South Street

by David Bradley

  “That was good stuff,” Speedy admitted. “Shame there ain’t no more.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you,” Jake said. “Just so happens I got a bottle left.” He pulled it out of his pocket and handed it over.

  Speedy accepted it reverently. “Why, thank you,” Speedy said. “You gonna be lettin’ me pay you for this, I know.”

  Jake stiffened and sat up. “Pay?” he said in outraged tones. “Course not. We friends. You’ll be doin’ the same for me one day.”

  “Why, thank you,” said Speedy. “I sure will be. You ma main man.” He examined the bottle, fished out his pocket knife, opened the corkscrew blade, and set to work. “You know,” he said between grunts, “maybe what I oughta do is to give you some money now, just in case I wasn’t handy when you was needin’ me to return the favor. I mean, you got your steady place here, but I move around.”

  Jake closed his eyes to consider the suggestion.

  “Now look,” Speedy continued. “You take tomorrow for instance. You might wake up an’ decide you wanted some wine, an’ you be reachin’ for it, but you done already give it to me. An’ where am I? God knows. You’re stuck. But if I was to leave you some money, when you reaches for the bottle you be findin’ some change. Now that’s even bettern wine, ’cause you can go on down to the State Store an’ drink what you is in the mood for then ’stead a havin’ to drink what you was in the mood for before.”

  “You done convinced me,” Jake said.

  The cork emerged with a loud pop. Speedy fished into his pocket and came up with a handful of change. Bending low, he counted out a dollar fifty in dimes and quarters and dumped it into Jake’s outstretched palm. Jake wrapped the money up in a corner of his handkerchief. “Thank you, Speedy,” he said solemnly, and blew his nose.

  Speedy tilted the bottle to his lips. He took two big swallows with his eyes closed, feeling the wine course down his parched throat. Then he placed his tongue against the mouth of the bottle and swallowed three or four times without actually drinking anything. He opened his eyes slightly. Jake sat with his handkerchief against his nose, his red eyes gazing passionately at the bottle. With each bob of Speedy’s Adam’s apple Jake clenched his hands, licked his lips nervously, and shook a little. Speedy took one more real swallow and lowered the bottle. “That’s fine stuff,” he said.

  Jake stared straight ahead. “It’s all right,” he said.

  “Here,” said Speedy, handing the bottle over. Jake gaped at him, grabbed the bottle, and took two small sips. “Go on,” said Speedy. “Christ, if it wasn’t for you, I’d be dry.”

  Jake took one big gulp, rolled his eyes, lowered the bottle. “You’re one fine youngblood, youngblood,” Jake said.

  Speedy smiled and took the bottle. He held it for a moment, feeling its odd shape. “You know somethin’?”

  “I knows lotsa things,” Jake said. “Which one you speakin’ of?”

  “Wine,” Speedy said. “Funny how it comes in all different shaped bottles when you get away from the cheap stuff.”

  “Yeah,” Jake said. “I guess rich folks is into variety.”

  “Yeah,” Speedy said. “You know, I been thinkin’ ’bout women.”

  “I don’t know nothin’ ’bout women,” Jake said. “It’s easier.”

  “Yeah,” said Speedy. He sighed, drank, lowered the bottle, and handed it to Jake. “All the same … You know, Jake, sometimes I wishes I had me a woman. Don’t you?”

  Jake peered at him over the top of the bottle. “Hell no,” he said. “What the hell would I be wantin’ a woman for? I’m damn near seventy-five.”

  “I didn’t know you was that old,” Speedy said.

  “That ain’t old,” Jake said, “that’s just outa childhood. Just old enough to know bettern to be messin’ with women.”

  Speedy chuckled and accepted the bottle, sipped at it, held it in his lap. “I useta have me a woman, when I lived up to Fifty-second Street. She was all right.”

  “What happened?” Jake said.

  “Aw, she run off. Said I drank too much.”

  “They all say that,” Jake said. “Wine an’ women mixes like niggers an’ white folks. Me, I’ll take niggers an’ wine, let them white folks an’ women be. That how come you moved down here?” Speedy did not notice. He was staring into the darkness deeper in the alley. Jake reached for the bottle, but Speedy did not move. Jake pulled it away from him.

  “Yeah,” Speedy said finally, “that’s when I moved down here.”

  Jake drank and looked over at Speedy without lowering the bottle. Speedy did not seem interested, so Jake took his turn for him. Then he took his own next turn. Then he handed the bottle back. Speedy roused, accepted it, took a long drink. “How come you be thinkin’ ’bout women all the sudden?”

