Ladies' Man (15 page)

"Oh yeah?" I said flatly. My brains were cooking. He just made me feel like a pile of shit. I felt like saying "Oh yeah? As a matter of fact, Candy, I know some nigger who sells stolen Earth Shoes from the back of his station wagon." Avon lady. We drove in silence for about ten minutes. Candy made me feel like I was doing everything wrong. Kids, Continentals—I didn't have shit. Donny wasn't saying dick either. I bet he had less than me.

"How do you know all this shit, Candy? Kids and jobs and all."

Candy seemed oblivious to the vibes. He made a face and shrugged. "My mother knows. She keeps tabs. I been to all the christenings and the circumcisions. Kids, man." He smacked his lips like he wanted some for lunch. "Kids is what's happening."

When we hit the Bronx, I got excited and wanted to start a memory lane riff, but I was also still sulking from listening to the Queen Bee. I shot another glance at Donny. He had left the planet three days ago.

"Hey! Moshokly Parkway!" Candy extended his palm for a slap and I halfheartedly complied. The car purred on at Candy's leisurely pace past De Witt Clinton High School, well-kept lawns and thirties-style blond brick apartment buildings.

"You know, this place still looks good?" Candy nodded, then turned to me and clapped a bear paw on my knee. "So how you doin', Kenny, you doin' okay? Financially?"

"Oh yeah, oh yeah, and you?"

Candy raised an eyebrow and bit his lip as if trying to remember a date, his hand still on my knee. "Well, I would, at this point in my life, describe myself as, slight-ly higher than middle middle class."

"Me too." Fuck you.

"You know, I just bought into a parking lot out in Riverhead out in Suffolk. I don't have the pension security of a city job like
this
cocksucker back here." Candy laughed and tossed a few chins back to Donny, then threw his arm over the seat to slap Donny's knee. Donny brought his knees together to avoid Candy's swipe but ignored Candy otherwise.

Maybe Candy was getting back at us for goofing on his fatness in that goldfish bowl on Eighth Street.

"Hey, Candy." I winked at Donny. "Maynard got any kids?"

"Not that I know of, but his brother Elliot? He got twins." Donny and I cracked up and I held out my palm over the seat for a slap. Candy smiled slightly but couldn't take his eyes off the road. "What's so funny?" He laughed uneasily. "It's true, man, he got twins."

I started howling, clasping my hands between my knees, jerking my head back and forth.

Donny was laughing so hard he bumped, his head on the window. I leaned over the seat, opened Candy's bar, pantomimed pouring booze into one of the glasses and splashing it over Donny. Donny exploded, pointed to the bar tears rolling down his cheeks and jumped back in his seat like his neck had been yanked. I collapsed flat over the back of my seat like wet wash. I was so tired from laughing I could only moan. Every time I moaned, Donny erupted into high-pitched, staccato giggles.

"Nice fuck, fuckin' c-car, Candy." Donny held his stomach, and I started howling all over, nodding yes! yes! yes! and pounding his palm with a million slaps. Joker soul brothers. We could have torn Candy to shreds with our fingernails. Our rage.

"Aw, you guys are nuts." Candy raised the volume on the radio.

"Hey, Lucky! Remember us?" Candy beamed down at the little German Jew luncheonette owner in T-shirt and apron who had been dishing out lime rickeys since the year one. He looked up at us, squinting behind his Dr. Cyclops glasses.

"Yeah, yeah, I remember you," he said defensively like we were bill: collectors. The place was deserted. It looked identical to when we were there as kids—high ceiling, gloomy, messy, greasy—and I was hit with a' great feeling of "so what." As a matter of fact, I didn't even want to eat there because the place was such a pit. I didn't want to ruin my stomach for the sake of a sentimental journey. Donny thumbed through the
Post
, by the cash register. He looked like he couldn't have cared less either. Only Candy was excited, twisting his head this way and that, his mouth gaping in delight. Actually, maybe it was just the idea that we were going to eat soon that was turning him on.

We sat on stools across from the grill, under aging fallacious paintings of juicy burgers and chilled Cokes. In one picture, against a faded lime green background, two blond kiddies, the boy crew cut, the girl in short yellow curls, avidly licked their chops for an orange Creamsicle as Mom and Dad in pearls and pipe benignly smiled on. "It's nutritious too!" was scripted underneath.

