“What am I supposed to do now—say no? Dorothy told me.”
“Snitcher,” he says to Dorothy. “But did she tell you it’s going to be a girl and we’re calling her Marina Claire?”
“I knew and I’m thankful. Girls are better than boys.”
“I didn’t know any of it,” I say. “It’s wonderful, what could be better?” I kiss them both.
“But is this the fantastic place to hear that kind of news?” Sven shouts.
“Unbeatable,” Peter says, “and appropriate. The heart of the New York harbor and with Brooklyn in the foreground and Manhattan in back and a jet going west overhead and the two rivers splitting up and going their own way. And my mom and pop store speech was pretty prescient, eh?”
“That’s what I whispered to Dorothy on the floor. ‘Does Peter know?’ She didn’t answer. Why didn’t you answer?” he asks her.
“Now I really have to go,” I say.
“Of course,” Peter says. “Goodbye to you all. It’s freezing and gorgeous out here and the news was a knockout—Wait up,” he says to me.
“Marry her,” Sven yells after Peter. “Don’t be a boob not to.”
“Sven, that’s an awful thing to say,” I say. “People have to work things out their own way.”
“But you’re a terrific couple and two of my favorite people and I’m deliriously happy, so what else could I say? I’d love to see you married and in a family way, which is my next big fantasy for you two and no doubt another one I should have omitted saying, but that’s just tough titty on me.”
“All right, I hear, and probably at your wedding reception you should be allowed to say anything you like.” I go back, kiss him, he’s been crying, says “Forgive me, Helene, I get too enthused and emotional,” say “Bye Sophie, many thanks,” blow a kiss to Dorothy and say “Hope I didn’t dampen things,” and she says “Pay no mind, nothing but a nuclear holocaust on us could ruin this day,” go into the room, Peter says “Truthfully, I had nothing to do with that marriage-fetus wish, but you handled him right,” and goes to the men’s room, get my coat and sit on a bench by the elevator to wait for him. The rooms to the other parties are at the other side of the elevator bank and lots of laughing, music and chatter are coming from them. Arthur comes over. “Oh, I’m sorry,” I say, “I forgot to say goodnight.”
“That’s what I thought I forgot. And, I’m not sure how close you are with this curator fellow, but if it isn’t too close—even if it is…”
“We can always have lunch. I’m in the book. Only Helene with a Winiker at the end of it. W-i—”
“I know. I asked Dot about you already and she gave me your number. Six-six-three, two-five, three-six. An easy one, but I’ve a way with numbers. I can still remember my selective service card number and army rifle registration number and all the combination lock numbers from high school and college. Phone numbers? You only have to tell me them once. I’ve got a regular rolloflex—but what do you call those rolling things that have a thousand phone numbers and addresses on index cards and you spin?—well that’s my head. I also want you to know I’ll gladly do your tax returns this year if you want. As a favor, and I bet I get you back seven hundred more than if you do them yourself and four hundred more than with a professional accountant, but maybe not a competent CPA, and all legitimately: I do nothing to jeopardize the reputation of my firm or my own personal name.”
“Sounds good. I do them myself, so I might take you up on it.”
“Great. So, it was words-can’t-say tonight, Helene.”
Peter comes over, has on his coat, says “Nice to meet you, Arthur; see you around,” rings for the elevator. Elevator comes. “Hold onto me if you’re still not feeling well,” and he presses the lobby button.
I hold his arm as the car descends. He kisses the top of my head. He’s about six inches taller than I and has put aftershave or men’s cologne on his face though I don’t know where he’d keep it. Not in his pocket. Maybe for men there’s such a thing as overnight cologne packages I’ll call them. More likely the management provided some for the men’s room, but why wouldn’t there also have been some in ours? Maybe there was and someone stole it. Could be he devised his own traveling package. He was always very inventive and liked to smell good. “You all right?” I nod. “Elevator not going too fast? I can slow it down.” I shake my head. “This might seem dopey, but why—” The car stops at the fourteenth but nobody gets on. “Why did you object so strenuously to Sven when he came on with that marriage talk?”
