by Jeffrey Lent
“You little fucker,” he said. “You’ll see more of me.”
The man reached and took the cigar from his mouth, holding it between his thumb and forefinger. He made an odd dipping salute with it, the red end describing an arc in the night. Then bit back down on the cigar and sat as before, his arms around his knees, gazing out down the street away from Jamie.
He crossed the street to the opposite sidewalk and went on, ignoring the gawking, the one who applauded. He passed a billiards parlor and the smell of fried meat but it was brightly lit and full of men and youths and he felt leery and strange, without his pins straight beneath him. He went on uphill away from the river and closer toward the main street and found a small café with a sign in English and sat at a bench-laid table and ordered a plate of beans and ham from the woman and ate it with sliced loaf-bread. Then went on filled and more at ease into the brightly lit central part of the city and near the opera house found an open drugstore with a soda fountain and he loafed there awhile, leafing through magazines off the rack and eyeing people at the counter. They seemed to him much the same as Randolph people and he made no effort to join them or even to sit at the counter. They all knew one another and he knew this was not where he belonged, knew he’d find the like of them everywhere and each place would be the same to him. And knew there was something else running through this town and all others where he’d fit and flourish but did not yet know what it was. The youth behind the counter was watching him now and so was an older man behind the cash register. So he walked to the counter and purchased a pack of Chesterfields and a box of matches and tipped his forefinger to his forehead and went out into the night.
Back in the neighborhood of his rooming house he slowed down, watching the movement and flow on the street. After a time he went up an alleyway where others entered and came right back out and there bought a pint of whiskey from an old woman who sat in a rocking chair in a darkened doorway while three younger men sat at a table behind her smoking, their faces blank as she took his money and reached into a rag-covered basket by her feet for the pint. On the table before the men was a cashbox with iron straps, a coffeepot and tin cups, a young puppy sleeping on its side and a baseball bat. He put the whiskey in his coat pocket and sat on the steps of a rooming house two doors down from his own and broke open the cigarettes and smoked one slowly. From time to time he dipped his head down to his coat and sipped at the whiskey. After a time he went up the sidewalk to the house where he’d seen the girl in the navy dress. There was a family out on the stoop but she was not among them. He tried to talk to them but they had no English. The woman was suckling an infant and she turned her head away from him and it seemed to him her shame was not her breast but something of his query.
He went to his own rooming house and into the back for the privy and then pumped water to drink from his cupped hands. He stood out in the dark and smoked another of the cigarettes and then went up the backstairs to his room. He laid his clothes out over the straightback chair and brushed the dust from the trouser legs. He sat crosslegged, naked on the bed in the dark, listening to the low folds of sound rising from the street below, the eventide of it broken only now and then by a man calling greeting to someone, a woman calling the names of children. After a time he laid his folded razor under his pillow and stretched out on his back.
He woke midmorning to a lemon light burning through the last haze off the river, the room already hot with flies spinning against the ceiling. The street below was quiet, dried slop and churned dust. What he took to be three whores lounged in an opened doorway across the way. Neither the woman nor the girl of the day before appeared to be among them. A ragpicker made way up the street, the horse a broken-down gray with a low roman head and patched and poorly laid-on harness fittings rubbing eternal raw welts into its hide. The ragpicker cried his way, walking alongside the rough-loaded cart. A woman came forth from one of the entrances opposite with a bundle. He’d not seen the whores move but they were gone. The woman stood with the bundle hugged against her as she argued with the ragman, finally handing it up and taking one by one into her palm the coins he counted. He went his way, crying out again. The woman still stood, fingering through the coins as if their number might grow if she only looked again.
He washed from the basin and dressed and went out. The sun hurt his eyes. He went to the café where he’d supped the night before and had coffee with cream and sugar and read through a newspaper bought off a boy on his way in. The job listings weren’t discouraging although there was nothing he was interested in. He already knew the work he wanted wouldn’t be found that way. He still was unclear what that work would be but knew he wanted money and that money wasn’t made standing on the rail platform blistering his lungs to drum up trade or some such. That was some other feller’s money. He drank his refill and thanked the woman and left a dime for the nickel cup and went back into his own neighborhood and there was shaved in a storefront shop with a rough-painted pole out front. There was a single chair and a foxed mirror but the towels were hot and the razor sharp.
He went to a pawnshop and spent a long time leaning across a flat glass case of knives. Asking for first one and then another to be brought out. Until he settled on a long thin-bladed doubled-edged stiletto with a vine-and-leaf motif etched into the blade, the handle fine wood the color of old rose petals with inlaid straps of brass running up to the boss, which was a delicate knob of solid brass with an oval of the same wood laid into the flat top surface. The knife was balanced and keen, the sheath of fine thick leather supple to the touch. There was no strap; the knife lay inside the sheath like sex, firm and grasped, but slid into his trouser pocket and reached for, the blade came out of the sheath without friction. Finally he took out his razor and laid it beside the knife and looked at the man behind the counter, a tall bald Jew with a beard golden and long, the gold stippled with silver. “How much,” he asked, “the one against the other?”
