I peeked over her shoulder. A school had burned down in Montana.
“Mr. Cheeseburger.” I motioned to George for a coffee.
“How come you not sit in back? You no like boys no more?”
“Hey, George, you know the Greek national anthem?”
“Never leave you buddies’ behind.” He winked.
“Charlene, I didn’t embarrass you in front of those girls yesterday, did I?”
“Whata you mean?” She scanned the paper.
“You know, when I said that thing.”
“What thing?” She licked her thumb and flipped the page.
“You know, that thing you know, ‘scuse me, girls…”
“Oh, no no no.” She stuck out her bottom lip, pouted and checked out “Moon Mullins.”
“Good, because I was a little worried, because I like you and you know I didn’t want, I don’t want…” Two soda truck drivers took a booth. Charlene got up and pulled out her order pad in one motion like a gunslinger. .
“ ‘Scuse me, Kenny.”
What the hell was I doing? She was pushing fifty, probably had sixty kids and a steamfitter husband. I felt embarrassed and stupid. La Donna was out twelve hours and already I was looking for a replacement. Always, always, when in doubt, whip it out. Think, Kenny, think. I carried my coffee to our table.
“How you doing, Big Tune?” I slid across from Al and slipped my case under the table.
“Hey, Kenny.” He didn’t look up. I peeked a look at his totals. He had down $650 in orders for the last week. I pulled in four and a half and I was scaling the heights. He must have been giving head with every order of five dollars or more. He finished up, stacked and tapped his sheets even, slipped them into his sample case and gave me a smile like “Now, where were we?”
“You’re here early.” He made a sweeping motion with his arms as if he were getting ready to conduct an orchestra and pressed the button on his red-tinted digital wristwatch.
“That’s a nice watch, Al. How many zorts that set you back?”
“This is a two-hundred-dollar watch. Look.” He twisted the face to me and tapped the light button to illuminate the dial. “Digital second hand, and digital date.”
“Big fucking deal, my watch tells me about the tides so I can go clamming.” I made to spit in his coffee, then grabbed his wrist. “Hey, wait, lemme see that again.” I hit the button on the dial.
Al glowed. “Nice, right?”
“Today’s the fourteenth?”
“If that’s what it says, that’s what it is.”
“Cock… sucker.” I collapsed back into the booth. “It’s Valentine’s Day then, right?”
“All day.”
How very depressing. I could at least mail my mother those pistachios, but that one got instantly vetoed. It would only make things worse. Make me more glum. I haven’t not had a girlfriend on Valentine’s Day since I was thirteen.
“You forget to buy your girlfriend a present?”
“Nah.” I held my head between my hands and pointed my nose at my coffee. “Whatsamatter, Kenny?”
There was something about that question, the way he said my name, that made me want to cry, to gush out the whole thing. I’d worked with Al for three years and I didn’t even know how many kids he had, what his wife looked like, what he did after work. Sales. Everything was sales.
“I dunno. I broke up with my girlfriend.”
“Huh.” Al frowned. “Was it serious?”
“We were living together.”
“Christ” He compressed his lips and shook his head like Charlene had over the six kids in Montana.
“It was no good, man, no good.” I hunched over, rested my elbows on the table and gestured with my hands held out facing each other as if to cup something. “You know what was no good? What else—the sex. The oldest story in the world. In the beginning we were like every other goddamn couple; we thought we invented it. Then, it went the way of all flesh.”
Once I started talking I had a terrific yet miserable feeling of letting go, of confessing, as though the only way to alleviate the craziness, the up-and-down mixed lunacy, was to dispense it orally, like a Sabin vaccine. Sixteen years after ninth grade I was finally hip to the compulsion of the Ancient Mariner.
“You see, I, I am a very sexual person. I need, I need…” I tapped his watch case absently with my fingernail. He sat there motionless as if his shirtsleeves were filled with sawdust. “I need to have sex, just to make me feel like I’m loved, vishtay? I need to feel like I’m being loved, like I’m needed . . .”
Al squinted and grimaced politely like I was going to ask questions later to see if he was listening.