  “Got this friend,” Speedy said. “He’s havin’ woman problems.” Speedy raised the bottle, drank, and extended it.

  “Hold it a second,” Jake said. He groaned, tried to get up. “Shit,” he said. He rolled over onto his side, unzipped his fly, and urinated. He zipped his fly quickly.

  “Hey, Jake?” Speedy said, handing the bottle over.

  “What?” said Jake, raising it.

  “You ever have a woman?”

  Jake lowered the bottle without drinking. He swallowed dry. “Yeah,” he said slowly. “A long time ago.”

  “Real long time?”

  “Forty year.”

  “Aw, hell, you had women since then.”

  “Yeah, sure,” Jake said, “I had women, but I ain’t had no woman.”

  “Oh,” Speedy said. “How come?”

  “Humph,” Jake said, raising the bottle. “Ain’t one enough?” He swallowed, lowered the bottle, examined it. “Ain’t much left.”

  “Gone an’ finish it,” Speedy said, lowering his head to his chest. Jake shrugged and poured the rest of the wine down his throat. He looked at the empty bottle and shrugged again. He laid it down in a row with the others, then eased himself down on the pavement beside Speedy and put his hands behind his head. Wincing slightly, he freed a hand and massaged his stomach. He put his hand back behind his head, closed his eyes, and in a few minutes he began to snore, first quietly, then louder and louder.

  The lobby was in almost total darkness, the only light coming from the desk where the light-skinned desk clerk sat reading a copy of the Koran and mumbling to himself in Philadelphia-accented Arabic. Leroy came out of the office, crossed the deserted bar, and walked toward the stairway. He nodded to the desk clerk and stepped on the first step, but then he saw a pair of female legs protruding out of the shadows, and he changed course abruptly. “Hey, good-lookin’,” said Leroy, with a sharkey smile. “How’s ma honey?”

  “I ain’t your honey.”

  “Oh,” said Leroy, ceasing to smile, “it’s you.”

  “Yeah, it’s me,” said Vanessa. She raised her cigarette to her lips and took a drag, holding the smoke in for a long time before she exhaled. Leroy looked down at her legs.

  “What you doin’ out here?” said Leroy.

  “Settin’.”

  “Settin’? What you hatchin’?” He cackled at his own joke.

  Vanessa took a drag from her cigarette.

  “How come you settin’?”

  “This here’s a public hotel. I can set in it if I wants to.”

  “Yeah,” agreed Leroy, “you can set in it. But it’s a place where folks goes to sleep too. In beds.” He smiled, and teeth flashed in his dark face.

  “Umph,” said Vanessa.

  “Bar’s closed,” said Leroy. “Otherwise I’d buy you a drink.”

  “Thanks for nothin’,” said Vanessa. She took another drag on her cigarette, caressing the filter with her tongue and leaving a smear of rich red lipstick on the white paper. Leroy stared at it. He licked his lips. Then he sat down beside her, his left knee brushing her leg. Vanessa did not look at him.

  “Well,” said Leroy, “even if the bar is closed, it don’t matter. I got a
bottle up to ma room.”

  “Yeah?” said Vanessa. She turned her head and looked at him for a minute, then turned back to her cigarette.

  “Yeah,” said Leroy. He placed his left hand on her thigh at the point where her skirt stopped. A few beads of sweat appeared on his forehead.

  Vanessa raised her cigarette again, sucked in smoke. She closed her eyes and rolled her head back on her shoulders, smiling. She rolled her head to the right, opened her eyes, smiled at Leroy, still holding the smoke in. Leroy leaned forward, smiling too. Vanessa blew the smoke out in a long plume, directly into his face. Leroy did not retreat an inch. His fingers tightened their grip on Vanessa’s thigh. “You know what I think?” Vanessa said, smiling.

  “What do you think?” said Leroy, wiggling his fingers slightly.

  “I think we oughta go on up to your room so you can pour me a drink.”

  “Yeah,” said Leroy.

  “Wait,” said Vanessa, raising her hand, “that ain’t all.”

  “No?” said Leroy.

  “No,” said Vanessa. She slowly crossed her legs, capturing Leroy’s fingers between her thighs.

  “Well, ah, what else did you have in mind?” said Leroy.

  “Well,” said Vanessa, “after you pours me a drink, we can turn down the bed.”

  “Um hum?” said Leroy, leaning forward.