The Jew touched the razor but did not pick it up. “Garbage,” he said. “The knife is five dollars.”
“That razor’s whetted to a fine edge. A lot of use still in it.”
The Jew looked at Jamie. He wore a fine shirt with a real collar and cuffs. After a bit he blinked slowly and said, “In the gutter allover are empty bottles. You take one up by the neck, smash off the belly against a lamppost and what you got left cuts just as fine as your razor. So. You want style, you want substance, or you want both.” He shrugged. “I care less.”
“Four dollars.”
“Five.”
“Four with the razor.”
The Jew sighed and took up the stiletto and placed it back in the case. Pushed the razor across toward Jamie. “You come back when you don’t waste my time.”
“Jesus Christ.”
The man crossed his arms over his chest.
“Four fifty.”
He shook his head.
“Seventy-five?”
“Look at me,” the man said. “You think you can wear me down?”
“It come with a guarantee?”
“Of course. The guarantee is that whoever you cut-up with it, I never saw that knife before in my life.”
“Five dollars,” Jamie said, no longer quite a question.
The man did not nod but waited.
Jamie went back onto the street with the knife in his pocket. It made a nice weight against his side. Comfortable. The brass boss lay just above his pocket seam, covered by his coat but easy to reach down and pull free. There was no one he wanted or planned to cut. There was no one he would be cut by.
He went the length of the street twice, cutting across where it died at the river to come back the opposite way, strolling, his pace easy. The coat was hot on him in the sun. His shirt was wet under his arms and down his sides and stuck to him and he knew he’d have to buy another shirt, maybe two, and find a way to have them laundered, socks also. He was looking for the girl but did not see her. Yesterday he’d thought the girl’s look held invitation
in it but today wasn’t sure. It might have been only mockery or pity. She was nowhere. He’d’ve guessed her as itinerant as himself but for her knowledge of him; that had not come from arriving fresh off a farm somewhere. The way she perched on the stoop also had spoken of some knowledge, not so much of the place itself as the kind of place it was. And of her place in it. And so he ignored the obvious whores, as if this chastity might renew him in the eyes of the street and someway be communicated to her. He believed she would know it of him, were she to see him.
A shift change took place in the works on the hill above. First men began appearing from rooming houses and quarters wearing clean rough workclothes and carrying pails or sacks stained with food as they made their way upstreet to where the trolleys ran. After this men came down the other way, sagged, stooped, ragged, even the young among them. The fine dust of stone lay over them as if the earth they emerged from followed them home. For a time the shops and cafés were busy with these men and their women and then as the afternoon heat settled the dust and the air in fine waves over the street it became quiet again as the men went inside to sleep or drink or lie with their wives. Jamie went back to his own room during this time and sat with his jacket and shirt off, the shirt spread uneven over the ladder of the straightback chair to let it dry and air in the unmoving heat. He drank a small spot from the pint of whiskey and smoked one of the cigarettes. After a time he felt better and drew his clothes on and went back out on the street. He was hungry and eager to face the man from the restaurant of the night before.
The girl was on the same stoop two doors up as the day before. Again in a navy dress but this one with white dots the size of pearls. She held up against the sun a small white parasol that seemed fine but as he came near he saw was slitted and ragged, a shade of ash and tallow from age and the bituminous sift the air carried. Her legs were stretched before her to the bottom step, crossed at the ankles and her hair was a loosely bound aurora about her face. She did not watch him come but he felt tracked, not only each step but every fiber and thought of him. When he came abreast of her she swung her face up at him just before he paused, looking at him seriously a moment.
“Well, slick,” she said. “I see nobody chased you off yet.”
“It’s a pretty day, idn’t it?”
“Go on. I’m too expensive for you.”
“I don’t truck with whores.”
“I’d smack your face, it wasn’t too hot to stand. I’m no whore, I’m in the entertainment business. What, were you upstairs preaching Jesus to that wore-out old woman yesterday; was that it?”
He folded his arms and tilted his head back to study her. “Seems to me, an expensive girl like yourself don’t have much ambition. Can’t be much trade for an entertainer along this stretch. Makes me wonder why you’re not uptown. And an aberration don’t make a habit.”
“I’ve heard more ten-dollar words than you can imagine. Likely more than you even know. Any man found out always claims it was that onetime only thing. I’m surprised you don’t try and dress it up like it was her that lured you in there someway. I work nights up at Charlie Bacon’s Supper Club which I doubt you’ve been to or got into yet. And you know, bud, I don’t think it’s going to be me to invite you.”
“No,” he said. “I wouldn’t guess you’d want that.”
“I’ve heard sarcastic before too. Why don’t you go on before you put me to sleep?”
“Sure,” he said. “I’ll git. But you still haven’t explained why I keep seeing you down here, this part of town. You so high-class and all.”
She looked at him a long beat, her brows drawn, deliberating. Then shook her head, more a quiver than any motion distinct. He felt he wasn’t meant to see that. She said, “Some days I like to get some air, see the sun, before I go on to work. Uptown, there’s always some feller who’s seen me sing and comes on pestering me. This place, no one bothers me. At least, it used to be.”
