The Last of the Wise Lovers (18 page)

Ms. Yardley was
breathing fire.  "I must ask you to leave the premises, Mr. Levin.
 Your continued employment here will be raised in a different forum."

   "As you wish," I said as I
walked from behind the counter to freedom.  "I've had enough of this
place, anyway." On the way out I pounded hard on one of the tables.  

Ms. Yardley said, "It seems to me that
hauling freight down at South Street would suit your character far more, and by
the way, don't bother trying to call your friend from the third floor to your
assistance. He can't help you any more...”

   Back out in the street I felt rotten.
 Maybe it was the way Mom had raised me, her hatred of
"scandals", or maybe I'm just not built for confrontations like that.
 My sudden freedom made me edgy, and no matter where I turned the date
seemed to jump out at me: from the clock shops on Fifth Avenue, from banks on
6th Avenue, from a lighted display on the corner of 42nd Street not far from
K.'s club, which was closed.

   There was a small but clear sign
above the entrance: "5:00 to 5:00".  The locked door didn't
leave any doubt as to which 5:00 was the one when the club opened.
 Nevertheless, I passed the magnetic card through the lock.  I heard
a "click", but it didn't open.  I continued down the street
until I reached the wharf.  An old man was loading cases of beer onto a
small truck.  I remembered Ms. Yardley's advice about hauling freight.
 Why not do a man's work and get a real wage?  I went up to him.
 

He sent me to the boss, who looked at me and said,
"You're built big, kid.  Just right."  Then he looked at my
hands and said, "Where'd you work 'till now?"

   "The library," I said.

   He laughed and sent me to help the
old guy.  After four hours during which I managed not to think about
anything at all, I had sore shoulders and $18.00.  There wasn't any more
work.  I sat down to rest for a few minutes on the loading platform, and
then I got up and left.

   It was 3:00 o'clock.  K.'s club
was still closed.  Again I felt restless. I decided the club could wait
till tomorrow.  In any case no one but me could take what was stashed
there as long as I had the membership card and the locker number.  I went
to Port Authority, planning to go home.  From one of the phone booths in
the lobby I called you.

   This time it wasn't a machine that
answered, but Dorothy, the black woman who was your housekeeper.

"Mr. Steinman's residence," she said
with some formality.  I didn't think she'd remember me, that's why I asked
for Mr. Steinman.  "Who's calling please?" she asked.  I
said who I was.

   She responded with such warmth that I
was touched: "Why Ronny, you big baby, how long has it been since I've
seen you, not since you were a real little thing and your parents brought you here
for the first time and left you with me in the kitchen while they went out to
look for an apartment.  Yes, he got your message, sure, but he's real
busy.  You know how business is... and now what with Rosh Hashanah he's
got a big mass going over at the Temple... I'm sure he must have meant to call
you back but he probably forgot.  That's how it goes.  Even the mayor
had to leave him a couple of messages before he had a chance to get back to
him...”

   When she paused to breathe I asked to
speak to you.

   "Oh, no, that's not possible,
Mr. Steinman, he's talking to some people now and then he's going to his office
on Lexington, but I tell you what, why don't you come on over for dinner, ok?
 That's what we'll do.  Tonight I'll set another plate and another
knife and another fork and I'll tell him we have a guest.  Mr. Steinman,
he doesn't usually permit that, but after all you're family and besides,"
her voice softened with longing, "it's been such a long time since we've
had someone with an appetite over here."

   We agreed on 6:30.  I went down
to the Village, spent three hours at the cinema watching back-to-back features
and then took the subway back uptown.  Opposite the building where you
live I slicked down my hair and tucked my shirt into my pants.  When I
entered the lobby the doorman had a big "no" on his face, but after
he'd called upstairs everything changed, and he even accompanied me to the
elevator.  Dorothy was waiting by the apartment door.  She fell on me
like a big, black mountain, and looked at me lovingly as if she really had
raised me.  I was afraid she might start to kiss me, so I thrust out my
hand and pumped her black, fat arm up and down, up and down, until you arrived.

