“Yes,” I said. “Mrs. Halpern, I wondered if—”
“Benny, you’re sick!” Mrs. Halpern said with satisfaction. “I knew it last night when you called a few minutes before seven. I knew it, Benny! I knew it in my bones! Benny, what have you got?”
I wondered if there was a word for it. “I haven’t got anything, Mrs. Halpern.”
The irony of my own remark snapped back at me like the flick of a knotted handkerchief. The bruise inside my head winced away from the blow.
“You mean you’re not sick?” Mrs. Halpern said.
The fact that she sounded disappointed did not surprise me. She had made her diagnosis the night before on the phone. She would stick to it until she was proved right. Guiltily, I wondered if it would not be only fair to Mrs. Halpern for me to get sick at once.
“No, I’m fine, Mrs. Halpern. I really am.”
Fine for what? I would not earn my salary for Mr. Bern on this day. That much was certain.
“Then why are you calling so early in the morning?” Mrs. Halpern said. “It’s not even yet eight o’clock, Benny.”
“I wondered if I could talk to Hannah?”
“I’m afraid not now, Benny.” Mrs. Halpern’s voice, always as hearty as that of an umpire, had sunk to a whisper. “She’s sleeping like she was hit on the head.”
In a flash of savagery, I found myself wishing she had been. But it was only a flash.
“Is she sick?” I said hopefully.
After all, maybe that was the simple explanation. She’d had an attack of something or other in the balcony, while I was buying the knishes, and Sebastian Roon had hurried her home.
“No,” Mrs. Halpern said. “She’s just a little crazy.” Hannah? That quiet, calm, smiling, soothing, acquiescent girl? With whom I had been eating Gabilla’s knishes for almost a year?
“Mrs. Halpern,” I said. “How do you mean crazy?”
“What do you call a person, Benny, she comes home it’s almost six o’clock in the morning?”
The answer that surfaced on my surge of rage seemed better left unuttered.
“Six o’clock in the morning?”
It seemed safer to retreat behind a repetition of Mrs. Halpern’s words. She seemed to like my response. So she repeated the words.
“Six—o’clock—in—the—morning,” Mrs. Halpern said. “Can you imagine, Benny?”
Only too well.
“Where was she?” I said.
“I thought she was with you in Loew’s 180th Street,” Mrs. Halpern said.
“Not till six o’clock in the morning,” I said.
“Of course not,” Mrs. Halpern said. “I knew Benny Kramer would not keep my Hannah out until six o’clock in the morning.”
Perhaps Benny should have tried.
“Did she say where she was?” I said.
“What she said, she said don’t bother me with questions, Ma, I’m a wreck, I have to get some sleep, and she’s getting it,” Mrs. Halpern said. “God knows where she was.”
It was a cinch I would not get the answer from Him.
“Mrs. Halpern, when she wakes up, would you tell Hannah I called?”
“What else?” Mrs. Halpern said. “A call from you, Benny, I’m going to keep it a secret? You want she should call you back?”
“Yes, please,” I said. Then: “No, wait. I’m at the office, so I—”
“Now?” Mrs. Halpern said. “Sunday? Eight o’clock in the morning?”
“Well, we’re pretty busy these days,” I said. “So I don’t know where my boss will assign me today. I mean on what audit he’ll send me. So maybe it would be better if I called back?”
“If you want,” Mrs. Halpern said. “Sure, Benny.”
“What would be a good time?” I said. “I mean when do you think she’ll wake up?”
“I don’t have to think,” Mrs. Halpern said. “In this house nobody sleeps after twelve o’clock. Even on Sundays. I’ll wake her up twelve sharp.”
“Okay,” I said. “Then suppose I call, say, a quarter after?”
“Perfect, Benny,” Mrs. Halpern said. “That will be fine.”
It proved to be somewhat less than that. Mr. Bern did not send me out on an audit. After he had given the members of the staff their assignments for the day, and they were gone, Mr. Bern told me he wanted me to spend the day with Miss Bienstock, straightening out the file room. These fits of tidiness seized Mr. Bern two or three times a year. It annoyed me that he should have chosen this day to have one of these fits.
