Death in The Life (8 page)

“Going round and round. Something new every day.”

He waited. Then: “I’m listening.”

“Today there was Mrs. Rodriguez upstairs. It’s a long story.”

“I’ve got a pocketful of dimes.”

She was tempted to ask him if he would like to come down to Seventeenth Street But if he said no? “It turns out my predecessor had a deal with Goldie. Do you know who he is?”

“I know him.”

“Friend Julie’s Place used to be a way station, a sort of connection between trick and… treat. Hey!”

“I got it. Are you surprised?”

“I guess not really. But the lady upstairs—that’s something else.” She told him about Mrs. Rodriguez’s expectations.

“Street games,” Pete said.

“It’s the child that bugs me, those great big empty eyes.”

“Little Orphan Annie.”

“Warbucks,” Julie said. “Money is rotten, Pete.”

“That’s where we left off. What isn’t rotten?”

“You, me, spring, poetry, hope… There’s a girl that’s been in to see me twice now, a sixteen-year-old whore who wants to go home.”

“Sixteen,” Pete said.

“Going on seventeen, she says. I’d have said younger.”

“Did she tell you where home was?”

“No.”

“So you couldn’t give her the exact fare.”

“Don’t be cynical, Pete. It’s not like you.”

“Honey, what’s like me? Do you know?”

“No.”

“Then don’t romanticize me. I’m not a romantic figure. I’m not even nice most of the time. Would you like to see the plays? Yeats—what else would the New Irish Theatre do?”

“I love Yeats. I would like to see them, yes.”

“They make nice noise.”

“When am I invited for?”

“It opens Friday night. That’ll be a shambles. Come on Saturday. A few minutes before eight and I’ll walk you through.”

“Thank you, Pete. I’m looking forward to it.”

“Take care.”

He had only needed one dime.

She found herself listening to what seemed like the echo of her own words. Thank you, Pete. I’m looking forward to it. She thought of Mrs. Ryan standing on tiptoe in Mr. Kanakas’s wanting to be in on everything, but careful not to touch.

Touch, touch, touch.

“Dearest Jeff, I’ll talk to Doctor about Paris in June…” April in New York… April is the crudest month… They had honeymooned on an island off the coast of Maine. They had bathed in the rock pools… two different pools, his and hers. After dark they had made love, retaining a certain anonymity.

J
UANITA PLAYED IN FRONT
of the shop so much of the time Julie wondered if Mrs. Rodriguez wasn’t psyching her into the baby-sitting role in spite of the
cordon sanitaire.
She often did find herself looking out to see how the child was doing. Why wasn’t she in school? Why, when other children in the block were not in school, wasn’t Juanita playing with some of them? The child hauled a cardboard box bump, bump, bump down the stairs and took her dolls out one by one and seated them against the wall beneath Julie’s window. That solemn little face was always bobbing up and down in the window as she went from doll to doll to punish each for an imaginary wickedness.

Julie did more reading than writing, and a lot of watching; she knew she was waiting. Five days had passed since Rita’s last visit. She avoided Eighth Avenue, not wanting to see her there. If she was there. The rodeo was still in town, the trick from Wyoming. Now and then a seeker came for a throw of the Tarot, Friend Julie’s card in hand. Always women, bored, stuck, discontented women who wanted something about which they were calling to do nothing. They came for a fix. Julie had made seventy-four dollars to date. Seventy-four. Seven, four, and one were numbers that often recurred in her life. She lived on Seventeenth Street. Her childhood phone number had been 7714, Rita was going on seventeen, and Pete lived at 741. Whenever she doodled in numbers, it was with a combination of the three. And on the first of June Jeff was going to be forty-one, he had reminded her in his letter. She decided to invent a layout of the Tarot, seven, four, and one. At the moment it occurred to her to wonder if Juanita might by any chance be seven years old, she leaned back in her chair and looked out the window in time to see a sleek giant of a man stoop and roughly push the child out of his way. Both Mrs. Rodriguez and Julie responded. He looked up to the window above and down to the door, then up to the window again. Julie drew back without opening the door. He was a caricature, but of what? The cream-colored, tight-fitting suit with its braided lapels, contoured with muscles. Sulky good looks and wavy red hair that was almost orange, a dye job that must have curdled. He kept answering Mrs. Rodriguez back, his soft mouth curling into the shape of what Julie was sure were obscenities. Finally he took some coins from his pocket and flung them on the ground for the child to gather. He came into the shop, the scent of his male cologne like an emanation.

