Frog (68 page)

It was about a year after. Working at a catering place delivering orders when the man who sends him out on them holds up a wrapped tray of canapés and says “This customer a relative of yours?” “Why, Tetch? Could be, as it's an unusual one,” and the man says “A Mrs. Howard,” and he says “That's my first name.” “I know, only making a joke; where's your sense of humor?” and gives him the tray and another order and exact change for both out of a ten and he goes, few blocks away rings the bell downstairs which has the apartment number he wants but the name Chandler on it. “Yes?” a woman says. “Delivery, ma'am, for Mrs. Howard, do I have the right place?” and she says “Sure, you got it, darling,” and he's rung in, goes upstairs, apartment door's opening right across from the elevator when he's getting out of it, woman in a bathrobe belted tight, Chippy, has to be, doesn't seem to recognize him or show she does, same style bright red hair, same soap smell or something coming toward him as he goes to her, very white skin, freckles around her nose, he doesn't know if the bathrobe's the same one as before, what the hell's she doing in a regular apartment in a nice apartment building twenty blocks from her hotel? “How much they sticking me for?” she says, taking the canapés, looks at the bill taped to it, he's already excited, gives him a five, he gives her change, puts a quarter into his hand and says “Here, go and buy yourself a cigar.” “Thank you,” and just as she's shutting the door he says “Chippy?” and she looks at him and says “What'd you say?—forget it,” and continues closing the door and he sticks his foot in it, though he had no thought to, it just got there, and says “I know you, Chippy, I went to you about a year ago,” and she says “You got to have the wrong party for whatever you mean, little mister. The name's Howard, like on the order slip, and if you're saying you don't like the tip I gave you, though I don't know anyone else who wouldn't think it generous, give it here,” and holds her hand out and he says “Yeah, the order slip, but not like on the bell downstairs.” “That's my friend's name downstairs, but what's it to you? Now I'm telling you, he isn't home now but the super is, and if that doesn't get you moving, I'll call the cops and have you run in. Now get your foot away,” and he says “Listen, I don't mean trouble and will go when you want me to, so you don't have to call anyone, but I remember everything about you, even the robe but maybe a different color. Can I come in since nobody's there. I can pay,” and she says “Shut up,” looks around, “Get in, you stupid kid,” and he does, she shuts and locks the door. “You got ten bucks? And you better be quick about it too, since I got someone coming here soon for these canapés,” and puts them on the table by the door. “If not, then you got to scoot.” “It used to be five,” and she says “Ten now. Five, if it was five then, was maybe the last time I used that price,” and she touches his erection through the pants and says “Look at you, ready to roll. Come on, hand it over or go,” and he says “Can't we do it for nothing?” and she says “You crazy? Get out of here if that's what you're thinking,” and starts pushing him to the door, and he says “Then just a hand-job for nothing? I won't take long and then I'll leave right after. For the truth is I have no money but the quarter you gave me, as I just came on at work and yours was the first tip of the day,” and she says “Oh brother, you really pulled a fast one on me. And everybody who says it won't take long, even you kids, takes forever. What the hell my going to do with you now?” and he says “Please, I'll bring customers like Ellis did,” and she says “I don't need customers; I've enough, even by charging ten,” and he says “Please, I'm really ready as I said; it'll take ten seconds,” and she says “Oh, to get rid of you, come in here,” and he follows her into the bathroom, “Pull your stupid pants down,” he does, she grabs his penis and pulls him to the toilet by it, lifts the seat and starts jerking him over the bowl. He's still holding the other order by the string and drops it to the floor, gets so excited he falls to his knees, she says “Get up, I don't want it on the floor,” he grabs her legs under the robe to hold on to, moves his hands up, nothing on, feels hair, the hole, sticks his fingers from both hands in, “What're you doing? I didn't say any of that, and get up. Hell with you, finish it off yourself,” and she lets go of him and leaves the bathroom, he gets up and finishes it off in a few seconds and washes up and comes out with the order and she says “I'm really pissed at you. I should even ask for my quarter back, you little brat. Now get the hell out, and I hope you didn't mess up my fucking bathroom,” and he says “I didn't; I did it into the bowl and cleaned up without a trace. A kiss?” and puts out his face and she says “I'll kiss you one, with my fist—you probably messed up all my linens