Table Money

by Jimmy Breslin

  The father tapped the newspaper. “I just read a story in the paper about walking. Maybe I’ll walk to the racetrack today. In the paper it says that in Mexico they have this place where you can walk up the pyramid and see the place where they used to cut the people’s hearts out. Offering them up for a sacrifice. They had a real terrible religion. What can you expect from pagans? Let me go get Owney.”

  “Not as long as you got that around,” Dolores said, waving disdainfully at the beer can.

  “This is only beer,” Owney’s father said.

  “To me, it’s drinking.”

  “You think we stand still for him drinking?” The father rose, making a great deal of noise with his chair as emphasis for the magnitude of the act he was about to commit. He took a bottle of J & B Scotch, a third full, from a shelf and poured it down the sink. “There’ll be no more drinking by anybody in this house.”

  “What’s that?” Dolores said, pointing at the beer.

  “That’s beer,” the father said.

  “What do you think that is?” she said.

  “Beer isn’t drinking.”

  Owney walked in with a T-shirt, wrinkled pants, and bare feet. His eyes were hooded with sleep. “I was coming to the house myself.”

  “I got here first. And I have to leave now,” she said, walking into the living room, suddenly sulking but her mind not grasping the reason: never before had she left the baby outside of her own house. She heard the noise from Owney’s bedroom and walked in hesitantly and found Christine on her stomach on the bed and trying to get off, with Owney holding her. When the baby saw Dolores she became more determined and started to cry and Owney had to let her go. She tumbled off the bed, got up, and fell against Dolores’s legs. “Well, this isn’t starting off so well, is it?” Dolores said.

  “She’ll be fine,” Owney’s mother said from the doorway. Dolores did not talk. “Won’t you be fine?” Owney’s mother said to Christine, who now hugged Dolores’s legs. Owney swung from the bed and reached for Christine, who wailed.

  “You shouldn’t of let her see you before you left,” the mother said. Dolores gazed at the deep, dark, concentric rings around the mother’s eyes.

  “I wouldn’t leave her like that.”

  “Maybe you should just run out right now.”

  “Yes, go ahead, I’ll hold her,” Owney said.

  Dolores shook her head.

  “It’s all right. She’s with her father,” Owney said.

  Dolores picked up the baby, who buried her face in Dolores’s shoulder.

  “You only made it worse,” Owney’s mother said.

  “Put her down and get going,” Owney said.

  Dolores patted Christine. Clucking, Owney’s mother reached for the baby. Dolores kept her eyes on the woman’s fingers as they reached out. The fingers grew longer and closer to the baby and Dolores took a step back. The fingers simply lengthened and spread to the baby and Dolores took another step back. The fingers jabbed boldly and almost grabbed her baby. Dolores’s mouth was open and her eyes were wide with fear. She stepped to the right. Owney’s mother stepped to the left and this brought her even with Dolores. The hands were so close to the baby. The baby clutched Dolores’s blouse. Her gums were wet against her shoulder. Dolores sensed the wall behind her. A step and a half back. Straight to her left was the window, about four steps away. Ahead was the bed. Between the end of the bed and the wall, in the space where she now stood, there were about three paces in which to move. On the left of the bed was the bureau. If she turned to the right, she was facing the door to the living room, four steps off. On the right of the bed was the closet, whose door was open, and, a pace away, a closed door into the bathroom. Owney stood between the bed and a chair. He started forward and his hands, too, began to raise. Dolores stepped quickly to the outside of the chair. She knew she was acting queerly and attempted to disguise this by talking and soothing the baby; when the mother moved on her from the left, Dolores, murmuring to the baby, began to use the room. Moving suddenly, going to the left, passing Owney’s mother, who was standing still for the moment, going toward the windows, she lengthened her stride as she used the room and came to the window and looked out at the fields of headstones in the pale morning sun. “Here,” Owney’s mother said, walking to her. Dolores moved away from the window, shoulder blades brushing the wall, and then she found herself in the corner and Owney’s mother had both her hands out and Dolores’s breath caught and she took a step to the side, turning her body and bringing up an elbow between herself and the mother. She walked across the entire room and pretended to inspect Owney’s closet.

