Hot Night in the City

by Trevanian

  But he stayed, and I didn't get a single customer that day, bracketed as I was by a bigger competitor and a more attractive one. I stuck it out until the A & P closed that night. But I didn't bother to come back again. What was the use?

  That Friday our weekly $7.27 welfare check came, so we were able to buy the tube, although it meant having potato soup every night that week, rather than the usual two. But I liked potato soup and still do, despite the gallons of it I consumed as a boy. That evening I stood in front of the Emerson on one leg in a narcotic state of deep soul-comfort, my head bowed, my eyes half-closed, totally absorbed in the exciting worlds of Jack Armstrong, The Green Hornet, and The Lone Ranger, Masked Rider of the Plains. The world was right again.

  After my sister and I did the supper dishes, the three of us sat in the front room, listening to Friday night's run of suspense programs. We always turned off the lights and listened in the dark, with only the faint yellow glow of the radio's dial because it made the stories deliciously spooky on such programs as Suspense and The Inner Sanctum, and The Whistler, a man who walked by night and knew many things. He knew strange tales hidden in the hearts of men and women who had stepped into the shadows. Yes, he knew the nameless terrors of which they dared not speak!

  I awoke one morning to the chilling realization that summer vacation was almost over and, what with trying to earn extra money and spending time up at the McGivneys', I hadn't gotten enough good out of it... sort of like a Popsicle that melts while you're obliged to talk politely to a nun, and you don't get to suck it white before it falls off the stick. Next year I would be ten, and I felt that advancing to a double-digit age was significant... the end of childhood, because once you get into two digits, you're there for the rest of your life. And another thing: all my life it had been nineteen-thirty something, and nineteen-thirty had a solid, comfortable sound, but next year would be nineteen-forty. And that 'forty' looked funny when you wrote it down and felt awkward in your mouth when you said it. Everything was changing. I was growing up before I was finished with being a kid! This would be my last summer before I had to give up my story games and start in earnest doing what I could to get us off Pearl Street.

  All right, I accepted that bringing my mother's damned ship into port was my responsibility. But I couldn't take care of Mrs McGivney, too. I intended to play as hard as I could for the next two weeks until school and my burdensome adulthood started, and that meant I needed all my time for myself, for my games, for listening to the radio, for wandering the streets in search of mysteries and adventures, and there just wouldn't be any time to waste sitting around with the McGivneys.

  I avoided the back alley for a week, during which I revisited one by one all the story games I had ever played so I would never forget the exhilarating fun of them. That week I fought off Richelieu's swordsmen, ran cattle rustlers off the streets of Albany once and for all, and led an expedition to the Elephant Graveyard, where we almost lost Reggie and Kato. On Sunday, I changed into play clothes right after six o'clock mass and went off to spend the morning playing one of the best games of all: Foreign Legion, which involved not drinking anything after supper the day before so I'd be good and thirsty by the time I had crossed Broadway towards the river, passed through the tangle of still-sleeping all-Negro streets that was called Blacktown, and scrambled over the high wooden wall of an abandoned brickyard that had huge piles of sand and gravel. I staggered through the endless sand, stumbling and slipping as I climbed the pile, blinded by the glaring sun, suffering terribly from thirst made worse by the fact that I was weakened by half a dozen spear wounds inflicted by perfidious Arabs whom I had always treated well, unlike some of my brother Legionnaires. My throat was parched, and I muttered to myself that the pools of icy water I saw all around me were only mirages. Must... keep... going. I wanted nothing more than to give up the struggle and just lie down and let death overwhelm me, but I couldn't. No, I must go on! There was a standpipe with a spigot by a watchman's hut, and it was part of the game to hold the vision of that cool, clear water in my mind as I crawled on my hands and knees over the piles of sand and gravel, dragging my wounded leg behind me (sometimes both legs) but determined to carry the message from what was left of my decimated company besieged in the fly-blown outpost of Sidi-bel-Abbès to the colonel of the regiment stationed at our headquarters in the noisy, bustling city of Sidi-bel-Abbès. (All right, so I knew the name of only one desert city! Is that a crime?) By taking the least direct path possible and weaving my painful, half-conscious way over the great central sandpile again and again, I could drag the game out to past noon, by which time my lips were crusty and my tongue thick with thirst. When at last I arrived at the standpipe, I put my head under it, ready for the blissful shock of its cool dousing, my fingers almost too weak to turn the rusty spigot. In a hoarse voice I cried out to Allah to give me strength. Give me strength! And I gave the spigot a desperate twist with the last of my fading strength...

