From then on, Ratso was on his own. He was sixteen, with no special training for life. But he did have a quick natural intelligence, and, like most persons raised in large families, he was a good, fast liar. With these assets, he took to the streets.
Ratso could talk about the Bronx, and he could talk about Manhattan, and he could talk about nearly any thing under the sun. But his best subject was Florida, and though he had never been there, he spoke more positively and with greater authority on this topic than on any other. He often studied folders in color put out by transportation companies or perused a stack of travel clippings collected from newspapers; he also owned a book called Florida and the Caribbean. In this splendid place (he claimed) the two basic items necessary for the sustenance of life—sunshine and coconut milk—were in such abundance that the only problem was in coping with their excess. For all that sunshine you needed wide-brimmed hats, special glasses and creams. As for coconuts, there were so many of these lying about in the streets that each Florida town had to commission great fleets of giant trucks to gather them up just so traffic could get through. And of course coconuts were the one complete food: This was common knowledge. Anytime you got hungry, all you had to do was pick one up and stab it with a pocketknife, then hold it up to your mouth. Ratso was unable to tell about this without demonstrating with an invisible coconut. “Here your only problem is,” he would say to Joe, sucking at the air between phrases, “—you want to know what your only problem is here, diet-wise? It’s the warm milk running down your face and neck. Yeah, sometimes you got to exert yourself, you got to reach up and wipe off your chin. Tough, huh? You think you could stand that? I could. I could stand it.” As for fishing, he made this sound so simple Joe actually got the impression you didn’t need a rod and reel or even a pole. Without examining the picture too carefully for probability, he had formed a kind of cartoon image of the two of them standing near the water saying here fishy-fishy, at which point a pair of enormous finned creatures would jump into their arms precooked. A silly, happy thought, and he could smell the fish plain as day. Sometimes to keep this pleasant discussion going, Joe might feed a question: “But shee-it man, where in hell would you sleep? They got no X-flats down there, you can bet your smart ass on that.” But Ratso had an answer for everything. At this cue he would begin to tell of the endless miles of public beaches on which had been built hundreds of pagodas and pergolas and gazebos; under these, on sun-warmed sand or softly padded benches, protected from rain and wind, one slept the sleep of Eden.
Most often under discussion, however, was the subject of their financial problem. Ratso was inclined to belittle any so-called honest solution. Neither of them was sufficiently presentable to get a job that would pay them at a worthwhile rate, nor had either of them been trained for such work. Besides, any course of action involving full-time employment did not seem worthy of being called a solution; such talk Ratso considered frivolous and had no patience with. Of course, living by one’s wits was just as problematical in its own way as legitimate work: Competition was overwhelming, one had constantly to be on the lookout for a new angle and, finding one, to be ready for its sudden obsolescence. (“For example, them goddam parking meters; right?”) As for Joe Buck’s earning potential, it was Ratso’s considered opinion that he had not a hope in hell of making a living from women. Such a profession was extremely specialized, requiring a wardrobe, polish, and a front. The cowboy gambit wouldn’t work on New York women. Not only was this costume an almost purely homosexual lure;, it was severely specialized even within that group, attracting to it almost exclusively a very small masochistic element. (“Never mind what that is, you wouldn’t believe it if I told you.”) Sometimes, against his own better judgment, but in an extremity of hunger, he would arrange for Joe a fast five-or ten-dollar transaction in which little more was required of the cowboy than standing still for a few minutes with his trousers undone. But these unhappy conjunctions usually left Joe in a depressed and disturbed state of mind. He felt as though something invisible and dangerous had been exchanged, something that was neither stated in the bargain nor understood by either of the parties to it, and it left him sad and perplexed and with an anger he couldn’t find any reasonable place for. Ratso agreed this was a poor way to earn a dollar. He claimed that prostitution had always been the hardest profession in the world as well as the most competitive—and even worse in today’s world, where the commodity was being given away free in such liberal quantities. The only way to do really well at it was to rob the patron, but this required an adroitness and a sense of timing Ratso felt was lacking in his cowboy friend, and he did not encourage him to enter this extension of the market. Ratso did credit himself with the needed wit and cunning for it, but his chances of success were severely limited by the condition of his leg. (“Now you take your average fag: Very few of em want a cripple.”)