   From here on, I'm not sure what I
should tell.  After all, you were there just like I was.  On the
other hand, it's important for me to summarize and crystallize what I felt when
I was with you, maybe even to compare how each of us felt, what each of us was
thinking, and what each of us hoped.  Maybe that way we'll be able to
understand why everything happened the way it did.

   You seemed different to me than
usual.  Somewhat distracted, though you tried to conceal it.  As
usual, you put your arm around my shoulders and led me into your study.
 After you'd closed the door and sunk into the big chair behind the desk,
everything seemed just like it had always been.

   The contents of that room are so
significant to me that I can recall them, item by item, from memory: the
chairs, the fireplace, the large photograph of the Western Wall, the smaller
photograph of you and President Harry S. Truman (whose face always seemed to
too pinched, his mouth pursed), the decorative llama pelt given to you by the
Indians who work your fields in the Andes ("To the Big Man from the
North", it says on the side, "On the Anniversary of His 60th Rainy
Season"), the jars of spices and dried herbs that line the mahogany
shelves, and the books, millions of books, in all the languages that you know,
on all the subjects that interest you.  It's enough for me to sit there in
the midst of all that plenty for me to become a different Ronny, an ageless
Ronny and a Ronny of all ages: Ronny at eleven, just come to New York, whose
parents have left him with you while they look for a house; Ronny at thirteen,
who you wisely realized should know about masturbation; or Ronny at fifteen,
who asked for a loan to buy an electric guitar (until you persuaded him of what
he now
knows only too well: that he hasn't
any musical ability) but instead got an electronics set, because you wanted him
to develop the talents he had and not be influenced by what was popular; and
Ronny at sixteen-and-a-half, who needed a place to turn when he had problems
like the one he and his girlfriend had when they came back from summer camp in
upstate New York.

   But more than anything, that room
filled me with something that only you knew how to give me: security.  It
grew out of your vast life experience, represented by all the objects and
knick-knacks collected in that room, and also by the knowledge that no matter
what problems I had, you would always listen attentively, never leave me
without a solution.

   But this time as I sat there, the
room's usual calming effect on me was replaced by a kind of panic.  For
the first time I realized that everything was about to change, that within a
month you'd be far away from us.  For some strange reason I translated my
fears into a silly question: "What's going to happen to all this
stuff?"

   "Is that what's bothering
you?" you said in amazement, nevertheless explaining that the really
personal things would go with you, and that everything else
("scenery", you called it) would be sold with the apartment.

   I asked whether it wasn't difficult
to part with so many familiar things.

   You smiled and said, "Sometimes
it's actually difficult to stand all these old, familiar things.  That's
why when you start to get bored you should change location, start fresh."

   I asked if you were starting to get
bored.

   You answered simply, "Yes."
 I liked the fact that you didn't try to lie to me, and I liked the way
you explained, honestly, that other, younger people were taking over the
market, and that anything you could sell for a dollar they could sell for 80
cents and still make a profit. When you finished you leaned back, looked at me
and said, "If only you were a little older, and I a little younger...”

   For a moment, I felt awful.
 That inviting sentence was exactly what Dad would have loved to have
heard you say.  As I wondered how to respond, you asked whether I was
asking after you out of politeness, or whether I was having trouble talking
about what was bothering me.

  
"Neither," I explained, "it's just this banter between us is
like tuning up...”

   "Tuning up," you smiled,
"that's nice."  Then, without beating around the bush, you
addressed my problem.  "When I was at your house, you said something
about fear...”

   I started to talk.  I remember
using Aunt Ida's phrase, "bad things are happening," two or three
times.  So as not to bore you, I described very generally all that had
happened to me since that night in the Lincoln Tunnel.  I didn't bother to
explain how I'd come to know things that were supposed to be secret, and I
weeded out a few incidents that seemed to me to be inconsequential.
 Dorothy poked her head in in the middle to tell us dinner was ready.
 I looked at you, trying to guess your reaction to what I was saying.
 You stared back at me blankly, and asked if I wanted to freshen up a bit
before dinner.

