He Got Hungry and Forgot His Manners

by Jimmy Breslin

  “Nothing. Let them talk. The only thing anybody really cares about is the rents. Only the rents. That’s all that is really sacred. Otherwise things run for the usual motive. Sheer jealousy.”

  She said this firmly, as one who understood the alliance that ran her city. She had seen it for herself on the afternoon in the walking ring at Belmont Park racetrack before the Belmont Stakes, the walking ring for this race a gathering of only the rich and known. A group of builders and the governor, his face red as a lobster from luncheon wine, laughed uproariously at one another’s jokes. It was clear to Octavia that each was insanely jealous of the other. Who is this scruffy little wino to be so important, the builders obviously thought, at the same time feeling terribly uncomfortable in the presence of a true star of what the builders regarded as the real world: politics. That day Octavia had seen that the governor was uneasy in the presence of those who could make so much money in a world politicians find most mysterious: private business. It was by using this jealousy and fear that people such as she, at the top of New Opportunity, could work with much success over long days and weeks.

  Now, in the penthouse apartment, she took Bushwick by the arm and led him into the dining room and introduced him to people and Bushwick kept saying “Pleasure,” and he didn’t remember one face or one word, and as he was terrified of taking a seat at one of these round tables with all these lacquered people, he made his way to a huge picture window and here, thirty-five stories down, was a streak of fire running straight up the island of Manhattan, the great avenue at night, the firelight rising so high that it turned the air to gold. They have so much money they end the night, Bushwick thought. Below he saw a brilliant white circle, the ice rink in the middle of the soft darkness of Central Park. Perhaps two hundred tiny forms skated in a slow circle.

  A man was standing alongside Bushwick, a man curried and combed, wearing a rich double-breasted blue pinstripe. “The one thing disappointing to me about this building is that they close the rink and shut off the lights at night. You can’t look at the people skating,” he said.

  “That is a shame,” Bushwick said.

  “I wonder if there is somebody we could call to keep the rink open at least until one A.M. or so when I go to bed. Keep it crowded with skaters, give me my view.”

  “You live here?” Bushwick asked him.

  “I’ll be moving in as soon as the decorator finishes,” he said.

  “Maybe we’ll force people to skate all night,” Bushwick said.

  “Well, I don’t see how you can make them.”

  “Use convicts,” Bushwick said.

  “Do you really think you could do that?” the man said.

  “Better than sitting in a cell all night.”

  “I suppose it is. But wouldn’t the security be too costly?”

  “Not if you locked the skates on their feet. Then they couldn’t go anyplace,” Bushwick said.

  “Wouldn’t that be amazing?” the man said. His mind was at midposition between ludicrousness and actuality and for the moment he had no idea which was correct.

  “Is your apartment like this one?” Bushwick asked the man.

  “Pretty much so.”

  “How much does one like this cost?” Bushwick said.

  “Five million.”

  “For that you should get ice skaters all night.”

  “I’ve got till next year, anyway,” he said. The man’s hand waved at the elegant room. “It’ll take them till spring to finish the building and my apartment. In the meantime, I’m trying to survive in hotel living.”

  “Which one?” Bushwick asked.

  “The Carlyle.”

  “You can survive there,” Bushwick said.

  “If you call four rooms surviving.”

  “Dear Fred Taylor, what are you doing there?” Octavia Ripley Havermeyer, hands on her hips, scowled at Bushwick like a schoolteacher.

  “Talking.”

  “But there is a whole table full of people who want to talk to you. Come now.”

  She led Bushwick to one of the large round tables and sat him down.

  The man next to Bushwick nodded. “How do you do? My name is Sidney Golden. I own 246 Park Avenue. That’s a nice office building, fifty-four stories. I own 813 Park Avenue. That’s a residence. Twenty-one stories. That’s who I am. Tell me who you are.”

  “I’m Fred Taylor. I own some things, too.”

  “Where?”

  “In Queens.”

  Octavia Ripley Havermeyer, unsure whether Bushwick was being serious or outrageous, but taking no chances, leaned forward and broke in.