in there; just get going and don't bother ever coming back, you're off my list for good,” and opens the door and shoves him out. He calls some of his friends from work, says what happened, she jerked him off while he had his fingers in her, she was all excited and he would've screwed her but she wanted too much and he thought this for nothing is better than screwing for ten bucks, and when they meet that night, five of them, one says “Hey, let's go visit her. We'll get ourselves in somehow and ask her to screw us all for free or just jerk us all off. She doesn't want to, we'll threaten her, bring knives but keep them under our coats till we have to show them. Shit, hand-jobs she can do two at a time and then we'll be out of there fast as Howard, we'll tell her. She doesn't want to do anything, we'll also say we'll tell the cops about her, and the knives only as a last resort and just to scare her, of course. He says “Not me, she could have cops there as customers when we try to push ourselves in, or just a customer with a gun or something or just something like acid to throw at our faces herself,” and this guy says “If cops are there, which isn't too likely, we'll say ‘Sorry, we had our appointments with her mixed up,' or we thought we could come by without calling her, and as for the other things, hardly.” “I can get in trouble, she knows where I work,” and another of them says “A whore's going to make trouble for you? She'll never show her face. That's the point, I guess. That once we get in she's got to do what we say, since there's five of us and it's not like we want to be future customers of hers. We only want this once and she's a sitting duck for us since we know where she is and what she does.” He still says no but doesn't want to miss out on the excitement and maybe getting laid and another hand-job but this one finished by her and even a blow-job as someone else says they might also be able to make her do while she's giving two others handjobs, so he says “OK, yeah, sure, but do we have to take knives?” and they go to one of their apartments first, say hello to their friend's mother and that they only came up for some cold water and soda and go to the kitchen, get kitchen knives there and put them under their coats or in their belts, Howard and another guy don't want to but one of the others say “Everybody, we're in on this together, all for one and do or die and that sort of shit,” say goodbye to their friend's mother, go to Chippy's building, decide while they walk what to say and who's to say it, ring her vestibule bell, “Yes?” she says, “Rowers from Mr. Tibbs, the florist, ma'am,” guy who was chosen to speak says, “Bullshit, flowers, beat it or I'll call the police,” and they ring several bells in the building, has about twenty apartments, four to five to a floor, a few people say “What? Hello? Who is it? Who's there?” but nobody rings back, ring some other bells and more people ask questions which they don't answer but one rings them in, they stay quiet downstairs, a man yells down “Is that you, Thomas?” the spokesman yells up “Sorry, sir, wrong building, made a mistake,” and points to the front door and makes hand motions and another of them opens it and lets it slam. They wait, door upstairs closes, five minutes, then go up, spokesman knocks on her door, others stay to the sides or crouched on the floor but out of view of the peephole, “Yes?” she says, “Rowers from Mr. Tibbs, ma'am, and has to be signed,” “I'm not expecting flowers or anyone, so good-bye,” “No, it's true, ma'am, just doing my job—open up and you'll see,” and she says “Even if you put a basket of bouquets in front of the hole here I wouldn't open up, so you better get moving or I'm calling the police right now,” and one of them from the floor says “Whore's gonna call the cops?” “Fuck you, dopos, you've been warned,” and goes away from the door, comes back a few minutes later while they're figuring out what to do next, stay here, leave, ring again and say there's just two of them and they're friends of Ellis and will give her ten bucks each to get laid and then when she lets them in to grab her and make her do whatever they want for free, and says “They're coming, have fun, boys, for if you don't think they do favors for me and that I also wouldn't press charges, you're crazy.” “Let's go,” Howard says, and the spokesman says “She's full of it,” and he says “What if she is? She's not opening up, we're never getting in there, and I'm going before something I don't like happens,” and starts downstairs, they follow him, outside he says “Let me ask you. What if she had her pimp with her and it was his apartment she was working out of or if she had called him instead of the cops to deal with us and he had come up from downstairs while we were there? Those guys got real weapons and can be very mean and rough,” and one of them says “Why didn't we think of that? I know I sure wouldn't have tried what we did if someone had brought it up.”

