Women and Men (93 page)

He has felt at once the boy-man’s eyes seeing what there is of him through the cab’s back window, homing on his brain (though Clara would laugh at such imagination from him) and was glad of the round-faced black man in the driver’s seat, and has given the address uptown, thinking he didn’t mean to take a cab.

Foley’s envelope has the five-day return-address box number instead of "— Prison," or "Correctional Facility" the Americans say, though how many know they do? The envelope comes unsealed too easily. He will explode the taxi if the driver is his personal DIN A agent. The letter hangs fire. Is it the margin narrowing his private personal life to one last light that will not escape him even into the heart of his life’s companion and must turn toward political anger to see if it is in him?

With this secrecy of the code directing one to a pay phone on upper Broadway, this meeting, and so forth, who is Foley protecting? His correspondent? Efrain? Efrain said on the phone he had to stay out of sight but then was bringing people together right and left. Was the clandestine process protecting Foley? His letter this time, one felt, would not concern itself with the long haul, with the Utopian sewage or a free-enterprise postal system, or deep-Earth steam power lately Foley’s passion running nuclear coolers
without coal(I),
a nuclear-powered prison!, and running electrical transformers without oil, by piping water miles down into chambers of molten rock a thousand degrees hot to bring it back as steam to make turbines reel with rage and joy. Foley’s privileged correspondent replied that he could see the steam project erupting in volcanic magma spews loading the sky with geothermal plumbing exploding sky-high which if the pieces went high enough were reassembled for use in orbit. But Foley—at his end of this slow joke-by-mail never knowing when he might get a live visit—retorted that clean power was the only answer, one of his contacts had told him what was going on in New Mexico. Yet in the end Foley can see an ultimate nothing but brain power nakedly moving Earth by intercommunication. And if you wanted to talk about volcanoes Foley would be glad to discuss Hibok Hibok, or Paricutin which came up out of a cornfield, or, his mysterious contact’s favorite, Krakatoa in 1883 which blew stuff seventeen miles up into the atmosphere and created legendary sunsets for years.

Had the letter been opened? Or come unstuck? Let the letter not matter. Hungry people matter. In the short run, too. An educated Cuban who announces himself anti-Castro long before he finds himself in prison on a spurious charge of planting weapons in a Korean grocery in Manhattan known to be a Cuban socialist cell will not (should he escape) be denied sanctuary in Chile, it stands to reason, unless he is known to have Allende friends. Clara heard the rumors before her husband did but knew that the man he first visited in prison here was a friend of a friend, and that’s all there was to it.

The dizzy buzzing in his ears wheels right to left. He tucks the back flap inside the envelope. Heart running fast and heavy as two magnets. Cabdriver missed the light, he’s been doing something up in the front seat. Has a French name. What if
he
is Hamlet? And
his
district is in motion. Why have they missed the light? They’re stopped at a red light. He slides the envelope inside his jacket into his wallet pocket. He hears music and hums like Hamlet thinking.

And when he lies back easy in the leather seat and looks out the window, he meets Efrain’s body, and knows the letter could be trouble, like an engulfing cloud that wraps round him and Clara and the cloud is targeted, only the cloud, but that would be enough to include them in.

He finds Efrain standing above him on the curb apart from him staring past the cab he is in, looking around for a man wearing a tweed cap until he happens to glance at the cab under his nose, the cab of the unknown person in the back seat who doesn’t blink, as the light conveniently changes and Sir Isaac Newton jolts your vertebrae, and Efrain claps his hand to his side like a holster and digs his hand then into his pocket.

And as he wheels wildly as if to see the thief, the moderately impressive fact is observed that he does not reach for the pocket on the other side, the right side. For he knows where the letter was. Does it matter in the long run? An episode in Foley’s private life and fantasies maybe no more, no plot, no intrigue involving other inmates anti-Castro, maybe no Chile, maybe just a letter by hand.

"You are from Ah-ee-tee," the passenger says to the cabdriver, and puts on the cloth cap.

"Yes," says the man with a look up into the mirror. "And you?" A he and a he, and a hee-hee-hee.

