Grack touched the tapioca cluster of swelling on his friend’s neck. “What’s the matter, mumps?”
“No, swollen glands from a pimple on my collar,” Scardini said. “Always get ’em like that. They cut off the glands for that sometimes.”
“You got to be real careful.”
“Yep, second worst place to have a infection in the glands. But how you been all this time, Grack?”—nodules of flesh on his neck and shivering false jowls when he craned and greeted. Goiter coming. “What say, Grack?”
“Mr. Scardini,” Grack said, having greeted his old friend Itch, “let me present my dear buddies Bud and Joy.”
Scardini took Joy’s hand and murmured, “Why, hello there, Joy,” and then looked his congratulations at Grack from a yellow-fleshed, oiled-down, slicked-up head. A saliva line of unhappy digestion creased Scardini’s lips, leatherstained by blood from somewhere. I believe he was not a well man.
“These kids are true friends of mine,” Grack announced, liking the sense of taking over after so long—better even than a habit for making the pride feel good. “Treat ’em like my friends. They used to be with it.”
“Nice!” said Scardini’s worn mouth. “Kids like them?”
“With it and for it,” Grack answered him, “used to be.”
Scardini risked the fissures of his mouth in a smile and lifted both arms to show us his G. Washington place. I could smell the camphor ice he had rubbed on his lips. “Then stay as long as you have pleasure here! How you want the rooms, Grack?”
Joy answered coolly, without waiting for jokes. “One for my husband and me, Mr. Scardini,” she said, “and one for Grack—they don’t have to connect. And thanks.”
Oh, said Scardini’s mouth, figuring this one out as best it could. The mouth cracked and opened for Joy, meaning, a cute trick she is, the eyes rolling to Grack for further explanation.
29. Poor Scardini, he was only Fred Trapp
I NEVER knew that Grack had such a friend as Scardini, a gutty, chicken-necked, flabby-breasted manager, gastric and troubled by piles, with a glove compartment full of special creams: “Me First Everywhere,”—his motto. First everywhere, but he was Grack’s friend, too, just like me.
A man with a habit rarely takes well to friends—does he need them? The answer: why does he need them? Grack seemed to need me, all the same, and this is one of the strange things that might happen even deep within a habit, despite its withering against the odd and familiar edges which define life. In a habit you need no more adventure, no more novelty; you need no more friends or family, no more job or pleasures—you need only to get your mainline when you need it. Grack wanted me not only as a help to getting to Windsor, but also as a reminder of his days in a life outside the habit, and maybe even because he liked me. I was fond of thinking of myself as an exception to habits. That Joy troubled him was the bother of friendship, exclusive and jealous, I thought. He wanted me to remember how he used to lead me although I now did the leading.
Well, now I wasn’t sure just what about Grack and Joy. He looked at her more softly through his red-rimmed, yellow-dusted eyes.
Scardini seemed to be a friend, too. Grack sat with him to talk the whole day through, in low voices in the next room, and twice I heard them clap and roar with laughter. When I came back from changing the oil and greasing our Dodge, Joy said, “Grack’s been laughing next door. Almost forgot what that sounded like.”
It made three times in one day, odd for a habit, which doesn’t need the fast switch of laughter. Scardini must have been a close history to him. Joy and I shrugged for annoyance that Grack could laugh for his pal Scardini and not for us. Let him be as happy as he could.
“How do you feel, Joy?”
“Fine. Quieted down inside.”
“You look like a kid.”
“Wait a few months and I’ll wheel my belly ahead of me. I’ll be good for shoplifting, Bud.”
“Never mind, never you mind. I’m going to get a job of work and we’ll pay for what we swipe. That’s the plan I’ve got.”
She grinned. “Mighty sweet of you to do that for me, Bud boy. Want to kiss?”
I did. I moved my mouth over her loving frown, that warm tussle of pleasure and devotion in the face. What if I had nobody, nothing? What if I had killed a man? What if my friends were not my friends and not even my enemies cared about me? What if my habit gave me no pleasure? What if I were a Kiskeedee with a mother so old she walked sideways and nothing more in my life at all?
I would look for Joy to kiss and feel better. If I had no Joy, well, then maybe I’d look to cross over the International Bridge.
