Women and Men (94 page)

She got mad at the Amy she was talking to: she said she "loved him," whoever he was—and she was very definite and she looked around the room and then said thanks to Amy for giving her the name of the messenger service and picked up the Psychic Consultation card and stared at him and smiled and shook her head while the Amy at the other end of the line was still talking pretty fast—that was definite.

Back at the office his mother was phoning just as he returned, he could almost hear her voice but more than her voice in the air; and Goodie and Baddie went into the storefront window to fight each other because the old lady with the white hair and the dark mole on her cheek had come by, and Mr. Turnstein who had almost no jaw-chin but giant hair
growth
like extra head said he was sorry the mother-on-the-phone’s son had these problems, but his work was O.K. But he agreed there were sometimes dangers on city streets, traffic, muggers, and such, especially in light of the mental level— he caught sight of him coming in the door and didn’t finish: but obviously he had been talking to the mother and it was Jimmy they were discussing, and all he could think to do was attract Turnstein’s attention and wave at him very hard (like I can’t talk to her), until Senora Wing sitting at the table with the magic lamp but not giving any psychic consultation said What’s the matter, did he get back from a job?

He needed another in a hurry, to get out of there, and Turnstein, who was still on the phone but then didn’t know Jimmy knew it was his mother again telling everyone he was not able to work, just pointed to the counter where the order was written out with the
GOING FROM
and the
GOING TO,
and he took it and went out again and didn’t get his carfare but had tokens, he had tokens. But Senora Wing was on the sidewalk in her shawl and her giant fat arms yelling that he didn’t know how to get there. He turned and staggered and said sure he knew and Senora went back in the storefront while Goodie and Baddie who you couldn’t tell if they were male or female and Senora Wing had said they were once Siamese twins but were separated, went on like crazy in the window punching and pummeling and the old lady laughed but not the old skinny guy she was with and she was saying, Why it’s just like Baddie and What’s-his-name, Baddie and what’s-his-name.

The address was Twenty-fourth Street and he could see the block right away and must have known before even laying hands on the order where he was going, he knew that much even if he didn’t know what was in the envelope or the box he carried from one place to another. He had a long walk but above ground and if his mother talked him out of the job he was going to get another because in the city they always needed messengers.

It said a theater. He knew what he was doing. He was building, and he was going to advance himself and have a bicycle. Some messengers were not retarded but were very old and had leather bags.

d. Don’t tell anyone; they won’t like you. They think you know something they don’t know. Feel their jaws near your own very big one. So big the kids laugh, so you hear them say what they say; but you know your job and you are working on this thing outside while you still have to ride the subways. But don’t tell anyone what you know: which is,

First: that in some cars only one of the two doors opens;

Second: that when you know which one opens, you don’t stand in front of the other one;

Third, that it’s lanes the city runs on, and if a vehicle or person is coming up behind you in parallel lane and you got a roadblock ahead of you they won’t let you change lanes unless you plan ahead the way you plan for a back-up job if your mother makes this one fall through or buy some pears on your way home to keep on her good side, which is the outside as long as she doesn’t tell the social worker you can’t work when you got work and you’re getting places;

Fourth, told another messenger on subway who had a smaller jaw but eyes so far apart they left his forehead giant all by itself and he had dark soft fuzz all over his face and was a messenger anyone could tell—that this was how things ran, no matter who your mother or father was, no matter at street level where a messenger may find himself limping if no bike, or below the street where he will find himself sitting or standing: keep the track open and look out for places ahead in your track or lane already occupied; and allow for the possibility of the left-side door suddenly opening at the next stop when it was the right-side door that opened at this one;

Fifth, and more to come, to build on—including telling others what you know because you are safer if they know what you know and can help themselves, even to the point of telling about lanes and subway doors to Grace, who the next time she needed a messenger made a special request for Jimmy Banks and when Turnstein tried to give her Goodie because the messenger she requested was out on a job, she said she would wait—which is client loyalty even to those who cannot speak a lot of the time, or not well. Because you build on what you know. One door at a time.

Told this to messenger on subway; told him we should organize; asked if he looked in envelopes at what messages he was carrying. He had good speech powers but all he said was "Never."

Tried to tell him we should all meet, build an organization, a union; didn’t get it out. He said, "Whatcha mean ‘w-w-w-w-we’?" but he was making fun. Started to ask him if he knew the almost blind cabdriver who go back and forth just along Cathedral Parkway, no one know why he never had an accident except sometimes he has his little girl in front seat with him; he’s got to build on what he learns. White messenger with smaller jaw said he didn’t want to hear about it. But he had speech power he wasn’t using.

Tried to say Mountain has to come to Mahomet if Mahomet don’t come to Mountain, but couldn’t; but when he turned his giant envelope over so it showed where it was
GOING TO,
the white messenger got up and said that very thing himself. Train pulled into station and he’s a very big messenger in a big coat and big heavy shoes and he don’t know but he is standing in front of the door that don’t open because it’s the left-side door that opens, and when it does a few black women come barging through that left-side door and the white messenger can’t get out and he tries to get into the space but they push him back and in comes a Puerto Rican woman wheeling a baby in a little push car with shopping bags on top of the baby and a man with a saxophone behind her getting ready to play and by the time she gets in the door starts closing on the saxophone but the man gets in and the door closes and the white messenger gets his hand in the door but he’s weak and a black guy in a white robe and white round flat cap at the other end of the car is giving a speech about education and the messenger lost his seat.

