Dark Stain (12 page)

“Me?”

“We kind of thought it’d be kind of helpful to ease the tension, Sam. You see we got a lot of Negro members and if they could hear you, they’d go back home and pass it on to their friends — ”

“Nothing doing,” Sam said.

“Sam,” Suzy cried.

“Don’t Sam me. I’m not pounding my chest to anybody, not to unions or Vincent or anybody. When I dig up some information, I’ll see Vincent.”

“You look stubborn,” Suzy said. “Johnny could I attend that meeting? I’d like to hear the report.”

“My substitute,” Sam said sarcastically. “The original Priscilla Picket Line, herself.”

“And you’re the original dim-out.”

At the next corner, Johnny paused. “You folks’ll excuse me but I got to see Butch. He’s waiting to hear — ”

“Butch!” Sam groaned.

“Who’s Butch?” Suzy asked.

“He’s in the union with me,” Johnny said. “We’re on this committee together, you know. To try and get the different races to understand each other. Sam, I’ve been thinking that if we all work together we can do a lil good up there in Harlem. It’s — You know? It’s like we’re all getting into position to slap the face of a mean guy. That mean guy’s been around a long time. He was over at Grant’s awhile back. I could see’m looking me over, all set to knock me down. He was on Broadway, too, and he didn’t like seeing me with you, and with Suzy especially. He’s a mean guy and now we got a chance to slap his face hard. Goodnight, I’ll be seeing both of you.”

They watched him enter the subway kiosk on the corner. For a second he was outlined by the dim yellow light coming up out of the station, tall, thin, bareheaded, then he was gone as if sucked underground. “That’s why he looked so sad before,” Suzy said. “Oh, well, Sammy, Rome wasn’t built in a day as Mother is always saying.”

“Or in a year.”

“I said day. How about a bus ride? Nice spring night for a bus ride. I haven’t been on a bus since my first love affair with Charley Alderdyce back in Sunday School.”

He smiled, compelled to smile at her bubbling words. They walked east towards Fifth Avenue. Broad and black, Fifth spilled in front of them; in the traffic beacons, the thin red crosses of light directed the traffic. They waited for the crosses to turn green, then ran to the east corner and, laughing, waited for the bus.

“Suzy, you weren’t serious about Clair — ”

“I’m starting tomorrow. One week at Camp Clair, swimming, boating — ”

“Quit horsing around.”

“Think horses’ll come back with all the gas shortage? Nice spring night for horses, for all of God’s little creatures.”

“Yes, nice spring night.” He wanted to laugh.

“That’s just how I feel.”

“You, you,” he said.

The bus rolled up at them, braked to a stop and they climbed the spiral iron stairs to the open top, catwalking down the gangway between sailors and their girl friends, young newly married couples, high school petters, old women out for the spring air. They found an empty seat in the middle. She let go of his hand and slid in towards the rail. He sat down, putting his arm around her shoulders. The bus chugged forward, its great broad nose edging away from the sidewalk. Suzy snuggled closer to him, pillowing his free hand between both of her own hands. They sat that way, the wind in their hair and on their cheeks, for a long time like kids holding hands in a movie: that was what the bus was, a movie on wheels, all the night-time sights of the city dreamily floating before them. The avenue was even more mysterious in the war-time shadows; the shapes of the men and women on the sidewalks belonged perhaps to millionaires, to actresses; a tall woman in summer white gleamed like a moth in front of a window full of oil paintings. The bus hurled into the Sixties, past side-streets of old-fashioned stone residences that belonged to another New York, the great city of 1917. On their left, Central Park was a wilderness; the immense walls of the apartment houses on their right.

He said, “Suzy, I’m fond of you just the same.”

“Fond of me? What a tame expression.”

“I like you a lot.”

“Come again, brother.”

“Damn you, I love you.”

“A little more enthusiasm and you won’t be bad.”

“You’d try anybody’s patience though.”

“That’s swell.”

“What’s so swell about it?”

“What do you want? Some clinging wet mouse?”

“Sometimes I think I do.”

“No you don’t.”

“I wouldn’t be so all-fired dogmatic.”

“I’m sure of you in case you’re interested.”

“How sure?”

“All the way and then some.”

“You are?”

“Almost from the first time we met.”

