Seventh Avenue (41 page)

“
You’re very warped,” Jay said. “Now let’s change the subject.”

They changed the subject, or at least Jay did.

“
How’re
you
doing in school?”

“
All right.”

“
All right, he says, when everybody tells me that he’s the smartest
kid in the whole school.”

“
I’ve heard this routine before.”

“
A genius. That’s what his teacher told me. Tops on his I.Q. test.”

“
You should’ve warned me and I would have brought earplugs.”

“
Don’t you take any pride in him?”

“
Why should I? He only stands between us. Once I thought it was
Herb who was our personal
ghost
. Now I know it’s not, never has
been.”

“
Who’s Herb?” Neal asked.

“
An old friend of Eva’s.”

“
What happened?”

“
Just deal you into the conversation? That what we’re supposed
to do?” Eva said.

“
I just wanted to know.”

“
None of your business.”

“
Herb died a long time ago,” Jay explained.

“
We killed him. Me and your father.”

“
If you open your trap I’ll dump you right out of the car.”

Jay pulled into the Little Neck Steak House, and the parking
attendant
took the car. He and Neal walked ahead, and Eva trailed
them in. A rustic wood-paneled bar led into the restaurant. It was
crowded,
and people were talking loudly and burning holes in each
other’s clothes with their cigarettes. Everyone seemed to be high in
one
way,
or another.

“
Can I have a horse’s neck?” Neal asked.

“
Course you can.”

Jay pushed his way into the bar, and the bartender, a tall, blond
man with a tired hangdog expression, a walking
encyclopedia
of
other people’s troubles, suddenly became animated.

“
Well, as I live and breathe, Mr. Blackman.”

“
Hiya, Charlie. Since when’ve you been working here?”

“
A month tomorrow. From the opening. It must be a good few
years since I seen you last. You stopped coming into the St. Moritz
with Mr. Fredericks.”

“
A lifetime ago.”

Eva shoved her head through.

“
Hello, hello, hello. Still the most beautiful redhead in New
York.”

Eva blinked.

“
Charlie?”

“
Right, Miss Meyers.”

“
Blackman.”

“
Congrats.”

“
Still double scotches on the rocks?”

“
She’ll drink anything. Sneaky Pete, if you sell it here.”

“
Always with the jokes, Mr. B, huh?”

“
Junior’ll have a horse’s neck.”

“
That’s ginger ale with grenadine, a slice of orange and a cherry,”
Neal said.

“
Done,” Charlie said. “It’s good to see a few familiar faces.”

“
What kinda crowd they get here?”

“
A few hookers. Amateurs. Cheaters and
players
mostly doing the
circuit. Husbands can’t afford the prices.”

“
I might come by during the week,” Jay whispered.

Eva found herself a barstool, a few drunks away.

“
Meet my boy Neal.”

Charlie extended a wet paw and shook Neal’s hand.

“
If you’re anything like your father, you’ll go places, Neal.”

Neal sulked against the bar. He found comparisons with his father
distasteful. He didn’t want to be like Jay, and everyone he met told
him
he ought to be. He couldn’t understand adults. He would have
preferred to spend the weekend with Zimmerman watching Lady Farberman, who operated nonstop on weekends. She had had more
pricks in her than a porcupine, Zimmerman said, and Neal thought
the joke was terribly funny and repeated it to everyone. Eva was ready for another drink before Jay had even bent his elbow.

“
Things okay by you, Mr. B?” Charlie said, nodding his head in Eva’s direction.

“
Oh, marvelous. I’d like her to drive home now. Right now.”

“
In her condition?”

“
Exactly.”

“
Oh, I’m sorry. You
useta
be so happy together.”

“
Yeah,
well .
. .” Jay finished his drink and went over to Eva. “Ready to eat?”

“
I am eating.”

“
Yeah? Well, don’t embarrass me.”

He slipped Charlie two five-dollar bills.

“
One’s for
you .
. . and she can drink the other. If she starts getting loud or falls on her ass, send me a telegram.”

“
Thanks,
Mr. B.”

“
I’ll have one more at the table. No bar scotch, though, Charlie. Black Label.”

A crowd of people waited behind a cord where a slim-hipped man in a tight-fitting suit
flapped
a pack of menus against his wrist. Jay walked up to him.

“
Blackman, table for three.”

“
Yes sir, Mr. Blackman. I took the reservation myself. Got a nice booth for you facing the fireplace.”

Neal picked up the menu while the waiter stood punctiliously waiting for their
order .
. .

“
I got a drink at the bar,” Jay said. “Ask Charlie.”

Charlie brought the drink to the table and gave Jay a perplexed look.

“
I don’t know what to say, Mr. Blackman. With the kid here, I don’t like
to .
. .”