“Because he knows that that’s what mainly broke it up for us: your not wanting to. Even if he was drunk or stoned, and who knows what those two are into these—” The door opens, a guard in the lobby nods to us and Peter salutes him and we head for the door. “I also don’t go for that shoot-from-the-heart crap in a crowd he’s also been into these days.”
“Hold it. About that particular time we’re talking of, it wasn’t so much marriage I didn’t want but that you wanted to have a baby then and at the time I didn’t think I wanted one.”
“I wanted to get married and have a child eventually. Why else get married or at least if you can have kids? But what does your ‘at the time’ talk mean? That now you think, to the woman you eventually do get married to, that you would have a child? That’d be interesting.”
“Did I say that? I suppose I sort of did. Yes, I very definitely think it’s a strong possibility that one day pretty soon I’d like to be a father.”
“I’m sure of it.”
“Be. Because with the right hypothetical woman—someone I love very much and so forth and who I think would make a wonderful mother as well as a wife—it’s very possible.”
“Nah, you have too many important interests and aims, which I’m not knocking, but they and you come first. You’ll get married again—eventually—but you won’t let a kid come into it.”
“Don’t be so dogmatic about me. People change. I’ve my rigidness and routines, but I surprise myself sometimes too.”
“All right. I believe that marriage-mit-kit is a very definite strong possibility for you pretty soon.”
“Pretty soon. Reasonably soon. Because—” I step inside the revolving door, but before I can push it he squeezes in behind me and we move in short jerky steps. “One more spin around?” when we’re outside. “I was just getting started.”
His car is parked near the entrance. A man’s standing next to it and says “Pardon me for a moment, folks—” Peter takes my hand and backs us up a few feet and looks into the lobby. “Now don’t be alarmed. I mean no harm. Besides, look at you, sir. You’re practically a giant, so who’d mess with you, not that I’m that type in any shape or form. All I’m politely asking for is enough change to put me on a public conveyance home.”
“I think I have a quarter.”
“That’ll put me almost halfway. Thank you. And the lady?—You couldn’t contribute something too?”
“A quarter’s plenty from us. There are other people to ask. I’ve a lot more change but that’s all I feel like giving. You don’t like the quarter—give it here.”
“Peter.”
“No, he doesn’t think it’s enough, let him give it back as I said. Fuck this shit. I’m not letting us get harassed on the street every other day.”
“Pardon, no offense, I don’t want to get myself killed by this guy,” and he walks away. “Didn’t mean to cause any trouble,” to himself or for us to hear.
Peter unlocks my door, I get in, unlock his while he’s putting the key in, he says “Thanks,” gets in and shuts the door.
“God,” I say, “—quiet. I can’t believe it. I’ve had so much chitchat and bullshit tonight starting from the minute I got to Diana’s party that I think—”
“How is she?”
“Please, give me a minute. There must be something else we can talk about, if we have to talk for the next minute. Or music. Maybe you can put on public radio or NCN if they’re not the same. One of them shou
ld have something nice.” He starts the car and turns on the radio. Station he was turned to has country music, one he turns to has a busy Brahms serenade with too much wind and brass. “Not that.” He turns it off. “No, you can leave it on.” He turns it on, low. “I’m acting so spoiled, but what I wouldn’t do for a solo flute. Bach, just Bach. I don’t even know if he has one for solo, but someone like him. Maybe I should just pray.” I close my eyes, clasp my hands and pretend to pray. All I really want is quiet or sleep. To wake up, as I used to, in my father’s arms, with the car parked and the family home and my shoes off and my body being lowered into my bed. He leans across me—I jump back because I think he’s going to grab my leg—opens the glove compartment by my knees, pulls out a number of tape cassettes, slips one into a hole by the radio and turns the dial up and Brahms has become flute and harpsichord music and I think Bach’s.
