“I think it’s great,” Uncle Harry said. “But I can’t go out for it.”
Kitty looked at us. “I can go out for you.”
Aunt Lila said politely, “We can’t bother you, dear.”
“It’s no bother,” Kitty said. “Just tell me what you would like.”
Her father spoke up. “They have a great family dinner. It’ll feed all of us. It’s got everything: egg rolls, chow mein, chop suey, spareribs, dim sum.” Quickly he took out a ten-dollar bill and gave it to Kitty. “That’ll cover five dinners, plus a big tip. Ask one of the Chinks to help you carry it up here and tell him he can keep the change.”
Uncle Harry gave Mr. Benson a fiver. “I’ll split it with you. You have dinner here with us.”
Aunt Lila got up. “I’ll set the table.”
I hadn’t realized how hungry I had gotten. I ate like the Chinese were never going to cook again. I got a couple of Rheingold beers and two big Pepsis out of the refrigerator. Kitty, Aunt Lila, and I drank the Pepsis, and the two men drank the beers. The table was quiet as we all ate like crazy. Finally we were finished. Kitty smiled and put the fortune cookies on the table.
I started to take one and then I stopped. “I don’t know if I want to take one. My future is pretty messed up right now.”
Aunt Lila took my hand. “Tatele, today is already yesterday. Your tomorrows will be better. Let’s all take one for a better day tomorrow and forever.” She leaned over and kissed me. I looked at her. She was right. It was already yesterday. I took a fortune cookie and broke it open. I straightened the small piece of paper that had been inside. THE GODS OF FORTUNE WILL SMILE ON YOU. Then suddenly I was angry. I crumpled the little piece of paper and pushed the fortune cookies off the table. “What fortune am I going to get, what fortune did my father and mother get?” I said angrily. “An early grave. And I’m left in a fucked-up world.”
“Don’t talk that way in front of the ladies, Jerry,” Uncle Harry said softly. “It’s going to be all right, son. While you were sleeping I was talking to Mr. Benson and we worked a good plan for you.”
I stared at him. “What kind of plan? You don’t even have an extra bedroom for me to live in, and there’s no way I can pay the rent for this apartment. I’m going to have to quit school, get a job, and live in a small room in some boardinghouse!”
“Jerry, it’s not that bad,” Uncle Harry said. “Mr. Benson has three months’ security deposit that your father had paid him for the apartment. He has been kind enough to offer us a deal. He has a studio apartment open on the second floor. Your father’s deposit will pay for your studio apartment for eight months.”
“That’s great,” I said. “But where do I get money to live on? I gotta buy food and stuff.”
“We’ve got that worked out, too,” he said. “Aunt Lila gave me the idea. What time do you get out of school?”
“Two in the afternoon,” I answered.
“You see, it’s perfect. You can come work at my counter on the Square. It’s the outside open counter across the street from Nedick’s and down the block from S. Klein. It’s the busiest store on the Square, and it’s across from an IRT subway entrance.”
“Fine,” I said nervously. “What am I going to do for you?”
“I’m going to teach you how to work the counter, and you’re a smart boy, you’ll catch on fast. I’ll make you a manager before you get out of school.”
“Okay, Uncle Harry,” I said. “How much do I get a week?”
“You’re family.” Uncle Harry smiled. “I’ll start you at twelve dollars a week. That’s a lot more than I pay the Puerto Ricans that work for me. And I’ll give you a raise when you get more knowledge and experience.”
“Is that the store where you have your office?” I asked. “Where my father used to check in his slips every evening?”
Uncle Harry flushed. He didn’t like for other people to know that he was really a bookmaker. “Yes,” he answered.
“Why couldn’t I just take over my dad’s job?” I asked. “I know how it all works and I’m a real genius when it comes to doing numbers in my head.”
Aunt Lila gave me the answer sternly. “One, you’re too young. Two, you have to finish school, so you can’t start working at seven in the morning until three in the afternoon. Three, there are a lot of tough men in that work. Your parents wanted a better life for you.”