  Owney reached past Dolores and she pulled away because she thought he was trying for the baby, but he simply closed the closet door. Dolores held the baby in front of her now, protecting her with both arms, looking directly into the face and small eyes that trusted and now she saw the blue veins of the mother’s hands that were so raised that they seemed to be throbbing. Clinging to her baby in a room with an unmade bed, with beer in the kitchen and a poisoned vision of a night in the first days of her life, she became motionless. Cornered, she screamed with her mouth shut.

  There was thick planking over the hole and they were putting metal braces around the top. They stood on the thick planking, which had spaces between the boards, an inch at the most, but enough for the eyes to peer through and see the darkness below. There was a small hole in the center of the planking. Feet moved with care about the hole. The shaft was a new one, on the fringe of the Van Cortlandt Park golf course. Someday, water would rise up the first five hundred feet of the shaft and enter a main. Now, it was a deep hole that had to be lined with concrete.

  Blaney, who had dressed for underground work, a light shirt underneath a rain slicker, now found himself doing a morning’s work outside in the cold spring air. He shivered.

  “This is as bad as Letterkenny,” he said. He was illegal Irish, who had arrived in this country on a piece of paper good for two weeks; he was now in his second year in the Bronx. He was chunky, with a square face.

  “Will I be able to see Danny Murphy out here?” he said.

  “Is that all you got on your flamin’ mind?” Delaney, the foreman, said.

  “I was in two places last night where they had the signs from the Fire-Department up. In the restaurant it says, only one hundred and eighty-seven is allowed in. Then I go to the Litram House on Jerome Avenue and it says right over the bar, only one hundred and eighty-seven is allowed in.”

  “Two places, you say?” Delaney said.

  “With my very own eyes, I saw the both signs.”

  “Then you’ll be fucking seeing Danny Murphy,” Pelaney said. “One hundred and eighty-seven.”

  “I’m going to be dancin’ in the Bronx tonight with my money.”

  Owney left the conversation as he saw Navy getting out of his old car out on the street. He walked down to meet him. “Can I talk to you?” Owney said.

  “I’m up for grabs.”

  “I went to a couple of meetings again,” Owney said.

  “Sounds good.”

  “Then yesterday I was over at my mother-in-law’s. I had the baby there all day. Dolores had to go to the library and she brought the baby over for the day, but I thought, well, it’s better for her if I keep the baby at her mother’s. I stayed there all day.”

  “That’s what Sundays are for. Everything go all right?”

  “Fine. I took the baby for a walk. I sat and watched the Mets game. I get along good with the mother. When Dolores came home, we had dinner. Then I had to go home. I’ll tell you, I decided that was the last night I’m going to do that.”

  “Go there to see them?”

  “No. Sleep alone at night. I loved holding my daughter yesterday. From now on, I want to hold my daughter whenever I want, and I want my wife in bed with me after that. I didn’t get married to be alone. Know what I mean?”

  “People discover that at odd moments. The first time I decided to hold m
y daughter was at her wedding. I went out onto the dance floor and said, ‘I want to hold my little baby.’ I wouldn’t let go of her. Twenty-four years old, she was. First time I ever really held her, I guess. The husband put his hand over my face and pushed me away.”

  “That’s not me anymore.”

  “For today.”

  “You could give her a call for me. No, better yet, you could go over and see her for me.”

  “Certainly. What am I supposed to say?”

  “Tell her I went to meetings and I’m not drinking.”

  “We’ve had this conversation before.”

  “It’s different. She could see for herself yesterday that I wasn’t drinking. If somebody tells her I’m not drinking at work, either, that could straighten it out. I’m going to be back with her soon anyway. Why do I have to wait?”

  “That easy?”