We were kissing again later when Scardini came to our door, lightly tapping and rocking on his too-high leather heels. Where does a man pick up shoes like that and does five feet four really like so much to be five feet five? His sick mouth contemplated himself with a little scowl. He was stretching to be taller, making his face long, while Joy fixed her skirt. Agitated and filming at the eyes, a grease of self-seeking starting from his nose and thick pores on his forehead, he was a cruiser in Cleveland and now cruised over my face, thinking, So you’re Grack’s Bud Williams, are you? He started into brisk words for us: “Hello, kids, hiya. He’s bad.”
“What?”
“Grack.”
“What’s up?”
“He’s bad, so bad.”
“What do you mean, Mr. Scardini? You deciding now who is bad and good? I suppose you get lots of experience in the hotel business.”
Scardini smiled the thin-lipped scowling smile of the man used to being disliked. It was okay. He didn’t need friends; he had ways; and besides, he had a pet friend or two. “Poor Grack,” he said, “he felt good, but now our Grack has got the shakes. We better get out and get him his sugar he needs. I know a place.”
He cocked his head at me. Joy looked something at me which I could not quite read: Don’t go, go, something like that. There was one of those tense pauses which a carnie talker so much dreads: who’s buying what? She waited me out.
“I’m carrying the boodle, I’ll go with you,” I said finally.
Scardini nodded and his plucked eyebrows shot up. “The whole family going?” he asked in a particular nasal voice.
Joy spared me his ridicule. “No,” she said, “the rest of the family will make itself comfortable in Scardini’s G. Washington Motel, thank you.”
“Then come on, Bud,” said Scardini, “we’re going out.”
The way he took to my name, Bud, made it clear that Grack and Scardini had had a long talk. He must have said a couple or three times, Bud, Bud, Bud, for this eaten-mouthed runt to say smoothly Bud at me.
“You sure you have some things to do?” I asked Joy. “You don’t want to come with? You all right?”
Joy showed her teeth to say that what she had was not sickness but health, and we exchanged smiles. I kissed her goodbye the way a husband might on his way to the office. Her arms around me were finely downed arms, sleeves pulled up tight over the bare round flesh—that nice pressure of sleeve on nice arm! She strolled with me to Scardini’s Cadillac and said goodbye again while he absently caressed a chrome strip. The stroke of his hand on the wheel told his satisfaction and still another story: Not yet paid for, Bud, but mine. When I took Joy’s arm in farewell or hello, I did it the same way. It was the stroke of pleasure which my father had always lacked in Pittsburgh—for car or for girl—and no son could give it to him.
Of course, I gave him less than most sons.
He would have been heavy-faced and creased by disapproval and not daring to say it if he had seen me by this slick Scardini riding, touring in Cleveland. Without knowing where or why—that would do him in, it was so much like his own straining to nowhere.
“The name is Trapp,” Scardini said after a minute, looking away from me. He wanted to be agreeable. He gestured with his hand off the steering wheel.
“What’s that, Mr. Scardini?”
“No, Trapp,” he
said. “I took Scardini’s name when he died—a tribute to the boss, you see. I’m really named Trapp from Lima, Ohio. Scardini is a better name for me in my business, besides being like a little heartfelt tribute to the genuine old Scardini article.”
“Pleased to meet you,” I said.
“No, I mean it,” he insisted, “Trapp.”
“Hi, Mr. Trapp.”
“Fred Trapp!” He gestured in an angry way, waving the glowing cigarette lighter from the dashboard. The name must have reminded him of himself. When he slapped his hand back, the hot coil melted and stank against the plastic of the steering wheel. “I’m telling you the whole truth,” he announced, beginning to regret it, “and that’s Fred Trapp. It’s because I like you.”
“Okay, Freddie,” I said.
“You like to work for me maybe as my night manager in the G. Washington? It’s my legal name.”
