Wherever There Is Light

by Peter Golden

  “Toots,” Fiona said to her, “don’t take any lip off a landlord. They’re all Satan’s spawn. If he gives ya any shit, tell ’im you’re Black Irish and your old man walks a beat. If that don’t work, send one of these lugs here to beat him senseless.”

  Dinner was the Tavern classic: aged prime rib, baked potato, and string beans. As they ate, Fiona asked Kendall her opinion of Paul Henry.

  “Who?” Eddie asked.

  “The painter,” Fiona said. “Does landscapes of west Ireland.”

  “Never heard of him,” Eddie said.

  “I read about him in a book.”

  Eddie said, “You’re not supposed to be smarter than me.”

  “Too late,” Fiona said. “Now let Kendall talk.”

  Julian swelled up with pride as Kendall said, “Henry was influenced by Vincent van Gogh and his painting Starry Night. It was how he learned to capture landscapes and people as they were—stripped of the usual Irish romanticism.”

  Despite his pride, the excitement in her voice saddened Julian, that she was so enchanted by a world he knew almost nothing about, and he despaired of ever catching up with her regardless of how many art books he read.

  For dessert, they had coconut cream pie, which had achieved some nationwide fame because of the radio and newspapers. The pie was deemed so fundamental to the restaurant’s success that the recipe was stored in a safety deposit box at the National Newark and Essex.

  “Could either of you ladies learn to bake this?” Eddie asked.

  Fiona and Kendall looked at each other.

  Eddie said, “I hear the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.”

  Fiona and Kendall began laughing and, nearly in unison, answered, “A little lower.”

  Later, in bed, Julian reached for Kendall, and she gave him a fast hug and sat up, lighting a cigarette and dropping the match in the yellow, butterfly-shaped glass ashtray on the night table. She exhaled a curl of smoke. “Do you think I can be an artist?”

  “Isn’t it more important what you think?”

  “Probably, but I want your opinion.”

  “I’m not an art critic.”

  “I’m not asking for a review.”

  Julian held out his hand for the cigarette. She gave it to him. He took a drag. “I think you can be anything you want. And I—”

  “You?”

  Julian stubbed out the cigarette in the ashtray, and he heard the forlorn notes of a lost child in his voice when he said, “And I hope some of what you want is me.”

  “Just hold me.”

  “Not in the mood?”

  She didn’t answer and lay with her head on his shoulder and his arm around her. A few minutes later, Kendall said, “I’m going to start looking for a place on Monday.”

  “Okay,” he said, and wanted it to be, but it wasn’t, and he’d look back at this moment, this beat of fleeting time, and wonder if this was the night he began to lose her.

  Chapter 18

  Kendall was grateful to Fiona for recommending that she wear comfortable shoes, because after two weeks in Greenwich Village she felt as if she were trying to rent in the whites-only section of Lovewood. At an apartment hotel on Grove Street, where a sign above the entrance claimed Suites/Apts Avail, she asked the goggle-eyed man at the desk in the lobby if he could show her a rental, and he said, “I can’t. My foot hurts.”

  “Will it be better soon?”

  “Maybe in twenty, thirty years.”

  And Fiona was right about the toilets. At a townhouse on West Fourth, where a studio in back off the garden had been listed for rent in the Herald Tribune, she rapped on the door with the brass knocker, and an old man in a black silk dressing gown came to greet her and exclaimed, “Bella, the new maid’s here!”

  Only one person demonstrated any kindness. When she inquired about an apartment above a candy store on Bleecker, the paunchy, middle-aged soda jerk replied, “I apologize, my sister just rented it.”

  As Kendall started to leave, the soda jerk said, “Ya know the bandleader Noble Sissle?”

  Hoping the fellow might have reconsidered, Kendall smiled at him. “I don’t.”

  “Noble got a singer looks like you. Lena Horne. A real doll.”

  “You think Lena Horne knows where I can get an apartment?”

  Before he could understand that there was more irony in her question than curiosity, Kendall was gone.