  “Um hum,” said Vanessa, rubbing her legs together.

  “What then?” said Leroy, as he leaned farther forward and began to pucker his lips.

  “Then I’ll watch for a while,” said Vanessa.

  “Watch what?” said Leroy, closing his eyes and moving in.

  “Watch you, while you fuck yourself,” snapped Vanessa as she brought the back of her hand across Leroy’s puckered lips.

  “Cunt!” Leroy shouted. He tried to pull his hand out from between Vanessa’s thighs, but she chopped down on his wrist.

  “You lay a hand on me, nigger, an’ you gonna be sorry.”

  Leroy pulled his hand out and stood up. “Someday I’ma kill you,” he said.

  “Sure,” said Vanessa. “An’ the next day the world’s gonna be findin’ out where a whole lot of bodies is buried. You’ll be cuttin’ your own throat.”

  “It might just be worth it,” Leroy said. “But I’ll find some way. I’ll make you do anything I want.”

  “Almost anything,” Vanessa said. “There’s one thing you could never make me do.”

  “Almost anything’ll be good enough,” Leroy said.

  “Not for you,” Vanessa said.

  “How’s it feel,” said Leroy, “knowin’ your baby sister’s a better woman than you are?”

  “Why’s she better?” said Vanessa. “Just ’cause she don’t care how stupid you are?”

  “Shit,” said Leroy.

  “You,” said Vanessa, stubbing out her cigarette, “are stupid. If you wasn’t so stupid, you wouldn’t have to be worryin’ ’bout every street nigger that comes along tryin’ to steal a piece of your action.”

  “Nobody moves on Leroy,” snapped Leroy.

  “Way I hears it, somebody done already moved.”

  “Your ears is big. An’ crooked.”

  “Humph,” said Vanessa. “An’ even if it ain’t happenin’ now, it’ll be happenin’ sooner or later. An’ when it does, when somebody does move on you, you ain’t gonna be able to stop ’em, ’cause you so stupid.”

  “If I’m so stupid,” demanded Leroy, “how come you been settin’ out here waitin’ on me?”

  Vanessa got up and walked to the door. “If you wasn’t so stupid,” she said, “you wouldn’t need to be askin’.”

  He never went straight home. At midnight he would descend from the executive suite into the lower regions of the bank, where the locker room was, change his clothes and find his card and check out. He would do it quickly, before the other cleaners came down to change and punch out and go home, talking in their loud, weary voices. He would hurry in and out and back to the elevator, let it punch him back up through the building to the executive suite, where he would stow his tools and sit for a while in the president’s chair, smoking a cigarette and gazing out over the city. After he was sure the others would be gone he would descend again and go out. And then he would walk.

  The city glowed quietly at night, and his feet scraped along, the lonely echo whispering back from concrete walls. Rayburn crossed Market Street and walked along the north side, past the bowling alley, stopping for a minute to look through the glass and watch the pins’ quiet falling and the silent faces before walking on past the row of hacks standing in front of the bus station, on into the station itself. He descended the short flight of steps inside the double doors and stood looking up at the big bulletin board that listed departures and arrivals. He read the names of the cities, moving his lips. The disembodied voice of the P.A. system announced an arrival from New York City. Rayburn read the names and departure times over again. He was tired, his head ached, and it was hard to keep it tilted back to see the board. Rayburn dropped his head and looked around. The waiting room was almost empty. In the far corner a fat white woman, ugly veins showing like purple spiderwebs on her grayish legs, sat surrounded by cardboard boxes and beat-up suitcases. Her jaws worked slowly on a wad of gum. Rayburn moved toward her. She saw him coming and placed a protective hand on one of the cardboard boxes. Rayburn walked past her to the water fountain, took a drink, and then started back toward the door. “Hey,” she said as he passed.

  “Wahuh?” said Rayburn.

  “You got a match?”

  “Sure,” said Rayburn, reaching into his pocket. As his fingers closed on his matches he looked at her. She had placed a cigarette in the corner of her mouth, where it dangled precariously. She gazed absently out through the plate-glass windows at the closed coffee shop across the street, waiting for Rayburn to light her cigarette for her. “Thought I had some,” Rayburn said. “Musta lost ’em.”

  She wrested her attention away from the closed coffee shop, looked at him. “You ain’t got no matches?” Rayburn shook his head. She looked him over, from the top of his head to the bottom of his feet, and made a face. “Figures,” she said.

