by Howard Fast
“He’s my lawyer,” Lola said. “He’s my friend, too. Don’t be afraid. He’s my good friend.” She knew he was afraid, not why or how, but simply that he was afraid; and it occurred to her that she judged better than Feldberger. Thank Gregg for that, she thought, and then remembered that she knew such men long, long before she ever knew Gregg. Such men came from the cannery into her father’s office, frightened, cold, tight, bearing their misery, their hurt, their sickness inside of them. Nothing showed, and it took you a long time to understand what was underneath when nothing showed. “Do you want to talk to me?” Lola said.
“All right—alone.”
“He’s my good friend.”
“Only alone, lady.”
She nodded. “All right. You’d better go, Sam.” He shook his head. “Go, Sam. Don’t be silly.” That hurt him, and he looked at her strangely, and then he said, “I’ll be at my office, or if you call there, they’ll find me in ten minutes. Remember what I said, please.”
“I’ll remember.”
He didn’t want to go. Lola realized that he was afraid to leave her with the little man. She smiled at him and took his hand in both of hers. “Thanks for everything, Sam.”
“Nothing.”
“Everything.”
And he thought, as he walked out, “I would give half my life for what Gregg has, and even hunted like a dog through the streets.” But he wouldn’t. He was brave but not that brave any more—not to be hunted like that; and as he walked downstairs he felt forlorn and wasted—terribly wasted.
Lola closed the door behind him, and the little man walked into the kitchen, put the paper bag on the table, and tore it open. Half a dozen wrapped sandwiches lay there, hot, sweet-smelling, grease soaking through the paper. “Hamburgers,” he said. “I brought them for you and the kids.”
“I don’t know you,” Lola said. “Who are you? It’s nice of you to bring us food.”
“They’re good hamburgers. Plain beef, fresh, nothing but salt and pepper in them. They won’t hurt the kids any, and I had to bring them. I got to have a reason to come up, Mrs. Gregg, believe me. You live in a fort now, plainclothes cop in the hall downstairs, two more sitting in a car across the street—you got a stake-out so a mouse would get identified. The hell with them I Lice! I hate their guts! I never seen a cop was any good, all of them—lice! Me, I’m the counterman at the all-night joint over at the subway—where your husband was this morning. So I brought you some hamburgers—the hell with them. If that makes me a commie, I’m a commie.”
“Where Gregg was?”
“That’s right—this morning, every morning. He comes in for coffee and a French doughnut. I like him. That’s a crime. It’s a crime if you sneeze these days.” He turned his thumb on himself and faced her defiantly. “I ain’t a hero, Mrs. Gregg. I done time, and I hate the can. It stinks! But here’s a guy I like! I like! Maybe I’m a crumb and I work an all-night joint because I’m a crumb and there ain’t nothing else I’m fit for, but I swear to God I know a phony from a man. This is a good guy, decent, kind, and like me, like me.” He beat the emphasis with his open palm on his flat chest. “I tell him my troubles, and he listens and he understands, and he knows what it is to be busted, not only broke but busted right into your guts. He listens like a brother. He tells me. He says, Andy—that’s my name—Andy, he says, take it easy. Do this. It makes sense to do this. See, Andy, it makes sense. He says to me, Andy, you’re a man. Goddammit, stand up like a man. He calls me a man. I’m a lousy crumb and he’s the first guy I know ever calls me a man like that, like it’s a medal he’s pinning on to me, right here, like this,” rubbing his lapel with his thumb, and pleading with his eyes for Lola to understand him, as if by this intense and passionate declaration he had to win her to Gregg—or perhaps win his own soul, still undecided. All of him was pleading now, his tight, discoloured fists clenched by his sides.
“I say to him, I say, Gregg, what in hell I got to live for? I’m loused up right down to my gut. I’m so loused up now, I can’t even take a woman now, I say to him. I say to him, I live in a hall bedroom and pay five bucks a week for a bed-bug bed and work a night shift in this rotten joint. I say to him, what am I, Gregg, and why don’t I take a powder out of this? It stinks. And you know what he says to me? You know what he says to me, Mrs. Gregg?”
