Ladies' Man (22 page)

"Oh ho." She laughed, not looking up. "Don't I wish it. I live with the poor people out in Queens."

"Whereabouts?"

"You know Whitestone?"

"That's quite a schlep, huh?"

She raised an eyebrow and. shrugged, still looking down at her orders.

"You know, ah, I've got a car today. If you want, I can drive you home."

"Oh, thank you, dear, I get a ride with George." Still not looking up.

I glanced over at the grill. Cheeseburger George leaned over the counter reading the
News
, hairy forearms and light-reflecting bald dome. He sang something Greek into his hand as he flipped the pages. The diner was relatively deserted.

"Charlene, you wanna go out, have a drink some evening?" Evening sounded less dirty than night, as if there was still some Daylight Savings Time in it. I was braced for the big no.

"Kenny, I told you." She looked up and not unkindly. "I get a ride with George."

Charlene got up to take an order. I rubbed my face in my palms. I remembered one time when La Donna was deliriously sick—she had 105. degrees, sweating, freezing, a heavy-duty flu was going around—I crawled into bed with her and held her. She fell asleep in my arms and I lay there furious because she didn't acknowledge my sacrifice, the comforting strength of my goddamn presence. I had wanted her to say "Thank you" or "I don't know what I'd do without you" or "Oh, Kenny" or something, but she just slept, and I was sulking while she was crackling with fever next to me. I
started thinking she didn't need me, she didn't need me, you don't need me, bitch? I'll show
you
! So I got up, noisy enough to wake her up, and she freaked and said, "Kenny, don't leave me." Just what the doctor ordered—for me. So I got back into bed and held her for hours.

I felt like taking a goddam fork and jabbing it in my face. A real nowhere man.

She wasn't asking for anything that unreasonable. Time, that's all. We all need time. Time to think, time to grow, time to work,' time to die on the vine. My mind kept doing uncontrollable flip-flops—within minutes I'd go through a rainbow of changes: don't leave me, who needs you, I understand, you're killing me. All very exhausting.

I went to the old German lady's house to deliver her Car-Vac and assorted goods. She invited me in for coffee. We sat and talked and I tried to ignore the cats, which seemed more dense than roaches on a 3:00 a.m. kitchen floor.

"How can you
valk
out dere?" She shivered in her chair and clutched the neck of her dress like a shawl.

"Ah, it's not so bad today. It was colder yesterday."

"Oh," she said, as if I'd just broken down the Rosetta Stone for her.

I pretended this lady was my grandmother. I loved my grandmother. On Saturdays she would take me to the roller derby, to monster movies and to wrestling matches. In the evenings we used to watch more monster movies on her old Stromberg-Carlson. She hated spies, niggers, other Jews, Germans, my mother's in-laws, other old people, the neighborhood, her arthritis, her gross heaviness, and any kind of animal. She was a Hatpin Mary at the wrestling matches, a rage queen par excellence. But she loved me ferociously, and it was me and her against the world.

This old German broad didn't even remotely remind me of my grandmother, except that she was old; that and the fact that I was sure if we had been related she would have loved me.

"This is good coffee." I winked.

"Ah!" She waved me away. "Why don't you get indoor job! You get pneumonia!"

"Well, I don't do this all the time." I set my cup on the rug and three cats drank the rest. "I go to school. I only do this part tone." I was raising my voice as if talking to a deaf person.

"You go to school!" She nodded in approval. I guess I still had that need in me from childhood to glow and perform in front of older people, adults.

"Yeah, I go to college! I'm gonna be a teacher!" was almost shouting. Why not medical school, schmuck? Go the whole route.

"That's good. To teach people." She nodded. I felt insane.

"Yeah, people need teaching. I got a year left, then I graduate." I waved in dismissal at her order in a shop-ping bag at her feet. "I'm quitting this soon, this is only to pay for tuition."

"You a smart boy." She squinted in appreciation of my craftiness.

"Yeah, I'm almost finished."

When I left she was beaming as if she was proud of me. I walked out, dizzy and totally out of touch with my body. I felt high but more a high of anarchy than of pleasure.

I almost never lied like that.

Ever since I woke up I had been walking around as if La Donna was some goddamn star, as if she had already made the big time and I was a nobody. It wasn't something conscious; it felt more like a physical pain, a crick in the neck.

