The Monkey Rope

by Stephen Lewis

  “As you wish,” Seymour said. “Do you know the way?”

  “Oh, I think so. I really hope this space is adequate.” She looked at the exposed pipes overhead. “Do you think there will be pipes upstairs, as well?”

  “I’m afraid so,” Seymour said. “This is an old building, some kind of factory at some point, I suppose, and that’s how they used to make them. Pipes everywhere.”

  “Well, we’ll have to do something about that. Maybe we can drop the ceiling, hide them somehow. My husband’s furs and those awful pipes. It just won’t do. Thanks for the key. I’m sure I’ll see you again. Soon.” She started down the hall, but in a moment Junior was at her side.

  “Allow me, Mrs. Levine,” he said, drawing out the second syllable. “I’ll take you up the freight elevator.”

  Seymour watched them enter the elevator and saw Junior’s hand brush against her hip as the door closed. He shook his head, wondering if O’Riley knew what he had bought into with Junior.

  * * * *

  Seymour had worked late one night, and the streets outside his building were blanketed in a thick fog. He headed toward his subway stop, enjoying the clatter of his shoes on the cobblestones. He was halfway down a street little wider than an alley when he stopped to light a cigarette.

  “Hey, man, you got a light?”

  Seymour looked around him, but he was already encircled, two in front, two behind, teenagers and all smaller than he, but too many. He held out his lighter toward the ringleader whose features were hidden by the fog. He flicked the lighter and the flame danced off a gold tooth.

  “Thanks, man,” the cool voice said.

  “No problem,” Seymour said, and he took a step straight ahead. The ringleader and another youth cut him off.

  “Hey, man, what’s your hurry?” the gold tooth asked.

  Seymour didn’t answer. He threw his shoulder into the one next to the ringleader and butted him back. He started to run, but after a few steps he tripped and a hand grabbed his coat and started to spin him around. He permitted himself to be turned, and at the same time threw his fist at the first head he saw. He felt it crash solidly against bone and flesh, and a shape crumbled to the ground. Then the others were on him, and he was wrestled against a wall. Something hard glanced off the side of his head and he slumped to the ground.

  “Now, man, why did you have to go and do that?”

  Seymour looked up at the ringleader.

  “What were you going to ask me for next? The time?”

  “No, asshole, your watch. What you think?” Seymour followed the voice to a figure behind the ringleader.

  “Hey, no,” the gold tooth said soothingly, “don’t pay him no attention. We don’t want much from you. Just a few dollars, whatever you have.”

  Seymour reached into his jacket pocket for his wallet, but a hand closed over his arm.

  “Don’t trouble yourself, man. I’ll get it.”

  The ringleader took the wallet, lifted the cash and credit cards efficiently, handed them to the one Seymour had hit, and tossed the wallet into the street.

  “There’s not much here.” He sighed. “The plastic is a lot of trouble for our immediate needs. And this,” he held the thin wad of bills between his finger, “now has to pay for some cosmetic surgery for my man over there. You made him even uglier. You shouldn’t have done that.”

  Seymour had started to get up. He didn’t see the kick aimed at his belly until it was too late, and he collapsed with pain shooting across his ribs. He gasped for breath. A fist smashed into his face, and he felt his eye begin to close. In a blind fury, he hurled himself at the figure in front of him and they rolled over on the pavement until he forced himself on top. He clubbed at the flash of gold and felt blood flow over his torn knuckles. He raised his arm again. This time, though, several hands pulled him up and shoved him onto the ground. Another kick landed in his ribs and he rolled over, covering his head.

  He heard a couple of thuds, but felt nothing. Then, for a moment there was silence, followed by the scrape of shoes running down the street. He looked up and saw a thick arm locked around gold tooth’s neck, cradling the head, while another hand flashed a long and lean blade up to the face.

  “What do you say, my man? Should I cut him?”

  Seymour squinted at Junior and tried to speak. But Junior didn’t wait. With one quick motion, he brought the blade across the ringleader’s cheek in a six-inch arc from his ear to the corner of his mouth.