She didn’t want to stop him. She was caught up wholly—as if she was seeing Gregg for the first time, she who knew so much of Gregg, she who had his soul in her hands felt as if she was seeing him for the first time, and whispered:
“What did Gregg say?”
“He said, Andy, you’re a man. You’re a good man, Andy. You’re a man who works with his two hands and earns his daily bread, he says to me, and he says: You got the dignity of a man, Andy, and I’m proud to call you my friend, so don’t talk like a goddamned fool, he says to me, and so help me God, no one ever says that to me before, and that time, when he went away, I go into the John and sit down and cry like a kid.”
He stared into Lola’s eyes. “Does it make sense to you, Mrs. Gregg? I can’t say it the way he said it.”
“It makes sense.”
“All right. So I had to have an excuse to come here, and let them ask me. I brought you some hamburgers. I stood outside, trying to get up enough guts to walk past the cops—the hell with that! I’m here.”
“Gregg sent you.”
“No—no, he didn’t. I’m sorry if I led you to believe he did. It’s just that I was there, and I figured it was an obligation to tell you what happened. I don’t have so many obligations in my life, Mrs. Gregg, believe me.”
“What happened?” She realized that he was still cold and shivering. “Oh, I’m sorry. Please sit down—here, at the table. Please. I’ll bring you a cup of coffee—I have hot coffee. I just made it.”
“If the cops come now, you’ll tell them I just brought you the sandwiches? You telephoned for sandwiches.”
“My phone is tapped. But I’ll tell them,” Lola reassured him, putting down a cup and saucer, pouring the coffee. “Don’t worry.”
“You don’t have to do this, Mrs. Gregg. I don’t need coffee.”
“Drink it, please. Here’s milk and sugar. Now tell me what happened this morning.”
“All right, sure. Sure.” He drank his coffee and nodded and tried to smile at her, but his pinched face quivered and there were tears in the corners of his eyes. Lola began to realize what an emotional turmoil he was going through, how torn, terrified and exalted he was, all at once. “Listen to him, listen to him,” she told herself. “You will find out something about Gregg that you never knew, something about men that you never knew.” He would solve no problems for her; that she already knew; he would offer her no solace, no comfort—yet what he had to say seemed enormously important.
“He comes in every morning, you know. Can I smoke a cigarette? You don’t mind?” She nodded and brought him an ashtray, and he puffed hungrily. “Every morning, same thing, coffee and a French doughnut. I’d say to him, Gregg, why don’t you have a nice toasted English. Let me cook you an egg. No—French doughnut. He said when he was a kid, he got crazy about them. Never had enough of them——”
Lola nodded. “I know, I know.”
“This morning, he comes in and sits down. Cold. He says to me, first, Hullo, Andy, top of the morning. That’s the way he starts every morning. Then he says, Cold day for March, Andy. Coffee and the doughnut. The radio’s on. No one there but the two of us; the short order cook, Harry, he don’t come in for another ten, fifteen minutes maybe. It’s like that most mornings, and I like it because it gives us a chance to talk. Only, this morning, I look up and see them staked out on him. I just didn’t think—I said it like a joke. I say, Gregg, there’s two plainclothes characters staked outside—what the hell you done, you robbed a bank? And he says, Not this morning, Andy, just like that, not even looking around, just stirring his coffee. He didn’t know a damn thing. He wasn’t expecting nothing. Then the radio s
tarts to talk and I go to get another station, but he says, Hold on, Andy. I want to hear that. They’re talking about arresting commies and they give the names, and there it is, his name, Roger Gregg, and I whisper, Jesus Christ, Gregg, did you hear that? But he don’t move, just picks his coffee up, takes a sip of it, takes a bite out of the French doughnut, and then looks at me. A thoughtful look—you know what I mean, Mrs. Gregg? You know how he looks that way?”
Lola knew. She saw him clearly and directly in her mind’s eye, sitting at the counter, his brow puckered, his clear eyes focused on her.