  With minor variations, these scenes reoccurred day after disheartening day, and yet, after she rode the train back to Penn Station and Julian picked her up and asked, “How’d it go?” she always answered, “Didn’t see anything worth a damn.”

  In part, she lied because she knew he’d offer to solve her problem, which Kendall didn’t want him to do. Her other motive for lying was less virtuous: Kendall resented the white people who rejected her, and she found herself, against her will, resenting Julian right along with them. Unfair, yes, but true, and she castigated herself for her ugly secret.

  Her frustration didn’t dampen her enthusiasm for the eccentric cosmos of the Village. A wispy man, bearded like Father Time, walking a quartet of calico cats on leashes down Perry Street and stopping people to ask for donations so he could finish composing the greatest history ever written—An Oral History of the Universe. In Washington Square Park, a group of short-haired white women in camisoles, dancing in a circle in the fountain while a Negro man watched from a bench, playing a guitar and singing the blues. In the Life Cafeteria on Sheridan Square, where Kendall regularly stopped for an egg-salad sandwich and carton of milk, she encountered bohemia in its full odoriferous flower: prostitutes, women and men, decked out for a party by lunchtime; assorted cranks and philosophers arguing; writers and painters scribbling in notebooks or drawing in sketchpads on their knees, all of them engaged in the hallowed task of translating their ephemeral misery into deathless art.

  Now, late on this windy October afternoon, Kendall was hurrying along Seventh Avenue. She had just overheard two sailors at the cafeteria talking about rentals on Washington Square South. The door was answered by a heavyset guy with bear tracks of coffee stains decorating his undershirt. He looked Kendall up and down as if trying to determine whether she met some preconceived specifications.

  “I’m Herm,” he said, leading her down the steps of the brownstone. “The building’s been converted into apartments, so if the basement ain’t to your liking, I got one on the third floor after New Year’s. Rent for either’s a hundred a month.”

  That was fifty dollars less than Kendall had budgeted, and her heart almost leapt out of her chest. As a painter, she was concerned about the presence of natural light, but up a few stairs off the kitchen was a solarium that led to a walled, flagstone patio.

  “It’s perfect,” Kendall said when they were back outside.

  “Swell. So all’s you gotta know is my end’s a third of your take.”

  “Take?”

  “You’re a working girl, yeah?”

  “I’m going to the Art Students League.”

  “That’ll bring in a classier trade. And I get a ride a week—on the house. I wouldn’t ask, but the wife died in July.”

  Kendall backed away, unsure what had her more worked up: Herm assuming she was a prostitute or imagining her mother lambasting her with an I-told-you-so.

  Herm interpreted her reaction as an objection to his terms and, like a carny barker attempting to drum up an audience for a freak show, said, “You’ll make good money. And the last girl in the basement met a peach of a fella. They got hitched, and I hear he got elected to Congress.”

  She wasn’t able to stop herself from crying until Julian met her train in Newark. He put an arm around her and gave her a hankie. She dried her eyes and, after telling him the story, said, “Am I ever going to find a place?”

  “Absolutely,” Julian said.

  Chapter 19

  Orchard Hill Township was in the northeastern border of Essex County, five square miles of dairy fa
rms and apple orchards that, acre by acre, were being acquired by Julian with an eye toward putting up housing developments. The county population was over eight hundred thousand, with fifty-two percent of it jam-packed into Newark, and Julian was betting that sooner or later people would trade the city for the suburbs.

  The three men in charge of the local government—Chairman Warren Willingham and the two other members of the Township Committee who elected him—were weasels of the highest order. They had appointed their wives as the sole agents for every land sale in Orchard Hill, and not only were they pocketing a six percent commission, they goosed up the asking price on the parcels. Julian accepted this as an inconvenience of the real-estate game. But when he asked Willingham to rezone a portion of his acreage from residential to commercial so one day he could put up an outdoor mall with all the stores that families would need, Willingham said the rezone would cost Julian twelve grand—four for each member of the committee.

