Seventh Avenue (21 page)

“Who’s stealing what?” she said softly.

“I haven’t stolen you from him: he never had you.”

She sighed fitfully; the discussion, like a bout of lovemaking, had drained her, and her body was limp and exhausted.

“Oh, Jay, what’s going to happen to us?”

“I’m going to marry you if I have to kill your husband.”

She let him kiss her on the cheek.

“Make sure I’m still alive afterwards.”

Rhoda was waiting up for him. He saw her perched on three pillows with an Ellery Queen in her hand, a bowl of gnawed fruit by her side and a chocolate stain across her lips. He went over to Neal and covered him. His breathing was raspy, but he was sleeping soundly.

Rhoda pointed guiltily to the fruit bowl when he came in.

“I got bored and well - I had a ball.”

“Better than taking pills - they can kill you.”

“Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea, huh? Make things a lot easier for you.”

“The minute I walk in, you start. I’m tired . . .”

“She gave you a workout?”

“Aw Rhoda, cut it out. I met Fredericks tonight at the Bedford.”

“Fredericks?” incredulous. “The landlord? What for?”

“To talk business.”

“What kinda business?”

He slipped off his jacket and threw it on a chair which was losing horsehair, and was Rhoda’s idea of an antique.

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“That’s you to a T. Why bother to explain to her - she’s only some idiot I live with.” She paused, her eyes darting nervously from side to side. “Tell me the truth. He’s asking us to get out of the store; isn’t he?”

He wished she would swallow her tongue.

“We’ve got a lease, remember?”

“What then?”

“I’ve taken five more stores.”

“Whaaaaaaat? You crazy or something? We’ve got three stores already, what do we need more for? Jay, I don’t claim to understand you, but I think you’re losing your mind. You’re opening stores like cans of sardines.”

“Are we making money?”

She looked at him cautiously.

“We are . . . but why spoil it?”

“Rhoda, do me a favor, read your comic book.”

“It makes more sense than you, at least. All of a sudden, you’re a big business expert, and I don’t know a thing.”

“When I fall on my ass, you can open your big mouth. But right now remember that you’ve never had this kind of money in your whole life. So just keep that big mouth of yours shut.”

“Back where we started from, aren’t we? When’s it gonna end, Jay? When? When? Are you gonna treat me like a human being - your wife . . . ?” she shouted angrily.

Neal began to hiccup loudly, then worked himself into a raging tizzy. Jay felt very tired and forced himself up from the bed and went inside to him. With trembling hands, he picked Neal up and tried to soothe him.

“Wunnerful father, you are,” Rhoda’s voice rang out. “I must tell him someday, how lucky he is to have a father like you.”

He stood with Neal by the window, and the child gave him a gas smile. The street was empty and in the darkness less actively ugly than in the daylight. Jay wanted to move to another apartment, but the thought of taking Rhoda with him forced him to abandon the idea. Sooner or later, she’d get around to asking him about moving, and when she did, he’d accede, because there could be no logical case for staying on at Roebling Street. Neal calmed down after a five-minute vigil at the window and Jay kissed him tenderly on the head and placed him back in the crib.

“So you went to the Bedford?” Rhoda exclaimed, as though the fact was some sinister corroboration. “And introduced him to your gangster friends? Must of made a good impression on Mr. Fredericks.”

“Can we go to sleep, or are you going to read all night?”

“The Bedford, huh? You stink from garlic. I guess it covers the smell of the woman you must of been with. That dope Rhoda couldn’t figure out a thing like that, could she? Well, when I get back to the store, you won’t be leaving me home, so that you can run around whenever you feel like. I’ll be included wherever you go.”

He turned off the light and rolled over on his side, and Eva’s face flashed before his eyes: the flaming red hair, her enormous opaline eyes that lingered on his face speechlessly for minutes, the swell of her breasts when he was inside her and she could not breath, and her anguished cry when he had satisfied her. He heard Rhoda rustle the pages of her book, and then close it, groan irritably, and chomp a chocolate marshmallow. He mustn’t lose Eva. God help him . . .

