The Early Stories (27 page)

“I can't get all them out tonight.”

Roy knew this was so, but if he agreed, it might encourage the kid to loaf. He returned to his sign without another word. He polished off the fine lines of the
Y
and, in one slow, satisfying movement of his arm, did the tail. On with the Silverdust.

Washing both brushes, opening the jar labelled “Crimson,” Roy was conscious of his hands. They were square and smooth, with dandified nails, and completely clean, yet not so white that they could not take a flattering tan from the contrast with the clean cuffs. The cuffs, folded back exactly twice and starched to about the stiffness of thin cardboard, pressed lightly on the flats of his forearms and gave him an agreeable packaged feeling. It was just as well he hadn't bawled the kid out. Roy knew it was only the boy's kind of peace, standing over there whistling, playing with type, his crusty apron snug around him, his can of salted peanuts and his pack of Philip Morris beside him on the table, God knows what going on in his brain. The kid smoked steadily. Once, when Roy asked Jack if he didn't smoke too much, Jack had said no, this was the only place he ever smoked, which was exactly the point, but Roy let it drop. It wasn't as if he was the kid's father.

Roy started the
L
. Jack started “If I Could Be with You One Hour Tonight,” in an irritating, loose, whoopsy way, trying to be Coleman Hawkins or some bop shade. In exasperation, Roy switched on the radio he kept on the shelf. It was an old Motorola; its tubes were all
but shot. Even on full, it wasn't loud enough for Jack to hear above his own noise. He kept on whistling, like he was a bird and this was some treetop.

Roy finished up the
L
. Suddenly Jack went quiet. Roy, hoping the kid wasn't offended, turned off the radio. In the silence, he heard the sounds that had really made the kid stop: the elevator door clanging shut and then high heels clicking.

More than a minute seemed to pass before the Display Department door opened. When it did, there was Maureen, wearing a transparent raincoat, moisture beaded all over it and in her clipped red hair. There was something aggressive about that soaked hair. She frowned in the bright fluorescent light. “It's dark out there,” she said. “I got lost.”

“The switch is right by the elevator,” was all Roy could think of to say.

She walked past the printing machine, with the kid at it, and came to stand by Roy. She looked at the sign.

“ ‘Todl?' ” she read.

“ ‘Toyl.' That's a
Y
.”

“But it's closed at the top. It looks like a
D
with a wiggly tail.”

“This is Gothic lettering.”

“Well, I don't want to argue. It's probably just me.”

“How come you're down here? What's up?”

“The rain made me restless.”

“You walked all the way? Who let you into the store?”

“It's only six blocks. I don't mind walking in the rain. I like it.” Maureen's head was tilted and her hands were busy at an earring. “The watchman let me in. He said, ‘I'll take you right on up, Mrs. Mays. He'll be glad to see you. He'll be real lonely and happy to see you.' ”

“Orley let you in?”

“I didn't ask his name.” She took a cigarette from Roy's pack.

“Better take off your raincoat,” Roy said. “You don't want to catch cold.”

She shrugged it off, draped it over the electric jigsaw, and stood, her legs spread as far as her narrow skirt allowed, smoking and studying the stuff in the top rack. Roy drew down the Orange and began painting the
A
.

“Orange next to red,” she said. “Ooey.”

“Hih,” he grunted, not hard enough to jiggle his hand.

“What's in these boxes?”

“Boxes?” Roy was concentrating and barely heard what she said. “
These
boxes.”

He lifted the brush and looked around to see what she was pointing at. “Tinsel.”

“Tinsel! Why, you have two, four, six,
six
huge crates of it here! What do you
do
with it all? Sleep in it? Do you feed it to cows?”

“You get a reduction for quantity.”

She kicked one of the crates thoughtfully and moved on, inspecting. The last time Maureen had come into Herlihy's was over three months ago, to pick him up for dinner and a movie. She hadn't been in this mood then. “Why don't you clean this mess out?” she called in a resonant, boxed-in voice from the closet where the mannequins were stored.

“Be careful. Those things cost.” Roy pointed up the big sweeping serif on the
A
.

She came back into the room. “What are these for?”

He doused the drying letter with Silverdust before turning to see what she meant. “They're pine boughs.”

“I know
that
. I mean what are you going to
do
with them?”

“What do you mean, what am I going to do with them? Put them in the window, make wreaths. This is Christmas, for Chrissake.”

He turned his back on her and stared at his sign. She came over and stood beside him. He began the N. As he completed the downstroke, his elbow touched her side, she was standing that close.

“When are you coming home?” she asked softly, for the first time acting like there was a third person in the room.

“What time is it now?”

“A little after nine.”

“I don't see how I can get away before eleven. I have to finish this sign.”

“It's almost done now.”

“I have to finish the sign; then I thought the kid and I would hang it. And then there are other things to do. It piles up. I'll try to make it by eleven—”

“Roy,
really
.”

“I'll try to make it by eleven, but I can't guarantee it. I'm
sorry
, honey, but Simmons is on my neck all the time. What the hell: I'm getting time and a half.”

She was silent while he put the serifs on the
N
. “So I suppose there's no point in my waiting around here,” she said at last.

The
N
looked fine. In fact, the entire sign was more than passable. He was rather proud of himself, that he hadn't let her showing up rattle him.