“See, she used to have nightmares all the time. Not run-of-the-mill nightmares, but nightmares that were so bad she would jump out of bed crying, still in her sleep, mind you, and try to run away from whatever monster she had made up for herself. You follow?” Al frowned harder and fingered his chin. “And when that happened, I would run around to the foot of the bed and catch her, see? You know, like a Chinese fire drill. She’d still be dead asleep and shaking in my arms.” I shook for emphasis. “But in a few minutes, she’d nod out peacefully. Then I’d carry her back into bed and she’d curl up into me for the rest of the night.”
“Huh.” He scratched the side of his mouth. The flab of his neck lapped over his starched collar.
“Those times were the most intense physical experiences for me. I would tell her in the morning about it, but she’d never remember. She used to say she had never had a nightmare in her life.” I shrugged. “One time when I caught her she kept saying ‘Morto, Morto’ over and over again. I figured what the hell was that? It sounded like a Japanese monster movie, or maybe it was like muerto, which is Spanish for death, you know? Who knows? When I mentioned it to her in the morning she told me her grandmother’s name was Marta. That’s German. But she didn’t remember having a nightmare. So we were back to square one.”
“Huh.” Al twisted his neck as if his collar were too tight, bared his teeth and moved his jaw back and forth as though he was recovering from a sock on the chin.
“But! Now comes the sick part. In the last two months, I have been feeling so hard up, so needy around this bitch, that I’ve been trying to bring on her nightmares!” I leaned forward, lowering my voice. “I’ve been trying to induce her nightmares so I could hold her when she jumped out of bed! Is that sickness or what?” Al rested his hand on his wrist. “I would lean over her when she was sleeping and go ‘Wwwooo! Wwwooo!’” I made a soft ghost-haunting noise. As I did, Al slightly moved his left hand and tapped the button on his wristwatch. His eyes dropped for an instant to check the time, then he quickly looked up again, a nervous grin on his face, like a bank teller sneaking a push on the silent alarm button while staring at the hold-up man. I stopped dead. I was furious. I was making an asshole of myself again. He didn’t give a shit. Wooo. Wooo. Who the hell was I talking to? Fat fucking bastard. Jerry and Maurice came in then and for the next twenty minutes I clammed up. Al sneaked nervous glances at me every now and then but he wasn’t saying dick.
“Gentlemen, today we have a little change of pace.” He poured the contents of two cardboard boxes onto the table, a cascade of small pale green plastic vegetable brushes.
Suddenly it dawned on me why Al couldn’t hear any of the stuff I had been saying. Why he kept sneaking those nervous glances at me. It was as clear as the nose on his face. Al didn’t fuck. The guy was seriously overweight, he was pushing middle age, he was marriedmust be close to fifteen years from what I heard. He was the first in the diner in the morning, the last to leave at night, he never talked about anything but the business. He was a super salesman. Of course. He never fucked anymore. And to sit there and listen to me talk like a normal man with a healthy sexual drive must have driven him batshit. And once the other two donkeys sat down he shot me those glances because he knew I knew. It was right in his eyes.
As we filed out of
the diner, Al slapped me lightly on the back.
“Don’t worry about it, Kenny.”
“You neither, Al.”
“What’s this now?” The sixtyish guy stood barechested in his doorway, grumbling to himself, holding a vegetable brush at arm’s length, jerking his head back and squinting at it as if it were a newspaper.
“A vegetable brush, hah? Well, young man, I couldn’t buy it, because vegetables give me the shits.” He had a sharp-nosed narrow face, a gray brushlike crew cut coming down in a V between his eyes, and a heavy, well-groomed gray mustache.
“You don’t have to buy it, it’s free, Pop.”
His thin sagging arms and chest were covered with tattoos. Down his left arm was a list of girls’ names followed by dates—all from the 1930s. Over his left nipple was SWEET, over the right sour. A big anchor tattoo covered the inside, of his right forearm.
“I’ve got some other things you might be interested in.”
“You wouldn’t have a banana brush, would you? I like bananas.”
“I might. Can I come in?” I lifted my case off the floor and he stepped back.
