The Ballad of West Tenth Street

by Marjorie Kernan

  He didn’t dare go into the veterinary clinic and ask for help, so he panhandled in front. He approached only certain people, the ones who looked kind, and as a result had just a few quarters in his cup. But what he really did was keep an eye peeled for the right one. He was getting desperate when finally he saw her. She had a cat carrier and looked worried. She came out half an hour later, crying. The cat carrier was empty.

  “Lady,” he said softly. “Lady, please?”

  She stopped, looking confused, and he could see it, her instinct kicking in, she stiffened and began to walk away.

  “I gotta poor sick kitten,” he said. “Please, could you help?” She’d stopped again and he went on, trying to keep his voice nice and pleasant. “They won’t let a bum like me in there, and the truth is, I don’t have the money, but I do have a twenty. I’m not asking for you to know me or see me or ever have anything to do with me again, but I found this kitten, its mother was dead, would you help it? Please?”

  She was a young woman with soft brown hair. She put her hand over her eyes, pushing away the tears. He drew the ginger kitten from his shirt and held it out, letting the flannel fall away from it. The woman touched it, then said, “I’ll try. Poor thing. You’ll wait here? You won’t run and leave me feeling responsible for it?”

  “No ma’am, I won’t.”

  It was more than an hour before she came back out. He’d begun to see the worst in his mind, the vet shaking his head and saying there’s no point, better to put it down, or the kitten, too hungry and too late, dying as it was looked at.

  “They said it should be kept over for four days, treated and fed special formulas. I don’t have that kind of money. I told them about you. They fed him and gave him some medicine.” She carefully handed him back the kitten, now wrapped in a clean towel. “Can you read? I told them you couldn’t pay for it, and I couldn’t either, so they gave me these.” She waited till he tucked the bundle back in his shirt and then gave him a paper and a parcel. “It’s instructions for care and a set of feeding bottles and some formula. You have to keep him warm at all times. Oh, and they gave me this and asked me to tell you, be very clear about it, for you to come back in six months and they’ll do the neutering. No charge, it says so on that card. The vet, he’s nice. He said you come in and bring that cat and he’ll neuter it, that the world would be a lot better place if there were fewer unwanted cats. I have to go now. Nah, thanks, there was no charge. Here’s your twenty back, they wouldn’t take it. And here’s a few dollars, for food.” She stuffed some crumpled ones in his cup and walked quickly away.

  “Oh my yes, that was a nice lady,” he reminisced to Titus as they slept in the underpass, all those years later, his hand tucking in deeper around the cat’s side. “And that vet was sure nice. But he’s wrong about the world being a better place with no unwanted cats in it. Your mother wanted with every instinct in her to feed you and show you how to mouse. And you and me never would’ve gone traveling together if things were all peachy and perfect, why that way only rich people with houses would have cats.”

  The man and the ginger tabby fell soundly asleep in the dark of the underpass, the honkings and swishings and bells of the great city growing quieter as the night deepened toward dawn.

  And in the shadows of the tall trees a phantom hunted, drifting between the shadows cast down from the trees, seeking, licking his senses to sniff out another human, one lost in sleep, one whom he could harm.

  5

  New Yorkers are so wary of personal contact with potentially troublesome or even deadly neighbors that they carry this fear into every corner of their lives. They don’t speak to strangers, abruptly cut off chats with shopkeepers, avoid making eye contact with that man in the next building, whom they see each morning. Bums are handed a coin or a bill from a blind hand, receiving no response to their thanks. Immigrants handing out leaflets on sidewalks are as invisible as lampposts. A man passes a shop window, glancing in. His eye, unknowing, catches that of the melancholy shopkeeper within, ruing his poor sales. The man starts, pretending to brush something from his nose, anything to falsify the fact that two strange pairs of eyes met.

  The children of the city are warned repeatedly, tirelessly, of the dangers of contact with strangers. They are required to recite a catechism of rules on the subject, to list all the people they mustn’t talk to. Even teachers and the parents of schoolmates are not exempt.

  Certain preternatural brats, already old in their parents’ ways, have the mannerisms down cold—the blind eye and the veil of indifference. But honest and true children have to be scared into it. Deen and Hamish were ordinary children in this way, and they liked to talk to everyone. Sadie for her part had given them a few pointers about scary people and left it at that.

  On this morning they were running their own branch of the Secret Service. To determine, by covert observation and the gathering of intel, all pertinent facts regarding activity at the house next door. It had been empty more than a year, the pair of bickering decorators who’d bought it having restored it and decamped.

  Earlier that week a van and a truck had pulled up in front and an army of men in white coveralls marched in. The for sale sign was taken down, and from early morning to well into each evening they hung wallpaper, painted, cleaned, and worked on the garden.

  That morning a moving van had parked in front. Next, a blond woman with a sharp, lacquered look arrived in a taxi. She stood in the front hall with a clipboard, directing the moving men.

  “Do you think she’s the new owner?” Hamish asked Deen. He’d taken the front wheel off his bike and they were pretending to fix it.

  “God, I hope not. She doesn’t look like much fun at all.”

  “Maybe we should just go over and say we’re from the house next door, ask her?”

