American Dreams (11 page)

'Oh, right, I forgot, you're a famous star in disguise.' He set both glasses on the desk and moved close. 'You've committed a serious offense, Fritzi.

We have to work things out.' He stroked the sleeve of her black bombazine dress. 'Are you willing to work things out?'

'Mr Merkle, please take your hand away.'

Blowing his boozy breath in her face, he closed his fingers on her sleeve; the pain almost buckled her knees.

'Mr. Merkle, let go.'

'I'm giving you a chance. You'd better take it.' Holding her forearms, he thrust against her. His pop eyes fluttered shut. Fritzi felt something stiff poking her apron.

She had no hat pin for defense, only her athletic strength. She yanked her arms down and lunged backward. When her right hand came free, she swung her open palm into his face. It rocked him, giving her time to speed to the door, unlock it with a twist of the key.

'Goddamn you, change your clothes and get out. You're fired! You take so much as a rag out of this hotel, I'll have you arrested.'

White and shaking, she wanted to run. Something compelled her to face him and say, 'Mr Merkle, do you know your nickname in the hotel?'

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His pop eyes appeared to vibrate in his head. 'Do I want to hear this?'

, 'Everyone calls you OIlie the Octopus. I'd say that's an insult to octopuses.

Octopi.'

'Get out of my sight!' he screamed. 'Try to find another job good as this one. You won't. You'll be humping for pennies like your fat friend.'

She couldn't think of another retort, so she shot her head forward and dry-washed her hands in a perfect imitation of him. Merkle turned red and made gobbling sounds. 'You you--'

Fritzi fled, caroming off the night clerk rushing down the hall in response to the noise. Lord, what have I done?

She left the Bleecker House bedeviled by thoughts of a small rectangular box, tin, hidden in a drawer in her room. Originally the box had 62

Striving

contained lemon drops. Now it held all the money she had left - four dol lars

and change.

In the morning, as she went out to buy a newspaper, Mrs. Perella was waiting by the newel post. The landlady murmured softly about 7a pigione.1 The rent. Fritzi promised a partial payment, two dollars, by

nightfall. Mrs. Perella murmured, LBello, bravo.' Beautiful, excellent. 'All my tenants should be as good as you.'

Fritzi searched the columns and that day answered ads for three positions.

Dishwasher - she was too well educated. Typewriter m an insurance office -- her typing speed was too slow. 'Artist's model.' The grubby room overlooking the Bowery was obviously a front for something else, probably unsavory. The 'agent' had pimples and the eyes of a ferret. Merkle and now this; she fled.

That night she paid Mrs. Perella, reducing the content of the tin box by half. Next day she walked to a shop on Second Avenue to pawn her tennis racket. She had surrendered it to the gnomish owner once before.

'One dollar,' the pawnbroker said, starting to write her ticket.

'Mr. Isidor, it was a dollar-fifty last time.'

'I know, Fritzi, but that was a year ago. Things depreciate.'

'I surely hope you won't sell it. I intend to redeem it as soon as I can.'

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He patted her hand. 'I believe you. One dollar.'

'I'll take it.'

She went up to Forty-seventh and peered through the lobby window of the Bleecker House. The dreaded Merkle being nowhere visible, she went in. The day clerk, a friend, told her that within an hour of Fritzi's dismissal Maisie had likewise gotten sacked. She hadn't take it well, had in fact bashed Merkle with an iron skillet from the kitchen.

'The night cook was cleaning up when she asked for it. Soon as he found out why she wanted it, he took it back and gave her a heavier one.

Coppers from the precinct came around, but Maisie had already left town to visit relatives in Wyoming.' He winked. 'That's what we told 'em, anyway. Merkle can't help them. He's in a Yonkers hospital for an indefinite stay.'

So she wouldn't be seeing Maisie again. Fritzi was sorry; she liked the fat girl.

Fritzi and Oh-Oh

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She sat in Union Square in the pleasant afternoon sunshine. The dying day washed the square in pale yellows and umbers. Paper trash and pigeon droppings and peanut hulls collected at her feet. The air rang with the curses of cabmen, the clatter of buried traction chains, the neighing of horses, the chanting of newsboys, the violins and squeeze boxes of corner musicians, the horns of taxis, .the popping of gasoline engines, clamorous voices speaking foreign tongues - all the music of New York that she loved. Today she didn't hear it. She was busy marking ads.