  “Maybe, now, your girlfriend won’t find you so pretty,” Junior said in a voice half snarl and half laugh. “I marked you so I’ll remember you. If I ever see your ugly face again, I’ll cut you worse, so you’ll have nothing for your girlfriend.” He stood up and smashed his heavy laborer’s shoe into the ringleader’s groin. “You understand what I mean, man?” Seymour staggered to his feet and stumbled over to Junior. Junior turned to him and steadied him.

  “Easy, my man, it’s all over,” he said.

  Seymour looked down at gold tooth. Blood ran from the slice. He lay on his side, his hands between his legs, and his mouth half open. There was a gap where his gold tooth had been. Seymour looked down at his own hand and saw that he had a ragged cut on his index finger, just below the knuckle.

  “You popped him good.” Junior smiled. He leaned over, picked up Seymour’s wallet, and unfolded it. He shrugged and tossed it to Seymour.

  “Picked the green clean, man, but at least like they say, you still have your health.”

  Seymour passed his hand over his bruised face.

  “At least what’s left of it.” He glanced at his assailant who lay still on the ground, his eyes closed.

  “I don’t think we have to worry about him no more,” Junior said. “He’s stupid, but I don’t think he’s that dumb. Anyway, let’s get the hell out of here.”

  “Do you think we should just leave him here, like this?” Seymour asked.

  “What do you want to do, call an ambulance, and then have to answer a bunch of questions. Before you know it, they’ll be saying we started the whole thing. There’s two of us and one of him.”

  Seymour began to say something about how ridiculous that version of the incident would be, but then he remembered O’Riley’s unctuous voice and he stuffed his empty wallet into his pocket without looking at the inert figure on the street.

  * * * *

  Seymour sat at his desk, his hand bandaged and his whole body stiff with pain. He had reviewed the file on the landlord/tenant case he would argue on behalf of the tenant until he had to conclude for the hundredth time that the landlord, a Mr. Goode, held all the legal cards. As he pushed the file to a corner of his desk, he heard a gentle knock on the door, and looked up.

  “I hope you don’t mind my stopping by. Junior called the other day and told me where I could find you. He mentioned something about a fight, and, well, here I am. I don’t know exactly why.”

  Seymour noticed her eyes first, even deeper and more lustrous than he had remembered. Beneath her beret, her hair was cut stylishly short, revealing delicate gold hoop earrings. She was wearing a tan blazer and a plaid skirt.

  “Looks something like the old school outfit, doesn’t it?” She smiled. “We librarians are supposed to dress discreetly, you know.”

  “Maybe,” he said, coming forward to embrace her. “But you’ll always be special, Rosalie, particularly when you are wearing this.” He ran his fingers over the beret, and then stroked her hair.

  “I didn’t know if you would remember. Anyway, I had to look all over for it before I found it stuffed on the top shelf of my closet.”

  The thought that he, too, might be only a memory retrieved from a dusty storage place stung.

  “Of course, I remember it,” he said. “You were wearing it the last time I saw you.” He paused. “I remember that, and your father’s rather large fist aimed at my head.”

  She smiled sadly, and her voice was gentle.

  “That was a difficult time, for bot
h of us. I’d like to talk with you, if you have time. Maybe we could get some lunch.”

  Seymour walked back to his desk, and picked up his appointment calendar. He studied it for a moment, and then held it up to her so that she could see the page, filled only with doodlings.

  “Well,” he said, “I think I might be able to squeeze in a day or two before my next client comes wandering by.”

  “That bad,” she said.

  “That new, anyway.” He put the book down, and picked up a little wooden box. “You know what’s in here?”

  “The key to your Swiss bank account?”

  He smiled and opened the box for her.

  “It’s not mine,” he said, taking the gold tooth out of the box. “It used to belong to a particularly stubborn young man, who had his mind set on mugging me until your brother happened by, and together we managed to disabuse him of the notion.”

  Rosalie shuddered.