  ...but no water came out. They'd cut off the water since last summer! Anything to spoil a game! Jeez!

  By the time I got back to my block, I was really thirsty, so I cut through the back alley to get to my apartment as quickly as I could.

  Three sharp clicks of a coin against the window above me... Oh no! And there she was, gesturing for me to come up. Nuts! Nuts! Double nuts!

  But this time it would be different. As I trudged glumly up the dark stairs of 232, I confected a plan to free myself of this lonely old lady and her loony husband: I would mope and be rude, so she wouldn't want my company any longer. But first...

  "Could I have a glass of water, Mrs McGivney?"

  "Why, of course, John-Luke!"

  I gulped it down, rather than sipping it slowly, savoring the life-saving sweetness of it, as I would have done in the dramatic last scene of the Foreign Legion game, if those idiots hadn't shut off the water!

  "My goodness, you were thirsty. Want some more?"

  "No, thank you." It was hard to remember to be rude.

  "You're sure?"

  She sat across from me at the little table set for two. "Here, before I forget it." She placed a nickel beside my napkin.

  "No, I don't want it," I said, pushing it back to her.

  She cocked her head. "Don't try to tell me that a little boy can't find something to do with a nickel."

  "No, my mother said I wasn't to take money from you unless I did an errand or something in return."

  "Oh, I see. Well... you just put the nickel in your pocket."

  "No, I don't want it."

  "Now, you just keep it until I think of something you can do later." She pushed the nickel back to me.

  I didn't touch it.

  She held out the plate of cookies to me, and I lowered my head and stared at the tabletop. Finally she put one on my plate. I didn't look at it.

  "Would you like to wash up, John-Luke?" she asked.

  "Only my mother calls me that."

  "What?"

  "Only my mother calls me that."

  "Oh... I'm sorry. I... Well, would you like to wash up? You look a little... dusty." She smiled sweetly.

  I touched my forehead and felt the grit of the sand through which I had crawled all the way back to Sidi-bel-Abbès. Having someone who wasn't my mother tell me that my face was dirty embarrassed me intensely—something left over from the time two young, syrup-voiced social workers swooped down on our apartment to see if my mother was taking proper care of us. They asked Anne-Marie and me if any men had been sleeping at our house, and one of them made me stand in front of her while she checked my hair for nits. I was so outraged that I snatched my head away from her and told her to go to hell, and the two do-gooders made little popping sounds of surprise and indignation and said they'd never seen such a badly brought up child. After they left, Mother told me that I had to be polite to social workers, or they'd write up a bad report, and the three of us would have to run away to avoid their taking us kids away from her. So it was all right for her
to lose her temper and give social workers hell, but I couldn't do it. Was that it?

  I got up and went over to the McGivney's kitchen sink. In the little mirror over it, I could see that my face was dirty and streaked with rivulets of sweat. I was embarrassed, so I snatched the faucet on angrily, and the water came squirting out of a little flexible thing at the end of the spigot and splashed onto my pants, making it look as though I had pissed myself, and then I was really embarrassed. To cover my discomfiture I quickly soaped up my hands and scrubbed my face hard, then I splashed water into my face, but I couldn't find anything to wipe it on, so I just stood there at the sink, dripping, the soap stinging my eyes, like some sort of helpless thing. Like her husband. Jeez!

  Then I felt her press a towel into my hand. I scrubbed my face dry and sat back at the table, hard, very angry.

  "You're not going to eat your cookie, John-Luke?"