Douglas Fredericks had pouches under his eyes, and his skin was a jade color when he entered the office of Robertson and Clay, Attorneys at Law. The receptionist was a slim, middle-aged woman who used witch hazel behind her ears and lived on cottage cheese. She got up to greet him with the kind of open-faced embarrassment women accord distinguished clients who give them pen sets every Christmas when they want those pen sets, six in her case, to turn into an engagement ring.

“Good morning, Miss Berry,” Fredericks said briskly, gritting his teeth, but squeezing a smile out. Miss Berry did him a lot of favors.

Miss Berry was about to remind him that he had called her Cynthia last Christmas, but instead she extended a slightly gnarled hand, an honored veteran of twenty years of shorthand, and said:

“Oh, good morning, Mr. Fredericks. It’s so good to see you. You’ve brightened my day. Mr. Clay will be free in about five minutes - he’s tied up with someone at the moment. Can I get you a cup of coffee?”

“Yes, thanks, but . . .”

“No sugar, I remember. I’ve never given you sugar once, now, have I?”

A pyrrhic victory, definitely, for Miss Berry.

Fredericks had to admit she was right, and now realized why enraged janitors murdered innocent spinsters with hammers.

A few fond glances later, Miss Berry received two sharp reports on her telephone, and Mr. Nathan Clay emerged. He was built like a wine tun with a gold watch hanging from one of his bellies, a scalp that looked as though it had lived through a drought and could support no form of vegetation, least of all hair, and a smile that revealed two buff-colored caps that had been necessitated by a disagreement with an outraged criminal whom Clay had represented during his younger days when he had to work for a living. The experience had turned Clay to corporation law and real estate for which a talent for finding obscure loopholes, snaring parcels of land almost before they were put up for sale, and interlocking directorships so cleverly fitted him.

He shook Fredericks’ hand warmly and led him into a book-lined office that he only used to entertain clients. Four young clerks, two doors away, did all of the research.

“Sit down, Doug. What’re you looking so worried about?”

“You know that little sonovabitch I introduced you to some time ago and asked you to act for: Blackman?”

Clay wrote the name down on a pad, then ran the name across his lips like a hock.

“Dress business or something?” he said through his nose.

“That’s right. I rented him the store I had on Fourteenth Street.”

“Of course, now I remember.”

Fredericks launched into an account of the preceding evening, citing every one of Jay’s nefarious tricks: the blackmail, the implicit threats, the swaggering air, which wasn’t really an offense except against good taste, the hoodlum in the background. He stopped peremptorily and cast an angry glance at Clay, who had not uttered a word.

“Well, what are we going to do about it?” he demanded.

Clay did a few somersaults with his pocket watch; the chain was inordinately long and Fredericks imagined it coiled around Clay’s belly like a sleeping python. He got up, walked to the window, and gazed down at minuscule New Yorkers crawling on the pavement forty stories below.

“It’s a tricky situation.”

“What’s tricky about it?”

“Has he actually said that he would do you bodily harm?”

“Does he have to mug me first?”

“No, but someone has to witness a threat. He’d probably - if it came to it - have two witnesses backing him up.”

“Can’t we swear out a complaint?”

“Not so simple. The State Building Commission would deny any suggestion of collusion and you’d have to prove that. It would be very difficult - even with Dewey as the D.A. If you didn’t prove your case, I think you’d be in a great deal of trouble, because in a situation like this - that is with an official body under investigation - they could well go through your affairs with a fine-toothed comb. It’s not a very pleasant business. Every business deal, every tax return of yours, your whole business life would be put under a microscope. And when these people start looking, they find little discrepancies. No one’s life can bear that kind of scrutiny, and yours especially.”

Breathlessly Fredericks said: “Nat, I can’t believe this is possible. Little shits like Blackman don’t push me around.”

“Doug, we’re all vulnerable. It just takes the right combination of factors. The point of all this is this: is Blackman offering you any less than the big department stores for the locations?”

“No, he’s prepared to negotiate the way they would.”