  “You think we should?”

  “Sure. What’s she going to do, put us in jail?”

  “No, let’s not. She’s got that eagle-eyed look, I’m sure she’s seen us, so she’d know we were spying on her. Besides, it’s more fun trying to figure it out for ourselves.”

  The next day she was back, with another crew of men, some with slablike shoulders, others of a more delicate build. They could see furniture being moved according to the blond lady’s direction and curtains going up. Agonizingly for Hamish and Deen, each pair was drawn as soon as they went up. A woman in her thirties, Spanish-looking with cheeks as pink as carnations, arrived and began working in the kitchen, which the children could see down into by lurking on the sidewalk.

  They talked of nothing else, devising elaborate stories about who was to be their new neighbor. Since the brick row house was the twin to their own, they had a special interest in the matter and they prayed it might be someone more interesting than those cranky decorators. The building on their other flank was apartments and not at all the same thing. And even they understood that having a house done up so quickly was no small feat in New York, and must be costing a great deal of money.

  The next night they had a brainstorm. They set up a ladder against the fence in the back garden, then ran into the house to get the binoculars. By looking over the wooden fence they could see directly into the back of the house. All the lights were on and the curtains open. Deen, claiming seniority, went up first. For a long while she was silent. Hamish waited impatiently.

  “It’s like a museum,” she said. “It’s all full of neat old stuff.”

  Hamish yanked hard at the hem of her jeans. “Come on!” he said.

  When it was his turn he stared in wonder at the rich rooms blazing beyond the windows. The blond lady was going from room to room, fussing with little things, pillows and objects on tables, patting leather-bound books into place and straightening pictures. Taking turns on the ladder, they could see that all the rooms were now papered in deep colors and filled with heavy, old-fashioned furniture. The curtains were of thick velvet, matching the colors of the wallpaper, and every surface was covered in interesting looking thin
gs. Bronze dogs sleeping on red marble plinths, candlesticks with long lusters, ivory chess sets, and Chinese vases. Oriental rugs the colors of old wines covered the floors and the walls were hung thickly with paintings in gilt frames. The lamps all had shades made of red silk. There was an air of deep, sighing luxury to it, they agreed in whispers.

  Sadie wandered out to the garden, soundless on bare feet, the only herald to her arrival the ice clinking in her glass.

  “What in Christ’s name are you two up to?” she said.

  “Spying on the house next door,” Hamish whispered. “Please keep it down, Munster. All the lights are on and they haven’t closed the curtains in back. You can see nearly everything. We’ve got binoculars too.”

  “Really? How fascinating. Can I have a look?”

  Deen slid down the ladder and handed her the binoculars. Sadie climbed up, propping her arms on the top of the fence. Deen and Hamish waited below, curious to hear her opinion.

  “It’s somebody with a lot of dough,” she said, climbing down. “And extremely old school. You haven’t found out who’s bought it yet? Hmm. It’s not the brittle blonde, I can tell you that. She’s a working girl. A decorator I’d guess. On a rush job, for some oil sheik or something. No, that’s not right—it looks like old money. Not at all up to the minute or decoratorish. Weird, because I’d swear the blonde’s a decorator. And you know what, darlings, that house now looks like it’s been owned by the same family for generations. Curiouser and curiouser.”

  The following day Deen was coming home from her English lesson when she saw something that made her stand still and gape. A long blue-blanketed shape was being maneuvered in the front door of the house. There was no question that it was the body of a concert grand. A concert grand, she shouted inside her head, a concert grand! Only made by special order by the best piano makers. Oh please let the new owner be someone nice, please let them be nice, she thought as she ran all the way to the basketball court to tell Hames, hissing the news through the chain-link fence.

  The dark brownstone church on Fifth at the corner of Eleventh had always stuck a cold finger into Deen’s ribcage whenever she walked by it. She’d learned, imitating her mother, to call it “the worst pseudo-Gothic of the worst Victorian taste,” which distanced it somewhat, but always it affected her with a dire gloom, even on the brightest of days. In the late autumn the pavement in front of it smelled like sour milk and something worse, a miasma created by the crushed ginkgo fruits on the stones. Bums huddled in the niche made by the entrance on Eleventh, sleeping on rancid mattresses, lying there like rag dolls, thin trickles of urine seeping from them over the pavement and dying into sticky traceries.

  She didn’t like walking next to the black-painted Gothic fence in front of it, its spikes imprisoning a sward of weedless green grass. As she neared it she planned to cross Fifth, lose a few precious minutes and cross to Eleventh on its southern side. As much as she hated that church, she loved that block of Eleventh, with the house the Weather Underground had blown up and the Portuguese Jewish graveyard hidden behind a wall, its few ancient headstones and shaggy cedar huddled nearly forgotten against the side of an apartment building.

  Walking along Fifth, looking at the cans of flowers outside the Korean deli and hearing Chopin’s G Minor Ballade in her head, pondering how to get those transitions in it right, she looked up at the Forbes Building. Munster had told her that the Forbeses were devils. How their spawn, a devil among devils named Steve, had made what turned out to be a fortuitously lunatic bid for the presidency some years ago, and that he was a dangerous horse’s ass. It was a building that trumpeted wealth, with a great portal, polished granite, and bronze fixtures. Like something the Mighty Oz would hide inside.