“No thanks, Freddie, but deeply appreciate. Joy and I are cutting out after—after—”
He grinned. It was something he wanted to know: After we drop Grack. He didn’t even bother to say, Well, never mind, think it over. He had spent his born name on me, he had won knowledge with this investment; now he could Scardini around the corners in his Cadillac again. But he was right that I had to figure about our unborn child after the couple of days left with Grack. Grack and a time of flight are not a wedding trip or reason enough for three lives. I knew Joy was thinking hard, maybe about seeing my pop and his trucking business and an apartment in the same building to start. She had a right to plan.
Was Pop thinking about me?
Would he reel and stumble when he laid eyes on my lovely Joy, the tears rushing because mothers used to die?
“This is the house,” Scardini said, no longer Trapp, tires grating the curb. “Get out first, if you please. Don’t like to get out streetside in this here neighborhood. Rough class of people. Wait a sec—let me tell you.”
We were at a low office block on Prospect Avenue, shoe repair and while-you-wait and Hadacol for Health and a row of apartments upstairs. Could have been Jacksonville or Baltimore, was Cleveland. One apartment had Venetian blinds pulled shut. That must be Nancy. “Nancy’s my contact for this and others,” Scardini said. “Nice fella, Nancy, we’re in so many little businesses together. We like it together. You just need friends in a world.” His cruising eyes again returned. “Well, son”—and the eyes were fleeing again—“please let me tell you how I made mine one week, later lost it.…”
“With Nancy?”
“No, that was with another good friend, the filthy double-crosser.” He too spat because he no longer wept, spit the tears of the tough, I believe. “But I don’t let Nancy get anything on me ever. That’s one good reason for you, Bud—you’re my witness. I like a nice boy like you for preparing himself for me—”
“Wait a sec!”
“No, no, not that Nancy would sing or make me pay, no, I got things on him, too. But I like to show him your sweet face. You shave already, Bud? How you get your nose done in like that?”
He was a talker at curbs, Scardini was, locking his hands about his steering wheel, confiding deep within the motor warmth of his Caddy while the useless power creaked and slipped. “You sure you wouldn’t love to go into a little business with me? Trust you to make collections, boy.”
Then he meant it! “No,” I said.
He jerked the door open. “So what we waiting for? Please understand me: I asked only because I need somebody to trust and you have a peculiar face. Honest. Come to Nancy now, boy, Grack’s in a hurry.”
I would have liked myself to claim hurry, hurry to finish the grackwork, but Scardini had feelings. Jeez, not hard for me to say, that word feelings, since his soft and rabbit-mouthed touchiness would make no diff to me one day after I left him. My pop, Grack, even Scardini and Doc Purdy, all these talkative ones were helplessness seeking a listener. Joy could sit quiet. Well, anyway, it would hurt him to think I didn’t just love to rock on Caddy springs and wiggle down and chat like this with the radio humming for company while he said: “Grack tells me you were a good talker, a carnie who got on, but just a mark in your guts.”
“Yes.”
“What do you mean yes?”
“I admit it, yes, I am.” And the radio said, Whiskey and gin, the trouble I’m in, please love me again, I’m yourrrs. “Yes,” I repeated, wanting to slip through the door onto the street.
“You mean you got mark guts instead of stringy carnie ones?”
All right, if he was the great conversationalist, I would try to climb fast to the truth he needed. I explained. “That’s what it takes, Mr. Scardini, to get to be the big boss, the man with the boots. You got to know marko. You got to know it by being it, but now I want out.”
“How’s that? Now you don’t like getting yours, Bud? Grack told me you’re far out, boy. You like that girlfriend of yours too much for good health and money? It thins the blood and makes the hair fall out. That how much you like her? That little Joy of yours we left back home at my G. Washington place with Grack? Yes?”
I did not answer.
“Yes? Me, sonny, I like hotel business, don’t you? I like to touch legs, you don’t? Rub up against the shaving, then where they forgot to shave. Don’t you though? Oh I’ll bet. I like a girl’s legs more’n the girl, how about you, boy?”
Nothing to say, but the impatient foot turning on its ankle.
“Of course, that little girl of yours is pretty neat. Grack just told me how—” He stopped. I said nothing. Patience was always my trick in times of difficult talking and hard waiting.
“Nice day,” I said, and put my hand out the window.
He groaned and we emerged onto Prospect Avenue in Cleveland for our business with Nancy. Scardini bumped me to jog my thoughts in case they were wandering. Poor Scardini was a reminder. We went for Nancy.