“Who would’ve dreamed to see the day with you piling on the syrup.”

“Why not, you flat-footed G-man. It’s all ours.”

“What’s all ours?”

“Everything in life that’s any good.”

“Including the syrup?”

“Including everything.”

“It makes me think of the first time we met at that union dance when Rose introduced us. Remember?”

“I remember. What’s the gag line, wise guy?”

“You’d never seen me before and yet you looked me over like I was a freak and you made a crack, one of those typical Suzy cracks, when I asked you to dance.”

“What was it? Maybe I can use it again?”

“You said you would dance with me but you hoped I wouldn’t step all over your toes since I was a cop. Rose, of course, had to tell you I was a cop.”

“I’m waiting for the gag line.”

“The gag was that cops stepped on toes because they didn’t even respect women.”

“That’s not so hot. I must have been off form that night.” She pulled at his coat lapel. “Sam, you’ll take care of yourself?”

He was silent.

“Sam, promise.”

“I thought you’d taken that job over.”

“To some extent, my wonderful lug. But I can’t be with you every minute. Honest, honey, I’m awful worried.”

“Unworry yourself.”

“You should’ve gone to Councilman Vincent today.”

“Don’t spoil the bus ride.”

“I’ll sock you in the snoot. If you’d seen Vincent, he might’ve written an editorial in his paper about you and Harlem wouldn’t be hating you so much.”

“Wrong.”

“You’ll see Vincent tomorrow, Sam?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I won’t.”

“Why not?”

“Nuisance, Deputy Inspector Coombs told me that Vincent and his committee are working like mad to suspend me. They want me brought up for homicide. They don’t even want me tried before the grand jury because they say the grand jury’ll only whitewash me.”

“You’ll see Vincent tomorrow?”

“Nope. I’m not crying to him I’m a good guy. When I round up the guys who slapped into the Italian bars or something like that I’ll see him.”

“You still can see him.”

“Be practical if you can. The dice’ve been thrown. Vincent’s after me.”

“You’re giving yourself a persecution complex.”

“I am, am I? Listen, sweetheart, don’t you think there are opportunists and demagogues mixed up with Vincent’s committee? Maybe they’ve started the boycott against the Italian bars themselves.”

“You know that isn’t so!”

“How do I know? How do I know that sacred committee hasn’t got its politicians who see in my case only a chance to go places?”

“You’ll find stinkers everywhere,” Suzy said quietly.

“Except among the unions and the Negroes.”

“Among the unions and among the Negroes. Negroes are people like anybody else.”

“Now you said something. That stuffed shirt Hal Clair.” He thought of Clair and Marian Burrow. “You ought to stay away from Clair’s place.”

“Don’t nag.”

“That’s hot. I’m the nag. See Clair and little Marian with those come-hither eyes. God help the Harlem Equality League with those two in charge. Meet them both. You’re all hepped about Negroes. You idealize them. Wait’ll you meet them in the flesh.”

“Sam, Clair and Marian are only two individuals. They’re not all the Negroes in Harlem. Even if Marian’s a dizzy kid, she isn’t all Negro girls, and Clair isn’t all Negro men even if he’s a stuffed shirt. Don’t you realize what you’re saying? You’re judging all Negroes by two individuals about whom you might be wrong. You’re talking exactly the way the fascists do.”

“Don’t give me the Party line. I like you better when you’re giving me your own line.”

“I’m not in the Party.”

“Okay, I give up. You and Butch Cashman are a pair. He talked me into going to the mass meeting and you’ll talk me into the Kremlin.”

“Honey, you stink.”

“Maybe.”

“You didn’t tell me Cashman talked you into it when I saw you last night. I thought you had decided all by yourself.”

“Why should I? I’ve got advisers, haven’t I?”

“You can say the stupidest things. I’ve been wondering?”

“About what this time?”

“Aren’t there Christian Fronters and other fascists in the Police Department?”

“How do I know?”

“Remember a few years ago when there was an investigation and nothing happened?”

“Well?”

“I wonder if some of those fascists kept you from resigning today?”

He said. “Are you serious? You are serious! You’re nuts. Nuts! Coombs is one of the finest men you could find anywhere and liberal — ”

“He isn’t the whole Department. Nothing did happen in that investigation a few years ago. Sam, listen to me. Don’t shrug your shoulders. Aren’t you limited by not resigning?”

