swallow her tongue.

  “We’ve got a lease, remember?”

  “What then?”

  “I’ve taken five more stores.”

  “Whaaaaaaat? You crazy or something? We’ve got three stores already, what do we need more for? Jay, I don’t claim to understand you, but I think you’re losing your mind. You’re opening stores like cans of sardines.”

  “Are we making money?”

  She looked at him cautiously.

  “We are . . . but why spoil it?”

  “Rhoda, do me a favor, read your comic book.”

  “It makes more sense than you, at least. All of a sudden, you’re a big business expert, and I don’t know a thing.”

  “When I fall on my ass, you can open your big mouth. But right now remember that you’ve never had this kind of money in your whole life. So just keep that big mouth of yours shut.”

  “Back where we started from, aren’t we? When’s it gonna end, Jay? When? When? Are you gonna treat me like a human being - your wife . . . ?” she shouted angrily.

  Neal began to hiccup loudly, then worked himself into a raging tizzy. Jay felt very tired and forced himself up from the bed and went inside to him. With trembling hands, he picked Neal up and tried to soothe him.

  “Wunnerful father, you are,” Rhoda’s voice rang out. “I must tell him someday, how lucky he is to have a father like you.”

  He s
tood with Neal by the window, and the child gave him a gas smile. The street was empty and in the darkness less actively ugly than in the daylight. Jay wanted to move to another apartment, but the thought of taking Rhoda with him forced him to abandon the idea. Sooner or later, she’d get around to asking him about moving, and when she did, he’d accede, because there could be no logical case for staying on at Roebling Street. Neal calmed down after a five-minute vigil at the window and Jay kissed him tenderly on the head and placed him back in the crib.

  “So you went to the Bedford?” Rhoda exclaimed, as though the fact was some sinister corroboration. “And introduced him to your gangster friends? Must of made a good impression on Mr. Fredericks.”

  “Can we go to sleep, or are you going to read all night?”

  “The Bedford, huh? You stink from garlic. I guess it covers the smell of the woman you must of been with. That dope Rhoda couldn’t figure out a thing like that, could she? Well, when I get back to the store, you won’t be leaving me home, so that you can run around whenever you feel like. I’ll be included wherever you go.”

  He turned off the light and rolled over on his side, and Eva’s face flashed before his eyes: the flaming red hair, her enormous opaline eyes that lingered on his face speechlessly for minutes, the swell of her breasts when he was inside her and she could not breath, and her anguished cry when he had satisfied her. He heard Rhoda rustle the pages of her book, and then close it, groan irritably, and chomp a chocolate marshmallow. He mustn’t lose Eva. God help him . . .

  Douglas Fredericks had pouches under his eyes, and his skin was a jade color when he entered the office of Robertson and Clay, Attorneys at Law. The receptionist was a slim, middle-aged woman who used witch hazel behind her ears and lived on cottage cheese. She got up to greet him with the kind of open-faced embarrassment women accord distinguished clients who give them pen sets every Christmas when they want those pen sets, six in her case, to turn into an engagement ring.

  “Good morning, Miss Berry,” Fredericks said briskly, gritting his teeth, but squeezing a smile out. Miss Berry did him a lot of favors.

  Miss Berry was about to remind him that he had called her Cynthia last Christmas, but instead she extended a slightly gnarled hand, an honored veteran of twenty years of shorthand, and said: