South Street

by David Bradley

“I’m a whore,” she said. “I’m a whore an’ I don’t want to do it—like a whore. Don’t come in for a minute, okay?” She looked at him pleadingly. Brown nodded, watched as she went to turn out the light, then made her way through the darkness to the bedroom and closed the door.

  Brown shook his head, went over and sat on the windowsill. He looked out over the alley, trying to straighten out the feelings of desire and disgust and amusement and sympathy that whirled inside him. He wished that he smoked so that he could light up and hold something in his hands for a few minutes and then flip the butt and watch it go glowing down into the darkness below. He heard the bed creak. He heard her call.

  The bedroom smelled unfamiliarly of perfume. He stumbled over something going through the door. The bed protested the added weight as he climbed into it. Her voice was a voice in darkness; she eluded him on the far corners of the sheet. “Sometimes,” she said hoarsely, “sometimes it don’t work too good. I’m just tellin’ you so you know. It’s like—like I can’t tell when I’m not workin’, you know?” She came to him, pressed against him. Brown ran his hand up and down her back. “It’s gonna be all right this time,” she said. “It’s gotta be.”

  8. Monday

  EARLY MORNING FOUGHT THROUGH the smog and fell exhausted through the open window, glinting redgold in the hair on the back of Brown’s hand. The hand moved slowly, casting a shadow as it traced out letter shapes, word shapes, with a cheap ball-point pen. Brown wrote on a paper bag—he had run out of lined legal pads—and struggled to keep the words in nice neat rows, but they insisted on wandering downward as they stretched out toward the right margin. The hand moved hesitantly, spasmodically, like a hand on a Ouija board, writing a word, crossing one out, writing another, crossing out two more. His grasp on the pen was tight; the normal pinkness under his nails was tinted by pressure a bizarre greenish-white. Beneath the skin of his forearm, muscles moved visibly, and drops of perspiration glistened in the hair. Brown, hunched over the table, face close to the paper, did not look up when the bedroom door swung open and Vanessa stumbled sleepily into the kitchen, rubbing her eyes with balled fists. She lowered her hands and stared at Brown, shifted her weight, causing a board to creak; Brown did not notice. She cleared her throat once, then again, more loudly. Brown made a period with his pen, put it down, and looked up. “Good morning,” he said brightly.

  Vanessa looked at him and groaned. “You always get up this early?”

  “Gettin’ up’s easy,” Brown said. “It’s stayin’ up that’s the problem. You want some coffee?” Vanessa groaned again and went to pour herself a cup. “Actually,” Brown said, “I only get up this early on holidays.”

  Vanessa sat down and scowled at him over her coffee. “What damn holiday is this?”

  “On this day in history, in sixteen-nineteen,” Brown told her, “Black Amos became the first American slave to plot armed resistance against his master.”

  “Humph,” said Vanessa. “I bet he didn’t do it at no six in the mornin’.”

  “So go back to bed.”

  “I ain’t tired,” Vanessa said, and yawned. “What you doin’ out here anyways?”

  “Nothing,” Brown said. He slipped the paper bag and the pen into the drawer beneath the table. Vanessa shot out her hand and grabbed the bag out of the drawer.

  “Pomes?” she said incredulously. “You some kinda poet or somethin’?”

  “I told you,” Brown said. “I’m a bartender.”

  Vanessa looked at him, glanced at the paper. “This must be good. It’s got lots an’ lots of big words.”

  Brown reached over and took it away from her. “It’s not finished,” he said.

  “Well, I’m toooo sorry, Mistuh Brown, suh. I didn’t know you was so damn touchy about your fuckin’ hen tracks.”

  “There’s nothing to be sorry about,” Brown said. “I just don’t like people looking at things when they aren’t finished.”

  “Oh,” Vanessa said. “I thought maybe it just you got pissed off ’cause some undereducated whore had the nerve to say it was good.”

  Brown sucked air through his teeth, eyed her speculatively. “You sleep naked, or you leave the chip on?”

  “That depends on who I’m sleepin’ with,” Vanessa snapped.

  “I thought you couldn’t tell the difference.”

  “I warned you,” Vanessa said. “Don’t say you wasn’t warned.”

  “It takes a little time,” Brown said gently.

  “Two days?”