“He’s a smart young bastard, but a greenhorn about leases. What you must insist on is a percentage of his gross profit - it could be anything between five and ten percent, plus the rent. You could never get a deal like that from a big chain. I think he’s going to do very well. He’s got a gimmick, and he always seems to have something up his sleeve. If his gross profit runs to a million between the five stores, it could be that he’s doing you a favor. So long as he believes you’re at a disadvantage, you’ve got him by the balls.”

Fredericks weighed up the advice and reluctantly accepted it.

“Send me a bill, will you, Nat?”

“A bill?” Clay embraced Fredericks warmly: he might have been the school’s star student at a nationwide spelling bee. “We’re friends . . . so I’ve given you a little advice.”

“I’ve got to do something to repay . . .”

“You’ll buy me lunch one day at Rumpelmayer’s and we’ll talk about old times and the future. It’s important to old thieves like us to talk about the future.”

The elevator shot down at a speed of fifty miles an hour and Douglas Fredericks had a small ungainly gremlin dancing around in his stomach. He blamed it on the elevator, and then when his chauffeur dropped him in front of the St. Moritz for lunch, he realized that Clay had been working for Jay as well.

In the summer, Brooklyn was hot and sultry, a sargasso of crowded apartments, of people sleeping on fire escapes, trying to breathe, of suicidal flies dying in midair before they could reach the rotting fruit, of rancid effluvia emerging from the river, of old people dying in subways. Jay watched Neal’s asthma gradually become worse, and finally, with an urgency and desperation that had escaped Rhoda’s detection, he persuaded her to take the child away to the mountains for the summer. She held out till the last week in June, for the thought of leaving Jay to his own devices in the city spelled death to the crumbling tenement their marriage had become. Hurried family councils with Howard and Jan buoyed her spirit: “He’ll miss you, you’ll see,” was the reassurance Jan gave, and Howard, totally enthralled by the huge success Jay had made . . .”An empire out of dust” was how he described it - advised her that Jay “needed a bit longer than most to settle down.” A surprising decision made by Jay at the last moment - to send his mother along with them - brought Rhoda to her knees; but she gave in only when he promised to visit them without fail every weekend and she knew that he would keep his word because the two people he loved, if he loved anyone, would be with her.

The journey to Ferndale on a humid, stifling morning, as though the city refused to wake from its coma, took nearly seven hours. Celia cradled Neal in the back seat for most of the morning, and the movement of the car lulled him to sleep. The mountain air had a crisp cool dryness that made them all feel better, and Neal’s racked breathing became less labored.

The countryside spread out before them in a porraceous wild mass of furze and boscage, with forests of ash and maple stippled on the mountainside. The road twisted through the mountain like an artery trying to find its way to the heart, through valleys where alfalfa, haystacks, red stiles and morose cattle receded from their field of vision almost before they took them in.

Jay had a dim recollection of an afternoon in Kalenberg: eating chicken in a field with a young German girl he had met outside a cinema in Vienna. The lowing cattle and the thick corn ears and the greensward by the weir were before him again, just beyond the windshield of his car, haunting him as he shot past them because they came from another life, a life that was now dead and which represented the best part of his memory of youth, also dead, never to be resuscitated except in the smell of cow dung that was unbearable and the image of chalk white naked legs on a red polka dot skirt and saffron hair, straight and braided, and the distant toll of laughter that now sounded like a jeer, and a smile that revealed a chipped tooth, an arm with a dog-bite scar: an afternoon that had ended with a despairing revelation when he had taken the girl back to Vienna; back, or so he thought, to her parents’ home. He had been shaken to see half a dozen soldiers emerge, cackling and drunk, their black boots shining like seal-skin, their scabbards lewdly over their stomachs - one of the soldiers hopped on his to the amusement of the others - and a girl, red-faced and slovenly, hanging out of the window, one of her breasts outside a muslin slip, shouting to him and the girl. He froze when he realized that the girl had said:
“Heidi, wie geht es?”
for he had been with Heidi and Heidi wasn’t . . . country memories, on a country drive with Neal wide-eyed, staring at an opalescent sky, which had patches of sapphire in the west, and Rhoda’s voice, cranky and pitched low, so that she always sounded as if she were trying to transcend some physical pain . . . he was brought back to the narrow curving road, and the mud huts and faded bistre tricked farmhouses set back from the road, visible only peripherally.