"Remember that picture?" Candy chuckled.

"They should take out the Creamsicle and put in a prick," said Donny.

Lucky stood before us wiping his hands on a towel. His almost bald noggin was topped with a wispy gray fuzz, and his mouth was locked open a good two inches, had been since the fifties.

"Lucky, can I get a spinach salad?" I asked, scanning the. food paintings.

"A
what
?" Lucky scowled.

"A spinach salad!" Donny turned to Candy hand to mouth then across the counter to me.

"Hey, Kenny, where do you think you are, Soho?" He slapped palms with Candy and I was afraid the alliances were going to shift.

"Okay, gimme some lettuce and tomatoes."

"Guy eats like Bug Bunny," Candy snorted. No comment.

"I'll have a ham sandwich, Lucky." Candy pressed his palms together.

"Yeah, make sure you give it to him on Melba toast." I grabbed a fistful of love rungs.

"And a Coke," Candy barked, trying to disengage my claw with his elbow while twisting his hip away from me.

"Make it a Tab!" I corrected, letting go. "Coke for me," said Donny.

Lucky brought me a lettuce and tomato cm white bread and Candy got a ham on white toast.

After eating we ambled over to the cash register. Candy whipped out a five to pay for everybody and neither Donny nor I protested.

"Hey!" Candy spied a box of rubber balls. "And
now
!" He bounced. "You skinny dudes think you're so bad? C'mon." Candy marched us across the street into the housing projects playground. As we hit the sidewalk, an el train overhead drowned the street with its grinding roar. For eighteen years that sound was as unnoticeable to me as my heartbeat. It was unseasonably warm for February, almost fifty degrees, and the basketball and handball courts were lightly sprinkled with people. "Whew." Donny gazed around him, hands on hips.

"This was the place, remember?" We stood in the middle of four basketball courts separated from four handball courts by a high link fence. Beyond another high link fence were a sandbox, benches, a seesaw, a sliding pond, monkey bars, a wading pool, and a tiny parks department supply cottage, all fenced in, all metal and concrete, all surrounded by red brick city housing. The basketball court boundaries, key and foul lines had been freshly painted over in bright yellow on the gray-black macadam.

"C'mon." Candy violently bounced his; rubber ball. •"I'll take on both of you." He headed for the handball courts, and we trailed behind, slightly blown out like soldiers returning home from a three-day gig at Gettysburg.

Three of the four handball courts were occupied, and Candy started throwing the ball against the wall of the empty court. All four walls were tattooed with massive explosions of spraypainted graffiti. A thick jungle of, purples, reds and blacks, numbers and names. Every time Candy threw the pink ball it seemed to get swallowed up in the artwork and bounced back like it was being spit out by the color scheme.

"Look what those bastards did." Candy grimaced, nodding toward the walls. Donny kept walking in circles as if he were stunned.

"Listen, Candy, I'm gonna pass on the game. Why don't you play Donny solo," I said apologetically.

"Aw, c'mon," Candy pleaded like a ten-year-old.

"Nah, really, Candy." I raised my hands in submission. "I rip this suit, I go to work in a barrel, no kiddin'."

"Yeah, me too," Donny said.

"No, Donny, play him, play him." I motioned Donny toward the court. "I'll keep score."

"C'mon, Donny, let's go, eleven points." Candy tossed the ball against the wall. Donny took off his coat and hung it on a piece of wire protruding from the fence. He effortlessly touched his toes, then did back stretch exercises. He was as thin and wiry as he had been at fifteen. And the bastard probably never did a sit-up in his life. I walked over to a low foot-high con-crete ledge against the fence by the first court and sat my ass down. The handball court walls were backed by the rear wall of a factory and I recalled the hundreds of balls I'd lost over that factory roof. On the court nearest me a young black mother played paddleball by herself. She had an enormous dungareed butt, an expression on her face like a stoned cow as she lethargically swished her paddle in the air, missing the hard black ball nine times out of ten, walking after it each time, her head jiggling on her shoulders. Her baby half-stood, half-dangled, suspended by his crotch in a walker parked about five feet away from me on the sidelines. The kid was listlessly chawing on the saliva-soaked cookie in his tiny hand. He kept twisting his head to me, but I had nothing to say. Maybe I should have adopted him and invited Candy to the circumcision.