Ratso had a specialty better suited to him: He was a pickpocket. But he wasn’t very good at it. Too often he would be caught in the act by someone twice his size who could have hauled him off to a policeman with no trouble at all, and Ratso would then have to undergo the indignity of pleading for mercy on the basis of his crippled leg. He was more skilled at a variation of this form of theft, but this variation required a greater investment of time and was apt to be less lucrative as well: He would sit in a bar and strike up a conversation with a stranger, then watch for the moment at which he could steal the person’s money. Sometimes he would lose up to an hour and come away with nothing more than a little change in his pocket and a beer or two under his belt.
Joe was disgusted by this kind of operation (“Makes me puke!”) and would have nothing to do with the gains from it. Ratso would have to invent some cock-and-bull story to explain this kind of money, otherwise Joe would refuse to swallow so much as a hamburger purchased with it and would go around for days with a face as long as time.
But Joe was still in the first flush of his friendship with Ratso Rizzo, and during these weeks nothing that happened seemed quite so terrible to him as the prospect of being once again a totally alone person. Even though he had stepped free of those lone years and had entered upon this new time, they still existed somewhere, shadowing even the present like some creature of nightmares, black and ruthless and many-armed, ready to snatch him back into more and more and more solitude.
The pair drifted along through October and into the foul November weather with nothing very remarkable taking place in their lives.
The sameness of their days, and the feeling of being trapped with no real prospect of things getting better, caused in Joe a growing restlessness, an agitation that was often downright painful. It was as if Manhattan were his cell and the cell was shrinking at a nightmare rate, and he was doomed to pace back and forth in it in ever smaller steps until finally it would press in upon him altogether.
They suffered one cold after another. Ratso especially: His voice had taken on a basso profundo rattle that Joe found comical in one so small. He gulped cold remedies and cough syrup in such quantities he went about light-headed and drowsy, and he had no appetite for real food. Now and then he got down a few spoonfuls of soup or a Hershey bar. And of course coffee. He could always drink a cup of coffee and smoke a cigarette. Whenever he watched Ratso smoke, Joe got the feeling there must be some special life-giving substance in the tobacco that only Ratso knew how to extract.
November was a cruel month for persons who hovered as much in doorways as they did, a cold month and a damp one, and windy, too. And it seemed that as the weather worsened, they were more and more in the streets. The temptation, of course, was to stretch the nights out as long as possible, lingering in the shelter of the X-flat. But each in his own way had developed a kind of fear of the place, and the extra hours spent there were hateful ones. Threatening, too. Somehow they knew that if you settled for this kind of hiding there was no telling what would become of you. No wizard was on his way there to knock on the door and offer them magic to change their fort
unes, or even food for that matter. And they knew it, and so it was all right to lie down in such shabby, make-do safety in the nighttime for real sleep. But to be awake there in the daylight, when the shadow of that big white X fell across the room like a message, was to indulge in a comfort so sinister as to be actually tiring. Nor was this matter ever discussed. It didn’t need to be. For in any kind of foul weather, no matter how sick they felt and no matter how grimly attractive the place seemed by contrast with their poor, poor prospects on the streets, they were out of there by noon.
Signs of Christmas appeared in the store windows and in the streets. But such a holiday had nothing to do with either of them. The sameness went on and on. Ratso appeared one day with a big sheepskin-lined greatcoat, offering it to Joe for a present. He claimed it had been given to him by an overstocked dealer in exchange for a small favor, but Joe had reason to believe it’d been stolen at the movies. He said you couldn’t go around stealing winter coats unless you knew for certain the owner had another one somewhere, and he ended up making Ratso feel so bad about the matter he simply hid the thing away in a cupboard. Joe went on wearing his catsup-stained yellow leather jacket. He claimed not to feel the cold, but he shivered a lot just the same and was always finding excuses to duck into stores and vestibules and theaters.