“I'll see you around eleven,” Maureen said. “I'll keep awake if I can.” She was putting on her raincoat.

“Here, let me walk you out.”

“Oh, no.” She lifted a long pale sarcastic palm. “Don't let
me
disturb you. Time and a half, you know. I can flounder out on my own.”

Roy decided, seeing the mood she was in, that it would be better to let her make whatever point she thought she was making.

By way of patching things up, he watched her leave. He could tell from the cocky, hollow-backed way she walked toward the door that she knew his eyes were on her. Instead of passing by Jack's bench, she paused and said, “Hello. What keeps
you
up so late?”

Jack rolled his eyes toward the racks of freshly printed signs—
$1.50 ea. $2.98 per pair;
P
RE-
X
MAS
P
ANIC
S
ALE;
100% Silk MEN'S TIES; Mixed Unmentionables from 89
¢. “Printing these.”

“All those on this little thing?” Maureen touched the press. “Inky!”

She showed Jack the first and second fingers of her hand; each was tipped with a crimson spot the size of a confetti bit. The kid poked around helplessly for a clean rag. The best he could do was offer her a corner of his apron. “Thank you so
much
,” she said, wiping her fingers slowly, thoroughly. At the door, she smiled and said “Ta-ta, all,” to a point in the room midway between her husband and the boy.

Roy chose to paint the last letter,
D
, in Sky Blue again, the same as the initial T. It would give the thing unity. As he formed the letter, first with the No. 9 brush, then with the No. 2, he was aware of something out of place, something askew, in his room, and with a section of his mind he tried to locate the trouble. This was a mistake. When the letter was covered with Silverdust, Roy stepped back and saw that he had botched it. The
D
was too plump, slightly out of scale and too close to the
N
. It was nothing Simmons or anybody would notice—who looked at signs, anyway?—but Roy knew it had been ruined, and now knew why. The kid had stopped whistling.

Ace in the Hole
 

The moment his car touched the boulevard heading home, Ace flicked on the radio. He needed the radio, especially today. In the seconds before the tubes warmed up, he said aloud, doing it just to hear a human voice, “Jesus. She'll pop her lid.” His voice, though familiar, irked him; it sounded thin and scratchy, as if the bones in his head were picking up static. In a deeper register Ace added, “She'll murder me.” Then the radio came on, warm and strong, so he stopped worrying. The Five Kings were doing “Blueberry Hill”; to hear them made Ace feel so sure inside that from the pack pinched between the car roof and the sun shield he plucked a cigarette, hung it on his lower lip, snapped a match across the rusty place on the dash, held the flame in the instinctive spot near the tip of his nose, dragged, and blew out the match, all in time to the music. He rolled down the window and snapped the match so it spun end over end into the gutter. “Two points,” he said, and cocked the cigarette toward the roof of the car, sucked powerfully, and exhaled two plumes through his nostrils. He was beginning to feel like himself, Ace Anderson, for the first time that whole day. Not a good day, so far. He beat time on the accelerator. The car jerked crazily. “On Blueberry Hill,” he sang, “my heart stood still. The wind in the willow tree”—he braked for a red light—“played love's suh-
weet
melodee—”

“Go, Dad, bust your lungs!” a kid's voice blared. The kid was riding in a '52 Pontiac that had pulled up beside Ace at the light. The profile of the driver, another kid, was dark over his shoulder.

Ace looked over at him and smiled slowly, just letting one side of his mouth lift a little. “Why don't you just shove it?” he asked, good-naturedly. It was only a couple of years since he had been their age.

But the kid, who looked Italian, lifted his thick upper lip and spat out the window. The spit gleamed on the asphalt like a half-dollar.

“Now isn't that pretty?” Ace said, keeping one eye on the light. “You miserable wop. You are
mis
erable.” While the kid was trying to think of some smart comeback, the light changed. Ace dug out so hard he smelled burned rubber. In his rearview mirror he saw the Pontiac lurch forward a few yards, then stop dead, right in the middle of the intersection.

The idea of them stalling their fat tin Pontiac kept him in a good humor all the way home. He decided to stop at his mother's place and pick up the baby, instead of waiting for Evey to do it. His mother must have seen him drive up. She came out on the porch holding a plastic spoon and smelling of cake.

“You're out early,” she told him.

“Goldman fired me,” Ace told her.

“Good for you,” his mother said. “I always said he never treated you right.” She brought a cigarette out of her apron pocket and tucked it deep into one corner of her mouth, the way she did when something pleased her.

Ace lighted it for her. “Goldman was O.K. personally,” he said. “He just wanted too much for his money. That kind does. I didn't mind working the Saturdays, but until eleven, twelve Friday nights was too much. Everybody has a right to some leisure.”

“Well, I don't dare think what Evey will say, but I, for one, thank dear God you had the brains to get out of it. I always said that job had no future to it—no future of any kind, Freddy.”

“I guess,” Ace admitted. “But I wanted to keep at it, for the family's sake.”

“Now, I know I shouldn't be saying this, but any time Evey—this is just between us—any time Evey thinks she can do better, there's room for you
and
Bonnie right in your father's house.” She pinched her lips together. He could almost hear the old lady think,
There, I've said it
.