I didn’t say anything for a moment. I looked at them. “I’m not ungrateful for all the help that you are giving me. But I feel I should be doing more to take care of myself.”
“Grow up, Jerry,” my uncle said gently. “You still have time. First, you serve two cents plain before you make up the egg creams,” Uncle Harry said prophetically.
“It’s not that bad,” said Kitty. “You will still be here in the same house where everybody knows you. Plus you don’t have to change schools. It’ll all be fine, Jerry.”
I turned to her. She was sitting next to me. She nodded, smiling. Then I felt her hand hidden under the tablecloth slipping inside the buttons of my fly.
I jumped up quickly. I didn’t need to come in front of all of them. I looked down at Kitty. “I’m going to wash the dishes.”
She rose up and smiled again. “I’ll help you.”
5
Sitting shivah for the week was impossible for me. I didn’t have time to mourn. Even Aunt Lila agreed that I couldn’t stay in my apartment for a week and not go out into public. I had to move into my new apartment.
The studio apartment on the second floor had not been rented for a long time. It was unfurnished and everything needed to be painted, the walls, ceiling, trim, and windows. The ancient wooden floors had dried and splintered. Aunt Lila suggested that we cover the floor with the new linoleum that looked like real wood. She said it was easy to take care of and it was also not expensive. Mr. Benson said he would give me the paint for the apartment, but I would have to paint it myself. He said he couldn’t afford to pay two Schwartzes ten dollars to do the painting. Kitty volunteered to help me.
Aunt Lila picked out pieces of furniture that I already had that might fit into my new room. It wasn’t easy because the studio room was only twenty by twenty-four and most of the furniture that my parents had was for bigger rooms. But it was Mr. Benson who finally helped me out. He said he knew an honest secondhand furniture dealer who would buy the extra furniture from the old apartment and would also give me a good price on a small Castro convertible sofa that I could turn into a bed at night. It had only been used for three months, but I could still get a good deal.
Meanwhile Aunt Lila asked two ladies from the Hadassah to take out my parents’ clothing. When I asked Aunt Lila how much I would get for their clothes, she got very upset and said that the old clothing would be sent to the poor Jewish people in Europe and that it should be a mitzvah for me to give it to them. It didn’t make good sense to me because I wasn’t especially well-off myself. But I said it was fine anyway.
Aunt Lila cleaned the small kitchenette. She scoured everything. She said before she started cleaning it was so dirty even pigs wouldn’t live there. But she finally was satisfied with the kitchen. Then she told me how to clean the white tiles in the bathroom with a mixture of muriatic acid, Lysol, and water. With a little more supervision from her I was also able to clean the white bathtub and toilet. Fortunately, I had a shower curtain from the old apartment and more than enough towels, pillows, and bed linens.
The most difficult part of fixing the apartment was the painting. Kitty really helped me, but it took an extra day to complete because of all the time we took off to get laid. After we had finished the painting, the furniture was delivered and Aunt Lila helped us move all the dishes and cutlery. She organized the dishes in the closet and the cutlery in the drawers. I couldn’t use the closet in the studio because it was too small, so we kept my parents’ armoire to keep my clothes in. Finally, it was all finished.
* * *
By the end of the week, Kitty and I
were sitting in my new apartment. We lit up a cigarette, and looked at each other. “What are you going to do now?” she asked.
“What do you mean? I have to go to school on Monday and then afterward I’ll go to Uncle Harry’s counter and go to work.” I looked down at my hands. They were red and the skin was cracked from cleaning the bathroom. “I was stupid,” I said. “Aunt Lila told me to use heavy rubber gloves, but I didn’t listen to her.”
“That’s not important,” Kitty said. “How much money did you get from all this, the furniture, the insurance?”
“I don’t know yet,” I answered. “Uncle Harry is talking to the insurance people and he’s going to let me know what they say. Your father is going to get me the money for the furniture.”