  Julian wasn’t inclined to pony up; the committee was already screwing him. But he calculated that his investment in Orchard Hill would earn a fortune, so he forked over the bribe. Except Willingham wasn’t done. Yesterday, he’d phoned and demanded another nine grand to modify the zoning, which was why Julian was more than slightly pissed off when he entered the Township Committee meeting room with Eddie carrying a new leather briefcase in each hand and another tucked under his arm.

  Willingham was at one end of a polished walnut table, his two lackeys at the other, and a mural covered the wall behind them—a bunch of Puritan assholes swindling some Indians out of their land by trading them axes and kegs of rum.

  “Mr. Rose,” he said. “Good of you to stop by.”

  In Julian’s experience elected officials came in two basic flavors: hard guys like Mayor Scales in Lovewood with his folksy gab and unabashed belligerence, and the oilier version embodied by Warren Willingham with his salt-and-pepper-haired, craggy-faced earnestness, and bogus rectitude oozing from every pore. Scales annoyed Julian, but Willingham reminded him of a venerable parson who in his off-hours was humping every girl in Sunday school, and Julian had to stifle a desire to break his jaw.

  “I bribe a guy,” Julian said, “he’s supposed to stay bribed. I don’t like chiselers.”

  “I would guess chiseling was a modus operandi with your people.”

  “My people?” Julian said, aiming his icy blues at Willingham.

  “Bootleggers, Mr. Rose.”

  “Alleged ex-bootlegger,” Julian said, knowing that Willingham had meant gangster and Jew. “Where’s the rezone paperwork?”

  One of the lackeys held up a sheet of official township stationery. “Here. The chairman has to sign it.”

  Eddie set a briefcase before each of the two men, then brought Julian the other one and the piece of paper, and returned to watch the lackeys. After reading the rezone order, Julian stood over Willingham, putting the case, paper, and an uncapped fountain pen in front of him. Willingham flicked up the brass clasp and peered inside the case. “Empty. I’m disappointed.”

  Julian withdrew a penny from the case and held it up with the thumb and index finger of his left hand.

  “Not empty,” Willingham said. “Let’s say the pot’s light.”

  With stripes of red, white, and blue, the mayor’s tie resembled a barber pole, and Julian took the tie in his right hand and read the label.

  “Ohrbach’s?” Julian said. “You shake me down for twelve grand, and you shop at Ohrbach’s? You’re a chintzy prick.”

  Letting go of the tie, Julian plucked the fuchsia paisley pocket square from Willingham’s suit coat and, like a magician about to perform a trick, began rolling up the penny in it.

  “I’m not so easily entertained,” Willingham said.

  “That kinda talk frightens the secretaries, does it?”

  “Don’t be foolish. The township has a police force.”

  “You figure they get here before the ambulance?”

  Willingham sprang to his feet. He was almost as tall as Julian, but older and not as strong or quick, so beyond flailing his arms there was nothing he could do when Julian grabbed the lapels of his suit coat, slammed him onto the table, and, with his thumb, started shoving the pocket square with the penny in it into one of his nostrils.

  “This is all you get from me,” Julian said, pressing with such force a nasal bone cracked, all the while wishing that he could do the same thing to those SOBs who refused to rent Kendall an apartment.

  “Stop!” Willingham yowled. “Stop!”

  Julian released the mayor, who eased himself into his chair, using the paisley silk to blot at the blood trickling from his nose.

  Julian held out the fountain pen. “Give me back my twelve grand or change the zoning.”

  Willingham’s right cheek was puffing up. He took the pen and signed.

  “Enjoy the briefcases, boys,” Julian said, taking his pen and the paper and walking out with Eddie.

  Chapter 20

  You sure you don’t want any help?” Julian asked, pouring pancake batter onto a griddle. Kendall still hadn’t found a place, and she’d become so remote that he was worried about her.

  “I appreciate the offer, but no.”

  “I’ve got business in the city today,” Julian said. “I could drop you off.”

  Kendall nodded. “I have to register for a class at the Art Students League before I . . .”