“
Don’t worry about him. Just spit it out.”

“
She left.” He shrugged his shoulders awkwardly and leaned on the table, avoiding Neal’s stare of amazement. “With some
guy .
. . a greaseball mambo teacher that hangs out here. A sort of specialist in married women.”

“
Thanks, Charlie.”

“
You want me to call the parking lot and have them stop his car?”

“
Don’t bother. Maybe I’ll get
lucky,
and she’ll have an accident.”

Jay’s mood was buoyant throughout dinner.
Like
one of those
“magic” blackboards with a thin sheet of translucent paper on it that
could erase automatically when you lifted it up, he succeeded in extirpating Eva from his mind. She existed in some kind of vague
peripheral relationship to
him,
and he could shut her out whenever he
chose to do so. It was a facility he was grateful to possess. From the
moment he had resumed his affair with her, after leaving Rhoda, he
had known that not only were they doomed people, but they were also
out of love. He neither desired her nor affected
desire
: it was all as
dead, as insubstantial as cigarette ash. He had been motivated by a
lack of feeling, a tired insouciance, a hollow sensation and the urge
to fill it in some way, and he had married her, although he realized that
she no longer wanted or needed marriage. They lived on an emotional continent of old wounds and forgotten passion. The ingredients
for a fire were
there,
but they had become useless, partly, Jay knew,
because he had become inaccessible. He could not even conjure up
the ghosts of his dead loves: S
pecters
also turn to dust. Only with Neal
he came alive and he perceived with one of the few important insights
he had ever had about himself that his all-embracing love for the
boy was the result of love diverted, which did not render it any less
potent. Neal came to possess him and he created an aura around him
that people reserve for objects of piety, and rightly so, for when they
are invested with flesh, made incarnate, they destroy and are destroyed.

“
You’re not happy, are you, Dad?”

“
When we’re together I am. I only wish that could be more often.
Once a week and every fourth weekend aren’t enough. I live for seeing
you .
. . I build my life around it. Doesn’t matter if I’m busy or
have to go out of town. Nothing’s as important to me as being with
you.”

“
I can’t live without you.”

“
I know that. Maybe it’s good that you can’t. Eva’s not the sort of
person that you should live with.”

“
Is she always as bad as tonight?”

“
It’s mostly when you come that she goes off the rails. And the
crazy thing is that deep down she cares for you. Eva buys all the
presents I give you. I mean sometimes she’ll pop into the showroom
and say: ‘Jay, I just saw the most terrific sweater for Neal.’ And
I say: ‘Buy it then.’ And she’ll hold up a bag. ‘That’s just what I did, Jay. I bought it.’ There’s a lot of good in her. Mostly, I guess, it’s my
fault, because I’m always talking about you to
everybody,
and she feels
left out. Especially as she’s got a kid who she never sees and can’t
stand.”

“
Why’s that?”

“
Reminds her of things she’d like to forget. Oh, Neal, it’s such a
mishmash. You think you’re doing something because you want to,
and you find out too late that you never wanted it in the first place.
And you’re lumbered. Make sure you learn from my mistakes and
when you’re old enough to get married be certain that there’s no bad
blood between you and the girl and you’re not doing it to make up
for something you did wrong. An apology shouldn’t last a lifetime.”

“
Dad, if I tell you something, will you promise not to go back and
tell Rhoda?”

Jay smiled at him and nodded.

Neal always called his mother by her first name when he spoke
of her with Jay. The division had been made for him, and he could
not reunite them, either in his mind or in conversation, because this
created an illusion of unanimity
that
altered the balance of reality,
and Neal was forced to avoid this myth in order to survive. He hated
confusion. There were carefully defined borders, artificial ones, and
they must be observed.

“
Rhoda’s got a man.”

“
A man? I thought men.”

“
A special one.”

Jay made a gurgling sound as he swallowed his brandy.

“
Since when?”

“
Dunno. I found him asleep this morning.”

“
What’d you do?”

“
I burned his clothes - in the incinerator.”

“
Whaaat
? Burned them? Just like that?”

“
Uh-huh.”

“
That’s pretty funny. Practical joke, huh? I’ll bet Rhoda and him
were
teed
off.”

“
It wasn’t really a joke. He might’ve been a thief or
something,
and
he could have tried to escape. But not without his clothes.” He
looked at Jay for support, and Jay touched him affectionately on
the shoulder. “I mean he was a
stranger .
. . and I was a
stranger,
and anything could’ve happened. He could’ve attacked Rhoda.”

“A gorilla couldn’t attack Rhoda.”

“I thought of something even worse to do: pour boiling water on his face, so he couldn’t move until I got the police.”