  "I don't want it."

  "Suit yourself. But they're sugar cookies. Your favorites."

  "Oatmeal cookies are my favorites. The kind my mother makes."

  "...Oh." There was hurt in her voice. "I just thought you might be hungry."

  "My mother feeds us real well."

  "I didn't mean to suggest... I'm sure she does."

  Actually, I was still thirsty enough to down that milk in two glugs, but I sat there in silence, frowning down at the little embroidered tablecloth I supposed she had put on just for me.

  She made a little sound in the back of her throat, then she said, "Poor boy: You're unhappy, aren't you."

  "No, I'm just... awful busy." I meant, of course, with my games, trying to get my fill of games before school started and I became two digits old and had to start looking for work, but she took it a different way.

  "Yes, I was talking to Mr Kane, and he told me how you're always doing odd jobs to help your mother out. She must be very proud to have a good boy like you."

  I said nothing.

  "I hope you don't mind if I ask, but... your father, John-Luke. Is he dead?"

  I don't know what made me say what I said then. A desire to shock her, I guess. "No, he's not dead. He's in prison." It would be more than twenty years before I discovered that I had unknowingly told her a truth that my mother had kept from us.

  She drew a quick breath. "Oh! Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to pry. I was just... oh, that's too bad. You poor boy." She reached towards me, but I twisted away.

  "No, we're proud of him! They put him in prison because he was a spy against the Redcoats! They're going to hang him next month, but he doesn't care. He's only sorry that he has but one life to give for his country!"

  "...Wh... what?"

  "Look, I'm going home." I started to rise.

  "No, please don't go." She stood up and hugged me to her. I turned my head aside, so as not to have my nose buried in her soft stomach. "You poor, poor boy. You've had lots of troubles and worries in your young life, haven't you? No wonder you're all nervous and worked up. But I know what will calm you and make you feel better." She opened a drawer and took out the brush that had white hairs trailing from the bristles, her crazy husband's hair, and she started towards me. I jumped up, snatched the door open, and plunged clattering down the stairs, the stair rail squeaking through my gripping hand.

  By the Labor Day weekend that marked the beginning of school, I had squeezed the last drops of adventure and danger out of that summer's game of single-handedly defending Pearl Street and, by extension, the world from Nazi invasion. As a sort of farewell tour, I was mopping up the last of the Strong Troopers at the end of our back alley, where I had not been since the day I had fled down Mrs McGivney's stairs to avoid the touch of that repulsive hairbrush, the squeaking handrail rubbing the skin off the web between my thumb and forefinger and leaving a scab that took forever to heal because I kept popping it open by spreading my hand too widely: a child's curious fascination with pain.

  Wounded though I was in both legs, one shoulder, and the web between my thumb and first finger, I managed to crawl from the shelter of one stable doorway to the next, making the sound of ricocheting bullets by following a guttural krookh with a dying cheeooo through my teeth, as Nazi bullets splintered the wood close beside my head with a tap-tap-tap sound of a coin against glass—what? I almost looked up, but I converted the glance into a frowning examination of the space around me, searching for snipers, as I didn't want her to know I had heard her summons. Satisfied that there were no Nazi snipers on the rooftops, I made an intense mime of drawing a map on the ground. Again she tapped her three urgent taps, and I could imagine her looking down on me. I hunched more tightly over my map. She tapped again, but this time there were only two clicks, then she stopped short. That missing click told me that she suddenly knew I could hear her, and I was ignoring her on purpose. I kept my head down, knowing that if I looked up I would see her there, her eyes full of sadness and recrimination.

  Miserable, and angry for being made to feel miserable, I pretended to see an enemy soldier down the alley. I shot at him with my finger then ran off in pursuit until I was out of Mrs McGivney's sight.

  For the rest of the time we lived on Pearl Street, I kept out of the back alley that had been the principal arena for my story games. A couple of times I caught a glimpse of Mrs McGivney scuttling across to Mr Kane's late in the evening, but I always avoided her. I never saw her hero husband again.