They're hanging out on Broadway, sitting against a parked car, night, when a car pulls up, “Hey,” the passenger yells, a friend, the driver another friend beside him, new Olds 98, “Want a ride? Hop in.” They get in, “Where'd you get it?… Whose is it?” and the driver says “A cousin's,” and Howard says “Nice car… feel the leather,” and the driver's friend next to him says “Actually, we shouldn't lie,” and they laugh together, “We saw it doubleparked in front of Tip Toe, motor running, vent window open, keys inside, so pinched it,” and he says “This is a stolen car?” and the driver says “That's it, babe, now where you want to go?” and he says “Out of it—stop the fucking thing,” and the front passenger says
“See
, I told you not to pick them up—let the fraidy-cat out,” when they sideswipe a cab, tear of metal, “Holy shit,” the driver says and puts on speed down Broadway, cab following them honking his horn, “What the hell we gonna do now?” front passenger says, through a red light, almost hitting some people crossing, cabby still behind them honking and now flashing his headlights on and off, right on Seventy-seventh Street, “Pull up so we can make a run for it,” guy next to Howard yells, car brakes, stops, halfway up the street, driver runs out his side, front passenger out his, Howard's door on the left won't open though it's unlocked, guy on right has trouble opening his door, Howard looks back, cab's stopped and driver jumps out of it and runs to their car, right door opens and friend falls out, gets up and runs, Howard's door still stuck, goes out the other back door, starts running to West End Avenue, hand on his shoulder, “You!” a man says, but he gets out from under the hand, runs to West End, crosses it, Riverside Drive, into the park, through it north, couple blocks away hides behind bushes, everything seems quiet, birds, far-off traffic, that's all, waits, coast seems clear, goes back to Eighty-third Street but on the other side of Broadway looking for his friends, nobody's there, walks around the block and comes back, still nobody's there, walks home, sees a commotion on Seventy-seventh where their car was, figures the cabby never recognized him from the back, goes up the block, cab still there, stolen car, police around, a crowd, he asks a man what happened, “Some kids shot someone on Ninety-sixth, stole a car, crashed into a few of them and wound up here, that cabby over there following them because he was the last one to get clipped, but they got away.” “Jesus,” he says, “anybody hurt?” “I told you, someone shot.” “Oh God, that's awful. Dead?” “Don't know. Ask the cop, not that he'll tell you anything,” and the man leaves and he watches for a while, it's just a lot of talking between the cabby and the police and some people around him who say they saw most of it, and goes home.

They pick up a Volkswagen and put it into the lobby of an apartment building and wait for the elevator man to come down, open the elevator door and see it. He looks around, through the lobby doors to the street but doesn't seem to see them. “Hey hey, over here,” they yell, and he shakes his fist at them. They're all laughing and run away. There's an old lady in the neighborhood, they call her the Black Widow, always wears black, carries a black umbrella, black hat with a veil over her face, and whenever she sees them she says “Stinking filthy kids, you'll never be anything, go away, leave this street in peace,” and shakes the closed umbrella at them and sometimes raises it as if she's going to hit them. They always laugh at her and sometimes dodge around her swinging umbrella and say “Black Widow, Black Widow's going to bite,” but one day when she's doing that to them, just shouting and shaking the umbrella, one of his friends comes up behind her and dumps a street can of garbage over her head. Some of it's dribbling down her and she screams savagely at them, in another language they never heard from her before and can't understand, and most of them laugh as if they never saw anything so funny and they all run away. When they get together right after at a candy store they go to he says “Really, it's got to be wrong, she's just nuts and didn't deserve that.” They say “Sure she did. She's a crazy old bag who doesn't know if she got garbage on her or rain or what.” Next time he's with them and sees her walking their way he says “Come on, let's not do anything; let her yell and scream and wave her screwy umbrella all she wants.” “What are you talking about, if she comes after us, and we got to have every day our fun,” and he crosses Broadway and watches the lady walk around them, not shouting or waving her umbrella and looking a little scared, and they chant “Black Widow, Black Widow, Black Widow's lost her bite.” A gang comes up to them one afternoon after school, they're from the West Fifties and Sixties, he can tell by the gang name on their jackets, and one of them