“Jerry, when are you going to learn?” Kitty said in exasperation. “They are both crooks. My father will screw you out of the furniture money. Did you get any receipts or bills? And your Uncle Harry is the biggest crook in the world. Did you see any of the insurance policies or did Uncle Harry just take them?”
“He’s got them,” I said. “He said he would take care of it for me. He said not to worry, and he would make sure that I would get everything that was coming to me.”
She just shook her head. “You better not waste any time. Ask Harry to show you all the papers and at the same time ask my father for all the invoices on the furniture,” she said.
“That’s insulting. I can’t do that,” I said, not believing what she was saying. “Uncle Harry is family. He’s not going to screw me. And it’s not a big enough deal for your father to make any money on.”
“I know my father,” she said. “He’s a nickel-and-dime hustler, he takes anything he can grab. He even tried to grab my ass once, but I told him if he ever went after me I would get my mother after him. He didn’t want any part of that.”
“Where’s your mother?” I asked. “I never saw her.”
“She divorced him, and now she’s married to a real rich guy. She lives over on Park Avenue. I have lunch with her a couple of times a week, and dinner with her and her husband once a month. He’s nice,” she said, nodding. “He slips me a hundred each month and my mother pays for all of my clothes.”
“That’s pretty good,” I said. “Why don’t you live with your mother?”
“The courts,” she answered. “That was the agreement for the divorce. My mother is Jewish and my father is Catholic, and the judge was one stupid son of a bitch. He was Catholic and gave my father custody of me. But that’s only until I am twenty-one. Then I can tell him to go fuck himself.”
“You still have two more years,” I said.
“I know,” she said. “That’s why I’m always trying to plan ahead.”
“I wish I could plan ahead,” I said. “I’ll be eighteen in January. Then I have to register for the draft and by the time I graduate from high school I will probably have to go into the army.”
She shrugged. “I’m getting hungry,” she said. “Would you like to go down to the Italian restaurant for some spaghetti?”
“I’d like,” I said honestly. “But I don’t have enough money. Aunt Lila was going to bring dinner for me.”
“Give her a call and tell her that you’ll just have a sandwich,” she said. “And I’ll treat.”
I telephoned Aunt Lila from the drugstore on the corner. It worked out fine—while I was there I bought a dozen Trojans for a quarter.
* * *
Kitty had been right. Her father screwed me on the furniture. He gave me only three hundred dollars for the family furniture. I told him that was crazy. It was only a year old and it had cost my parents fifteen hundred dollars, plus my bedroom set with a dresser. It had to be worth more than three hundred dollars. Mr. Benson was very smooth. He told me that the Castro alone cost seven hundred dollars. He said the furniture man had to pay to have everything moved out of the apartment and into the apartment. By that time there wasn’t much left since the big heavy furniture we had in the old apartment was not very good in the market right now. He handed me the three one-hundred-dollar bills and told me that he had spoken to Uncle Harry about it and he thought it was a fair deal. He said if I wanted to I could go over and talk to the secondhand furniture man myself, but his warehouse was at the end of Brooklyn, and that was a half a day subway ride for me to get there. I decided that it wasn’t worth it. There was nothing I could do now. Uncle Harry let him screw me. Mr. Benson smiled at me. “Don’t worry so much about money, kid,” he said. “Don’t forget you’re not paying rent for eight months. By that time, you’ll be a manager at Harry’s counter.”
“Yeah,” I said sarcastically.
“And don’t forget, Kitty will always be helping you out,” he said. “She likes you, I know. That’s why she’s always coming up to your studio.”
That got my attention. I looked at him to see if he had any real idea of what Kitty and I had been doing, but I couldn’t tell. He was too smooth.
6
I caught up on my schoolwork by the second week after the funeral. I managed to do just enough to get a passing grade. After that first week back at school, I started going to Uncle Harry’s store on the street corner.
When I arrived the first day he was sitting behind a dirty-looking old desk with his big belly hanging over the top. It was just about four o’clock. He glared at me. “You took your own sweet time to finally get down here.”