  “I know,” he said, “and I did try to run, which was a better thought, but I didn’t get too far. I tripped and these guys were on me, and then Junior came along.”

  Seymour opened his desk drawer and pulled out a brown bag.

  “It’s a little early for my table to be ready at Twenty-One. Would you mind the Promenade? I frequent a certain bench.”

  Rosalie opened her pocketbook and showed the corner of her lunchbag.

  “Just what I had in mind,” she said.

  * * * *

  Seymour pulled the crust off his bread and tossed it to the pigeons strolling in front of their bench. There was a brief flurry of wings and angry cooing, and then one bird emerged with piece of bread and strutted on. The others eyed Seymour expectantly for a moment, and then waddled off.

  “I’ve thought about our last night together, a lot,” he said. He expected a recrimination, at least in her eyes, something to ask why he had never called, not once, in all this time. But her face betrayed no anger.

  “I have, too. But it just wasn’t right, then. And it wasn’t only our families’ opposition.”

  “Well, for a while, we were Brooklyn’s version of Romeo and Juliet. But you’re right. That wasn’t the cause.”

  “I think we both knew that. And then you went your way, and I, after a while, got married.”

  Seymour started.

  “Is that so miraculous?” she asked, her voice mockingly angry.

  “Of course not,” he recovered. “It’s just that I think of you only from that time. As if you and I have just said good-bye, and you are walking away, your beret perched on your head, and me sitting like a fool in that Packard.”

  She leaned toward him.

  “How can you blame yourself? And I wasn’t ready for anything. Except that I knew I had to get out of that house. And so, I guess, I married Timothy Michael O’Grady. My parents had a little trouble swallowing the name. But at least, you know, he wasn’t Black. Or even a Protestant.”

  “Or, thank God, Jewish,” Seymour smiled.

  “No,” she said seriously, “maybe that would have been tougher for them to accept. But then when I got divorced, my mother couldn’t understand it, of course, and my father, well, he’d probably have tried to beat me if he could have stood up straight long enough. They moved out to the Island a few years ago. At the time Junior was looking for a place to live, but you know all about that. We don’t talk much, really not at all. I send cards for birthdays, and holidays, but I don’t call.” She paused. “I think,” she said slowly, “that they’ve buried me.”

  “As for Timothy Michael, well, it wasn’t that hostile, nothing like that. He was a good kid, and I was a kid. You know, one of those kinds of things.”

  “It’s never that easy,” he said softly, the sentence falling hard between them.

  “Oh, I see,” she said, “that bad. For you.”

  “It was.”

  “And is?”

  “Sometimes,” he conceded.

  She took a can of juice out of her lunchbag and offered it to him.

  “Are you okay?” she asked after a moment. “I mean,” she glanced at his bruised face and bandaged hand, “about that.”

  He nodded, happy for the distraction. “Oh, sure. Nothing serious.” He finished the juice and squeezed the can flat beneath his shoe. “The thing is, here I am trying to get my own practice started, and I can’t tell the police when I’m mugged. Your brother,” he said quietly, “is a dangerous man.”

  “And you are involved with him. Again, after all these years. I saw that prosecutor on television, and I wanted to throw something at him.” Her eyes flashed and her voice trembled. “Can’t you get out of this mess somehow?”

  “In time. Right after the election, when O’Riley will be off our backs. Anyway, Junior did help me out. He might have saved my life.”

  She took the bandaged hand gently to her lips, and then brought her face close to his.

  “That’s the way he is, at least there is that part of him that is loyal to his friends.” She forced a smile. “Sometimes more than they want.”

  He nodded, anxious for her to continue. He had stopped thinking about them as sister and brother. In his mind, he had separated her from her family.

  “I know my brother, please be careful.” She took his face between her hands. “He’s reckless. He loves to play dangerous games.” She started to look down, a faint blush on her cheeks. “But, of course, you know that. Anyway, I wanted to tell you that I do appreciate your helping him. But not if it’s going to hurt you.”

  “I understand,” he said.