   That was a good idea.  I was
worn out and dirty from the day's events.  Dorothy trailed after me to
bring me a fresh towel.  In the hall she stopped to rub smooth with the
tip of her shoe a corner of the carpet that had become folded over.

"Just like a little boy, your uncle,"
she said in her thick kindergarten-teacher's voice.  "All the carpets
in this house are ruined...”  It was a stubborn fold.  She asked me
to hold down the corner of the carpet while she tugged at the opposite corner. "...
I've shown him, I've asked him.  He promises to be careful, but at night -
he forgets everything.  Instead of going to sleep, he wanders around here,
drinking...” she pointed at the umbrella stand crammed with golf clubs,
"and when he drains a glass, he rests it on the floor and shoots those
golf balls into it.  By morning these carpets look like the hide of a
whupped dog!"  She came into the bathroom with me and took a folded
and ironed towel out of the cabinet under the sink.  "It's a shame
that such a good man can't get any sleep at night...” I smiled awkwardly and
took the towel from her.  She wiped the door handle with the edge of her
apron.  "It's a shame he's leaving.  There aren't too many
gentlemen like him left...”

   When I came back, you were sitting at
the table.  I sat opposite you.  You looked troubled.  

When I said so, you answered, "Not troubled.
Confused."

   I suggested telling everything from
the beginning again, even writing it down.  If you had agreed you would
have received these six-and-a-half notebooks long ago, and maybe we could have
prevented everything that came after from happening, but you insisted,
"No, no. It's more important that you try and tell me what the heart of
the matter is, the most important thing...'

   Without hesitating I answered,
"Mom."

   You pressed me.  "But your
father is the one who... who's involved in such affairs, isn't he?"

  
"With
him it's something steady, professional, and no one's threatening him.
 She, on the other hand, has gotten involved in something over her head
and," I swallowed hard, "is even planning to get herself in
deeper."

  
"What is she planning?" you asked, and from the tone of your voice I
gathered that you didn't trust her any more than I did.

  
I told about the last letter I'd read, in which
she'd written of her willingness, "to leave it all, in order to be with
you," and her, "renewed hope."

   It was a little embarrassing, and for
a minute rang unconvincingly in my own ears.  You thought so, too.

"Aren't you jumping to conclusions from only
one letter?"  You pulled the meat toward you and began to slice with
seemingly measured strokes.  The big, uneven slices gave you away; you
were angry with me, either for having spied on Mom, or for suspecting her
without sufficient grounds.  

As if to confirm it, you said, "Letters from
one side only are a dangerous thing, especially letters like
that
.
 They're filled with hope, delusions, sometimes lies...”

   "I've got lots more proof,"
I said, and told about all the other letters I had managed to read with the
help of Mom's face powder, and about the night that Mom had waited by the
window.

   Here you got tense.  You asked
whether I'd seen the car that had picked up the material.  I said it had
been a large, ungainly one, a new-model Ford or Oldsmobile.  You claimed
there were lots of cars like that in the State of New York, and that any one of
them could have passed down our street.

   I remembered Mom's efforts, after the
incident in the Lincoln Tunnel, to prove to me that there were tens of cars
just like hers in the area.  This time I had a more convincing rebuttal.
 

"... But not all of them would stop so close
to a specific tree that just happens to have a hollow notch in it, and that
just happens to be a few houses away from the trash can where I found slides of
diagrams of secret missiles...”  I just
had
to convince you.
 You were my last remaining hope.  I was so frustrated I even started
going back over what I'd already told you.  This time, for some reason, I
started with the night that Mom had gotten out of a car at the end of the
street.

   "Did you see who was driving
it?" you broke in.