  “Does anybody know a good foot doctor?”

  “I can find out from my wife,” Golden said.

  “Fred Taylor, did you try the salad?” Octavia said.

  Satisfied that Bushwick’s mouth was full and that Golden would talk about foot doctors for five minutes or so, Octavia relaxed. Oh, she could have talked buildings with the man all night, but for what? Her family had owned the land under Golden’s buildings since the 1800s, and Golden’s ninety-nine-year lease would expire in the year 2036, at which time the land and all that was on it, the big beautiful buildings worth hundreds of millions, would revert to the Havermeyer family. “This family came here from Rotterdam to rule,” her grandfather had always insisted. The only way to rule was to retain control of the land. Octavia Ripley Havermeyer’s antecedents were among the thirteen original members of the Dutch West India Company and thus belonged to the handful of adventurers who founded New York. They were the first to push into the desolate lands of upper Manhattan, where Octavia owned parcels of most priceless land, from the core of the earth to the top of the sky, and thus was worth a fortune that would be handed down to her family for entire centuries to come.

  Next to her, Golden, living for the moment, was lustrous. At fifty-four, he had dark wavy hair with curls on each side. He and his barber allowed some gray, so he would look distinguished, but not so much that his twenty-five-year-old wife, who professed such desperate love for him, would decide he was too old and take the complaint to her lawyer. The twenty-five-year-old, in a Bill Blass black that was a size too small for her, sat a table away.

  Golden spoke in low tones to the man next to him, Robert Whalen, another major builder.

  “I have the feeling that they simply have more teeth.”

  “How could one set of teeth be different from another?” Whalen said.

  Octavia said, “You must forgive me for interrupting, but I do so want to pick up the thread of your conversation.”

  “We’re talking about dogs,” Golden said.

  “Oh, how cheerful. Are you showing at Westminster?”

  “Not quite,” Golden said. “I have been having trouble with teeth. I can hardly believe it, but the dogs I like best, good young Dobermans, have plaque, just like humans do. The plaque pushes the gums back and loosens the teeth. Just as if it’s your grandfather. My God, if there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s a Doberman with loose teeth.”

  “Dobermans are so sleek,” Octavia said.

  “The sleekness doesn’t attract me. The original reason I went to Dobermans was that I fell in love with their teeth. I thought they had more teeth than other dogs. They remind me of sharks. Teeth growing all the way down the throat. Break off one set of teeth and you have another just waiting to catch onto you. So I wind up with dogs that have plaque. You know what? To scrape away plaque, you have to put the dogs to sleep. You can’t tell one of them to open his mouth. Have to knock him out.”

  “If Dobermans get plaque, then get another breed,” Whalen said.

  “The Dobermans are the only breed on earth.”

  Octavia Ripley Havermeyer looked with some alarm as Bushwick picked his head up from the salad and said, “How many of them do you have in your kennel?”

  “Kennel? I got twelve of them out on the street around my buildings.”

  “Oh, to keep people away.”

  “Of course.”r />
  “The drug addicts and criminals?” Octavia said hurriedly, particularly when she saw Bushwick’s scowl.

  “No, the homeless,” Golden said.

  “Whatever it is that they pretend to be,” Whalen said. “Who knows what they are? Why don’t they sleep in subway stations where they belong? I guess they’re all on drugs. But there is no way to have decent real estate with them hanging around every nook and cranny of a building. You ask them to leave and they just sit and stare. But when you have a man patrol your building with a dog, they go away and they don’t come back.”

  “The dog sniffs out their drugs,” Octavia Ripley Havermeyer said, her voice at least strained.

  Golden smiled slowly. “My dogs don’t sniff. My dogs bite.”

  Octavia Ripley Havermeyer understood the subject, protection of property, but here she had the sudden burden of Bushwick sitting at the same table. Why did they have to send this young man from the office to this party? They usually had people silent and unconcerned and so happy to get a meal in splendor that they suffered through anything. But this young man clearly was agitated and about to do something bold.

