CHAPTER XXIV
The next Wednesday morning, as part of my quotidian routine, I was back at the Laundromat. The cut on my face was healing nicely. It had been a clean cut and I had disinfected it regularly. The gash had probably required stitches, but I wasn’t inclined to see a doctor or go to a hospital. I would bear the scar and remember.
My wash was done. The ad hoc Wednesday morning group of acquaintances had conducted their usual salutations and discussions and cleansing rituals and had moved on. I’d finished folding my laundry and was putting it in my bag when I looked up and saw her. The same arrogant young woman who had stolen my machine the previous week. I was in a foul mood that may have been triggered by the rage building up in me since the robbery. So I decided it was the right time to take my revenge on this female for her insulting behavior.
I put the last of my clothing into the laundry bag and tied it up. Then I slung the bag over my shoulder and walked past the woman in the narrow aisle between the folding table and the washing machines, bumping her brusquely as I passed her. She stumbled, but didn’t make a sound.
I turned to face her. “Did I hurt you?” I may have given her a nasty smirk.
She looked up at me. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “It was my fault.” She knelt and gathered up her laundry from the floor. Her movements were awkward as she stuffed her clothing into the laundry bag. I didn’t offer to help her. When she had finished, she stood and smiled at me. “I’m so careless,” she said. “I’m always bumping into people or dropping things on people. Please forgive me.”
“Don’t you remember me?” I asked. I wanted to rub her nose in her display of bad manners.
She gave me a puzzled look. “I don’t think so. Have we met before?”
“Sure we have. It was last week. Right here at this very place and time.”
She shook her head in confusion. “I’m sorry, but I don’t remember meeting you. I think I would have remembered seeing a good-looking man like you.” She looked down as though she were embarrassed to have made such a personal remark. Her voice had trailed off at the end of her sentence, but I was sure that was what I heard her say.
Her confusion seemed to match my confusion. This woman wasn’t at all like the nasty bitch I had encountered last week. The woman who wouldn’t even acknowledge my existence. She seemed like a completely different person. Her words were soft and welcoming. She didn’t exactly have an accent, but her voice had a flat tone to it.
Perhaps she had a grave mental illness. She could have been on some kind of medication that changed her personality when she took it. One of those pills that regulated her seratonin uptake so as to change her into a sweet enticing creature. Maybe she was a chemical Circe, a siren designed in the laboratory.
“Don’t you remember that you took my washing machine and that you totally ignored me when I shouted at you and…that you were so rude… and…and…arrogant,” I stammered.
She stared at me. “Oh, no. I wouldn’t ever have done that. It’s not in my nature to be rude to people.”
Maybe she was a psychopathic liar. She was staring at me with an innocent face that said she was telling the truth. Her face was so warm, so open, so trusting. Maybe she had an evil twin who stole other people’s washing machines and didn’t take MAO inhibitors.
My anger had dissipated like the mist on a sunny spring day. It must have been due to the disarming effect of her words. I don’t know what made me say it, but I blurted out, “Would you like to go for a cup of coffee?” To me, that question, when put to a girl, had always had the same meaning as “Would you like to go to bed?” It was only a matter of time.
She didn’t respond. Instead, she glanced around the Laundromat, uncertain. “I don’t know if I should,” she said. She placed her hand gently on my wrist. It was a tentative gesture. “I don’t know if it’s a good idea.”
I wanted that cup of coffee more than anything I’ve wanted in a long time. “Please,” I said. “Come with me for some coffee. It can’t do any harm, can it? Just a simple cup of coffee. Unless, of course, you prefer something that’s decaffeinated.”
She shook her head. Her long black hair flowed with the movement of her head. “No, that’s not it. I mean, it’s kind of you to offer but I’m not sure if it’s the right thing to do.”
“But, why? It just involves crossing the street to that coffee shop and sitting down for fifteen or twenty minutes.” I pointed out the front window of the Laundromat. “It’s not a world-shaking event of cataclysmic proportions. It won’t cost more than two dollars and it doesn’t entail a commitment on either side. We’ll agree that we’re both free to get up and leave at any time with no hard feelings. I will even carry your laundry bag for you.”
She smiled in resignation. “You’re a very persuasive man. (She pronounced it perSUa-seve.) And I suppose it can’t do any harm. But you don’t have to carry my bag. I’m perfectly capable of doing that.”
She picked up her bag. We left the Laundromat and crossed West Fifth Street. As we dodged the traffic, we looked like two vagabonds carrying our meager possessions on our backs. The morning was cold and overcast and the air was heavy, as if it wanted to start snowing. I studied her back as she walked. She was short, thin and delicate, with a decided spring to her step.
We entered the coffee shop and took a booth toward the rear. It was five after eleven. The place was almost empty. We both had coffee with skim milk and I ordered a doughnut, but she didn’t want anything else. We didn’t speak until the waitress had brought the coffee.
“What’s your name?” I asked her, with a decided lack of imagination.
She examined my face. There was no pretense of shyness. “My name is Malkie,” she said.
“Like Michael?” I said stupidly.
“No.” She shook her head. “M-A-L-K-I-E.”
“What kind of name is that?”