He blinked at her, both eyes slow. Looked at her as if making up his own mind between disregarding her rudeness or her altogether. Then said, “I’d ask you to lunch but I’m meeting a man about a bit of work I’ve got in mind. Perhaps another time.”
“Dishwashers are a dozen to the dime this town. And I wouldn’t want to strain your pocketbook anyhow. At least not being trapped across a table for an hour with you. Fact is, more I see of you the less I think there’s anything of me you can buy at all.”
“You’re a smart little cookie,” he said, and tipped two fingers up against his brow as if he were wearing a hat and stepped away from her. “But you’re not as smart’s you think.”
“A course not,” she called to his back. “Not a one of us is.”
He went on. Ten paces she called out to him. “Joey.”
He stopped and turned, looked back at her, scowling. “That’s not my name.”
“It’s mine. What I’m called. Now don’t be telling people you’re a friend of mine. All I’m being is polite.”
“Joey,” he said. Walked halfway back to her. “That’s a odd name for a girl”.
“Joie,” she said. Then waited and when he waited also she went on. “French for joy. What I was named. I wasn’t ever Joy though. Never brought joy to no one. So, the time came, I changed it to Joey. It suited me.”
“Joy,” he said.
“No.” Emphatic. Even, he thought, a flair of distress. “You can forget I told you that.”
“Sure,” he said. “Joey. I kind of like it.”
“I wasn’t concerned you liked it or not. It’s my name is all.”
“Sure,” he said again. Then felt clear it was time to leave. This would happen over and again in his life and he always heeded it; this still did not explain the times the warning failed to occur. He grinned now at the girl and said, “I gotta go. I’ll see you around, Joey.”
“Maybe,” she said. “You never know.” Then she grinned back. “Be careful around those guineas. They’ll do you worse than pitch you on your butt in the street, you don’t pay attention.”
Now he stopped smiling. “Where’d you hear that?”
“It’s a little town. You might not think so but it is.” She paused and studied his anger and added, “Don’t get worked up. Everybody gets some story or another told about themselves. Now you got one, you watch out for yourself, you won’t need another. See what I mean?”
He was quiet a long moment, then nodded. And looked her over, more bold than before. And she met his eyes with her own and then looked away and he said, his voice tuned down a pitch, “You could use a new umbrella.”
She took it down before her and looked at it. Then propped it back over her shoulder. “Sure I could. I could use plenty of new stuff. Show me someone who couldn’t. Show me one person in this town who doesn’t need and want.”
“Oh,” he said, “I guess there’s ones pretty well satisfied.”
“Don’t you think it. There’s no fools so well off they still don’t want and want. Want theirselves to death. Some new trinket, some new toy.”
“Maybe I was wrong,” he said. “Maybe you’re smarter than I thought.”
She said, “Don’t you forget it.”
It was the middle of the afternoon. Some few high mare’s tails had broken and spread to haze the sky and the air was swampy. The storefront restaurant’s paper shades were up with the windowglass fogged with grease. Inside the front room was empty but for a girl with deep wide dark eyes sitting at one of the tables drawing with a pencil stub on butcher paper. He seated himself at the same table he’d eaten at the day before and waited. The owner came from the back, dressed now in shirtsleeves and a stained high apron tied just under his arms. His face did not change expression upon coming through the half door.
The man stood over the table, stinking of sweat and redolent of kitchen, a sharp pungency. Jamie looked past him to the menu, a handlettered cardboard stuck on the wall. The writing was Italian or could have been English translation; it didn’t matter which for it meant n
othing to him. He looked to the man. The man seemed to be waiting for this. He said, “So, you.”
“I had lunch yesterday. I never had nothing like that before. It was good. So I came back for more.”
The man looked at Jamie. His face did not change. Without nodding or making acknowledgment of any sort he said, “All right. Spaghetti then.”
“No. I want something different this time.”
The man’s head tilted just off-center. “What different?”
“Well I don’t know.” He angled an index finger toward the cardboard. “I don’t know what any of that means. Just so you know.”
The man broke in. “What you want then? What you want here?”
Jamie nodded as if admitting the problem of the question. Then said, “Bring me something good. Up to you. Bring me what you’d want, you hadn’t eaten since yesterday, what you’d fix for yourself. How’s that sound?”
Now the man frowned at him. “You want something different. Not everyday. All right. But, if you don’t like.”
Jamie stood fast and put out his hand, too fast for the man to more than draw up to himself. “My name’s Pelham. Jamie Pelham. Now, I wasn’t thinking on my feet last night. Wrong maybe but it’s no crime. Most folks do it one time or another. What I’m saying is you done right how you tossed me out. I was you, I’d have done the same. Just so you know I understand.”
The man looked at him, looked down at the hand. Then took it up. “Victor Fortini. Victor to you.”
Jamie said, “You know your food. I don’t. So bring me what you’d eat, you was me. I like it or not, that’s my risk. What I think, you don’t take a little risk here and there, you never learn anything.”
The man dropped his hand. Still studying Jamie. After a moment he said, “It’ll take a few minutes.”
“That’s all right. This afternoon, I’m in no particular hurry at all.”