There were no unexposed phones in the Maurice Saltzman & Company offices except in the private rooms of Mr. Bern and Mr. Saltzman. All the rest were out in the open: in the room where Miss Bienstock and Lillian Waldbaum worked. I did not see how I could possibly call Hannah in their presence. As Miss Bienstock and I worked away, I kept an eye on the Seth Thomas that hung over the switchboard. When the hands touched noon, and the minute hand started creeping to the right, I started to sweat.
“Miss Bienstock,” I said. “Maybe if we don’t go out to lunch we could finish this job today? I could go down for sandwiches?”
For a few moments Miss Bienstock gave the matter her perplexed attention.
“Let’s just get through G,” she said finally. “We’re near the end of it, and after we have a bite we can tackle H. Okay, Benny?”
“Sure,” I said.
I poured myself into the letter G as though I were chained to an oar in a trireme. We finished, and stood on the brink of H, at seven minutes after twelve.
“I know what I want,” I said. “Ham on a roll and coffee. Okay for you too, Miss Bienstock?”
“Well,” Miss Bienstock said through her troubled frown, “I was thinking maybe an egg salad on white toast?”
“Whatever you say,” I said, heading for the door. “Egg salad on white toast. With coffee?”
“No, milk!” Miss Bienstock shouted, snatching up her purse and running after me. “Here’s the money, Benny!”
“Pay me later!” I shouted across my shoulder, and pulled the door shut behind me.
The elevator was my first piece of luck that day. It must have been on the way down, and just above our floor, when I jabbed the button. The door opened promptly, the car swayed a bit as I jumped in, but the operator brought it smoothly without a stop to the lobby. I was in the Liggett’s phone booth at twelve minutes after twelve, and it was thirteen after when Mrs. Halpern answered the phone. “It’s me,” I said.
“Benny?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Could I talk to Hannah, please?”
“Benny, I’m sorry, no,” Mrs. Halpern said. “She woke up half-past eleven and when I told her you called, and you were calling again a quarter after twelve, she said she couldn’t wait. She had a date for twelve o’clock.”
My heart, dropping swiftly in the general direction of my rubber heels, gave me the courage to say, “With who?”
“That girl who works in Hannah’s office?” Mrs. Halpern said. “Grace Krieger? You know her, maybe?”
“Well,” I said, “I’ve met her. Mrs. Halpern, you wouldn’t happen to have her telephone number? Miss Krieger?”
“No, but wait,” Mrs. Halpern said slowly. “I think it’s a Walton? No, wait. The Walton, that’s my brother Aaron in Brooklyn. Honest to God, me and my head for numbers. Wait, Benny, wait, I think maybe—”
“That’s okay, Mrs. Halpern,” I said. This was no time for one of those performances at which my mother excelled. I didn’t want to wait, and I didn’t want Mrs. Halpern to think. I said, “I’ll look it up in the phone book, Mrs. Halpern. Thanks, anyway.”
There were no Kriegers in the Bronx phone book. Bitterly, I thought this was just as well. I recalled the ambience of the encounter during which the night before I had fallen from Grace.
I stared out of the phone booth and watched the soda jerk behind the fountain as he lovingly built a banana split. Inspiration struck. I invested another nickel and called my home. My mother answered the
phone. “Ma,” I said. “It’s me. Benny.”
“Something is wrong?” she said. “It’s the middle of the day. Why should you call me in the middle of the day, Benny?”
“I’m worried about Seymour,” I said. “He didn’t come home all night, and before I went to the office this morning I looked into my room. His bed had not been slept in, Ma.”
“When did you go to the office Benny?”
I had not looked at my watch when I left the house or when I reached the office. But I made a swift backward calculation. I had completed my chores by ten to eight. That meant I had started them ten minutes earlier, at twenty to eight. On Sunday the trip down from the Bronx on the IRT took almost exactly one hour. So I had been in the subway at twenty to seven. Five minutes for the walk to the train, and I must have left the house at twenty-five minutes to seven.
“Ma?”
“Don’t scream,” she said. “I’m here, Benny.”
“I left the house at around six-thirty, twenty-five minutes to seven this morning, the latest,” I said. “At twenty-five minutes to seven this morning, Ma, Seymour had not slept in that bed.”