“It’s a Yiddish name.”
“Are you Yiddish?”
She laughed. It was a delightful laugh. “No, I’m a Satanist.” She pronounced Satan like satin. “You’re silly,” she said. “Yiddish is a language. It’s a dialect of Eastern European Jews.”
“So, are you a Jew?”
“Yes, I’m a Jew. What did you think? Why would I have a Jewish name if I wasn’t Jewish?”
I took a sip of coffee and looked at her. She appeared to be about twenty-eight or thirty. Her skin was flawless. She had soft, even features. Her eyes were large and luminous. I wanted to drown in them.
“My name is Tony, Tony Mendes,” I lied. I held out my hand over the Formica table. She took it and shook it. Her hand was small, but her grip was firm. I didn’t want to let go.
“Hello, Malkie,” I said. “It’s a pleasure to have met you in the pursuit of my ablutionary chores.”
She shook her head as if she didn’t understand me. “What did you say?”
Perhaps she had trouble with the English language. “I said I was very pleased to meet you.” I took a bite of my doughnut. “Are you from Eastern Europe?” I asked her.
She seemed amused by that. “No, I’m not. I’m actually from the Bronx, just several miles north of here.” She drew her head back over her shoulder, as if to indicate the direction of her origin. Maybe she thought I was from out of town and didn’t know where the Bronx was.
I’d met Jews before, but never one as intriguing as this woman. She had a biblical look to her. If I were Jacob, I would also have married her ugly older sister who wore the heavy veil over her face and then worked another seven years to marry her. I would even have rolled the stone from the mouth of the well and watered her father’s flock.
She started to say something and then hesitated. She glanced down and sipped her coffee. Then she looked up at me. “There’s something I should tell you,” she said. “Before we go any further…”
“What is it?” I laughed. “You have an evil twin sister you keep locked up in the attic?”
She shook her head. “I’m deaf.�
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“No, you’re not,” I said, without thinking.
She nodded. “I am.”
“But you can’t be deaf. You can hear me perfectly. You speak perfectly. You’re not deaf,” I insisted. I couldn’t comprehend what she meant.
“I can’t hear you. I am deaf.”
“You mean you’re hard of hearing. You have trouble hearing me. Isn’t that what you mean?”
She gave me a little smile and shook her head. “I can’t hear you at all. I’m completely deaf.”
“But, I don’t understand,” I said. “If you can’t hear me, how do you know what I’m saying?”
“I can read your lips. But you have to speak slowly and distinctly. And sometimes I can’t understand you and I have to ask you to repeat what you said.”
I was starting to get a queasy feeling in my stomach. I couldn’t eat any more of the doughnut. “But…but you speak so well. You speak like a hearing person. I would never have known you were deaf.”
“Yes,” she said. Her eyes met mine. “That’s because I didn’t become deaf until I was nineteen. I had an illness that sent me to the hospital. I almost died. When I recovered, I was fine except for one thing. I couldn’t hear. I was terribly depressed for a long time. But then I realized it wasn’t the end of the world. It was the end of one world and the start of another one.”
So that was why she’d ignored me. She hadn’t heard me. She hadn’t seen me. She didn’t know I was there, talking to her, yelling at her. I felt like a damn fool and a rotten son of a bitch at the same time. But then, of course, how was I to know? I took a deep breath. She was so vulnerable. I wanted to protect her and shelter her. I put my hand on hers. She didn’t withdraw her hand.
“I’m very sorry,” I said. “I had no idea.”
“Don’t be sorry for me. I’m a perfectly normal and healthy person. I just can’t hear. And there is a bright side.”
I was dubious. “What’s that?”
She laughed. “I don’t have to listen to a lot of nonsense that people spout.”
She had a point there. What was it worth to have a built-in buffer against inane conversation? I nodded. “I see what you mean.” I picked up her hand and cradled it between my hands. “The fact that you’re deaf makes no difference to me. I’ll just have to learn to talk slower.”
She looked into my eyes. “You’re sweet. And I’m sure you’re kind.”
She had certainly read me all wrong. I was none of the above. I was cynical and I was sardonic. But I would try to become more of what she expected. I would try to improve. She wasn’t alone in her deafness. We were all damaged goods. My soul was broken and I was trying to fix it. Maybe she could help me in the process of reparation.
CHAPTER XXV
I gathered up my courage and a thousand dollars of my rapidly-dwindling store of cash and tramped over to my landlady’s apartment. It took her some time to answer my knock on the door, but she didn’t seem surprised to see me.
“You be out of flat end of month, OK you?” she commanded. Her tone was reminiscent of a Serbo-Croatian NCO organizing his troops in a close-order drill. Or ordering refugees to line up for a Kosovo death march.
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”
She folded her arms across that powerful chest. “Nothing to talk about. End of month, it is.”
“What if I was willing to pay a higher rent?” I said. I could see just myself wandering the streets in despair searching for accommodations in the depths of winter. “What if I paid you a thousand dollars a month?” For that shithole of a hovel, I was tempted to add, but didn’t.
An ugly smile formed at the corners of her mouth. “You interesting guy. You think, you come up with good idea.”