Lieberman’s Farm rested on an acclivity that overlooked Ferndale, a sleepy Catskill town that came to life in the summer. The farm was about half a mile from the town, and although its principal source of revenue was from summer guests, it still maintained a semblance of bucolic innocence. Half a dozen Jerseys munched in the small green lea in front of the main house, and about twenty lambs bleated welcomes to the new visitors. Hens squalled in a chicken run behind the house. Jay helped his mother and Rhoda out of the car, and Celia held Neal tightly in her arms, crooning with joy. She had never had a holiday in her life, and she couldn’t believe that she was about to have one now. The porch squeaked when anything heavier than a robin trod on it; the façade of the house was an unequal mixture of flaking brown wood and red brick, testimony of man’s ability to improvise when money is at stake. The lobby contained two second-Empire sofas - vintage Salvation Army - a writing table precariously balanced on two bricks to make up for height deficiencies, a brown leather chair that could accommodate a gorilla, two rugs made out of remnants, and an official-looking mahogany counter that had once been a bar. Behind the counter, Mrs. Lieberman sat chicken-flicking. The feathers were all stuffed in a huge laundry sack, to be used for pillows. Mrs. Lieberman lifted herself out of a rocker to greet them. She was a large thick-set woman, with ruddy cheeks, a stevedore’s forearms, curly blonde hair that she had given up brushing a decade before, and a rear end that appeared to be an extension that was still being built. She had served her hotelier’s apprenticeship in a Munich
wirtshaus,
and she had been grabbed, or at least her behind had been, by every workman in the city.

“I spoke to you on the phone, the other day,” Jay said. “Blackman.”

She opened her arms to embrace him, and dropped the chicken on the rocker.

Celia pointed to a sign behind the counter.

“Strictly kosher . . .” she said, reassured. She suspected that gentiles were all trying to poison her with unkoshered food.

“Ebsolutely,” replied Mrs. Lieberman, striking a sympathetic chord. “For suppa tonight we got gefilte fish, chicken soup, and boiled or roast chicken.”

“
Satisfied, Momma?” Jay said.

“I’ve got some baby food for Neal that has to be heated up,” Rhoda said.

“
Everythink
we got for
der
chillden
.”

A small gray man in a pale blue smock appeared. He had a vulpine snout, thin gray hair under a peaked cap, and small slate-gray eyes that peeped out from cowlish eyelids.

“Mine usbin,” Mrs. Lieberman said, indicating the man.”Say allo, Mex.”

Max said hello and then picked up their cases and beckoned them to follow him down a corridor. He swung open a door and said:

“Your rhum. Plenty yair.” He pointed to the double exposure with a flourish.

“
Nice and big,” Rhoda said.

“
And clean,” Celia added.

Max smiled gratefully.

The room was better than Jay had hoped for. It had two largish double beds, and a small crib for Neal tucked away in the corner behind a huge wardrobe that acted as a room divider and would give them a bit of privacy.

“I think this is a better setup than a hotel. Plenty of fresh air and good food,” Jay said apologetically. Rhoda had wanted to stay at a hotel, and had accused him of cutting corners on his family, but a doctor had recommended the farm and he had insisted that Neal’s health was the most important factor.

“I guess maybe when you come up weekends, we can get out a bit to some of the hotels,” Rhoda said.

“
Yeah, sure.”

“Beautiful . . . like the old country,” Celia said, peering out of the window at the green field behind the house. “You can see in front and behind. Oh, Jakie, you’re such a good boy. Isn’t he, Rhoda? So thoughtful.”

Rhoda stared at him and reluctantly nodded. Her attention was drawn to Neal, who awoke abruptly in Celia’s arms and commenced squalling for food. Rhoda took him from her and started out the door.

“
You unpack, Momma, and I’ll feed the baby.”

“Oh, Jakie, see I told you it would be better when the baby came. You and Rhoda are gonna be happy . . . I know it in my bones. I’m sucha proud momma because of you, the way you make a success of everything.” She put her arms around him and hugged him with all her strength and for the first time in months he felt safe and at peace.