“How?”

“Isn’t there a strong urge in you to follow Coombs’ advice and take things easy?”

“Because I don’t want to see Vincent just yet? I’ll see him when I’ve got something to see him with.”

“But why wait?
The Peoples’ Advocate
will be out Thursday. It’ll be full of pictures about the meeting.”

“I like publicity. And you think, you innocent babe, that they’ll kill the biggest story of the week for my sweet sake?”

“You don’t know until you try.”

“You won’t take my advice about the Harlem Equality League and I won’t take yours.”

“Sammy, why not do everything you can to lessen the feeling against you?”

“I am.”

“Darling,” she whispered. “I’m afraid something’ll happen to you.”

He felt her shudder under his arm. “Don’t be silly.”

“Resign, Sammy. Join the Army. Get out of Harlem.”

He blinked. “What?”

“I didn’t say it! I didn’t say it!”

Shaken, he groped for her lips and kissed her; the bus travelled uptown block after block and his lips stayed on her lips.

She pushed him away from her and he kissed her cheek fast. “Sammy, give a girl a chance to breathe.”

“Go on and breathe.”

“Thanks, generous.”

He laughed, inhaling the warm wind from the Hudson; they were on upper Riverside Drive and the dark river below was like a vein of coal; across the river on the shore, the lights of the factories were dim; high above the factories the tiny lights of moving cars appeared and disappeared glimmering like miners’ hats in a shaft.

“Sam.”

“Yes.”

“You’ve got your fight right here in Harlem. I didn’t mean it about the Army.”

“Slacker.”

“On you jokes aren’t becoming,” she said.

“I know. I’m the serious type.”

“You know what I mean. The battlefields aren’t all over there.”

“Where are they then?”

“Don’t be so wise.”

“What do you say, Suzy? Let’s drop the discussion.”

They reached One Hundred and Sixty-Eighth Street and changed for the downtown bus. “I better get you home,” he said as they climbed another spiral stair to another seat in the darkness. “I wished we lived in the same place, Suzy.”

“So do I, darling.”

“I’ve known you five months. That’s a hell of a long time to be saying goodnight in hallways.” He kissed her on the ear. “Suzy,” he whispered. “How about getting married, me and you? What’re we waiting for? I said the same thing last month. What’re we waiting for?”

“I don’t know now.”

“Why only now?”

“I had the right answer last month but not now.”

“You mean you being the sole support of your mother? That’s just as true now.”

“Not only that. I thought I’d talk to mother some more.”

“About me being a Jew?”

“Five months is a short time for somebody like my mother. She’s just about catching her breath that we’re serious and that her only daughter’s in love with you, Sammy.”

“How long does she need? A lifetime?”

“Sam, I don’t know why we’re waiting. No, I don’t.”

His heart raced in him like a turbine and his blood roared in his veins and he kissed her on the lips and felt her shoulders underneath his hands and the drunken minute was over. “When’ll it be?” he said.

“Soon. Very soon.”

“We better get off or we’ll miss your block.” He pressed the button and the bus stopped on the downtown side of Riverside Drive. She walked ahead of him, a small girl with flowing hair black in his eyes. They cut east to West End Avenue and then over to Broadway with its hotels, cocktail bars and Childs’ restaurants and crossed the avenue into the long streets east of Broadway. She lived between Amsterdam and Columbus Avenues in a block full of tenements, furnished rooming houses and scattered old-fashioned apartment houses. She unlocked the door of a big limestone and brick apartment lettered
Rochambeau
and he followed her into an antique lobby with a bust of Dante on a pedestal and a marble bench. He grabbed her to him and they rocked together in a long kiss. Her lips felt soft and spongy and moist to him. He stepped back and stared into her face. In the light of the overhead lamp, her face showed the long day’s work. Her grey eyes looked black and they never shifted from him and her lips were wide apart and she seemed inwardly absorbed, almost dreamy, as if waiting for him to make a decision for both of them. He pulled her body to him, tightened his arms as if he would never let her go and he felt as he had on the bus as if moving through a darkness towards springtime hills far beyond the last street and the last house in the city.

She said. “What a lug you are.” She was smiling.

“Why?”

“You proposed to me on the bus and at the same time you noticed when we came to my block.”