  “Well, it’s the truth. I told you she came and took me to a meeting. From nowhere she showed up one day. Then on Sunday, I told you, she had me come to her mother’s house. So it’s only a matter of time. Why don’t you tell her something good?”

  “I thought we agreed that I’m no schoolteacher giving out notes. What I will do, I’ll go to a couple of meetings with you.” When Owney made a face, Navy said, “Why haven’t I made any meetings with you, anyway?”

  “I go.”

  “But what do you get out of them? Do you put yourself up there? Say anything about yourself?”

  “You see for yourself, I’m all right.”

  “Today. Rather, this morning.”

  “Isn’t my word any good?”

  “A drunk’s word?”

  “I’m not a drunk.”

  “There’s your problem right there. As long as you talk like that, I can’t give you much help. When you put down the glass once, that doesn’t mean official retirement. Ray Robinson retired five times that I know of. You get a good drinker, lifetime, he makes a retirement announcement maybe seven hundred fifty times.”

  By now, they were standing alongside the excavation and Blaney, hearing this part of the conversation, said, “The people who want to take the drink away from a man would steal the Cross from Christ’s back and leave him hanging in the air.” With a shout, he jumped onto the scaffolding. “You can deprive the man of a drink. Not me. Tonight, I’ll be dancin’ in the Bronx.” He took a step. The joy in his shout turned into a scream as his legs went into the small hole in the center of the scaffolding. His body caused the boards, with the spaces between them, to click together. The hole in the center now was wide enough for a body to fit through.

  Owney threw himself at the wood. He landed on his stomach, with his chin on the wood, seeing blackness and hearing Blaney’s long, single scream as he fell down a shaft eight hundred feet deep.

  In Brendan’s, on Katonah Avenue, the day bartender was suddenly so busy that he had to throw his cigarette away and work with both hands. He looked out the window while he drew beer. “Danny Murphy.”

  “He’ll be here,” Delaney said.

  “The fookin’ number is going to turn up,” the bartender said.

  “Sure as we’re here.”

  “If he isn’t here in ten minutes, I’ll call up for him,” Delaney said.

  Owney tried to drown out the sound of Blaney’s scream by placing two dollars in the juke box and punching numbers randomly; he heard only Blaney. Beer tasted sour, but he kept drinking it. “I don’t want to insult you.”

  Navy’s creased face smiled sadly. “That can’t be done.”

  “Tastes lousy.”

  “It always does when you need it,” Navy said. “Alcohol is nothing but a traitor.”

  “I need something.”

  “Just don’t expect me to stay.”

  By now, the place was filled with bellies and reaching arms and then the bartender called out, “Hup,” and Danny Murphy, the left side of his face still discolored from his encounter with the baseball bat, pushed in. The barman slapped a hand into the cash register and pulled out a bill, which he held out for Murphy. “One eighty-seven!”

  “Put me in for one eighty-seven. Ten dollars,” Delaney said.

  “Twenty dollars;” Chris Doyle said.

  “On?”

  “One eighty-seven.”

  “It’ll fookin’ come in,” the bartender said.

  Danny Murphy nodded. “That’s the way it always happens.”

  Owney said, “Put me in ten dollars a day for the next two months. One eighty-seven.” Murphy held out his hand. “Mark me down. I’m good for it,” Owney said. Murphy nodded.

  “I want another ten. The man’s death has to stand for something,” Delaney said.

  Murphy was being pressed to the wall; hands that had been reaching for glasses now held out money, which Danny Murphy snatched.

  “One eighty-seven!”

  “What’s so bad if you win and give the money to his family?” Delaney said.

  “The fookin’ number is going to turn up,” the barman said.

  Owney pushed the beer away. “I don’t know if it’s the beer or the number. It’s making me sick. Probably the number.”

  “Then you ought to hang out in a funeral parlor,” Navy said. “Play every dead stiff’s pet number. You’re liable to wind up rich and sober.”

  On the way home, Owney stopped in a place in Flushing, but he couldn’t get Blaney out of his ears. He stopped at Gibby’s on Myrtle Avenue and looked at a beer and then went to see Dolores, who was not home. He played with the baby and left. When Dolores got home, she said nothing when her mother told her that Owney had been around.