Julie waited, her hands fisted in the pockets of her smock.

He looked at her as though it was she who was ridiculous. “Are you Salvation Army or what?”

“There’s a sign in the window. What can I do for you?”

“They call me Mack around the neighborhood. Now do you know?”

“I’ve heard the name,” Julie said.

“I don’t like Jesus freaks messing with my girls.”

“You got the wrong address, Mister Mack. I don’t think I could even call myself a friend of Jesus.”

He sat down in the chair out front without being asked. Fine. She preferred to look down to him than to look up.

“How about Rita? A friend of hers?”

“An acquaintance.”

“Where is she?”

“I’ve been wondering the same thing myself, and that’s the God’s truth.”

“If it ain’t, I’ll find out and it won’t do you any good, sister.”

“I don’t know that I’d tell you if I did know, but the simple truth is, I don’t.”

“That’s twice you don’t know. Once more.”

“Same answer.”

“She come to you, didn’t she, saying how she’d like to quit The Life and go home? That’s bullshit. She’s the best little hustler on the street, but she’s so jealous of me taking a new girl, she cuts out every time.”

“Well,” Julie said, feeling a little sick, if this were so, at having possibly involved Doctor Callahan, “you know her better than I do.” Rita had admitted Mack was breaking in a new girl. What Julie thought was something like disgust might have been jealousy.

“Straight people don’t understand how my girls feel about me.”

Julie shrugged. Then, on impulse: “How do you feel about you?”

“I like me a lot.”

Julie just nodded.

“Don’t understand that, do you?”

“That’s right, man.”

“The only way to dig The Life is from the inside.”

“Goldie said something like that to me the other day.”

“That man’s something else, isn’t he? Now if you was to ask me how I feel, a white man in a black man’s trade, that’d show you understood a little.”

“You know what, Mack? I just realized something: I’m not really curious. I don’t give a damn.”

“Then don’t try getting my girls out of The Life, because you can’t do it.”

“I keep telling you, that’s not my mission. Where did you get the idea it was? How come you’re here anyway?”

“My girls take care of one another when I’m not around. Wife-in-laws, do you dig that?”

“Not mathematically.”

“You’re too damn smart, too smart for your own good.”

“Sorry,” Julie said. “But I would like to know where the idea that I’m into religion came from.”

“Don’t get me wrong, sister, I’ve got no objection to religion as long as it don’t get in the way of business.”

“Okay, Mack. It doesn’t matter. If I see Rita I’ll tell her you were looking for her. Okay?”

“Just tell her to get her little ass back on the street. I got a big weekend coming up and I need the cash.”

“I’ll try and remember that,” Julie said.

He got up like a model about to promenade. He checked the wave in his hair, the fold in his scarf, using the glass of the door for a mirror when he closed it behind him. Before moving away, he blew a kiss up to Mrs. Rodriguez. Juanita, when he looked down at her, offered him the handful of coins she had gathered, a gesture that made Julie sick. He took them and again flung them over the sidewalk. Across the street a flaming red sports car was waiting for him, a youthful black driver at the wheel.

Julie went out to where she could speak to Mrs. Rodriguez. “He’s an elegant hunk of shit.”

Mrs. Rodriguez did not understand. “Bad, bad.”

“I thought maybe he was a friend of yours.”

“I don’t want friends like him. Gangsters. I don’t like him coming here.”

“I don’t much want him either.”

“You saw with Juanita?”

“She shouldn’t be down here alone. Why isn’t she in school, Mrs. Rodriguez?”

“Mind your own business.”

“Okay. But don’t think I’m going to look out for her.”

“The street is public. You don’t own the building.”

“Come on, neighbor. I’m not looking for a fight. I didn’t ask that guy Mack to come here. I don’t want to mess with any of these cats. They’re out of my class.”

An expression Mrs. Rodriguez probably did not understand. “Don’t you be bad to Juanita.”

“Oh, hell,” Julie said and went back indoors. Juanita had pretended to give each of the dolls a coin. Now she was slapping the hell out of one of them, taking back the money.