“Wonderful,” I said. “So we have a deal?”
She shook her head. “No deal. Not good enough.”
“But you said…”
Her eyes narrowed until they looked like the menacing slits of a machine-gun bunker. “I got agreement with new tenant for thousand a month. What I tell him? I woman of my word. I give my word. What I tell him now? I tell him I liar? No, sir. He trust me.”
I tried to mollify her. “I’m not saying your word isn’t good. I’m just saying that maybe you could tell him you had an agreement with the present tenant and that…”
She interrupted me. “He paying me thousand a month. What you do better?”
So that was her game. Who knew if there was even a new tenant? This was extortion of the crudest variety. This was Balkan extortion with none of the niceties of Western European subtlety. Whatever happened to her word? How much was that worth?
I shrugged. “Well then, what about fifty dollars a month more?”
She glared at me with cold-blooded indifference. She didn’t say anything.
I waited. But she still didn’t say anything. Whoever spoke first would lose this game.
It was apparent I was negotiating with myself. I exhaled slowly. “All right. I’ll give you eleven hundred a month.” The power of Adam Smith’s invisible hand was clearly at work in this consideration of supply and demand. Just another nail in the coffin of the already-moribund rent control laws.
She stuck out her hand. “Give it,” she said. The machine-gun slits widened. The skirmish was over. The forces of darkness had prevailed over those of reason and intellect and moderation.
I took the thousand dollars out of my pocket. Then I pulled out my wallet and extracted a hundred dollar bill and handed the cash to her. She counted it carefully and nodded. “Is OK,” she said. “You can stay in flat.” She stuffed the money into her coat pocket and turned to go back to her apartment.
But I would have my last little paltry triumph.
I gave her a grim smirk.
“What about my receipt?” I said.
CHAPTER XXVI
The moment I’d been dreading had finally arrived. My money was running low and I knew I would have to find employment. It was not just that there would be less time for reading great works and scribbling poetry and listening to sublime music. It was more of the depressing notion that I would have to give up my perfect freedom and submit to the domination of a boss. I had no illusions. I knew what my new boss would be like. Probably a money-driven immigrant, a stern taskmaster with an unerring sense of the precariousness of economic life.
It was obvious my employment possibilities were limited. Nothing that required a work history or references. Something that would be paid in grrreens under the table. There would be no W-2 or 1099 because I didn’t exist. I couldn’t use my social security number. A few digits would have to be transposed if a social security number was required.
Ethan had once offered to help me if I needed a job.
“The time has come, Ethan,” I said. “I need your help.”
He looked up from the chessboard. With the advent of winter we had transported our moveable game indoors to a local community center with folding tables and chairs and the pleasant sound of children squealing in delight as they played their games.
“It very simple, my man,” he said. “Knight to king’s bishop three.”
I grunted and pushed my chair back. The metal chair made a scraping noise on the concrete floor. “No, Ethan. That’s not what I mean. I need your help in finding work.”
“Well, well,” he grinned. “Welcome to the real world at last. You livin’ like a lord for so long. You money finally run out?”
I nodded. “Yup.” I leaned back in the chair and folded my hands behind my head. The aroma of something that smelled like chicken pot pie floated in from the kitchen on the other side of the large room. It was a good, wholesome smell. It reminded me of the kind of food my mother used to cook.
Ethan surveyed the chessboard one last time, searching for his gambit. Then he sighed and leaned forward and put his elbows on the card table. “Look like the end of free will, don’t it?”
“Sure does,” I said. “What would Sartre say now?”
H
is laughter boomed out. “Man got to make money to eat and pay his rent. That’s a given. Ain’t no way round that. But you can still be like me and maintain some choice.”
“How’s that?”
“You can drive a car for hire. You can work when you want to and if you want to. The choice is up to you.”
“How does that work?” I asked him.
“Very simple. You make money when you drive. You don’t make money when you don’t drive. Depends how much money you need.”
“Do I have to cruise the streets looking for fares?”
He shook his head. “No, man. They got a dispatcher. They give you assignments. Could be interesting. You meet all kinds of weird people. Could give you material for you poetry.”
“How do they pay you?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Depends. Could be by the hour or by the job. Plus you get tips. Sometimes when they drunk, they give you real good tips.”
My months on the run had been formless, without texture. Each day had blended into the next like a never-ending week of Saturdays. There was nothing to differentiate one day from another. It was a sort of rudderless existence. I’m not saying I didn’t enjoy the lack of structure, but maybe Ethan was right. If I had a job, my life might become more interesting. There would be new experiences, new people. After all, wasn’t I looking for new perspectives along my route?
“Do they have openings at your company?” I asked Ethan.
He guffawed. “They always got openings. Guys get drunk, they strung out on dope, they old lady hit them upside they head. So many reasons they don’t show up for work. They always looking for new men. They got too many cars. Not enough men. Plus you look presentable. You well-spoken. Be easy get you a job.”
“When do you think I could start? Might as well not prolong the agony.”
“Sure. Meet me tonight at nine. I take you to see the man.” He reached over and grabbed a pencil and a piece of paper and wrote out an address. He handed it to me. “You know where this is?”
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