  “He was very quiet,” the mother said.

  “And?”

  “He didn’t have anything to drink in him. He said he’d be over to see you and Christine tomorrow maybe.”

  “Fine.”

  Now he decides he’s married to me, Dolores said to herself. Just like nothing ever happened, dissolved consequences. I guess bringing him here Sunday was a mistake. She shuddered and went into her room.

  That Thursday night, at about nine o’clock, in the organic chemistry laboratory, she heard cellophane crackling somewhere around LaVine, at the next station. She looked up in time to see him pulling Lorna Doone cookies out of his pocket.

  “Give me one of those.” She pressed her hand against her stomach. “I’m starved.”

  “My dinner,” LaVine said.

  “So you’ll eat a diet meal.” She grabbed a cookie.

  “Don’t you eat dinner home?” LaVine said.

  “I’ve been here since nine in the morning,” she said.

  “Oh.”

  “And why didn’t you eat?”

  “How was I going to eat if I’m carrying a woman who was hit by a Sanitation truck? After something like that, I can’t stand the sight of gravy.”

  “That’s too bad if you’re so squeamish.” She took another cookie out of his hands and went back to her station.

  At ten twenty-five, with people starting to pack up, LaVine said to Dolores, “Can you get home without something to eat?”

  “No.”

  “Neither can I.”

  “I guess we’ll both be found on the roadside,” she said.

  “I’ll get you something,” he said.

  “No, I appreciate it very much, but you go to that place of yours. I’d prefer going home.”

  “What place? We’ll go anyplace you want around here.”

  “No, thanks. I’d like something to eat. But I just don’t feel like eating in a bar.”

  “We won’t go to a bar.”

  “Don’t be silly. You’re exhausted, too. You go have something to eat and have a few beers to relax.”

  “I don’t drink,” he said.

  “You do so.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “You invited me into that horrible place near where you work.”

  “And you didn’t show up.”

  She was surprised that he mentioned that. “It looked
like a dungeon.”

  “You think the place was that bad?”

  “From what I could see from the street, it was at least seedy.”

  “The only reason I’m in there is to watch the games with everybody from work. I don’t go into bars, otherwise. I don’t drink. I was raised in a house where nobody took a drink. So I don’t. That’s some case for genes. I don’t drink and I live in Queens. I’m the only one in the whole borough who doesn’t drink.”

  “There’s one other,” she said. “All right. Where do we go for something to eat?”

  “The pizza stand on Parsons.”

  “Fine.”

  She drove to the pizza stand, whose signs proclaimed “Real Sicilian,” and which served squares of wet cement that, if offered in the city of Palermo, would cause the counterman to face a unique negative reaction. They sat at a counter along the back wall and Dolores went for a moment to a phone out at the curb.

  “Everything is all right home. I worry when it’s this late.”

  “Who’s home?”

  “I have a baby.”

  “Oh. That makes it tough, doesn’t it? With your husband and all.”

  “We’re bringing nice modern complications to Glendale,” she said.

  “They like families there,” he said.

  “They love the idea of them. Sometimes I think all the families don’t like each other so much, but they stay together because everybody loves to see families together. They stay together for holiday pictures. Wait’ll they hear that I put in for a divorce.”

  “You did?”

  “Yes.”

  “You Catholic?”

  “Of course.”

  “I thought you weren’t allowed.”

  “That’s why I went to a lawyer.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “You’re married?” she asked.

  “No, not close.”

  He pushed half of the slice into his mouth.

  “You’ll choke.”

  He shook his head and chewed.

  “Where do you live?” she said.

  “Over in Long Island City. It’s close enough. But I don’t have any food home. I only have myself home. I have the second floor of a small factory. I’m two doors from the river. I look out the window at Manhattan. Then people in Manhattan look out the window and they see me. For ten thousand a month they see David LaVine in the window of his factory.”