“He started sleeping in it ten minutes after you left,” my mother said. “I woke up when he came in. It was a quarter to seven. I went out and asked him if he wanted a glass of milk, maybe, but he said no. He just wanted to go to sleep, he said. So he went to sleep. You don’t have to worry, Benny. Seymour is one hundred percent all right.”
“Did he say where he was all night?” I said.
“In Brooklyn,” my mother said. “There’s two men they want to buy finished jazz bows for their store, it’s on Bushwick Avenue, but they couldn’t see Seymour until after the store closed, and on Saturday night it closes, the store, it closes one o’clock in the morning or later. They talked, they went out to eat something, and then the long trip back to Tiffany Street, the poor boy, he didn’t get into bed before a quarter to seven, like I said. But don’t worry, Benny. Like I also said, Seymour he’s one hundred percent all right.”
A bit of vitriol came boiling up inside me, but I did not let it pass my lips. My mother loved that double-crossing, two-timing Cockney bastard. Loved him enough to believe his silly story about Bushwick Avenue in Brooklyn.
“I’m glad to hear it,” I said. “Could I talk to him, Ma?”
“If you know where he is,” my mother said, “sure you can talk to him. I’m stopping you?”
“Isn’t he in the house?”
“Not anymore,” my mother said. “He woke up half past eleven. I said I’d make him a few latkes for breakfast, but he said no, he didn’t have time. He had an appointment for twelve o’clock.”
Social life in the Bronx, I thought sourly, had suddenly started to center around high noon.
“Did he say when he’d be back, Ma?”
“Do you tell me when you’ll be back?” she said. “And you’re my son yet.”
“Well, Ma, in case he should get back, please tell Seymour I’ll call him at six o’clock.”
Even though at six o’clock Miss Bienstock and I were still only halfway through T, I was able to make the call without going down to Liggett’s. Mr. Bern had gone home at five. He and his wife were going to a wedding. At six o’clock I went to his office and used his phone.
“No,” my mother said. “Seymour didn’t come back yet.”
I hung up, tried not to think, and called that goddamn number which I never had to look up.
“No, Benny, I’m sorry,” Mrs. Halpern said, “Hannah didn’t come home yet. When she comes home, is there anything you want I should tell her?”
The temptation to make the classic reply was almost overwhelming, but I resisted it. As long as I didn’t slam any doors shut, there was still hope. Anyway, I could believe there was still hope. That, in itself, was an achievement.
“I’ll try her later tonight,” I said. “Tell Hannah I’ll call her later tonight.”
When I did, at nine o’clock, Hannah had not yet come home. I did not have to call about Seymour. I had made the call to Hannah’s house from my own home. Seymour was not in it.
He was not in it when I went to the office the next morning. Again, his bed had not been slept in. And again, when I called Hannah from the office, Mrs. Halpern answered.
“The girl must be going but real crazy, I mean it,” she said. “Like yesterday morning six o’clock? Again this morning she came in six o’clock. And this morning it’s not like yesterday morning. This morning is a Monday. She has to go to work.”
“Is she?” I said.
“She’s got to,” Mrs. Halpern said. “If Hannah gets fired, how are we going to pay the rent?”
It was a problem with which I did not feel at the moment I wanted to cope.
“So she is going to work?” I said.
“How much work she’ll be able to do today, God alone knows,” Mrs. Halpern said. “But she said I should wake her up at eight o’clock so she can get to the office. Two hours sleep. After yet yesterday only five hours. Benny, can you believe it?”
I was beginning to. Nevertheless, when I took Mr. Bern’s vici kids down to the lobby, I skipped the ruggle and cuppa cawfee. Instead, I went across the street to the phone booth in Liggett’s, looked up the number in the phone book, and called the office of Gold-Mark-Zweig, Inc., on Mosholu Parkway.
“Gold-Mark-Zweig, good morning.”
I recognized the voice of Grace Krieger. So I disguised my own. “Miss Halpern, please,” I said.
“Who is calling, please?”
Through the phone booth door and the plate-glass window beyond, I could see the huge sign on the gray building on the Seventh Avenue corner: NOBODY IS IN DEBT TO MACY’S.