  Brown put a hand on her shoulder. “Sometimes it takes a long time. Sooner or later—”

  “Shit,” Vanessa said, shrugging his hand away. “What makes you think I’m gonna hang around with you waitin’ for your damn prick to turn green? An’ what are you, some kinda expert on fuckin’?”

  “Me? No,” Brown said. “I’m an amateur. But I’m enthusiastic.” He put the paper bag back in the drawer, closed it, got up, and went over to the refrigerator. He took out a can of beer, snapped the top open, took a long swig. Vanessa watched him, a look of distaste on her face. Brown flipped his chair around with one hand, straddled it. He gulped more beer and belched.

  Vanessa shook her head in disgust. “Just ma luck. I’m lookin’ for a man an’ I get a goddamn poet.”

  Brown looked at her, finished the beer, and sent the can arching across the room into the garbage bag. The bag was full; the can bounced out again. Brown grunted, rose, went over and stuffed the can into the bag, leaned out the window, and let the bag drop into the alley. It split open, exposing beer containers and wet coffee grounds. Brown remained leaning out the window, staring down at the alley, at the garbage, at the dark shape of a wino sleeping deeper in the shadows.

  “I’m scared,” Vanessa said.

  Brown pulled himself back inside, twisted around. “What?”

  “I said I was scared.”

  “What of?”

  “I … I ain’t never been with nobody like this before. It’s like bein’ a virgin. I guess—I don’t remember much about bein’ a virgin. But it’s the first time it mattered if it was any good. For me, I mean. Ain’t nobody much cared if it was any good for me, ’cept maybe Leroy, an’ he wouldn’t a cared except it bothered him he couldn’t make me come. But it was just like I was somethin’ that didn’t work right, like his car wouldn’t start or somethin’. So he traded me in on a newer model.” She smiled a little. “You know, I ain’t never done like we done yesterday, settin’ around doin’ nothin’, readin’ the Sunday paper, goin’ for a walk. A goddamn walk! On South Street. Jesus, if I ain’t walked on South Street enough by now. An’ wakin’ up in the mornin’ an’ havin’ a cup a coffee. Like we was on TV or somethin’.” She shifted her eyes to look out the window where the sunlight bounced off the building across the narrow alley. Brown shifted uneasily.

  “I just ain’t never cared about me before,” Vanessa said. “Some old drunk fool jams hisself up inside you, he don’t care what happens, so long as he gets his money’s worth. He ain’t payin’ for you to have a good time. There ain’t nobody thinkin’ about you but you, an’ it’s hard to keep thinkin’ about yourself all by yourself.” She looked at Brown for a minute, then down at her coffee. “Well, hell, what do you want? I’m a damn whore.”

  “My great-granddaddy was a slave,” Brown said. “One of ’em. One a the others probably owned him. So what?”

  “It matters,” Vanessa said. “It has to matter.” She looked up at him. “What do you think about when you look at me?” Brown opened his mouth, closed it again. Vanessa looked at him, smiled bitterly. “Never mind.”

  “Shut up,” Brown said. He pushed himself off the windowsill, pulled the drawer open, grabbed out the paper bag and shoved it at her. “Read it,” Brown said. “Don’t just look at the words. Read it.”

  Vanessa stared at him, accepted the paper, read. Brown stood absolutely still. It took her a long time. Finally she looked up. “This ain’t got nothin’ to do with me,” she said. “I
t’s about South Street. Who the hell wants to read about South Street?”

  “You wanted to know what I thought about when I looked at you,” Brown said. “There it is.”

  “Yeah. Garbage. Rats. Roaches. Drunks. Jesus, Brown, if that’s what I make you think about, excuse me while I kill maself.”

  Brown reached over and took the poem away from her, looked at it. “You ever hear the story about the frog that got turned into a prince?”

  “What? Oh, Jesus! ’Sides, you got it backwards.”