  He left the bus station and walked west on Market Street, waiting for two o’clock when the bars would close and she would have to go home. He moved quickly along the deserted hulk of the street. He always walked fast going away so that when he was tired and turned back he would be as far away as possible, and it would take him a long time to get back. He left Center City and crossed the river, passed the Post Office and the train station and the squatting headquarters of the Evening Bulletin. A few blocks further on he began to tire, and he looked around for someplace to rest. But he was in the strip of no man’s land along Market Street the buffer created after the riots in ’64—all the buildings torn down, leaving only bottle-and-brick-strewn fields. He turned off the sidewalk, stepped through a broken white board fence, walked across ruptured earth and scraggly grass, and urinated while looking up at the sky, oblivious to the cars that occasionally passed, raking their headlights across his back. And then he turned to walk home.

  He picked his way across the bare ground, kicking cans, stumbling over a bottle discarded by a wino days before, reached the sidewalk, stumbled on across the street. He turned east until he reached Thirty-fourth Street, and then turned south. He began to feel acid in his stomach. He began to wonder about her: where she’d been, who she’d seen. He turned left when he reached the University Hospital. He crossed Thirty-third Street. South Street began.

  Rayburn moved through the city’s shadows, hands in pockets, shoulders slumped, footsteps tapping an ancient rhythm, slowing down to give her time. South Street stretched out dark before him, and from the river a foul mist rose, chemical fog in the summer heat. Rayburn stopped, leaned out over the water. “Damn,” he said. He listened to the whisper of the cars on the Expressway, the rumble of a freight train heading south. “Man,” he said to the river, “that’s w
here I oughta be goin’. South. On down to D.C. I oughta take ma goddamn paycheck an’ walk into that goddamn bus station an’ buy a goddamn ticket. Far as the money’s gonna take me, one damn way.” He gazed at the river, the idea whirling in his foggy brain. It didn’t matter where he went: D.C., Boston, Chicago, L.A. He wondered what it was like in L.A., if things were better there, or worse, or even different. “Shit,” Rayburn said, turning away from the silent river. Suddenly he didn’t want to go to L.A. or anywhere anymore, because he was afraid that he would get there, step off the bus, and find that he hadn’t gone anywhere at all, that everything was exactly the same.

  His feet knew where to stop. He stood at a door beside a store’s dry carcass. He looked up at the second-floor window. There was no light. He felt panic rise, thinking that perhaps he had read the time wrong, that it was still early. But the dark and silent street around him belied that. He calmed himself. She was in bed, had just forgotten, or neglected, to leave a light on for him. He pushed open the lower door, climbed to the landing, stood before the door. His key snicked in the lock, and he stepped inside. And then his heart was pounding again as he thought perhaps the light was off because she wasn’t there, hadn’t come back, would never be back. He stood, breathing sharply, in the darkness of the living room. He took a deep breath and stepped forward to where he could peer into the bedroom. His foot struck a glass; it rolled away into the darkness, clattering.

  “That you, Rayburn?” a voice said sleepily.

  “Yeah,” said Rayburn. “It’s me.”

  Brother Fletcher slept the sleep of the dead. His chest rose and fell, rose and fell. Mrs. Fletcher looked in at him sleeping and smiled to herself. He had been ordered, he had confided, to infiltrate Lightnin’ Ed’s Bar and Grill, and Mrs. Fletcher knew he was thrilled with his assignment. Mrs. Fletcher nursed the suspicion that it was not intrigue alone that fascinated him, that many times he had yearned to enter one of the dark, inviting doorways that lined South Street. Now, given his excuse, he approached the project with the passion of a zealot. He had spent all Monday and Tuesday preparing himself: making covert excursions to bookstores to purchase paperbacks on wines and liquors, listening carefully to beer commercials on the radio so that when he entered the lion’s den he would be armed, at least, with knowledge. He had gone out at nine o’clock, disguised in tee shirt, slacks, and holey sneakers and looking exactly like a preacher dressed in a tee shirt, slacks, and holey sneakers. Two hours later he had returned, to confess that he had not had the courage even to enter Lightnin’ Ed’s, to eat the bacon sandwiches and to drink the iced tea that Mrs. Fletcher had prepared for him, and to go to bed, leaving Mrs. Fletcher to clean up the kitchen and to listen to his gentle snoring and to smile. Men, thought Mrs. Fletcher, are so silly. She cared nothing about Brother Fletcher’s mission, but if it made him happy to sneak around playing spy, she was willing to go along. She looked at him snoring and resolved to provide him with a more imaginative disguise.