Blobs of hot, dirty air hit Jay in the face when he got back to the city that night. The traffic pile-up choked the bridge. It was about ten o’clock when he reached his apartment. It was silent and empty, and there was the lingering odor of fried egg. He opened all of the windows and ran a bath. A pair of the colored maid’s stockings were hanging over the faucet, and he rolled them up in some old newspaper and stuffed them in the small garbage can under the sink. The bath cooled him off and brought him back to life. Eva had been unable to get out of a family dinner, and he had not tried to pressure her, for he realized that it would only make her position more untenable. By the time he was dressed, it was eleven o’clock and like a wild animal on the hunt he decided to go out. Just as he was about to slam the door behind him, the phone rang, and he retreated back into the apartment; the open windows had done nothing to counteract the stale egg smell.

“
Hello?” he said.

“Gotcha at last . . . where the hell you been?” Marty’s voice had a querulous tone.

“
Took Rhoda and Neal up to the country.”

“
You free then?”

“
Yeah. Why, something exciting happening?”

“It could. Listen, drag your ass out of that
schwitz
bath you call home and come up to my place.”

“
Where’s your wife?”

“
Atlantic City for the weekend to visit her sister.”

“
See you in twenty minutes.”

He went back to the bedroom and put on a lightweight gray gabardine suit, and a dark blue tie, fastened his pearl stickpin, a recent acquisition that like a beacon announced his entry into moneyed society. When he got behind the wheel, it occurred to him that he had driven for nearly fourteen hours during the day; his legs were stiff, and he took a cab uptown.

Marty was behind the bar, minus the colored barman, mixing himself a drink. He poured about four fingers of scotch in a tall glass, tried to get the ice tongs to close, but they resisted, so he used his fingers and carried it to the door with him. He handed the drink to Jay.

“You’ve got a future in room service,” Jay said, sipping the drink, “so if you have a bad season I’ll give you a reference for the Statler.”

“
What’re you doin’ tonight?”

“
I’m going to a military
ball
if it’s all the same to you.”

“
Putz
.
. . I mean,
do
you have to get home at a certain hour?”

“No, my mommy gave me a letter saying I could be out till midnight. What’s all the Hollywood production for?”

Jay sat down on the lobster-shaped settee and stretched his legs out. The room didn’t seem quite as large now as it had the first time. He could afford to put his feet on the furniture, and he wasn’t worried about being told that he had no manners. In a sense he regretted his quick success; if it had taken longer he might have learned how civilized people comported themselves and he was full of admiration for men who made amusing small talk, used the right knife, and wore women down by a process of silk-tongued attrition. He was still a bandit. Marty traversed both worlds with skill and finesse, and Jay liked him for that and his freedom from hypocrisy. He gave Jay another drink and Jay felt a sudden burst of energy.

Marty paced the apartment edgily, and Jay wondered what he had on his mind.

“So, what’s happening.”

“Am I a friend?” Marty demanded.

“Sure.” Jay was taken aback. “Why the question?”

“If you’d heard something that might hurt me, would you let me know about it?”

Jay reflected for a moment and loosened his tie.

“I think I would.”

“Eva knows you’ve got a kid.”

Jay sighed despondently. He hated to have anyone catching him out in a lie and he realized that he should have told Eva the truth, but he was afraid that it might damage their relationship, which drew its energy from the fact that he was an unhappily married man who had been deceived by a girl who wanted him at any cost. He had dodged around the issue when Eva had asked him about Rhoda and assured her that Rhoda had a false alarm, but he had learned about it too late. She regarded the story with some skepticism, for it was difficult to believe that Jay could be duped by anyone. She had not, however, pressed him further, and he had let it die.

“You got any brothers or cousins?” Marty asked.

“Who told her?” Jay said in a resigned voice.

“I asked you if you have any brothers?”

“One. A half-assed bookkeeper. But he doesn’t travel in my league.”

“Well, someone who says he’s your brother got a job with Harry Lee last week.”