  “No, I don’t,” Brown said. “You listen. See, once upon a time there was this frog. Lived in the lily pond. Well one day this princess, she come tippin’ down to the lily pond. The frog, he looked at her an’ he says to hisself, ‘Hey there, ain’t that a fine-lookin’ piece a somethin’! An’ rich, too.’ So this simple jiveass goes hoppin’ up on the bank an’ says hello. Now the princess, she ain’t never seen a frog that could talk as pretty as this frog, just like he was a reglar poet or somethin’, an’ he runs his jive on her an’ pretty soon she’s just hummin’ away. She even started takin’ off her clothes, only all the sudden she stops an’ says, ‘Hey, how’re we gonna make love if I’m a princess an’ you’re a frog?’ Now the frog, he figured that as soon as he started to put it to her she wasn’t gonna much care what he was, so he says ‘Damn, why soon as you kiss me one time I’ma turn right into the handsomest damn prince in the whole damn world, an’ what’s the matter with you, bitch, don’t you watch Walt Disney?’ But she wasn’t havin’ any. She put her panties back on an’ took him on up to the castle an’ introduced him to her daddy, the king, whose name just happened to be Martin Luther, an’ fixed him up with a fancy room an’ a horse an’ air-conditionin’ an’ dressed him up in fancy clothes an’ kept him readin’ books, taught him how to do all kinds a bullshit. They’d only make it in the nighttime, ’cause the princess, she didn’t want anybody to know she was makin’ it with a frog. Well bit by bit, that old frog got brainwashed to the point where he thought he was a goddamn prince. They even had the emperor come around an’ check him out, an’ when the emperor said, ‘Boy, run down to the cleaners an’ fetch ma white suit,’ the frog took off an’ come back with an’ empty hanger. An’ they lived happy ever after, except that frog kept hoppin’ back to the lily pond, an’ that just drove the princess crazy, that an’ the fact he kept wantin’ to screw in the daytime. …” Brown’s voice trailed off. He looked out the window.

  “Is that all?” Vanessa said.

  “I don’t know,” Brown said.

  Vanessa got up and walked to the window, looked out. “That alley’s full a shit,” she said. “There’s a wino sleepin’ in it. Looks like Jake. He’s been sleepin’ in that alley for years. In the same damn shit.” Brown grunted. Vanessa turned to look at him. “I said there’s a wino out there sleepin’ in his own shit. He stinks. Anybody could smell him clear up here, unless they was a fool like you with Chanel Number Five smeared all over his upper lip.” Brown looked at her, then looked away. She moved around to stand in front of him. “An’ I’m a whore, an’ I probly stink a little, too. Don’t I? Lily pond, shit. A goddamn toilet bowl is more like it. An’ there ain’t no frogs swimmin’ around in no toilet bowls, just turds waitin’ around for somebody to flush ’em away. How you like bein’ a turd, Mr. Frog?”

  Brown went and stood behind her and put his hands on her shoulder. She shrugged them away. He put them back. She shrugged them away again, twisting in the same motion, so that her back was to the light, her face a dark shadow. Brown raised his hands. “Don’t touch me.” Brown dropped his hands and stepped away. “They better?” she said dully, her voice coming out of shadow.

  “What?” Brown said.

  “In bed. Are they better?”

  “Who?”

  “White women. Who else?”

  “What the hell are you talkin’ about?” Brown said.

  “What you was talkin’ about, princesses an’ shit. I ain’t stupid. I knew what you was gettin’ at. I guess I ain’t no big deal for you, now am I, after you done had all that, a black whore.”

  Brown smiled and shook his head. “Princesses come in all colors.” He stepped close to her, and she looked up at him, placed her hands against his chest but did not push him away.

  “Whad you have to come down here for, Brown? You ain’t doin’ nothin’ but mess people up with your shit.”

  Brown looked at her. She stared at him, then dropped her eyes. Brown reached out and lifted her face, and she stared at him past flared nostrils. “Go away,” she said. Brown took her by the arms. She pushed against his chest, and Brown felt the muscles in her arms tighten beneath his fingers. He pulled her to him, and her long fingernails dug into the skin above his nipples. Brown squeezed her arms. Her muscles relaxed. Her knees sagged. She let him pull her against him. Her fingers left his chest, wandered over him. “I’m gonna be as good as them,” she said. “I’ma be just as good.”