“I had to catch up on my homework,” I answered.
“That’s a good excuse,” he snapped. “But from now on I want you here no later than three-thirty or you can go look for another job. And I want you here early while I’m training you.”
I stared at him. “What are you getting mad about?” I asked. “I haven’t even started working for you here and you want me to go out and get another job. Okay,” I said. “I’ll go get one.” I started heading toward the door of his office.
“Wait a minute!” he yelled. “Don’t be so hot under the collar.”
“Look, I’m not the one that started this,” I said. “You’re the one that’s acting crazy.”
“You don’t know how difficult it is without your father here,” he said. “I have to do everything myself, and I’m worn out.”
“I’m not doing that great without my mother and father but I’m trying the best I can,” I said.
“Okay, okay,” he said. “Calm down, and I’ll take you downstairs and show you around.”
“Okay,” I answered. “Hey, Uncle Harry, one of my teachers asked me if my parents had any insurance. I told my teacher that they had some insurance but I didn’t know exactly how much. But I told him that you were taking care of everything. He offered to take a look at the policies if I wanted him to. He said he was pretty good at that kind of thing.”
“Fucking bastards,” Uncle Harry swore under his breath. “Everybody’s nosy. They can’t mind their own business.”
I watched him without speaking.
He opened a drawer from his desk and took out some papers held together with a paper clip. “Here’s all the information. Your father had what they call a funeral policy from our shul. It covers the cemetery costs and funeral expenses. This policy paid for everything. Kaplan’s arrangement for the coffins, opening the graves, and paid all the alte men at the service to help the rabbi with the kaddish and the ceremonies. Kaplan also took care of the hearse and the two limousines we needed.”
“What kind of insurance policy is that?” I asked. “Wasn’t there any money left for me?”
“That’s not the kind of policy your father carried. There would have been money for you if it had been a society policy. Your father didn’t expect to die this early, we had the plots for all the family, what was necessary? This was an old policy that had been taken out by your grandfather for his sons.”
“Then there’s nothing for me?” I asked.
“The funeral expenses came to two thousand one hundred dollars,” Uncle Harry said. “Here’s the papers. You can keep it,
they’re yours.” He was silent for a moment. “You’ll be getting about two hundred dollars from the automobile insurance.”
“The car was only two years old,” I said. “I remember what Daddy paid for it. Six hundred and fifty dollars.”
“It’s junk now,” Uncle Harry said. “You’re lucky to get two hundred for it.”
I sat and thought for a moment. “It’s really sad. All that my parents have left from their lives is five hundred dollars. What happened to all of my mother’s jewelry and my dad’s other jewelry? I can’t find anything.”
“Gone,” Uncle Harry said. “Before we ever got to see anything. The cops probably took all the expensive stuff out of the valise. You remember, the coroner told us that nothing else was found.”
“Shit,” I said dejectedly. “It’s not worth dying.”
“Get it out of your head,” Uncle Harry said. “Now, come downstairs with me and learn your job.”
7
“Why don’t you get a telephone?” Kitty asked as she rolled out of bed and crossed the room to get a Pepsi from the small refrigerator.
I waited until she came back to bed. “I don’t need a phone,” I said, taking a swig out of the Pepsi bottle.
“It’s stupid to run down the stairs just to use the phone,” she said. “I called you a couple of times at the drugstore, but by the time they got upstairs to get you, I got bored and hung up.”
“How many times was that?” I asked.
“Enough,” she said, “to let me know it was a pain in the ass.”
“Why are you complaining?” I said. “I’m the one that has to run downstairs to the phone.”
“Why do you want to be so cheap?” Kitty said. “Suppose I got the hots for you and wanted to call you for a quickie,” she purred demurely.
“That’s stupid,” I said. “I don’t even get home from work until nine o’clock. I’m gone all during the day.”
“I could call you when you get home,” she said.
“What for?” I said. “All you have to do is knock on the door.”
The Predators Page 3