On the farthest court from me, three Puerto Rican teenagers played paddleball—two, short twitchy butted girls in hip-high pea-coats against a skinny kid in a . brimmed porkpie hat and a premature mustache. The kid was showing off, hitting the ball behind his back, between his legs, smacking one girl on the ass with his paddle, adjusting, readjusting his hat. The girls were laughing, stiff-arming their swings, innuendoing to each other with their eyes. He had a hard-on. Anytime the girls scored a point he groaned or slapped his forehead or said, "Ah must be gettin' old!" Once in a while he slammed a killer just so they would know he was a lay-back but active volcano.

Candy moved his weight well. They both had good coordination, but it had been a long time, and they played like shit.

By the basketball courts, on
our
bench, three identically dressed Puerto Rican guys sat on the top slat, backs against the fence, hands in coat pockets, feet on the seat slats. Against the far mesh wall a kid also in a porkpie leaned into his girlfriend, whose back was curved into the fence. His hands were in his pockets and he supported himself by resting his long thigh in her crotch.

That was us. All of it. All of it. Me and Sandy Talla against the fence. Me and Suzie and Dawn and Ronnie playing handball. Me and Donny and Brazil shooting hoops. Me and the boys bullshitting on the bench listening to WMCA, WABC, WINS.

I felt a rush of panic. For a second I thought I had lost my sample case. Then I remembered it was in Candy's car. Outside the playground two sixteen-year-old blond Irish girls walked by in pea coats and I got hit with a sweetness, a sweet horniness, and I remembered what it was like to thrill to a tongue in my mouth, a tit in my hand, perfume in my nose. The delicious gut-wrenching agony of the time in my life when titty was king and I never even knew girls
had
cunts. Another el train roared overhead, bringing back the millions of el trains that had roared past my window and I started crying.

Nothing heavy. Just misty sadness. It was over. It had been the best and now it was over and nothing had ever felt as good. We had peaked back then, and all we'd been doing since was dying.

I heard Candy groan as though he just got skewered with a sword. I glanced up in time to see the pink ball, soar over the factory roof. End of game. They slowly staggered over to me, breathing heavily. Donny looked miserable. Candy's chest was heaving like a bellows and perspiration dripped steadily off his nose. I wasn't sure if it showed that I had been crying. If any of us had had anything
real
going on in our lives we never would have come back.

"Gentlemen? We are very lost people."

Donny caught my eye for a second, then looked away. Candy stared at me, still wheezing. Raising his hand above his head, he wiped the sweat off his face with his shoulder. "Speak for yourself, Kenny."

"Yeah, Candy? Whata
you
got?"

"Kids. I got kids, Kenny, and they're the best." He lightly slapped Donny on the chest with the back of his hand while looking at me. "C'mon, I'll blow you guys to Tabs."

After the drinks Candy wanted to tool around the Bronx, go over to the high-school, the park and maybe even drop in on Maynard at On the Road, but me and
Donny just wanted to go home so he drove back to Manhattan.

It was only two-thirty but I couldn't psych myself for any more selling that day, so I talked Candy into dropping me off at the Seventy-ninth Street exit on the West Side Highway. As I was getting out of the car the three of us made big promises to get together, exchanging phone numbers and addresses, but all I could think about doing was getting the hell away from Candy. His car smelled like baby shit.

The
Post
was rolled between the doorknob and the jamb and my first thought was that La Donna was out. Then I remembered how "out" she really was and I felt slammed again by that strange mixture of pain and relief.

I hung up my suit, slipped on dungarees and did my hundred and fifty. Then I took the
Post
into the bedroom, turned on afternoon cartoons and lay down. It was three o'clock. Automatically I skipped from the movie section to comics to sports. I only liked two or three comic strips and had the most passing of passing interests in sports—mainly if the team was from New York it was nice if it won—but movies were my meat. I checked the four or five local movies on the Upper . West Side. Nothing registered and I wound up watching old Popeye and Mighty Mouse cartoons. Every time La Donna popped into my mind I raised the volume on the cartoons a little higher.

Three books were stacked on my night table:
Tropic of Capricorn, Franny and Zooey
and
Prize American Short Stories
. I read a page in each. They all sucked, all were boring. Books were boring. I'd make some goddamn teacher. Maybe I could get a schedule that would let me teach only when I was in a good mood.