  The day had begun with a rude awakening, when a bag of garbage had burst on the cobblestones ten feet away, but in light of later developments, Jake had to admit that it was beautiful. While wandering along outside the Elysium he had discovered a wallet containing fifteen dollars. With luck and careful husbanding, fifteen dollars would keep him in decent wine for three solid days. Jake had deposited all but two dollars in his left shoe—the one with the fewer holes—and the wallet in a mailbox. The problem then became waiting out the two hours until the liquor stores opened. Jake turned away from the mailbox and considered his options thoroughly, and that in itself wasted a good bit of time. There were the traditional wino time-wasters, like loitering in the lower lobby of the Reading Railroad Terminal or in the Penn Center bowling alley, and there were other doors that were open to him because of his newly acquired wealth; he could go to one of the twenty-four hour movie houses on the other side of City Hall and watch reruns of Major Dundee. He rejected the traditional out of a distaste for routine. He rejected the cinema because he considered spending money on anything besides wine and—occasionally—food an unnatural act if not a mortal sin. But there were other, more imaginative alternatives. Since it was summer, the fountain in Kennedy Plaza would be going. Jake was fond of the fountain, but Kennedy Plaza was also the location of the tourist information center, and the police took a very dim view of winos enjoying the fountain and disgusting the tourists, which was useful if you wanted to spend a little time in a nice comfortable cell, but, having just come into money, Jake valued his freedom. There were the porno houses along Market Street and north toward Chinatown, where he would be safe from the police, but Jake considered himself far too sophisticated for porno houses. Besides, every time he entered one, they laughed. Of course, he could always join the inevitable line-up in front of the liquor stores, which would offer an opportunity to greet old friends, but Jake did not feel like standing in line; his stomach hurt, not sharply but insistently. Having wasted the better part of fifteen minutes considering his options, Jake turned north and headed, as he had known he would from the beginning, for the Post Office.

  Jake was something of a snob. He went out of his way to pass the winos idly ranked in front of the State Store like the bottles displayed inside, behind the wire screening and the heavy plate glass. Jake sniffed and shuffled on by, secure in the knowledge that he was of a higher caste, that his territory was not limited to South Street, that his horizons were not delineated by the Delaware and the Schuylkill. He was known at dozens of bars, in North Philly, in Mantua, in Woodland Village. He was known as a proud man who always paid, and if it was not full price, that was only right, since he had consumed enough to be classed as a wholesale buyer; his discount was not charity but a small courtesy shown by appreciative bartenders to a faithful client. While he never slept anywhere but South Street, he ranged far and wide, pursuing his trade, which was shining shoes at the Pennsylvania Station, and his hobby, which was rumormongering. Jake made it his business to know everything that it was none of his busin
ess to know. He gathered information constantly, and one of his favorite sources were the FBI’s “Wanted” posters in the Post Office. He would spend hours flipping through the posters, which were clamped into a heavy notebook bracketed to a bulletin board on the Post Office wall.

  Jake was not interested in what he called chickenshit crime—burglary or embezzlement—and he looked with disgust upon kidnapers, counterfeiters, rapists, and extorters. Jake’s imagination was fired only by the clever and the violent, by bunko artists and confidence men, by armed robbers and murderers. He felt profound respect for anyone whose crimes smacked of the political, but he was not yet sure how he felt about airplane hijackers. He was down on deserters and draft dodgers, but rather ambivalent about income-tax evaders; having essentially no income, Jake was ambivalent about income tax.

  He shuffled north along Nineteenth Street, heading for the Mid-City Branch office on Chestnut, which was conveniently located one short block from a State Store. It was a beautiful morning, not yet too hot. The flood of office workers had been sponged up by the office buildings, leaving only a few people on the street. That suited Jake; he had no fondness for office workers, although he viewed them with profound compassion. There, but for the grace of God, went he. He turned west on Chestnut Street, shooting a brief glance at the State Store just past the corner, and momentarily considering speculating some of his wealth on a state lottery ticket, as the sign in the window advised. He might win fifty thousand dollars, and fifty thousand dollars represented an awful lot of wine. But Jake knew that he would never win the fifty thousand dollars. Nobody who needed it ever won the fifty thousand dollars, since if you were unlucky enough to be broke in the first place, it was unlikely you would be lucky enough to win fifty thousand dollars. Besides, there was no bank that would cash a check for fifty thousand dollars presented by a scruffy wino and it was a little too much to expect the state to pay off in cash. All in all, Jake decided, the lottery was great for solid citizens, but for winos it was better to play the numbers. Unfortunately Leroy Briggs ran the numbers on South Street, and Jake refused to have anything to do with anything that had anything to do with Leroy Briggs. As he pushed open the stubborn wooden door of the Mid-City Branch of the United States Post Office, Jake decided that if he ever did win fifty thousand dollars, he would be willing to expend a large portion of it getting rid of Leroy Briggs and his other nemesis, the Reverend Mr. J. Peter Sloan.