Pointed to him and his envelope that was hoping to get to the same place—"Foundation"—where the girl Amy sent the big envelope to the woman Jean with the picture of the Indian watching blast-off and tried to say, We got to organize, you see? but didn’t get it all out, and white messenger said, "Whatcha mean ‘w-w-w-w-we’?" and said he didn’t want to hear. Looked in window and saw a donkey’s jaw. It can be built on.

e. He felt sometimes their jaws near his own very large one, their heads and hands unknowing near the subway door that he knew he knew. Which was two doors, not so hard to open as three cards shifting back and forth on the box on street where always pick the card it
couldn’t be
but still it’s not building on definites, like knowing from experience which door would open and standing in front of that one seeing insane people on the platform lining up in front of the other side door except there’s two kinds, this kind and the other, the long-haired earring guy who looked at him one day he was getting off at Twenty-third Street to take message of art work from the big boomer and his young boyfriend who live in the same building as Miss Kimball, and this guy on the other side on the platform waiting for the train looked him right in the eyes knowing he knew which door would open and was on a lane-track although granted it was jogged thirty blocks north where it continued when he got off and jogged one right or one left when an obstacle stopped or slow-moving appeared in lane ahead and he one day built on other definites to see that double parking wasn’t only law breaking like leaving your laundry in the laundromat top-loader beyond-cycle which was a problem for his mother who waited ten minutes by her watch before unloading the machine or machines —double parking was also occupying space till someone said get off it. Which he explained to Grace Kimball who asked especially for him, Jimmy Banks, and understood what he meant, it was a law that was
in the abstract
she said and she believed all motor vehicles should be compacter’d and evacuated from the city because most of the trucks carried either furniture, sugar-derivative and/or dairy products, sex-negative clothing, or machinery that didn’t satisfy your needs and sometimes did not work, and she said Jimmy, you know things we don’t know, and her friend Cliff standing naked beside the stereo inquired what the opera singer Mr. North was doing with a little theater on Twenty-fourth Street which it would have been violating the rule about not cross-involving clients with each other to explain to Grace Kimball that the opera singer in her building had seen him in the elevator coming from Kimball and had employed him, not knowing that the man who knew him at the Twenty-third Street station as someone who had figured out the doors and the lane-basics of the city knew Grace through a mutual friend and was interested in employing Jimmy, who himself didn’t know the further connection with this man but it made sense when he ran into him the second time. But then he saw that, like building another level on what he already had, if clients were in contact with each other through one messenger, messenger might build his own business even including people who just happened to be present like the man in the long hair and fringe jacket first seen in subway, later at door of theater signing for envelope from Mr. North’s boyfriend and asking if Madame Somebody the South American singer had not sent something along in the same envelope (which the messenger, cool and professional, had no comment on—the answer to question being No, but also by coincidence messenger in question did know lady in question) upon which the fringe-jacketed (no doubt) actor originally encountered on Twenty-third Street platform asked if he’d do a special job for him if needed—name, Ray Santee—Ray Santee would contact
him
if he would give Ray Santee his card (a new building block for independent business operation and messenger said N-n-no cards yet and Ray said, Well, whenever) and when Jimmy Banks tried to get out that Mr. S. should call, and failed, Mr. S. picked up the idea and said he should go on his own now and break away from the outfit he was with. Wrote down home number, tried to get out that Mr. Santee not deal with his mother but him only, because she was against him working let alone riding a bike, but he nodded fast, Santee, very fast, and really did understand without the words, when he took out Turnstein’s Messenger Service/Psychic Consultation ballpoint and wrote "Hope to get a Bicycle, Open my own Business"—and when Ray Santee said he would help ol’ Jim Banks, ol’ Jim got out the name Grace Kimball, but not the information that she was going to procure a second-hand bike to expedite transport of messages and building of self-confidence and clientele. And couldn’t get out, either, the info re: having hassle with Turnstein due to receipt not signed—when Ray Santee said, "Always want to get those receipts signed —you know, like from the opera singer lady." But shook head: Opera singer
man.
Had to write it down, but no time: doors opening, left side, right side alternating, mind over matter, supposed to be cutting down on power but this is doubling usage probably.

In evening, white messenger phoned home, smaller-jawed but with fuzz all over face: mother tried to deal with him herself hand on hip, had trouble understanding him, he gets his tongue out around his mouth looking for words left there. She definitely must yield phone to ("He can’t hardly talk to you") supposedly crazy son-retard-messenger to hear that Gustave got number through man met at foundation; Gustave felt Jim Banks was onto something with lanes and alternate subway doors, and Gustave would consider organizing. Meet at corner near Turnstein’s.

Where would bicycle be stored nights? Bicycle not yet definite.

"Jimmy, you have to accept that you can’t live like other people do," his mother said next to him at the phone when he hung up (like, look at other people’s ways and doings but don’t touch). "I’m an old-fashioned girl," she said. "Social worker said you retarded know things we don’t know, but I don’t believe it, sugar.

f.
Higher
required building
wider,
until a full messenger-service specialization minus the psychic consultation . . . build on two white/black messengers, three, four, and a bike to make the boss smile.

Two women noticing Jimmy Banks limping past the cafe smiled through the shining plate-glass window when he stopped to see them. They they turned back to each other but weren’t speaking, and they slipped out of their white coffee cups in the window which flipped into mirror-mode when a bus passed and Jimmy saw his jaw and the Afro he had just started growing that morning, and hastened on to Turnstein’s corner.

Gustave waited there like a tree, and knew two other messengers who would organize, but Gustave with all the fuzz on his face and after all a good-size jaw, was happy where he was but didn’t understand that Jimmy was a-a-a-a-asking if Gustave would come into
Jimmy’s independent
messenger service and Jimmy did not press it but settled for the organizing of all city messengers with retardation or physical problems by end of 1977, which gave them several months to work it out, and reported that a white guy named Ray Santee would help them organize and a client was procuring a vehicle for Jimmy Banks. Gustave had heard that name—at least knew a woman named Ray.