The passenger leans so his nose is almost against the steel divider screen, and three hundred or is it two hundred and fifty years of what-have-you, sophistication, responsibility, family, and geography in the mind start to speak for him words he wanted to speak to that unknown Puerto Rican Efrain, and to the man he buys his coffee from, and to a neutral econometrist who says in the long run "it" evens out, and to Lord Keynes who said In the
long
run we are
dead,
and to the man Mayn who probably knows the words by now, and to one’s grown children but so young—Efrain’s age—wandering a muddy street past breeze-block housing named La Hermida, named Joao Goulart— but in Santiago no one
wanders
any more—or up against it in a sports stadium; blinking up from the bottom of a limestone mine that will not be mined; working perhaps for the regime—and to whoever wants him dead, if anyone—and the words are
I am from Chile
—yet the words turn into one spoken word: "Chileno."

"Lejos de casa," the driver says with an accent, turning left on Thirty-second, which is the long way to the Upper West Side but with lanes of cars to their right it would take him two blocks to drift across Seventh to turn right and get over to Eighth Avenue, which goes north. Escape the scene, but to do what then? Go home. Home is Clara.

"Far from home, yes," the passenger agrees. And smiles; and, feeling the American language close, adds to the man in front of him, "You know it," and it comes to him that he is over that dizziness, it will not visit him again.

Then he remembers, and tells the man, "Your parking light reflector’s broken."

And while the man knows, the passenger wonders how he himself saw such a thing in his haste to get into the cab.

known bits I

a. The bike stood there and had no business on the subway platform. Ten-speed blue Fuji with a lock clamped on the rat-trap for safe travel. Hands were on the bike and it was being pushed onto the Lenox Avenue express by a white man but there was no room for it, so it was not definitely being pushed onto the train. Gray-bearded man with an orange leather headband and black sweatshirt with the hood back pushing that definitely beautiful bike, the front (quick-release) wheel on the car, the remainder of the bike on the platform. Gray beard on platform holding the saddle and one handlebar. Georgie the owner of the other hands receiving the bike gladly onto the too-crowded train, Georgie smiling waiting to take delivery, while the graybeard jerk’s smiling on the platform but not because a bike’s got no place in the subway.

Other rush-hour people reached to get it onto the jammed car where there was no space, man in green beret holding other handlebar, girl in pink T-shirt with her hand next to his. And what Georgie definitely needed was a henchman on the platform end to distract the graybeard jerk-owner of bike so it could be taken from him onto the subway car in time for the doors, both operative, to shut, leaving the graybeard on the platform outside looking through the glass window at his ten-speed inside, not smiling any more then, unless he had been intending to make a donation of that bike to a world that was a good place. A bike to build on, though moving.

And Georgie in the army jacket and blue jaw-scar not seeing the one person here in the middle of the city from his block in Brooklyn, his neighborhood; but would never see—even on home block—the big big Jimmy jaw and wide eyes stupid-looking, almost never give a look to build on except once, Hey how’s Jimmy the retard? What’s happenin’?

Definites to build on. Even the biggest jaw per least words. Ten-speed Fuji, and a white guy taking it on the Harlem express but won’t go all the way, and looks like someone. Bike don’t change, space or no space.

Probable that people in the car would look after it and/or the motorman could take it to the Lost and Found at the end of the line. But would they do that with the Sony portable color TV in the carton there on the platform, possession of the beautiful blonde woman with the busted nose at that taking it home probably to her family? Probably it would not wind up in Lost and Found—any more than woman in white robe on her hands and knees by the exit stairs who stopped singing a religious song and started growling real loud and stopped. Probable is not definite, not known for sure, not fact; not a message to build on: though have now found out that it is possible to build even when in motion.

