by Tom Molloy
“There’s a book in there just waiting to come out, I’ve got it outlined, it’ll be a great work, a great work.”
After passing out the glasses he sat back in his chair. The thin white heaters and the whiskey’s aroma helped the room’s warmth grow as Morris resumed his talk.
“Funny thing about back then in the ’60’s.” He sniffed the glass, swirled the liquid twice and continued. “You know everybody was screamin’ about the war. Everywhere I went people were really up and down about ’Nam; I mean people were upset.”
David proffered his glass.
“Yes, I seem to remember some disagreement back there now that you mention it.”
Morris took a small sip of liquor.
“Well, you know as I travelled and people found out I’d been over there, they’d tell me how pissed off they were at the hippies. ‘Dirty hippies’ they’d always say.”
He took a longer drink. “‘Dirty hippies’ this, ‘dirty hippies’ that, but ya know, none of ’em really gave a fuck bout the ’Nam. What was really sendin’ ’em round the bend was the hippies, and you spell that s-e-x. The hippies were into sex. I mean black boys fucken white girls in the park an’ smokin’ weed and saying fuck, and even worse the girls were sayin’ fuck, and girls didn’t never say fuck before then and that’s a fact.”
Morris drained the shot glass, then held it high above his head letting opaque drops fall into his open mouth.
“I mean John Q. Public is watching this shit every night on the tube, I mean every fucken night, friend, an’ he’s seeing niggers with white girls, and Jane Fonda tellin’ broads to ‘say yes to men who say no,’ an’ all these gorgeous hippie chicks screwing like rabbits an’ he’s lookin over at the old lady, all 200 pounds of her, an’ he’s realizin’ he’s on the dock an’ the ol’ love boat done sailed, an the only ones on it are the niggers fucken the white girls, the college students, and Jane Fonda and her great boobs saying yes to men who say no, an’, brothers, old John Q. is one pissed off motherfucker. Old John Q. was seeing red, ’cause the rules of gettin’ laid had changed and nobody wanted to hear his opinion about it, least of all Jane Fonda and all them white girls screwin’ all them niggers. An’ that did it, that defined war and peace, if you said fuck, you were for peace and if you were married to 200 lbs. of boredom you were wavin’ the flag. No shit, all the yellin’ and screamin’ wasn’t about Nam, it was all about s-e-x.”
He took a long toke on the marijuana. “Tell ya somethin’ else, brothers.” He passed the joint to me, the smoke seemed hotter now. “A guy ran for president, saying he’d end an unpopular war, said if he got elected he’d bring the troops home ’cause he knew the people wanted the war over. An’ he did just that. Man’s name was Dwight D. Eisenhower. An when poor ol’ George McGovern said the same thing everyone thought the poor motherfucker was a commie. Yup, ol’ Ike ended the war, an’ brought the troops home, an’ nobody burned no flags, or no draft cards, nobody trashed no dean’s office, nobody was out callin’ cops pigs, no construction workers beatin’ on no college kids, cause it was just a dumb ol’ war, not nothin’ important, like niggers bangin’ white girls, and ladies saying fuck.”
The silence and the heat rose until David went to the sliding doors and opened them a crack to let in cooler air. The sound of a single car scurrying across the bridge came clearly over the water and into the room.
David shifted his weight from one leg to the other like a boxer getting ready for the ring. He dabbed at his nose with the back of one wrist.
“I think you’ve got something there, lad.”
“Believe I do, brother Dave.”
David plugged in an old record player and we listened to Mozart’s Symphony 40 and 41 as he produced a chess board, saying that some people thought chess a manifestation of the Oedipus Complex because its goal was to overpower the king. Morris beat both of us easily.
When the matches were ended, I walked to the Chelsea train station to catch the last train rolling from the north toward Boston. On the empty platform I left a message.
The great light of the train grew, sweeping along the discarded refuse of trackside and illuminating the words on the metal pole.
Crossing the bridge over the water I could see the city and the muffled roofs of neighborhoods beyond the tall buildings. In the cold empty space of North Station I left the message again and added it to the side wall of the X-rated cinema across the street, and to the state office building opposite.