I passed Gordon's apartment house. I felt like I wanted to lay off a load something fierce. But not with her. Not there.

"Bluecastle Housewares, Mrs. Macready."

I stood in the doorway of one of my coffee klatchers holding her order in a bag next to my heart, my elbow sticking out at a stiff angle like a Victorian suitor, with a box of candy.

Macready opened the door. She was a short juicy chuck of a lady in tan slacks and brown rayon pullover which showed off the concentric stitching of. her bra. She was about forty with Prince Valiant bangs and a sharp nose.

"Well, it's the Bluecastle House man!" She had gut fawed the loudest of the four when I was riffing with them on Tuesday. She was the most hopeful prospect.

I extended her goods. She stuck her nose in the bag. "What's the damages?"

"Eight-o-nine. Let's call it eight even." I paused significantly. "Plus a cup of coffee."

She read my eyes and I was in like Flynn. She stopped smiling. "Come on in."

I sat at a round Formica table in her kitchen under a six-bulb fake brass chandelier. As she made coffee she sneaked glances at me as if she were going to slip me a Mickey Finn.

"It's cold out." I rubbed my hands. The kitchen dinette was wallpapered with black and white flowers on a mustard gold background.

"I was out earlier," she said.

"Oh yeah?"

She tightrope-walked back to the table, a brimming cup in each hand.

"How do you like it?"

"Black's good." I slipped my hand over hers.

She looked at me as though she wanted me dead, as though she was already nude hugging a pillow on her bed as I remade my Windsor knot in the mirror, hemming and hawing about not being able to make a definite time to meet again because the next five weeks were going to be so crazy for me. But she didn't slip her hand away.

It would be a most unhappy and rageful screw, a grudge hump. But I could have given two shits. Without dropping my stare I nodded toward some vague bedroom over my left shoulder as if to say "Let's get it over with."

She drummed her fingers under my hand. I heard footsteps approaching the dinette. The walk was an unsteady shuffle. I fought down a, cooling shudder. A kid appeared in the doorway. He was mongoloid with small, glassy, unfocused pig eyes and a saliva-slick tongue pro-trading slightly from a small goldfish mouth. He raised his eyebrows in surprise and cocked his head at me, his mother, than back at me.

She stared at me and withdrew her hand, like he was
my
fucking fault. .

"Herbert, what do you want?"

He stared at me, raising and lowering his eyebrows. "Who a you?" in a loud singsong croaking splutter.

"Herbert, what do you want?" Flat and icy.

"Who a you?"

"Hi, Herbert!" I sounded weak and self-conscious nice a game-show contestant unexpectedly forced to sing on television.

"Who a you?"

"Excuse me." She shepherded him back down the foyer.

"Who was him?" In that-same brassy dingdong singsong. I heard a door quietly close.

"I'm sorry." She stood in the entrance.

"For what?" I shrugged like I ate with mongoloids three times a day. "How old is he?" I tried to make light conversation. "Fourteen?"

"He's twenty-six. I think you'd better leave."

She paid me and as I left I kissed her on the cheek like a jerk.

I stood out in the hallway and for a second I felt as if I could have been anywhere. I didn't even know what part of Manhattan I was in. That anarchy rush got stronger. I could have either killed or gone to sleep with equal gusto. I found a cream sachet foil in my coat pocket, walked down the corridor and knocked on a door.

"Yeah?" A male voice answered.

"Free gift from Bluecastle."

"Slip it under the door."

"You got it." I placed the foil halfway under the door and stomped on my end. I was walking to the elevator when the door swung open; the guy popped out into the hallway in T-shirt and pajama bottoms. He was about my size. His hair was wild and his face was turning colors.

"Whata you, a
smart
son of a bitch?"

He was in a slight crouch. I turned slowly. I was up for it.

"You ruined my fucking rug!"

"Oh yeah?" I felt sleepy. "That's too bad."

"That's…" he sputtered.

"Larry! Come inside!" a lady yelled.

"I'll kick your fucking ass!" He moved toward me. I took off my jacket and extended my arms, palms up like a saint.

"Anytime." I nodded serenely.

He stopped, enraged and flustered.

"Larry!"

"Listen, you Bastard! I know karate!"

"Anytime." He wasn't going to karate shit.

"I know your fucking boss!" He pointed a finger at me.

"That's too bad." I smiled.

"Larry!"