It was a one-room studio on West Twelfth Street, almost by the piers. The place was immaculate, and even though he had plenty of furniture, its cleanliness made it seem almost barren. The yellow walls were thrown into deep shadow by drawn manila shades. There was a drab floral print convertible couch, a desk, a small coffee table topped with a dish of wrapped rock candy and the dried remains of a Rice Krispies breakfast. A black velvet wall hanging of a bullfighter in action was centered over the couch. A huge black and white television squatted in a corner, and a forties’ vintage refrigerator topped with a generator stood in a kitchen alcove. The television was on without sound. The picture was rolling. A bunch of spotted bananas nested in the crotch the antenna. I sat on his couch and peeled off my coat. The apartment was hissing with heat. I took out my hand cream, put it back, stared at my room sprays, mop head samples. I didn’t know what to show him.
“Young man? I noticed you couldn’t help staring at my tattoos.” He sat stiffly at one end of the couch and peered at me. “My name is Harry Bloom. Is anything unusual about that?”
“Whata you mean?”
“What does the name Harry Bloom tell you about me?” He smiled and placed his extended palms, elbows rigid, on his kneecaps. I didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about.
“I dunno, you’re Jewish?”
He dipped his chin to his left shoulder. “That is absolutely right. So, is there anything unusual about me?”
Besides the fact that he was totally fucking insane I couldn’t think of anything.
“I dunno, Pop, you got two dorks or something?”
“No.” He dipped his chin again. “Use your eyes.”
“You sure got a lot of tattoos.”
“And?” His voice lilted, like there was more to it. He had me stumped.
“I am the only Jew you will ever See with tattoos; it’s against the religion!”
“No kiddin’.” Maybe he was a renegade rabbi or something.
“In nineteen twenty, when I was sixteen years old, I enlisted in the merchant marines.” He spoke like he was reading his lines, telling the story for the two hundredth time. “When I was younger I lived with my holy mother on the corner of Stanton and Eldridge streets on the Lower East Side. I was trouble—in and out of -jail, drove my mother insane—so when I was sixteen I up and joined the merchant marines, lied about my age. Wound up on the Black Patsy bound for Barcelona and Algeciras. I was the youngest A.B. on board and the only Jew. I was a galley aid. Helped serve the meals. I took a lot of razzing about being a Jew. Got into a lot of fights too. I was a tough son of a bitch then.” He unwrapped a rock candy and chewed it like a pretzel nugget The muffled crunches inside his mouth sounded as though maybe he was eating his dentures.
“One day in May of nineteen twenty I was serving dinner and the first mate, Blassingame, called me over for a cup of coffee. He said, ‘Hey sheeny, more coffee.’ Well sir, I decided to ignore him, but he kept it up: ‘Hey Jewboy, hey sheeny!’” he shouted across the apartment. “Well, finally I couldn’t take it anymore so I dumped the pot of coffee on his head. Got thrown overboard for it.” He chuckled. “Lucky I wasn’t keelhauled. The next week we came into Algeciras, everybody was treating me white, we got to a whorehouse. They paid for me, we go to another whorehouse, out drinking. Next thing I know I’m back in my bunk. It’s Sunday morning, my head’s exploding and my arm is feeling sore. I look down.” He looked at me, his eyes popping with astonishment. “There was a big blue crucifix tattooed there! They got me drunk and took me to a tattoo parlor.” He hoisted himself back farther on the couch. “Well, I’ll tell you, I took off from my bunk like a bat out of hell. Went right back’ into town, found the tattoo parlor, woke up the artist and told him to change it into this here anchor. At first he wouldn’t do it, told me I would get gangrene, but goddamn, I said, I would rather die from gangrene than come home to my mother with a crucifix tattooed on my arm. So he did it, and I was sick for damn near three weeks with blood poisoning, but here it is. Once I got that one I figured I would be just as damned for one tattoo as a hundred so…”
“My father was in the navy.” As if that would make us relatives, or at least sea buddies.
“Navy’s the most anti-Semitic a the lot.” He nodded. He looked down at his breakfast plate, got up and whisked it away to the sink.
I started fantasizing about living in a house with the guy—father and son of Gloucester. Both of us in stocking caps and cable knits, hauling up full fishnets, sea chanties in the background, hot buttered rum, glass fishing balls, fishermen’s bars, gray skies, bar wenches soft and big-eyed. Yo ho! Yo ho!
“How long you out of the merchant marine?”