On a nearby path a man shouted, i need four supers.' He held up four fingers. 'Pay is sixty cents.' Fritzi guessed the stranger was one of the freelances called super captains. They worked the square around this time every day, rounding up supernumeraries for evening performances.

Fritzi. had disliked her work as a super in The Mongol's Bride. It wasn't acting; supers never rehearsed. They showed up for costumes and minimal instructions thirty-five minutes before curtain. Most didn't know or care what play they were in. Many were lowlifes who needed drinking money, and the super captains weren't much better.

It was no time to be choosy, though. She raised her hand.

The man came to her bench. He wore an old but clean corduroy jacket and pants, a blue railroad bandanna knotted in the open throat of a work shirt. In his thirties, he had a pleasant face, deeply lined. He tipped his
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cap.

'Hello, dear. Earl's my name.' His eyes were oddly unsettling, a strange light brown, gold-speckled.

'Are you hiring for a performance tonight?'

'Yes, but I can only use gents. Sorry.' He smiled. He had a wide mouth, allowing a display of large teeth of spectacular perfection and whiteness.

Though his smile made him attractive in a rough way, somehow he scared her,

Looking Fritzi up and down, he Said, 'I haven't seen you before. Been missing something. I don't do this work regularly, you understand.'

'I don't do it at all if I can help it.' She started to edge away.

He followed. 'Actress, are you?' She nodded, kept moving. 'Care to join me for a beer after I round up my four?'

'No, thank you.' She spun and hurried off.

When she glanced back, he was coming after her, scowling -- offended by her refusal. Others were looking at him; he stopped, yelled after her:

'Go walk the streets, slut, I don't give a damn.' He pivoted and went off the other way. 'Four here, I need four tonight.'

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Striving

She ran for two blocks before slowing and looking back. Why had the man upset her so? Something about his eyes, his angry insistence --

Or was she reacting too strongly, unnerved by her encounters with Oh Oh and the Bowery 'agent'? Without knowing the answer, she was thankful to escape the stranger and have New York's teeming crowds around her, hiding her.

13 Smashup

In the twenty-second lap, Artie Flugel in the little Mason deliberately whipped into a skid ahead of Carl, spewing dust over Carl's windscreen and blinding him. It was a dangerous trick of experienced drivers.

Artie wanted to win not only the purse but a five-dollar side bet with Carl.

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Coming out of the turn in a thick tan cloud, Carl took the middle of the straightaway by instinct alone. The dust blew away; the grandstand and pits loomed in the sunshine. Three more laps to catch Artie, who was already sprinting into the next turn, toward the backstretch. Through the oil-specked lenses of his secondhand Zeiss goggles, Carl saw spectators sitting on the white rail fence at the turn beyond the stands. Damn fools.

The track was in a northern suburb of Detroit. The race was the closing event of the day, a hot, dry Sunday in early summer. Carl worked six days a week at Henry Ford's auto plant, and on the seventh day he raced.

Today, four earlier races had rutted the track and torn out chunks of the hard soil the drivers called gumbo. A piece of it flew up over the radiator and hit the windscreen, cracking it. Above the engine roar Carl heard his riding mechanic yell. It might have been, 'Lord Jesus,' or 'Oh, God,'

because a chunk of flying gumbo could smash goggles and put out a driver's eye. This piece luckily glanced away to the right, gone.

Four cars remained in the race, a Peugot, a National, Artie's Mason, and Carl's Edmunds Special with lightning bolts painted on the cowl. The Peugot and National were a lap and a half behind; they had no chance.

Carl was on Artie's tail, battling for the lead.

By now the race was taking its toll. His rear end hurt, and his legs were killing him, not only cramped but aching from working the accelerator and clutch pedal up and down, up and down, every few seconds. Carl Smash-up

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looked like a mummy: long-sleeved shirt, leather gauntlets, leather helmet, goggles, chamois face mask. Underneath his shirt hot, itchy burlap wrapped his chest and belly to help absorb the severe vibration of the frame. It came through the wheel to his gloved hands, his arms, and his shoulders.