“Then he says to me, take it easy, Andy. Don’t get nervous, but take it easy. Look outside, but easy. They still there? he asks me. They’re there. Then he asks me are they cops, am I sure, like I couldn’t smell it. They’re cops, I tell him. I see him looking at me, like he’s trying once and for all to decide what’s inside of me, and all the time he goes on drinking his coffee and chewing the doughnut, like it was the best thing he ever tasted. Then he says to me softly, quiet, gentle, Andy, any other way out of here except the front? I tell him about the can. I tell him he can open the window, go through the alley and in the back door of one-sixty-six, that’s the house on the next block. So he says, OK, Andy, I got to wash my hands anyway. Then I say to him. How much money you got? He tries to laugh that off. How much money you got, Gregg? He grins and says, four dollars and about sixty cents. Andy, but don’t get any ideas. Ideas hell, I tell him—I know where you’re going—you think I ain’t been there? And I give him what I got in my pocket, about twelve bucks. He takes it; he looks at me, and nods. He says, so long, Andy. We’ll meet again. People like us always do. Take it easy, Andy, he says, and thanks. Thanks a hell of a lot. Then he walks into the can, and maybe two, three minutes later these guys in the plain clothes come in. But I guess it was the time he needed—all the time he needed.”
He stopped talking, and Lola just sat there, staring at him. “All the time he needed,” he repeated.
“You did that for him?” Lola whispered.
“I didn’t do anything. I don’t even know anything,” the little man said with pathetic defiance. “Ain’t he got a right to go into the can and wash his hands?”
“Thank you,” Lola said.
“For what?”
“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” Lola said.
The phone rang and she went to answer it, but Patty reached it first and was gurgling into it. She took the phone, and it was the Times calling. A man’s voice said: “This is Peterson, on the Times. Are you Mrs. Gregg?” She said she was, and then the questions tumbled out. “Would you mind telling us when you last saw your husband, Mrs. Gregg? Were you aware of the indictment? Will you give us a statement? Anything—just a few lines, Mrs. Gregg.” She put the phone on to its cradle. In a moment, it began to ring again; she listened, and again replaced it on its cradle. “Why don’t you talk in it, Mummy?” Patty demanded. So it was beginning. She was now the Lola Gregg, and the world was closing in. Please give us a statement. She looked at Patty, and whispered to herself, through the sudden dampness in her eyes, “I state that I am Lola Gregg, and my husband has run away. You will hunt him down like a wild beast is hunted. Oh, my God. That is also in my statement. Oh, my God.”
“But you didn’t talk into the phone,” Patty insisted.
She went to the chair where her purse lay, where she had dropped it coming in, and opened it and counted her money. She had only eight dollars and forty-six cents left.
She took all the money back to the kitchen where the little man still sat and offered it to him, keeping only the change for herself, and explaining that while she was four dollars short, she would have the rest of the money the next day. He looked at her without responding, and then he shook his head slowly but determinedly.
“But you must take it. It’s a lot of money—you’ll need it.”
“I don’t need it.”
“Please take it,” she urged him. “I’ll feel better.”
“Maybe,” he said slowly, “when Gregg comes back, he wants me to take it, I’ll take it. I didn’t come here for the money. I came to bring you the hamburgers and to tell you about Gregg.”
Lola nodded, “If you feel that way.” Then she said, “Thank you, Andy. You’re a good friend. I need friends now.”
“OK.” He got up to go, and Lola said, “This is my little girl, Patty. I have a son who’s seven years old, but he’s in school now. We call him Roger. He looks like Gregg more than Patty does.”
“I’ll bet.”
“Some time, when everything’s all right again, you’ll come to visit us, won’t you?”
He nodded uneasily, and Lola followed him to the door. “Take it easy, Mrs. Gregg,” he said. “Take it easy.”
CHAPTER NINE
THE NEIGHBOUR
SHE was still at the door, had not closed the door, when they began to come, as if by prearrangement, one from the Tribune, two from the morning tabloids, another from the Post. She only started to resist when the telephone rang again. Its jarring ring was beginning to sound like a syncopation, and she tore herself away but failed to close the door entirely. Patty stood there smiling. There were two photographers, and the man from the News yelled, “Get the kid, buttonbrain, the kid! The kid!” Hearing this, Lola swung back, the telephone screaming at her, but not quickly enough, and the flashbulbs exploded in Patty’s face. They had pushed into the house through the open door.