“Since nineteen thirty-eight. Drove a truck for the next thirty years. Now I get a nice triple pension, Seafarers, Teamsters and Social Security.” He washed his dish and returned to the center of the room wiping his hands. “Whata you got to show me?”
“I dunno, Pop, whata you need?”
He shrugged. “Not much. I could use a new deck of cards.”
“I’m the wrong guy for that.”
“I could use a new TV.” He grimaced at the rolling picture.
“Can’t you fix that?”
“Knob busted off in the back. I can’t get at the vertical hold.”
“Shit, I’ll fix it. You got pliers?”
He opened a drawer in the desk and foraged around. “Got a screwdriver.”
“Give it here.”
I sat lotus position behind the TV and checked out the problem. Like he said, the knob on the vertical hold was gone and the metal rod that controlled it was recessed inside the back panel out of finger reach. I stuck in the screwdriver, poked around, and a silent jolt of electricity shot up my arm.
“Ah shit!” I dropped the screwdriver and shook my hand. I felt like a jerk.
“Ah, no matter.” He opened a closet and prilled out a heavy chambray shirt. “I’m goin’ over to the club today anyhow.”
I was pissed he wasn’t concerned. I could have fried.
“I belong to the Poseidon Club, ever hear of it? I don’t know why you would have, just a bunch of senile ex-sailors playin’ cards. Boys got some interesting tattoos though. We got a nice library there too. You ever read Joseph Conrad? We get a concert now and then, truly can’t complain. You ever hear of Oscar Brand? Serve meals there too. I almost ate myself into the hospital last Christmas. Good bunch of boys.”
I got up and put my jacket on. He slipped on an old Chesterfield and opened the door.
“Who runs this club?”
“Seafarers.”
“I mean they actually plan stuff for you? They hang around there?”
“Oh no, no. They hire people, social directors, recreation workers, librarians, good bunch of boys.”
“Do they have to be sailors?”
“Oh, hell no.”
We walked outside together and headed downtown at a slow clip. “You know, the boys I play cards with, we added up last week, we got two hundred and forty-two years at sea among us. I’m the baby.” He laughed. “Also, I’m the only Jew still, but they’re good boys now.”
I walked him down to his club on Varick Street. It was a white brownstone, POSEIDON CLUB etched in a bronze plaque over the cornerstone.
“Pop, whata you play?”
“Pinochle.” He started climbing the steps.
“You need an extra hand?”
“G’wan.” He laughed- and headed inside. I went across the street to a phone booth and got the number of the club.
“Hello?”
“Yeah, hello, my name is Kenneth Becker. I’m majoring in social work and I was wondering if you have any job openings at the Poseidon Club. I’ve spent three years in the navy and your organization intrigues me.” Intrigues me. Bad word. Wrong word.
“Aw, gee, that’s nice, Mr. Becker, not many people ever heard of us, but ah, see, we’re a permanent staff of three here. We do take an MSW intern every now and then from Columbia. What school you go to?”
“University of Texas. I’m just visiting.”
“I see. Yeah, well, I can’t really help you much, but ah, thank you for your interest and good luck to you.”
“Right.” Just a thought.
What happened to me next was so incredible I still don’t believe it. I decided to do lofts on Spring Street for a change of pace and I wound lip walking in on a sculptor who ordered fifteen wax applicator heads for a conceptual piece; Then he called up some friends who came over and went through my catalogue, raving about what a gold mine it was. One chick wanted two hundred of my free sample vegetable brushes. I felt like a right-wing capitalist sitting there in my suit. These people were my age, but they all seemed like college kids. Like we were from two different planets. I left with over two hundred dollars’ worth of orders for tilings I had no idea how to spiel about because I had no idea what they were going to be used for. I was afraid if I pitched I would be laughed at I asked for and got a fifty percent deposit on all the orders. I felt like a pig, or one of the over-thirty establishment slobs, because customarily I never asked for more than a twenty-five percent deposit, but their orders were so big and all those dudes were wearing ripped T-shirts and shit—I just needed the security that I wasn’t going to be taken off when I delivered that coming Friday. The whole thing embarrassed me, because I wasn’t a redneck, but we were just from different worlds and I had to be sure.
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