30. Down is the long way up
WHEN ripe with anger and righteousness during that swell hey-rube that busted my nose for Grack, I had learned something important although it took a long time—the habit, Grack’s helping me to break it, my father, Joy, and now this far flight—to teach me what it was. I had fought for Grack and my brother carnies because I had a mad on. When my nose got busted, little-girl Joy helped to repair it. All this was a fine wound, and fine to receive it for a friend.
There are two sorts of anger in the world. One is that one—for the need of Pauline and other friends. The other doesn’t move at all, it is a stiff and self-seeking anger, the Scardini thing. He had it as we trod the staircase up to Nancy’s. It was for nothing and for no one, and yet it was as miserable and as angry as the mad I spouted for true love of our false carnie freedom. We crowded and bumped each other up the decaying stairway, coffee grounds and fuzzing pine, off Prospect Avenue in Cleveland, Ohio. “For a buck in Tennessee when I had my other name,” Scardini said, “talked my other way, said it Tinnissee, for a buck you could get what you wanted, how you wanted it, sunnyside up or poached, any age including virgins. Oh, wait, it’s hot in this hundred-dollar overcoat. Why did I need to wear it?”
He labored up the stairway, his back bent from behind, stooped and neck-sweating, with deep belly unease. Nuck and willy of love, that’s what it was for him—jigger and yawp and withers. I stopped to escape the bad air behind. He turned to breathe and scowl.
“Hurry up. Nancy has all we want new, sonny.”
He needed me to stick by his side, this heavy-lidded, thick-eyed, wheezing man, inflamed at the seams, always on the verge of tears, with a nose and ears that were three of the same shape—this man who liked to be called Scardini but could bring no Sicilian litheness to his straining on earth.
“Come on, you afraid to get what you want from Nancy?” His eyes bulged and teared with the attempt at laughter. Please smile back at me on this staircase, no one can see you do it, his mouth implored, breathing in wisps. Please. I have tried to please you. No? Then I will go on trying.
He took a step back
and pulled my arm. “Come on, Nancy expects us, sonny.” His face swollen by overheat of house, car, and fear for self, heat of ambition and heat of dread, he had veins, lymph, water under the skin, troubled kidneys, too. This was the bad stopped-up anger which above all Joy had helped me escape. (Yes! Kicking the habit had been before Joy, my own work, and I found her myself!) Tenderly Scardini bent to hurry me. It would be a fearful thing to hit a face like Scardini’s—a blister ready to burst, boneless—and let all that full-to-breaking poison spill over in tears on the stained cheeks. Absolutely stopped up! What a stink if you lanced it! My rage of pity was righteous and pleased, because could his mother have died any earlier than mine, who died at my birth?
“You coming or you staying?”
“I promised Grack, didn’t I?”
“Come on then, sonny. Once I knew another guy did all his thinking on stairways. Break-and-enter man, he was. Used to place his irons, shavers, electrical appliances with me.”
“Don’t tell me.”
“I trust you, sonny. Come into business with me, the hotel part, strictly legitimate. What you want to grift for?”
“I’m coming, I’m coming. Which door is Nancy’s?”
The door opened as if Nancy had been listening for us. “Come in, come in, oh come in!” This joviality on a Prospect corridor made me want to run. I even preferred Doc Purdy. What was he selling, this lovely Nancy in his beige corduroy shirt, all bending and smiles to Scardini and me? If Scardini’s face had been gradually worked up from his stomach and kidneys, Nancy’s came trippingly distilled from his cologne, male cologne for sweet sportsmen, musk and invitation. “Come in, friends, and sit down. I so seldom receive visitors before the cocktail hour, it’s an unaccustomed pleasure. Do enter!”
Scardini laughed alone. He had told me that Nancy ran a notch-house for travelers who loved to see things. Exhibitions. He had artistic ambitions, Scardini had hinted, to make stag movies and live off the royalties. Nancy’s wife, a woman wan and thoughtful as a convalescent, a bony hillbilly with hooded eyes, stood waiting behind him. “Be a pretty girl, hon,” Nancy called to her, “and boil up some coffee for my friends.”
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