DADDY HAD A DADDY TOO
15
The January day had been typical of such days in New England. A brief, furtive scene played out under a remote sun that blinded the eyes while giving the landscape its sharpest focus of the year. Always January passes quickly, like that brief morning time when the sleeper wakes, hesitates in bed, then sleeps again, to wake frightened and late for the day.
An hour after the sun had pulled its trailing pink hues into the solid black line of the horizon, I followed Frances Lawless through a supermarket. The warm neon whiteness within and the solid cold blackness without made the task at hand a pleasant one. Frances hovered over the cantaloupes.
“You’re feelings ain’t hurt ’cause I asked ya to get lost, are they?”
“Nope.”
She hefted two cantaloupes, holding them in her open palms.
“I mean it’s just for a while like, ya know, like midnight or like that.”
“No problem.”
At the counter where the pale grapes were clustered on kelly green cloth, she hesitated again.
“I mean he ain’t stayin’ over. I ain’t hoppin’ in the sack with ’em or nothin’, but how am I gonna explain the guy in the sleeping bag on the floor? I can’t say you’re my brother, cause no offense or nothin’, but there ain’t no family resemblance.”
I told her I understood. That I’d go to a movie or visit some book stores. When I finished she began talking about Charlie.
“He’s not real handsome, but he talks real nice. He uses words real nice, some of ’em I don’t understand, but he don’t talk down, ya know?”
I said I did.
“Right, an’ he’s got nice shoulders, an’ he’s strong, an’ he’s polite, an’ he likes to talk a lot sometimes, but that’s OK ’cause I like to listen anyway, ya know?”
I nodded my understanding as we cruised down an aisle of breakfast foods.
“He dresses real sharp an’ he’s clean. I like guys who keep clean. He smells good too, not too much after shave, ya know, like some guys. You’d think they fell in a bottle of perfume or somethin’.
“So listen, I really like the guy, ya know. He’s just cute, an’ ya probably don’t understand, but I wanna meet a nice guy, I really do, ’cause no offense or nothin’ to your gender, an’ pardon my French, but I’m really sick a meetin’ assholes.”
We swept past the meat and its white-aproned attendants, past the milk and cream, and turned up another aisle where I stopped by a worn red machine that ground coffee.
I measured out a pound of brown beans and poured them into the open top of the machine. Flipping a switch, I watched the fine rich powder pour into the bag. Frances stepped closer, so that her hair almost touched my shoulder as she spoke.
“I never told ya but ya make real good coffee in the mornin’.”
“Thanks.”
“Really, it’s good, mine tastes like burned mud or somethin’.”
“That’s because you make instant.”
“Well, I’m in a hurry, ya know?”
“Yeah.”
Before sealing the bag, I held it to my face, inhaling the aroma, Frances did the same.
“Nice,” was all she said.
Putting the coffee with the other goods in the cart I asked Frances where she had met Charlie.
“Well, like I said, he’s in sales, an’ he comes in every so often. He sells adding machines, stuff like that; his dad started the business.”
As we plied the aisles she told me he was
separated and the divorce was on the way. He liked snowmobiles and had a dune buggy too.
She added, “He goes up to New Hampshire an’ rides his snowmobile way out in the woods, over lakes and everything, an’ in the summer he’s got a dune buggy down to Cape Cod. He knows all about fancy wines an’ stuff like that. He’s just smart, an’ a gentleman. A little fresh maybe but a lot of girls like that, but me I’m thinkin’ long term if ya know what I mean.”
With a sudden surprising intensity she grabbed my arm, squeezing it through the cloth of the coat.
“An’ he ain’t gonna be here in the mornin’ ya know? Least not yet he ain’t. Like I said I’m thinkin’ long term. For once I’m thinkin’ ahead.”
In another aisle she got yellow paper napkins for the table, and two boxes of mint cookies with chocolate covering. In another aisle she picked up a candle and the shopping was finished.