"It's gonna Be too bad for you!" He stormed back into his apartment and slammed the door.

"Anytime." I continued to stand there like a plaster saint as the two of them screamed at each other behind the door.

I didn't make the rest of my deliveries, just headed home instead. I felt bushed.

There was a funny smell in the kitchen. The broccoli floated in the pot in a puddle of melted ice. The salad dressing had been out all night and there was a two-inch layer of sediment in the old fashioned glass. I opened the oven door; the half-baked chicken thighs looked nasty and withered. Surprisingly, I didn't see any roaches. They must have eaten themselves to death overnight.

After trashing the food, I did two hundred and twenty-five sit-ups; my usual hundred and fifty and the seventy-five I couldn't do the previous night because of the dope.

My phone rang.

"Yeah?"

"Kenny, what the hell happened?" It was Fat Al.

"What?" I felt sleepy again.

"You fucking know what."

"The guy got pissed." I shrugged.

"He got… We're getting
sued
, Kenny."

"That's too bad."
I
ran the edge of my pinky around the square corners of the Touch Tone digits. There was silence on both ends.

" 'That's too bad.'" Al read back my quote. "Whata you goin' mental on me, Kenny?"

"Nope." I wiped the accumulated dust off my finger onto the couch.

"Well, what the hell do you suggest?"

"I suggest we have his legs broken." My eyes focused on a slick of sunlight on the polished wood floor.

"What?"

"And then you know what I suggest for
you
, you fucking hump?" The floor kept moving in and out of focus as if I was staring at it through unadjusted binoculars.

More silence. Deep nasal breathing.

"I suggest you strap a goddamn catcher's mask to your butt because the next time I see you I'm gonna try to shove that motherfucking electronic watch of yours right up your ass."

"If I
ever
see your face around that diner again, I'm gonna take your fuckin' case an' I'm gonna shove it up
your
ass, you got that?"

"That's a very childish response, Al." My voice was flat, but I could feel my heartbeat in my face.

Al hung up. I was out of a job. Kenny makes a move.

It was goddamn Friday afternoon. That used to be. the best time in the week for me. The beginning of the weekend. As high as Monday morning was low. Playground time. Why was it that everybody seemed to have more friends when they were kids than when they were adults? Adults never had buddies. I could have used some company.

The house was freezing. I sat on the couch, the living room phone in my lap. I sat there zoned out until the room was almost dark. I didn't feel like calling La Donna. As isolated as I was it felt like the wrong thing to do, the wrong type of heaviness. My hands were icy and slightly moist My armpits smelled like coffee grounds. I needed a shower but I didn't have the wherewithal to get my ass up off the couch. It was too cold. I wanted to call Donny but was too embarrassed about last night. I stared at my hand on the receiver, then both hands, the same hands I'd always had. They didn't look thirty years old. I couldn't imagine them getting arthritic, covered with liver spots. They were young man's hands, teenage hands, finger-popping hands. Maybe I wasn't really thirty. Maybe I wasn't really aging. Maybe the aging process was purely psychosomatic, yeah, and maybe what really got you high was the rolling paper not the dope.

My baby wants space from me, she got it.

I had about $1500 to my name. I was unemployed. I was glad I didn't have to door-to-door anymore, but that's as far as it got in my head. I noticed the rest of Donny's joints in the cigar tin on the wall unit.

The job I had before Bluecastle was working with my uncle doing tax forms out in Queens. It was also an hour's commute from where I was living, which was with those guys from college.
That
was a disaster. It wasn't a total disaster. At least they were company. As a matter of fact, we used to have some pretty good times.

I remember one guy, Alvin, was heavy into jazz. What were their other names? That place was okay. I didn't spend much time there., and the minute I started making money I split, but somehow the bad memories didn't hold up so strong over time.

But the place had been a dump. Big deal. My joint was as neat as a pin, but I still wound up playing handball with my own shit. I wondered if they'd kept that place. It was almost, eight years ago. I had a fantasy of waltzing in and those guys still in long hair, sitting on pillows, eating wok-fried vegetables and grooving on Janis Joplin and Vanilla Fudge, as though I had just stepped out for some smokes. For the hell of it I got up, got my coat, and got ready to take a walk. I hadn't been there since the day I left. Maybe I could move back in. I was jobless. I could use the rent break. Jobless. I kept waiting for a panic lick, but nothing happened.