  “Promise me something, please.”

  “Anything.”

  “Get in touch with me right away if anything else goes wrong. Believe it or not, Junior sometimes listens to me.”

  “I will,” he said. “Right now I’m trying to keep him away from a rich, spoiled, and bored young woman.”

  “Anybody you might be interested in?”

  “Only,” he said, “from a distance. Besides she’s married.”

  Her face darkened. “And Junior’s after her?”

  “I think so.”

  “That would be just like him. He’s never happy with what he’s got, or what other people have. It’s the challenge, I think. He wants to see what he can get away with.”

  Seymour felt the anger and resentment begin to build in him, but he forced a quietness in his voice.

  “Look,” he said. “I feel like this is an old story. I just hope he doesn’t fuck up too badly until I can be free of him, once and for all. But I want you to know that I don’t want to be free of you. Do you think we can try again?” He drew her to him and kissed her.

  “I was hoping you might say something like that. If you hadn’t, I would have said it for you.”

  * * * *

  “Excuse me, Rosalie,” Seymour said. “I can’t hear you well. There’s some kind of construction going on on the floor above. Anyway, I’ll see you tonight.”

  He hung up the phone and walked out into the hallway. All week, workers—carpenters, electricians, plumbers—had been trooping by on their way to the new showroom for Phil’s Fur Palace, soon to be open to the public right above his head. And every day, as he tried to work, he was assaulted by the whine of power tools and the crash of the old plaster walls as they were pulled down.

  On the stairs, he stopped a workman who was so covered with plaster dust only his eyes were visible in his face. From the stoop in his back, Seymour could see that he was not young.

  “When will the work be done?” he asked.

  The workman shrugged. “Three, four weeks, a year, who knows? You should see what she’s doing to the place. You wouldn’t recognize it.”

  “That’s just where I was going,” Seymour replied.

  The worker brushed some dust from his cheek.

  “Messy stuff, this old plaster,” he said, “but when it’s right there’s nothing like one of those old walls, smooth and solid. Elegant, you know? I used to be a plasterer, but now there’s no wo
rk. Everyone’s using this new hollow shit. Hear the guy in the next apartment fart. But that’s what they want. So I tear it down and put the cardboard up.”

  At the top of the stairs, Seymour encountered a cloud of dust through which other workmen moved, some walking, and other swinging their arms in purposeful motions, directing invisible tools. The whole floor had been gutted. Seymour looked up, and saw that a new ceiling was being installed to hide the thick pipes. He picked his way through the rubble on the floor and found Mrs. Levine.

  “Oh, Mr. Lipp. What do you think?”

  He considered. “Well, I can’t say that I can see very much right now.” He brushed a flake of plaster from his sleeve.”

  She began to laugh but it degenerated into a giggle. “I know it’s a mess, but it’ll be worth it.” She stepped closer to him and brushed some dust from his hair. Her hand was soft and he could smell a delicate perfume in the hollow of her wrist. Her fingers trailed behind his ear for a moment, before she moved away. He noticed that her eyes were bright but unfocused, and that she had to fight to control another giggle.

  “I hope Phil likes it when he sees how far they’ve gotten,” she managed to say. “Of course, he drew up all these plans. He knew exactly what he wanted. But then he got so busy at the main store on 34th Street, and there was that burglary in the Astoria store. He’s just had to leave everything in my hands.”

  The words tumbled out without thought, but she now seemed in control again, and he decided to be charitable and ascribe her odd behavior to nervousness. He could still feel the touch of her fingers on his neck.

  “You look like you’re enjoying the experience,” he said.

  “Can I tell you something?” she asked, coming closer again.

  Seymour felt as though she were drawing him into her troubled orbit, but he nodded.

  “Phil usually tries to keep me out of his business. But I like being involved. Especially here. The help is so nice. That one custodian, Junior, he’s always coming around, asking if he can do anything.”

  Seymour chose his words carefully. He did not want to alarm her, but something in her voice urged him to speak.

  “I’d be careful of him if I were you.”