  “They can’t very well with sore gums,” Octavia said, her voice a little tense as she tried to think.

  “That’s why this plaque has me crazy,” Golden said.

  “I still think you should try German shepherds,” Whalen said. “They are a bigger dog. They might even have bigger teeth.”

  Golden shook his head. “You take a German shepherd. As good as they are, there is still a quality about a German shepherd that you want to reach out and pet him. You don’t do that with a Doberman. You look at them and what do you think of? Mafia. That’s what they are. Mafia dogs. And with those yellow teeth sticking out of that black mouth. That’s for me. A couple of my good alert guards swagger around with the dogs and these other people simply leave.”

  “If the dog bites the guard, he got a lawsuit against you,” Whalen said.

  Golden shook his head. “Not my guards. You ought to see them. I have twenty-five former Rangers who guard the buildings.”

  “Who pays them?” Whalen asked.

  “I take it out of the tax fund. I was supposed to pay thirty million in taxes for the first three years. The city cut it to nineteen million for me. It gives me something to play with. You should see them. They wear berets and fatigues and polished boots, just like in Vietnam. They have some kind of pride. They were fighting in Vietnam. Now they’re keeping people away from a building. But those boots are polished.”

  Octavia, voice more strained, said, “This is all well and good for dinner conversation, but tell me, Mr. Golden, what happens if the dogs actually do bite a person?”

  “That’s exactly what I pay for,” Golden said.

  “They have actually bitten people?”

  Golden said nothing.

  “Can’t these people sue you for a fortune?” she asked.

  “Not these people.”

  Her lips immediately trembled with indignation, but Octavia also had her usual difficulty in understanding that what she was hearing was real. For the world that she had small glimpses of, the one out in the streets, and this one here, with which she was most familiar, were in such contrast that the differences frequently stunned her, and at times such as this, when some man next to her said the most atrocious things, she was capable of having proper emotions but at the same time found her insides inert, as if they had just fallen from a horse.

  Octavia arose and put a hand on Bushwick. “Dear me, I forgot that you had to get something signed. If you gentlemen will forgive us.” Bushwick, who had an idea the party was over, picked up a piece of chicken with his bare hand and ate it as he walked out of the room with Octavia.

  “Oh, I don’t know what I can possibly say to you except that these men contribute money that does reach the poor dears with whom you deal.”

  “I guess so,” Bushwick said dully.

  “I am so mortified!” Octavia said.

  “I don’t know what to tell you,” Bushwick said.

  “It’s part of what we have to bear,” Octavia said.

  “Not to insult you, but I don’t know how anybody can sit here and listen to these people,” Bushwick said.

  “For now, please try to understand how ragged my heart is about tonight.”

  “You don’t mind if I go?” Bushwick said.

  “Oh, of course not.”

  “Because I would’ve had to go anyway, I guess.”

  She smiled and touched his arm and he walked out of the apartment and she went back to the table, feeling quite relieved. She also immediately changed the conversation from dogs to show horses.

  4

  BABY ROCK HEADED STRAIGHT FOR the lights of a subway kiosk: when sick, go to a doctor; when black, head for the subway. Baby Rock went up to the change booth and asked the man which side the Brooklyn train came in on. “This is the side.”

  Baby Rock slapped the change tray. The clerk was about to push out a token when he saw that Baby Rock had left nothing. He loped up to the turnstile and put the fingers of his right hand on the turnstile and, just using the fingertips, nothing else, went up into the air, spun spectacularly, and went over the bar backwards, laughing at the change booth man. Great Big walked up to it and merely stepped over. The two were gone down another flight of stairs to the train platform. Cosgrove ran to the turnstile, thought the jump was too high, and thought just for a moment before dropping to his knees and crawling under, and that was all the change clerk needed to summon a cop.

  A metal door alongside the toll booth opened and a young cop in a leather jacket, with a radio in one hand and a summons pad in another, appeared. Cosgrove smiled benignly and said that he appeared to have lost his money. The cop smirked. “I’m not the police upstairs. I’m transit police. We don’t care if the Pope shows up here. He got money or he can’t get in.”