“Close enough?” He buckles up, helps me to and drives off. “And low enough? Loud enough? Sorry for the harpsichord obligato, but it is obligato. But whatever’s your pleasure, ma’am, this nifty sports job will supply.”
“Everything’s fine, thanks. And before? To clear up a possible wrong impression? I didn’t mean that chitchat’s so bad. Just I’ve my saturation point. It’s like knickknacks, chitchats. Though I have those too I also have my saturation point with them. No more than five knickknacks to a radiator cover I say. What am I saying? Believe me, I was fine at the start of the evening, but now I’ve become ridiculously chitchatty myself.”
“No you haven’t.”
“Have to. So goddamn condescending. I crit others what I myself do. Because chitchat and bullshit have their days too. Just right now, for me, they’re—This music’s also too chatty. If only we could speed it up to a slow part. Mind if I shut it off?”
“Slow part’s coming, but I can speed up the tape to it.”
“No, no music. I don’t know what I want. But same way? The radio dial? Never saw anything like this,” shutting it off. “What else can it do? Record, take in, give change? Oh, shut up, Helene, till you get home, and then, if you have to chitchat like this, do it in your sleep.”
“You can’t. You have to keep the driver talking so he doesn’t fall asleep at the wheel.”
“Then let’s talk about something interesting. But you start, I can’t. But let’s see if we can talk about only one thing till I get home that keeps us unwinkingly stimulated and our minds unmoronically—oh my God, that man!”
“Where, what? Don’t startle me like that. You’ll run us off the road.”
“But that man we just passed. On crutches—I think being robbed.” I look back. “It still seems the younger one’s going through the pockets of the older man. Turn around, go back.”
“Come on, you couldn’t have seen all that so fast.”
“But I’m still watching it—now no more—too far back. Slow down and make a U at the next left.” He slows down but passes that left. “Peter, we can’t drive by knowing someone’s—”
“And I’m saying, if you did see something, you don’t want to get involved in a possible dangerous robbery. Because suppose we go back—then what?”
“We can get near enough to see if he is being robbed, and if he is, we can drive past slowly and honk and wave our fists. If the man’s already been robbed and the robber’s gone, we can drive him to a police station or stay with him till a police car comes. If he hasn’t been robbed, I want to find that out by asking him so I know I didn’t drive past anyone being robbed. And if it’s only what I think is the robber who’s there, then we’ll quietly drive past.”
“All right. Okay.” He makes a U-turn at the next left and slows down at the first red light.
“Don’t stop. No car’s coming, go through.”
“And if a cop—”
“All the better. That’s who I’m looking for now.”
He goes through the light. “I hate going through red lights.” The older man’s leaning against a lamppost, two canes, not two crutches, at his feet. We stop, I roll down my window, “Excuse me, but were you just robbed?”
“You undercover? If you are—”
“We’re not. We thought—”
“Still, he ran up that sidestreet and you can still catch him but you’ll have to go against a one-way.”
“We don’t want to try to—either thing—and get hurt. We saw you from the uptown side and thought we could help with a honk and shout if he was still here, or help you in any way. You’re not hurt? Did he get anything?”
“My wallet. Fifteen dollars. That’s what you have to carry on you today in case you get robbed. My watch two other punks took last year, so I don’t wear the new one when I’m out.”
“What are you doing out alone so late?” Peter says. “This neighborhood’s deserted.”
“I like to walk. If I get that itch, I take it. There are just so many directions to go. Last night I went the other. But I don’t go far. My place is two blocks down.”
“Can we do anything?” I say. “Take you to a police station or wait with you till a patrol car passes?”
“It’s not worth it. Fill out a report, nothing happens. If I made a bundle it might be worth having that report as proof for a big loss on my taxes. I’ll go home.”
“We’ll drive you.”
“I don’t want to drive him,” Peter says.
“We have to. We came this far, let’s see it through.”
“No thanks,” the man says. “I can’t get hit twice in one night ten minutes apart. It doesn’t happen.”