At the apartment I helped her spread the white tablecloth and set up the dinnerware. I placed the water and the coffee in the pot telling her all she had to do was switch on the gas and remember to keep the flame low.
Under the hot steam of the shower I made plans for the night. I would buy a book, read some of it in a Harvard Square coffee shop and go about my trade. Soaped and shampooed, I laid out clean clothes and in fifteen minutes was ready to leave.
I pocketed several instruments and went into the kitchen, where I reminded Frances again to keep the flame under the coffee low.
She said she would and asked if her hair looked all right. Even though I told her it looked fine, she frowned as she absently touched it. She looked about the room as though checking it before leaving on a trip, then she looked at me and spoke.
“Well I’ll see ya in the funny papers.”
“Have fun tonight.”
“My hair look OK?”
“Fine.”
“I look nervous?”
“No, you look fine.”
“Honest?”
“Honest.”
I went into the street walking the block to the subway, hunched against the damp cold. Walking at this time of the evening was one of the small joys of being a man. There is a near-invisibility to a man walking alone at night. He does not draw the notice that a woman does. And whether he wishes it or not, a man alone on a dark street invokes fear in almost all whom he approaches. He is given a wide berth and has a wonderful freedom. He’s part promise, part menace. His face invisible, he is alone with his thoughts.
As I walked I thought of a message for the night. The even dips and rises of curbstones, the cold air, the empty streets were ideal for thought. When I had decided on the words, I stopped at a neighborhood tavern, its windows warmed by red and blue neon.
Men’s faces turned when I opened the door, but then they all resumed their talk as on the television above helmeted figures on ice skates battled for an invisible puck. The barman came to me raising his eyebrows in silent query. I ordered a shot of whiskey with ginger ale on the side.
The smoke of the cigarettes was pungent as I cut through it, my hands on the pocketed instruments, to leave a message in the men’s room. I took a chance openly writing on the faded yellow plaster above the sink, but I was undetected.
Back at the bar I took half the whiskey in one gulp, feeling its heated promise spread through me like widening ripples on a pond surface. On the television the Boston team scored, and muttered approval moved along the dark wooden bar.
A man who had been sitting almost directly under the television set got up and went into the men’s room. In a minute I saw him return and tap the man beside him on the shoulder and mouth the message from the wall. Both of them gave slow, approving nods.
I took the ginger ale through a straw and in two sips finished the whiskey and left. The fine heat of the whiskey carried me along as overhead a train clattered and sparked its way from the city.
Standing in the elevated station I watched the train as it sank, becoming invisible into its metal bed of red and green lights. My own train came from the opposite direction and with a whoosh opened its doors on a welcome little world of warmth.
Most of the passengers were teenagers, off on a Saturday night date, shifting nervously in their seats, whispering and giggling at their fellow passengers. At each stop the train, like a wheeled bellows, threw out heat into the night, drawing cold air and chilled people back into its bosom.
At length the machine plunged into its familiar tunnel, stopping at the Park Street stop with its sudden burst of shops, smells, and piped-in music. Almost everyone got off. Soon we were hurtling onto the frigid open bridge that crossed the Charles River into Cambridge. The next stops were busy Kendall Square and sad Central Square—a dirty place much loved by the insane. I exited at Harvard Square, and on the street I dodged the ever-present young people with their pamphlets demanding immediate stops and starts to consummate issues in faraway lands.
I moved into a well-lit bookstore, spending time in a rear corner admiring a fine collection of maps. I passed on to a cool, dim ice cream parlor where I had a delicious sundae in a silver dish, the ice cream the color of emerald.
In another bookstore I picked up a remaindered hardcover edition of a Latin grammar text and a magazine about the stock market, something I follow very closely. What I have always loved about the market was its catholicity, its quivering action and reaction to every single thing anywhere, its beautiful unerring flow to its own level.
At the fringe of the Square, I moved along the darkened streets leaving my message at the entrance of a restaurant, the foyer of an apartment house, the lip of a mailbox. I came back to the Square itself, then strolled through Harvard Yard. Crossing Massachusetts Avenue, I used the instruments on the sill of a window of a small men’s clothing store.