steps out from the others and says “The Saxons challenge whatever your gang's name is to a fight.” They say they're not a fighting gang and have no gripes against them and if they want them to move on, they will. The gang's about four times larger than their group and some of the members in it older and bigger, though there are a whole bunch of small young kids with them too. The gang calls them chickens and pansies and when they start walking away the gang follows them and then chases them till they see a cop; then they run back downtown. A week later on Broadway again the gang suddenly rounds the corner and runs at them and jumps them. Two are on him and a little one is trying to pull off his shoe and he swings wildly at the bigger ones, rips at their hair, kicks their balls, pulls at and bites one's ear, shoves the little one into the street, knocks one of the older ones down and picks up the other one in a bearhug from behind while kicking at the one down and doesn't know what to do with him but the guy's punching his head so he throws him against a store window they're up against. The guy goes through it and glass breaks around them. All the fighting stops, the gang members rush to their friend in the window who's screaming he's been stabbed, he got it in the face, and Howard, who's bleeding from a lot of little glass cuts, and his friends run away. Day later they hear from someone who knows a member of the gang that the guy got glass in his neck and almost bled to death and has to stay in the hospital, and the gang's looking for Howard. They all stay away from the neighborhood for things like hanging around it and going to parties, go to parties in the Bronx and Queens, and a few are escorted by their older brothers and fathers to and from home. Then they're at a party in the neighborhood, a couple of weeks after their contact with the Saxons says they've dropped the matter and aren't interested in them anymore, lights are out, soft music on, each of them has a girl to neck with, drinking the father's liquor of the girl who's giving the party, when they hear from the street “Hey mama boys in there, come on out.” There are about thirty of them, big and little, all in their gang jackets it seems, across the street, in it and on the sidewalk right outside. “Hey, we see you peeking through the windows,” they yell. “Look, don't be afraid—come on out, all we want to do is powwow.” They stay put, don't know what to do, maybe call the police but that'll get the girl in trouble with her folks she says. Then the phone rings. “Someone with a funny voice wants to talk to you,” the girl says, giving Howard the phone. “This is Crazy Louie. We'll let you all alone if I can have a crack at you on the street this minute, no matter even if you beat the pants off me.” “I'm sorry,” he says. “I've nothing against you and I only fight if my life's at stake and I don't see why anything should be like that now. Anyway, you got to think I'm nuts going into the street alone with you and with all your friends, not that I want to any time.” “So I'll tell you what. I'll have them all get away. It'll only be me out here and if you want I'll even have one of my arms tied behind my back. If you don't want to come out because you think I'm a better fighter than you, that should give you the odds.” “Listen, I'm sorry for your friend through the glass, but he was picking on me, three to one, so I had to do something. And I heard you use your feet more than your hands, so I'm sure you'll still kick the shit out of me.” “Hey, baby, I'm going to dust you up bad, very bad, so why not have it done today?” “No thanks,” and he hangs up, tells them what Louie said. One of his friends says “He could be drunk and you might be able to beat him up and then we'll all be off.” “You out of your head? Where you think he got his name from? There's no stopping him. He fights like a maniac, butts his head, kicks you everywhere, vomits on you if he has to, pounds your face against concrete till you're half dead. That's what I heard. And those guys use zip guns. Beat up Crazy Louie and they could use it on me.” One friend calls his father who he knows has some pretty tough friends over for cards and the men come over in topcoats with the collars turned up, six of them, mostly big guys except for his friend's father, and each of them keeps his hand in his side coat pocket as if packing a gun, and they say “All right, you kids, we're cops, so you better beat it or we're running the bunch of you in,” and the gang takes off. Howard and his friends stay away from the neighborhood for parties and movies and things like that for another month. Then they hear from their contact that Crazy Louie got busted for stomping someone almost to death, some of the older Saxons got drafted into the army, and the rest of them have a gang war going with a gang south of their territory and have sort of lost interest in them.