  That next week I went back to school: a new grade, a new teacher, a tough old overdressed orange-haired bird of the no-charm, no-nonsense school who saw through the indifferent, wise-guy posturing I had assumed for self-defense. She arranged for me to take a series of IQ and aptitude tests that led to special tutoring and, in time, to a pattern of scholarships and an academic career that eventually carried us out of Pearl Street. My mother's ship came in at last.

  I am now considerably older than Mrs McGivney was when I first responded to the rap of her nickel against the window. For many years I have lived and worked in Europe, as far away in space, time, and culture from Pearl Street as one can be this side of death. And yet, on those nights when the black butterflies of doubt and remorse flutter through a sleepless nuit blanche, I still sometimes hear that broken-off summons, those two clicks, and the recriminating silence that followed them; and my throat tightens with shame as I remember the lonely old woman that I didn't have time for because I was too busy trying to save myself.

  SIR GERVAIS IN THE ENCHANTED FOREST

  Know you that in those distant days the good King Arthur did entreat his knights of the Table Round to sally forth in quest of the Holy Grail for the benefit of their souls, the glory of his reign, and the serenity of the court, which would be much enhanced by the absence of those feisty brawlers. But although each of Arthur's doughty warriors was eager to earn Man's acclaim for lofty deeds and God's forgiveness for base ones by devoting himself to the search for this holiest of relics, there was no general haste to fulfill the king's behest because, the shameful truth be known, not one of those noble warriors was certain in his heart of hearts exactly what a grail was... save, of course, that it was a holy thing and the right and proper object of quests. But none durst confess his ignorance for fear of ridicule, and because no other knight ever admitted doubt in this matter, each assumed himself to be alone in his shameful want of learning. Therefore, each would nod and suck his teeth knowingly upon any mention of the Grail, and when he glanced about and saw all his fellows nodding and sucking, his suspicion was confirmed that the nature of a grail was known by all save himself.

  Now of all that high-born company, none was prouder of his ancestry than Sir Gervais, and for this reason he felt the shame of ignorance most sorely of all. Twice had he gone forth in search of fame and recognition, but never had he come across a grail... not to his knowledge, anyway. What most galled him was the thought that he might have seen the Holy Grail, but passed it by unknowingly, and thus lost the credit for finding it. So he confected a cunning stratagem to ferret out the exact nature, func
tion, and shape of a grail so that he might recognize it should he come across one in the course of some future quest. One evening, as all that noble host sat around the Table, Sir Gervais said, in the most offhand tone imaginable, "Ah... tell me, fellow knights, have you ever considered what you might do with a grail, were there one sitting upon this table at this very moment? I speak not, of course, of the Holy Grail, but rather of your common, everyday sort of grail."

  "Huh? What? A grail? Here? On the table?" asked Sir Bohort, whose father's loin-strength had gone so totally into making his well-muscled body that nothing was left over for his brain.

  Immediately did the proud Sir Gervais grow pale with the fear that a grail might be too vasty a thing to be placed upon a table, and that his ignorance was in danger of being revealed. "Nay, did I say a table?" he asked, laughing at his slip. "I meant to say a courtyard. Oft and again do men—even men of impeccable lineage—confuse tables with courtyards, for are they not both... ah... things?"

  "Yea, but tell me, Sir Gervais," asked Sir Gawain, hoping himself guilefully to discover just what a grail was, "why wouldst thou put this grail of thine in a courtyard? And just what wouldst thou do with it, once thou hadst it there?"

  Now did Sir Gervais hotly rue that he had introduced the matter and opened himself to accusations of stupidity—if not impiety. "And why should I not put a grail in a courtyard, brother knight, so long as it be a proper courtyard for the receiving of a grail? Prithee, why art thou so quick to challenge my understanding of the nature of things?"

  "Nay, brother of the Table Round, wax not huffy. I seek only to understand how thou intendest to use... or wear... or admire... or perhaps punish?... this grail, once thou hast it in thy courtyard."