I reconnoitered the inside of another bookstore that was filled with the humorless faces of the Left. Passing back outside I went down a small side street, leaving my words on a light post and a wall at the mouth of an alley behind a restaurant. I was pleased with that, for there was a dumpster in the alley and I knew many men who rode trash trucks to be well read, men who as a rule, knew the score.
Moving back onto the main street of the Square, Massachusetts Avenue, I was caught off guard by a young woman who handed me a pamphlet promising to lead me to inner peace. Folding it twice, I put it in my back pocket.
The cool breezes of the early evening had dissipated and now the cold was heavier, more sure. I passed down an alley leaving my words on a metal grate, then descended the stairs of a coffee house called Paris.
The subterranean room was tiny and hot, the waitress wearing a black sweater, black slacks, and sandals. She brought a demitasse cup and I took the liquid in tiny sips, reading the Latin text of the tale of the Minotaur.
More than an hour passed, and on the third cup of cappucino Icarus fell to the sea, but his father did not and I ordered pastry.
At length, I left the cafe and with the book tucked into my jeans at the small of my back, and my instruments secure, walked to downtown Boston. It was about five miles, a long canyon of urban sprawl, black, then Puerto Rican neighborhoods, the airy rush of MIT, then the Longfellow Bridge with its subway track in the middle leading across the river back to Boston.
As I trooped along Mass. Ave. I tried to picture the British marching along this very road in the chill pre-dawn of April 19, 1775, on their way to Lexington to seize American powder. The English boys must have been very cold, for April in New England has the empty promise of a pretty whore.
When I crossed to Boston I decided to walk the remaining three miles to the house. I arrived at thirty minutes past midnight. In the hall I stood quietly in the dark listening as the exertion of the march filled me with a sure feeling of accomplishment. There was no sound and I noticed no light came from beneath the door. I let myself into the kitchen. The air was still, the little room held within it the aroma of a cooked meal. Without turning on a light I went to the parlor, but froze when I saw Frances si
lhouetted against the window, her head down, shoulders slumped. She was sitting on the radiator. When she spoke I knew she’d been crying.
“Don’t turn on no lights, OK?”
“What happened?”
She didn’t raise her head.
“Mr. Wonderful beat the crap outta me.”
In the kitchen I banged ice cubes from two trays, wrapped the ice in a towel and returned.
“Here hold this to your face.”
“I’d like to cut his balls off.”
“It’ll make the swelling go down.”
“I’d like to cut all your balls off.”
For about a minute she sat still, the cold cloth to her face, her breath slow, softer than the gentle hiss of the radiator. She shifted her weight as drops of water slowly fell from the crumpled towel.
“What happened?”
Lowering the cloth, she turned painfully to face me, a single drop of water running up her arm. Even in the dark I could see the area around her left eye was already discolored. Before speaking, she pressed the cloth again to her face so that her mouth was hidden as she spoke.
“He came over an’ he brought a bottle of cognac, 75 years old, no less, an’ he looked like a million bucks.”
She shifted her weight with difficulty and I realized not only her face had been battered.
“So we have a nice meal, real nice, an’ like I expected, he did most of the talking. An we had the cognac, geez that stuff could burn a hole in your tonsils. So anyway the meal was real nice an’ the cognac was good, even though it burned my stomach a little.”
In the wall above her head the heating pipes tapped a message of reassuring warmth.
“So then I clean up the table, an’ he helped me, an’ I’m thinkin’ ‘Jeez this is great,’ ya know? I’m thinkin, ‘Don’t blow it, girl, this is a nice guy.’”
She adjusted the towel and resumed talking.
“So we came in here to the parlor an’ I’m sittin in the chair here, an’ he’s on the couch. An’ he’s tellin’ me all about cognac, an’ how you’re supposed to hold the glass in your palm an’ swirl it, so the heat from your hand makes the flavor come out, it’s a bouquet or somethin’ about a flower or somethin’ like that.”