  A bum was gesticulating next to a steel trash can in front of it. As she drew closer she could make out his words.

  “Goddamn, motherfucking infidels!” he was screaming. “Shit for brains, shit and you make more money, shit, shit, shit! I’m gonna fuck with you all, motherfuckers! Fuck with you and see you sucked up inside the devil, then shit out of his asshole.” He picked a broken umbrella out of the trash can and stabbed it up at the building, then dashed it onto the sidewalk. “No, you listen to me! Now, fuckheads, before you die and I eat you!”

  As she passed him Deen tried to become invisible, the incipient New Yorker in her kicking in. But she was afraid of him. The way you could hear the spit in his words, the way his fs cracked like gunshots, scared her. His rage shot out around him, making everyone hurry their steps while trying not to look as though they were.

  Now he was picking something else out of the trash can, holding it up. She hoped it wasn’t something sharp. It would be terrible if she looked up and caught his eye—he’d be incensed by her fear. There were too few people around her. With a surge she dashed toward a couple ahead and ducked between them, breaking all the rules about physical contact. Startled, they parted and Deen ran across the intersection. A taxi slammed its brakes behind her.

  “Yeah and I saw you, little girly-girl,” the angry bum muttered. “Little girly-girl, all nice and clean and loved. Well, shit on all of you!” he screamed.

  6

  For every stack of citizens piled and packed into the buildings of New York there are delis to meet their needs. Palatial ones with marble floors and sushi counters, walls of gleaming steel coolers filled with cold drinks and exotic juices, steam tables and salad bars and a grill counter with short order cooks yelling out orders for eggs and sandwiches. Then there are the small ones, owned by families who work there day and night, with wavy wooden floors and florescent lights, their shelves crammed with tins and packets, bootlaces and pain relievers.

  Lily and Ron’s deli was of the latter type. They opened it each morning at five on the dot. The deliverymen swarmed in first, ticking supplies off their lists, the engines of their trucks idling outside on Seventh Avenue. Say, Lily, you take care now, they’d call out, jumping back in their cabs. Ron swept the sidewalk first thing but if he had to put the broom down Lily would seize it and carry on. Then, between early customers, they cleaned the inside of the shop, tidied the shelves, straightened the stacks of newspapers and dusted the candy rack.

  Everyone loved Lily. She treated every customer as if they were a great and treasured friend. She remembered a remarkable number of their names and gave everyone, regular or newcomer, a smile that blazed with sincerity. Strangers were often seen emerging from her shop, bemused expressions on their faces, wondering what they’d done to deserve such a smile.

  Lily and Ron’s bagels, it must be admitted, were of rather indifferent quality. But the local workmen and a good many residents of the surrounding blocks would have no other, not even the really good ones at the place on Sixth. There the staff stood on raised decks behind the registers, calling out, “Next!” in bored voices.

  Lily was a queen of the cash register. No one ever sighed or rolled their eyes in her line. She made the sales incredibly quickly, all the while chatting animatedly to the person paying, juggling bills and coins, stuffing straws and napkins into the bag, and thanking them. She never made incorrect change, showed deep respect for the elderly, and would chase after a deliveryman running late to stuff a brownie and an orange juice in his pocket, yelling, “You got to take care of yourself, get some energy!” Many of her regulars took the trouble to have small change and ones ready so that they could hand her the exact amount, for which they received what one of them had dubbed “Miss Lily’s Special Number One,” a smile that followed them as they left and seemed to warm their backs.

  Cap’n Meat understood the delicacy of Miss Lily’s sensibilities. She naturally did not like bums coming into her shop. Bums would distract her and besmirch the shining cleanliness of it. And more than that, Cap’n Meat understood that she felt troubled by bums. They ruined her smile because they ruined her cheer, her hope that by working hard and keeping things tidy everything would be well.

  Cap’n Meat had a deep and true respe
ct for Miss Lily, but sometimes his large belly was so aching with hunger, a hunger that grew worse as it gnawed at him. At these times his sensitivity had to be set aside.

  So he’d stand at one end of her orange awning, waiting, trying to look unobtrusive and not bother her customers. Who, me? his body seemed to claim, I just happen to be here, I’m not begging, no, not at Lily’s.

  “Not so good day, huh?” she’d say, rushing out as soon as she could, her black ponytail swinging as she handed him a bag. “You no tell others! In there egg salad, fruit, coffee, and cupcakes. And you drink water. Water cleans body. Some food for cat too, no one call me a bad woman.”

  You didn’t thank a woman like Miss Lily, you respected her world and said thank you with your eyes, then tucked the bag away quick and moved along, just like some bum that’d been told off. No sirree, you let Miss Lily look like she was chewing you out.

  She’d stand with her fists on her hips, staring furiously at his back, beneath her orange awning, surrounded by tiers of tight indigo iris buds, roses, spider mums, and cow-eye daisies dyed cyanic yellow, St. Paddy green, and candy pink, wondering why humans, such miraculous creatures, couldn’t get down to it and tidy up the world.