At noon Julie locked up and headed into the Eighth Avenue traffic. The street was crazy with hookers trying to pick up lunch-time quickies. There wasn’t a cop in sight. Julie went on to Bourke’s Electrical Shop. It felt like a kind of oasis inside.

Mr. Bourke was mending an old table lamp at the back of the shop. It looked so incongruous, that old fixture, when all around the shop were the modern appurtenances for stage and photography lighting. He glanced at her over his glasses and then back to the work in hand. His fingers were graceful and sure. They seemed to pirouette around the socket. “What can I do for you, Julie?”

“I was wondering about the girl you sent to see me, Rita.”

“I wouldn’t say I sent her exactly. She’s always looking for someone to talk to. She picked up one of your cards from there.” He indicated the Friend Julie cards alongside the cash register. “So I said why don’t you go see her? She’s a wise little person.”

“Oh, boy.”

“She hasn’t been in lately. I was wondering myself.”

“Maybe she has gone home,” Julie said. “That’s what it was all about”

“Most of them do, some time or other. But they drift back.” He put the brass casing around the electrical innards and said, “There, that’ll keep Mrs. Ryan out of the dark for a while.”

“Is that her lamp?”

He had caught the note of surprise in Julie’s voice.

“She does talk, doesn’t she?”

“Some.”

“It gives her something to do. Now your friend Pete I have seen. Christmas tree lights in April. ‘Give me some stars, Philip Bourke,’ he says.” Mr. Bourke imitated Pete imitating an Irish brogue. “‘Give me an ocean of stars to fill an Irish heaven.’”

“Will you go to see the play?”

“I might since I’m a benefactor, you might say. Unless I have to stay open.”

“At night?”

“Some of my best customers are moonlighters. I don’t think I could stay in business without them.”

“From Pete and me you couldn’t make much of a living, that’s for sure.”

“The likes of you make the living worthwhile.”

“Thanks,” Julie said, suddenly shy of him. She wanted to go, but not to run.

“You’re a lovely little lady, I wouldn’t mind coming to you for advice myself.”

“Don’t!” Which he could easily misunderstand. She sputtered and laughed, trying to explain. “I mean my advice is for fun, not serious. The heavy stuff is for doctors, which is what I told Rita.”

“I understand.”

“I guess what I mean is I’m best with strangers, people coming in for kicks.”

Mr. Bourke just looked at her while he took off his glasses and polished them with a handkerchief that was as white as snow. “I suppose Mrs. Ryan is saying I’m worse than the whores. And maybe she’s right, but I don’t feel that way. They’re full of anger and hate and greed, and what I feel is love. It may be terrible to some people, but to me it’s tender.”

Julie was in agony at his frankness. Which was ridiculous. She made herself stand and be silent. Yoga or Doctor. Or herself. She was rewarded by a sudden association: “Do you know the Greek poet Cavafy, Mr. Bourke?”

“I’m not much of a reader, I’m afraid.”

“I’ll bring you the book if you like. He has a lot to say about love.”

“My kind of love.” A gentle mockery.

“Yeah.”

Mr. Bourke smiled as though he was the one being tolerant. And he was. “All right.”

“Maybe I’ll see you at the Irish Theatre,” Julie said. She was on her way when Bourke called after her and came from behind the counter.

“Stay a minute,” he said, peering over his glasses at the street. “We’re being observed by Mack and one of his girls. Don’t look around. That’s what he wants, the bastard. He’ll put on a special show for us.”

But Julie did look around. In time to see the pimp slap a black girl across the face and then again, this time with the back of his hand. Although Bourke called out to her not to, Julie ran to the door and shouted out at Mack, “Leave her alone, you sadistic bastard!”

It was the cowering whore who answered: “This ain’t none of your business, little white cow.”

Mack grinned and said, “Don’t pay her no mind, sugar. She’d like some of the same thing. How about it, Sister Julie?”

“Shit,” Julie said. She turned and waved at Mr. Bourke.

He beckoned her into the shop again.

When the door was closed, he said, “Don’t tangle with him, Julie. He’s a bad one and I’m sorry I was dumb enough not to think about him when I sent Rita to you.”

“Did she tell you she’d kill herself if she didn’t get out?”

“She told me.”

“But you didn’t believe her.”

“I doubted it, but that doesn’t mean she wasn’t telling the truth. It only means that if I believed her, I might have felt I had to do something about it. I’ve got a Catholic conscience, Julie.”