  Cosgrove was amazed that the subway police would not honor a priest. Then, looking at the cop and seeing unmistakable Italian features, he understood that the situation would not change. “Priest hater,” he muttered.

  Suddenly, there was noise from the staircase and a crowd of people came down, many of them white, apparently coming from a theater, for they held programs, and the young cop began to watch over them, particularly when a few blacks also appeared. Still, he never really took his eye off Cosgrove.

  Baby Rock came back up the stairs, saw the problem, took out a matchbook, folded it, and stuffed it into the coin slot. Then he stood there. An old woman, carrying purse and theater program, came up, dropped her token, and tried to go through the gate. It didn’t move. She looked at the coin slot and shrugged and pushed the turnstile again. When nothing moved, she walked purposefully back to the change booth to complain. Baby Rock bent over the change slot, put his mouth on it, and sucked the token out of the slot. He put his hand to his mouth, dropped the token into his hand, and handed it to Cosgrove. “My man, let’s make the train.”

  When they got off at the last stop, in East New York, a subway worker told them how to get to Cozine Street. Following directions, they found themselves passing Baby Rock’s store. He jumped inside and threw the blanket over himself. His white sneakers showed from under the end of the blanket and he passed out.

  Cosgrove and Great Big walked through the last of the night and again came to the part of Cozine Street where the street dipped, but this time, following directions, they walked in the darkness and came up the hill on the other side and a block down they came to an old church, dull red brick, with a similarly old rectory attached to it. Alongside the church litter was spread across a lot that ran into a stretch of vacant land that led far out to the bay, and beyond the bay, as the sky indicated, there was more water, endless water, the ocean. Cosgrove rang the bell; it was some time before an old pastor peered around a curtain, saw Cosgrove, and with much unsnapping of locks opened the door.

  “You were due last week.”

  “We got los
t.”

  “Well, I’m in bed. Who is this with you?”

  “My friend.”

  “Well, you and your friend come in. I’m sleeping.”

  Cosgrove looked at the sky and the empty land running out to the water. “I want to stand here for a minute,” he said.

  “Have it your way. I’ll be in bed. Lock the door after you. You never know who comes in here, day or night.”

  Great Big followed the pastor into the house, folded himself up on the floor, and was asleep.

  Cosgrove stood on the stoop and looked at the sky and thought for a moment that he was back where he was born, in Dunboy in Ireland, in the western part of county Cork, in a hut atop a cliff that was a hundred feet over a cold and angry Atlantic. The ocean waves slapped high on the side of the cliff and threw white salt water far up, all the way up to the tough grass in front of the hut. The cliff where the hut sat formed one side of Dunboy Bay, which is so deep and almost so endless that it should be considered an elbow on the ocean rather than a separate body of water.

  On the rectory stoop in East New York, Cosgrove remembered a spring day when he had stood in the saltwater spray at the cliff as gray clouds spread high in the sky, and through them came a single shaft of light that poured across the ground around him as if it were the hand of God. Looking down the bay, he saw a section of clouds darker than night, thunder sounding in them, thunder loud enough to startle people many miles away, as deep orange lightning exploded in the black clouds, the bolts turning yellow-white as they darted to the land. Farther down, at the shoulder of the storm, bright sunlight covered several miles and washed the air blue and caused the land to appear fresh green and the white huts to glare like mirrors. The sunlight ended suddenly at a dull gray sky that covered the town of Dunboy, whose narrow streets and low stone buildings sat in a wonderful drizzle. Usually, in less than an hour, these different forms of weather changed places, with the sun momentarily on the town and the lightning out at the mouth of the bay, where it flashed down and struck the cliffs. As a child, he had often hidden inside his mother’s coat when a hailstorm trapped the two on the road while they walked home from the store. The hailstorm came at the end of a bright spell. Life inside the hut was lived in the relentless whistle of wind that was exciting and even comforting for a short while, but then became torture that left an imprint on the bones.