She swept the frightened, whimpering child into her arms and ran to the telephone, her heart crying, “Gregg, Gregg, now it’s Gregg and what will I say to him with them here?” But it wasn’t Gregg; it was Mr. Cann, inquiring whether she had heard from her husband, in his polite, carefully phrased, business-like tones. “Well, you know you will hear from him sooner or later, Mrs. Gregg. It’s to our interest to resolve this safely and decently—safely for him, I mean.” His tone said that he was trying to sell her a vacuum cleaner or a washing-machine. The Fuller Brush man came in with that tone, precisely. “I have a little gift for you, and something for your husband.” She put down the telephone, and they were already in the house.
“Please leave,” she said evenly. “This is my house, do you understand. Please leave.”
The cameras flashed in her face, and Patty hid her head in Lola’s breast and arms. The man from the Tribune said, “I guess we’re all sorry we barged in like this, Mrs. Gregg, but you are news. If you’ll only give us the facts, we can present the picture accurately, and that will help.”
“Accurately,” Lola smiled, looking from face to face, the tall and the short, the tweeds and the glasses and the uneasy pomposity and the dull, senseless, impervious faces of the photographers. “You couldn’t report the weather accurately. Will you write how you forced your way in here and frightened a child out of her wits? There are policemen outside, and whatever they are, I prefer them to you. Get out of here or I’ll open the window and call them!”
They didn’t move. One of them thrust out his lower lip and nodded in mock admiration. Another examined her carefully from head to foot, undressing her. The man from the News said:
“Come off it, lady. We’re not good enemies. Anyway, we’re neutral. Why don’t you give us the facts?”
The telephone shrilled again. One of the photographers reached for it, and Lola cried, her voice new and strange to herself, different, like a whip. “Leave it alone, damn you! “When she picked it up, it was Mr. Cann again, inquiring solicitously, “You hung up so suddenly, I didn’t know if anything was wrong. Is anything wrong, Mrs. Gregg?”
“I don’t care to talk to you, not at all.”
They still stood there.
“Get out!”
“Look, Mrs. Gregg—be reasonable.”
A huge man, a big broad-shouldered man in his shirt sleeves, loomed behind and over the gentlemen of the Press and asked Lola in a husky voice, “Anything wrong, Mrs. Gregg?” They turned to look at him. It was Schwartz from across the hall, the oiler who w
orked the night shift at the power house, and he stood there, hugely, sombrely, rubbing one blue cheek and regarding them with sullen, native hostility. “Who the hell are you?” the News man demanded. Schwartz had abig, fleshy nose; now he took put his handkerchief and blew his nose. It was a gesture of contempt.
“You want them here?” he asked Lola.
“I don’t. God, how I don’t. They frightened Patty out of her wits, forced their way in. They’re newspaper men.”
“You heard her. Get out,” Schwartz rumbled.
They positioned for defiance, but he stood motionless and nodded, and then the Tribune man broke and headed for the door. The others streamed after him. Lola put Patty down and went to the door and bolted it after them. When she returned, Schwartz was making Patty a fireman’s hat out of newspaper. Lola fell into a chair, suddenly exhausted and helpless, and watched silently. It was almost funny, the delicacy with which Schwartz folded the paper, while Patty gazed at him silently and worshipfully; and then, when she ran to the mirror to look at herself, he observed Lola thoughtfully and asked her what he could do for her.
“Just getting rid of them was doing a great deal, Mr. Schwartz.”
“Rough day?” She nodded. “Well, it’s the way the cards fall. Damned shame, you ask me. I heard it on the radio, and then when I woke up, my missus, she had the whole story. Trust her. All you got to do is cut your finger in a dark corner of the basement, and she’ll have all the details before it starts bleeding. Then I heard the commotion in the hall, and I looked in.”
He was watching her again, quizzically and reflectively. They had lived across the hall from one another for the best part of three years, but Lola knew him hardly at all, a good morning, a hello, or a nod. Across the airshaft, she saw a surly, bear-like man who crawled into himself and growled at his wife, and often enough Lola had wondered how a human being could go on like that in such a life with such a relationship from month to month and from year to year. Now he had suddenly stepped into her life. “Do you lean on such a man?” she asked herself. “Trust him?”