Georgie did not know he was being looked at by one of the freaks from his block far away in Brooklyn. All freaks to him. Often back in neighborhood he would not know he was being looked at, would look right through you, but no, not through, but, for a fact, just around you. On one side of bike now half or three-quarters into car was Puerto Rican or Cuban woman who was having a baby soon. Never saw Georgie away from the block before, someplace else in the city. Woman having the baby couldn’t move, and she was leaning on someone but someone invisible, the light overhead came down the pole and made her eyelids dark lamps for a fact. She didn’t have a seat to sit down. She could use a vacation out where it’s warm and quiet—where there’s space to turn around—turn around three times without pickpockets making friends before you know it and if she’s your sister you protect her if you have to against someone wants to make trouble for her, a sister it would be good to have sitting in the kitchen taking a breather, brushing her teeth in the bathroom in the morning with the radio going, a sister a little older, a little younger, that could be talked to, and let the mother go her own way for a while, a sister who would believe when told retard-brother learned all alone on broken bike in trashed lot months and months ago until they took lot away. A white messenger came by like a slow motor, had one smaller arm and a look in both eyes.

The next car not so crowded, there’s light between the people. It didn’t have all its doors functioning, either. Just the left half of the door or the right half would open; it’s the circuits unloading. Georgie a prick but no asshole; keeps mouth shut. Bike was being retracted from crowded car. But sometimes Georgie says, You retard, you retarded asshole, you jerk; you got yourself a
job!
But he didn’t see all the
other
messengers. Has big hands and a scar on jaw.

b. Some big manila envelopes heavy; some light. Some too big to hand-hold. Some stiff. Some bend. Some with art work inside; some with different important papers and cardboard moving around inside. Sometimes a long or small box to carry from one office to another.

Kid with fast hands standing beside the newspaper and sex-trash stand upstairs by turnstiles. Fast mouth: dumb mothe’-fuckin’ retard; asshole messenger; ugliest nigger messenger ever seen: they give you money to carry around? Hey boy you hear me?

Fast hands on a big manila envelope that’s already hard to hand-hold tight up under the arm. Tight’s better than fast—photographs and big ones inside envelope. Kid with fast hands fast mouth alongside approaching the stairway from turnstile level, he’s looking to take the big envelope for himself, but he don’t know lanes and he is not looking ahead and he’s in a lane just like everybody else in the city: ahead of him in his lane a transit cop’s wearing a stack of ribbons, and a collision is impending: cop pushes fast kid right down on his back and he don’t bounce up or roll over. He stays there, and lanes are where it’s at. Some days lanes blocked, some days lanes clear with elevator opening before the buzzer even gets pressed, and upstairs it’s two ladies with all their hair cut off waiting for delivery. Very important to them, like a telegram, and they take from the messenger even in motion, they’re big builders and they build on what they already got. The younger one goes and lies on her back on a blue mat with her legs and feet back over her head, toes touching the floor behind her head. ‘‘Brother, what would you like to have most in all the world?" the older one asked, and what almost comes out is Why?, but instead only W-w-w-w-w-wah—but a man with no clothes on and a scar right up his front came out of the hall with a glass of orange juice and said, "Leave that kid alone, Grace, you can’t convert everyone who comes in off the street." But she got her answer from messenger with a lot of
b,
and it was a bicycle, a bicycle was the answer to her question. "Abundance," she said, putting a hand on messenger’s wrist; "I know where one is," she said. The younger one on the floor said, "Do you get the minimum wage? Do you ever see any
women
messengers?" But the older one is ripping open the envelope and whipping out a poster with a picture of a naked woman with her legs spread open but it looks like outer space. "You ought to organize," the younger woman said. Both wearing their gray sweat pants. The older woman says, "Cliff, you’re going to turn orange at that rate"; then she turns and says, "When you stammer like that, that’s abundance speaking; it’s many voices in you." "Right," says the younger woman, her name is Maureen, and Grace, the older, says, "You’re an angel, Jimmy," but she didn’t know the messenger’s name, did she?—she definitely didn’t. "He’s
what?"
asks the guy with the orange juice. The young one is right—there
are
no woman messengers. Cliff says, "They know things we don’t know."

c.
She
didn’t sign for it because he forgot to tell her to. She was on the phone smiling and she was talking to someone called Amy but about someone else, a man. She had big and little pictures all over, photos and paintings and drawings like that looked like chalk. Some of Indians, one of an Indian kid with feathers watching a rocket take off like a white bullet, but it didn’t look like a rocket. And a photo of a bicycle racer with giant legs.