“This is the Macy’s shoe department,” I said. “Miss Halpern ordered a pair of shoes from us two weeks ago, and she said I should call her at her office when they came in. They’ve just come in, but I’m afraid they’re not exactly the color she wanted, so I thought I’d better talk to her before I send them back. May I talk with her, please?”
“Not today,” Grace Krieger said. “Miss Halpern won’t be in today.”
“How about tomorrow?” I said. “May I call her tomorrow?”
“If you don’t mind wasting a nickel,” Grace Krieger said. “Miss Halpern doesn’t work here anymore.”
I hung up and called the Halpern house. Mrs. Halpern said I could reach Hannah at her office. She had gone to work an hour ago. So I knew that either Mrs. Halpern or Hannah was lying about whatever it was that was happening. By now I had no difficulty with deciding in my own mind which of the two I could believe. I settled for Mrs. Halpern, and wasted no more nickels on Hannah.
I concentrated on trying to arrange a face-to-face meeting with Sebastian Roon. I got nowhere, except with working on and building up to rather large proportions the suspicion that my mother was covering for him. There could not, it seemed to me, be any other explanation for what was happening.
Every night, when I came home from C.C.N.Y., Sebastian Roon was out. Every morning, when I left for the office, his—or rather, my—bed was empty and had not been slept in. Every noon, when I called my mother, she said he had come in soon after I left, slept for a few hours, and left the house just before I called. The third day I called at eleven. My mother said Sebastian had just gone out. The fourth day I called at ten. He had just gone out. The fifth day I called at nine. He had just gone out.
“After less than two hours’ sleep?” I said.
“He’s a big boy,” my mother said. “I should go counting how many hours he sleeps?”
“How about the jazz bow business?” I said. “Without sleep, he can’t be giving you very much help.”
“Who needs help?” my mother said. “I know how to run my own business.”
That night, when I came home from C.C.N.Y., I took one more stab at it.
“Ma,” I said as I munched my slab of honey cake and sipped my glass of milk, “I just thought of something.”
�
��What?” my mother said.
“Maybe Seymour has found another place to sleep?”
She looked up from her account book and gave me a long, cool stare. I had the feeling that she was trying to decide whether or not to let me in on something she knew. The decision went against me. My mother shrugged.
“Who knows?” she said, and went back to her account book.
Saturday morning I decided there was only one way to settle the confusion with which I had been living. I called the Halpern house. Hannah was out, of course. Mrs. Halpern was friendly, as always.
“I may not get a chance to call again today,” I said “So would you mind giving Hannah a message for me, Mrs. Halpern?”
“Mind?” she said. “For you, Benny, anything.”
“Tell Hannah I’ll meet her under Goldkorn’s clock tonight,” I said. “Regular time.”
Regular time was not, of course, seven-fifteen, the time Hannah and I had agreed upon when we arranged our first date almost a year ago. Regular time was seven sharp, the time I always arrived at Goldkorn’s clock and always found Hannah waiting under it. On this Saturday I arrived at Goldkorn’s clock at a quarter to seven. Hannah was not under the clock. I settled myself against the tall iron pillar on top of which the clock sat. Waiting was all that was left for me.
Goldkorn’s clock was enormous. Four feet across from the nine to the three. Sitting twenty feet in the air, on the pillar against which I leaned, Goldkorn’s clock could be seen and read clearly all the way up to Bronx Park and all the way down to Grand Concourse. The digits were as big as the identification numbers on the chests of long-distance runners, and the hands could have been used as baseball bats.
These hands, which were moved by some sort of electrical mechanism, did not move smoothly and imperceptibly, like the hands of a watch. On Goldkorn’s clock it was never, say, ten and a half minutes after the hour. On Goldkorn’s clock it was always either ten minutes after or eleven minutes after. The electrical mechanism sent the minute hand forward in jumps, a full minute at a time. If you were anywhere within ten feet of the clock, you could hear the heavy muffled thump as the hand moved.
When I took up my position under the clock that Saturday, the minute hand was on nine. A quarter to seven. When I heard the thump overhead, I did not bother to look up. I knew it was fourteen minutes to seven. Fourteen thumps later I did not look up. Seven o’clock on the button. Then I looked up to Bronx Park, and down toward Southern Boulevard. No sign of Hannah.
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