  She went to get dressed without finishing her sentence. Nor did she perk up in the car, but at least she was talking. Julian couldn’t bear her silence. It reminded him of living with his mother in Berlin.

  “What business do you have in the city?” she asked.

  “Going over some numbers for a guy.”

  “For your friend Abe?”

  “Siano Abruzzi.”

  “I read about him in the Star-Ledger. He’s a mobster. The head of his own gang. Didn’t he almost kill Abe?”

  “They had a disagreement. A long time ago.”

  Kendall looked at him, but Julian couldn’t tell if she was curious about his meeting Siano or suspicious. She was so perceptive that Julian would have to watch his mouth, especially now. The disagreement between Siano and Abe had escalated into a war. The Abruzzis had tried to horn in on bars supplied by Abe, and Julian and Eddie beat one of their salesman senseless. Siano sent a pair of his goons to shoot Abe, and Julian and Eddie buried them in the Dumpster behind Giordano’s Bakery. Then Abe cut a deal with Siano. War over.

  “I’m gonna be working till the afternoon,” Julian said, as he let her out at the arched doorway of the Art Students League. “I can come get you. We could get a bite or see a movie.”

  “There’s a luncheonette next to the Loews on Seventh Avenue and Twelfth. I’ll meet you there at four.”

  Julian tuned in WNEW and whistled along with one of his favorites, Benny Goodman and his band doing “Sing, Sing, Sing.”

  Things were looking up.

  The luncheonette was empty, and Kendall sat in a booth by a window with gingham curtains. A waitress in a white-trimmed black uniform came through swinging, saloon-style doors and set a pie plate on the counter.

  “Pardon me,” Kendall called. “May I have a cup of tea?”

  The waitress glanced at Kendall. Her gray hair was wound so tightly in curlers that her eyes appeared half shut. “We’re out,” she said.

  “Coffee then?”

  “The urn’s getting scrubbed.”

  “A Coke?”

  “Syrup’s gone but we maybe got some bottles in back.”

  The waitress barged back through the louvered doors as Julian came in, removing his hat and sitting in the booth.

  “Drink up,” the waitress said, putting a glass of Coke on the table.

  Julian said, “I’d like a Coke too, please.”

  “How nice,” the waitress said, and disappeared.

  Kendall sipped the soda, then spit it out into the glass. “Jesus, God, there’s vinegar in it.”


  Kendall looked mad enough to skin the waitress. Julian helped her on with her coat and put on his hat. The waitress was standing behind the counter next to a man in a grease-stained shirt and pants. He had a handlebar mustache and was as squat as a circus strongman.

  Kendall walked over, Julian beside her. “Was that vinegar?”

  The waitress said, “You don’t like our soda, go somewhere else.”

  Kendall pointed her index finger at her. “You redneck bitch—”

  “Watch your mouth,” the man said, coming around the counter. “That’s my wife.”

  Julian stepped toward the man. “How much for the pie?”

  “The lemon meringue?” the man replied. “It ain’t for sale.”

  “I’ll take it to go.”

  “I says that pie ain’t for sale. Beat it.”

  Julian tossed a fiver on the counter next to the pie and, when the man looked down at the bill, Julian slipped his hand under the plate and smashed the lemon meringue in his face, then shoved him backward so that he stumbled against the sink.

  When Julian turned around, Kendall was gone.

  Julian had found a space less than a block from the movie theater, and Kendall was in the passenger seat. As he got into the Packard, she said, “What the fuck’s wrong with white people?”

  “You mean the Ku Klux waitress and her husband? Or you mean all white people?”

  “Do we have to talk about this?”

  “You brought it up.”

  “I mentioned it.”

  “Isn’t that the same thing?”

  “I wasn’t inviting you to a debate.”

  Once, when Eddie was yammering on about Fiona arguing with him until he felt as if she were sticking one of her knitting needles in his eye, Julian told him that any guy dumb enough to argue with a dame deserved his fate. Now, instead of heeding his own advice, he pressed on: “You were simply stating the facts.”

  “I was stating the facts as I’ve experienced them.”