“It’s disgraceful, someone stealing from anyone—but from you? I wish we’d stopped sooner.”
“Good thing you didn’t. He came out of nowhere, didn’t look playful, might have panicked and done something to me worse. Thanks,” and he picks up his canes and starts downtown.
“Some night,” Peter says, passing the man and signaling a left.
“Wait, back up to him.”
“What now?”
“Just back up—Mister, stop!” I open my bag. “I only have ten dollars,” I say to Peter. “Loan me a five.”
“Ten’s enough.”
“Please, I’m only borrowing it. You’ve nothing smaller than a ten, I’ll give you one of my fives.”
He gives me a five. “On me, no loan.”
“Here,” I say to the man. “Don’t ask questions. You went through too much tonight, you don’t want to be stopped by anyone without your fifteen, and we’ve plenty.” He takes the money. “Now can we drive you home?”
“I’ll make it.”
Peter drives off, makes the U. “That was very nice. I think a little excessive, but okay—nice.”
“As if it isn’t bad enough for him, and then to get robbed? But maybe I shouldn’t have said it to him like that.”
“How?”
‘“Disgraceful for someone to steal from you.’ But to be so deformed? Did you see the way he walked?”
“Saw.”
“It’s got to be so painful. Going every step like that. I’m not talking of only the threat of being robbed, but just getting up and down curbs and I’m sure falling every so often because of the canes in the street cracks and so on. And if you’re out of bread and want a loaf—what a chore.”
“He goes out nightly, so maybe he’s more mobile and not in as much pain as we think. But look at it this way. If you have an affliction like his you have to make adjustments and other arrangements. That’s what you have to do in life; that’s what everyone has to do.”
“You might be right. But so many people in the city and everywhere like that man. In my neighborhood especially, and which I can never quite get used to. Even someone who walks a three-legged dog. The dog does well—compensates—but he has three. But there’s a one-legged baby in a baby carriage and always on Broadway that destroys me every time I see her.”
“A three-legged dog, sad; a one-legged baby—that’s tragedy.”
“Sometimes when I’m feeling very sad about
people and animals like that—which can last for minutes to hours after—I think, and usually soon after I felt that way, that I only felt this for myself somehow—but it’s not true or not most times.”
“Of course it isn’t. Probably never, or only rarely. Your response is authentically sympathetic rather than self-pitying.”
“And I’m not saying this to have anyone think better of me. But why can’t we feel these things for these people—forget the three-legged animals; what can I do for them?—and help them when we can? Not just what we did before, but sort of.”
“Now you’ve lost me.”
“If they need assistance across the street. Reaching for things for them in supermarkets they can’t reach. And I guess for dogs if they’re lost or starved no matter how many legs—feeding them or helping them find their way home.”
“No, those are good things to do. And if you mean sorry, pity—feeling those—sure, that’s what we have to do—fellow human beings, all that. Public spirits—because those words are still good words if accurately employed. And giving to charities—good charities if we can—ones that don’t squander all the given money to keep the administrators administrating them. Just as any public institution—museums as well as any—shouldn’t squander its money that way. Because it’s all given, that money, by individuals or some larger public or private institution. And the truth of it is that no institution or government or private company should squander its money, and museums should probably be the first ones to exclude themselves from that type of administrative abuse. I believe in that.”
“There, we discussed something interesting and stayed with it for once. We needed the robbery of an old crippled man to catalyze the discussion, and let’s face it, nothing that profound was said and maybe only a baby-step past knickknacks. But we could always bullshit well.”
“That wasn’t bullshit.”
“I know; just trying out something new for no reason: depreciating what I said if it made the littlest bit of sense.”
“That was real talk, real feelings. Maybe not the deepest, but this is only a car conversation to get us safely home. But I’ll tell you, a lot of what some people say sounds false to them isn’t. So it doesn’t mean you should hold your sentiments in check because of what they don’t feel. And we could do plenty else—plenty—besides bull and serious talk.”
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