At certain odd moments Joe knew that the restlessness he felt had nothing at all to do with the sameness of his days. Somewhere in him was the knowledge that there was no such thing as sameness: You might do the same things and cover the same streets and even think the same worrisome thoughts, but inside, deep where you couldn’t see them, things were changing and changing and changing and working up to the point where they would come together and show. And then before long you would be saying that something had happened, and your life would suddenly be so different to you you would hardly even recognize it as your own.
But Joe’s was not the kind of mind that could take hold of such a thought with any good firm grip and keep it. It would appear to him for a moment or a split second and then recede as if it had a life and a rhythm all its own. So that, to Joe, his own anxiety seemed most often to be a fear of nothingness. Only at these odd, unexpected moments would it be a fear of something.
And then there came a night in early December when this waiting time ended altogether.
13
“Him?” said the boy.
“Just a second, let me look,” said the girl. She tapped Joe on the shoulder.
It was a December night. He was having coffee in the 8th Street Nedick’s when he heard these voices behind him. He turned and found himself being studied by two childlike young people dressed in identical costumes: black turtleneck sweaters and tight black jeans. They seemed to be brother and sister, perhaps even twins. There was no great difference in their apparent genders. Her hair was short for a girl and his long for a boy. Both were blond, gray-eyed, and gently pretty; neither wore any makeup.
The girl was clearly the bolder of the two. She took hold of Joe’s chin and examined his eyes. “Oh yes, definitely,” she said to her brother. “Definitely him.”
The boy smiled in a meaningless way and handed Joe a small piece of thin orange paper rolled into a scroll and held together by a gummed silver star.
Then the boy and the girl left the place. Joe, caught by something peculiarly calm and deliberate in their manner, watched until they were out of sight before opening the scroll. A message had been printed on it by hand in black ink:
You are expected to appear before midnight at the kingdom of hell which is located in a filthy loft on the northwest corner of Broadway and Harmony Street. There you will be poisoned.
Hansel and Gretel
MacAlbertson
Joe went outside and looked in all directions, but there was no sign of the MacAlbertsons. He looked at the note again, read before midnight, and then consulted the clock on the red brick tower next door to the women’s prison: it was eleven o’clock. He lit a cigarette and contemplated the good fortune of being handed something by these strange blond youngsters. The traffic light changed. Pedestrians trying to cross the street bumped against him in their effort to avoid old snow piled up at the curb.
Joe read the note over and over again. He realized he’d need help in interpreting the thing. Ratso was probably working a certain Sixth Avenue saloon. Joe crossed the street, headed in the direction of the saloon, when he caught sight of Ratso under the green awning of a newspaper vender. He was wearing the controversial sheepskin coat, and when he saw Joe coming there was a defiant look in his eye. For his part, Joe was pleased to see the thing getting some wear. He handed the orange scroll to Ratso.
“If you want to read something,” he said, “read that.” Then he explained to Ratso how the note came to be in his possession. “In that whole place,” he said, “they only give one to me.” He tried to hide the pride he felt.
Ratso pulled the great collar up about his ears and started to move. “Let’s go,” he said.
“Whay-whay-whay-where?” Joe said, following close beside him. “I mean what is the damn thing? Is it some kind of a advertisement, or a religion, or a what? ‘Cause we don’t know what the hell we’re walkin’ into.”
“It’s a Halloween party.”
“Halloween? This ain’t Halloween. This here’s December.”
“So what do you care? It’s a party, and we’re invited.”
We? Joe wondered. “It don’t say nothing on there about you,” he said.
“Agh!” Ratso waved the thought away.
“Man,” Joe said, “they sure look me over ‘fore they hand me that thing.”
They were walking east on 8th Street, headed toward Broadway.
Yeah, Joe thought, they sure look me over good, and the one says, Him? and the other’n says, Oh yeah, definitely. Now I wonder how come they picked me? Is it my boots and my hat? Something about my face? Just sexiness in general? Or what?
The thought of his sexiness, a suddenly remembered asset, caused him to smile and laugh out loud. They were passing a bakery that had an amber-tinted mirror in its window. Joe swung his face quickly toward the mirror, hoping to catch some of the good of that smile. He caught a little of it.
Midnight Cowboy Page 15