The first sections of the crowded grandstand flashed by on his right.

Seated to his left, Jesse, his mechanic, was constantly in motion, peering at the gas and oil gauges, pumping up the gas pressure to spurt gas to the front carburetor from the rear tank, watching the four smooth rubber tires, especially the rear ones. They'd already changed two tires in the pit halfway through the race. Jesse also kept a lookout behind, signaling Carl if someone wanted to pass. The signal was one tap on Carl's left knee. With all the noise, shouting and being understood was impossible.

Halfway past the grandstand now, clocking something like fifty mph.

On the fence rail at the turn coming'up, amid people wearing drab clothes, something bright white shone. Artie Flugel roared out of sight into the far back turn. Carl shoved the accelerator pedal down. Jesse tapped his knee frantically, twice. Tire going.

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Carl looked at Jesse for a second. Jesse stabbed a finger over his right shoulder. Right rear. It always took the worst beating: He knew he should slow down for the turn, but Artie was. already showing him too much dust, and driving was more than a friendly sport, it was a game of high risks. Carl roared into the turn high up on the track near the fence where all those people roosted like crows on a wire. Jesse shouted another warning an instant before the right tire blew like a Fourth of July torpedo.

Carl pushed his cars, took chances. This time, as the Special began to slew and slide, he knew he'd guessed wrong. The Special headed straight for, the fence sitters, who were screaming and scrambling and trying to get down, get away, but couldn't, not fast enough.

As the Special hurtled toward the fence through the sun-bright dust, Carl experienced a strange, suspended moment, the kind of moment that had come to him in tight places before. He was scared, terrified, but it was an exhilarating kind of fright - nearly unendurable, but if you survived it, if you tricked fate one more time, the fear would be followed by a giddy pride - fast breathing, laughter at nothing -- when you walked away from the car. This time, unless he did something fast, he and Jesse wouldn't walk away.

If he drove into the fence, a lot of people would die. At the fence's far 66

Striving

end, hay bales were banked in the turn. Carl yanked the wheel over left, stood on the brake. The rear end juddered and slid. The Special just cleared the end of the fence, where all the spectators were diving for their lives. Carl shouted a pointless 'Hang on, Jess' as the Special hit the hay bales, burst through, slammed down into a ditch, and threw them both out of the car like rag dolls.

A tree limb raked the top of Carl's head. He landed violently on his back in long grass, wind knocked out, ready to wet his pants because he reckoned that if he'd sailed an inch or two higher, the tree limb would have decapitated him, chop.

He clawed his way out of the grass, ripped his goggles and helmet and mask off, sucking air. The Special lay nose down in the ditch, its front end

¦

crumpled like a tin can someone had stomped on. Oil smoke leaked out. i|

The smell of gas was raw in the Sunday air. People were running from the ™

fence, from the grandstand - the racetrack vultures who'd loot any avail --

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able souvenir from a smashed-up car.

¦

Carl didn't see his riding mechanic. He had a queasy feeling that his friend lay in the ditch with a broken neck.

Vessel

Nothing -- silence, broken only by the greedy cries of the vultures around the Special and the faraway snarling of the cars finishing the race.

The Special's owner, Hoot Edmunds, walked slowly toward the looters.

Hoot's straw hat was tilted at its usual rakish angle. His striped seersucker blazer was properly buttoned, and he twirled his Malacca cane. Carl had just thrown away Hoot's latest investment of several thousand dollars.

Then Carl saw the bright white person from the fence. The white was a shirtwaist, and the person was a girl with blond hair.

Curly black hair, a long-jawed head, coffee-and-cream skin, poked up from the ditch. Blood ran from a gash over the man's left eye, dripping on his coverall.

Jesse climbed out of the ditch with a dolorous expression. He was taller than Carl, starvation thin. He was colored, though clearly one or more ancestors had mixed a lot of white blood with his blackness. Jesse Shiner was ten years older than Carl, and lucky to be riding as a mechanician. He had the job because Carl had insisted Jess's color didn't matter, only his skill as a self-taught mechanic.

Jesse and Carl stood a foot apart, staring at each other. As if by thought transmission, they came to the same realization at the same moment: they 9

were miraculously whole. Both started to laugh wildly.

Smash-up

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