Found in the Street (7 page)

“She okay?” asked Natalia.

Jack closed the door softly. “Yep.” He wanted to embrace Natalia again, she was standing so close to him now, but he was afraid it would annoy her.

They looked over the living-room, carried some glasses and ashtrays out, but Susanne had already done a fair job of tidying. The dishwasher had finished its cycle. The sink could hold what dirty dishes there were. All was well.
And Christ, we're lucky,
Jack thought. To live in a nice place, not to have to worry about money, to be able to afford a reliable person like Susanne, to have a healthy kid!

Natalia was under the shower.

Jack took a deep breath. All was right with his world.

7

Jack emerged from Rossi's Fruit and Deli with both arms around paper bags. A cold bottle of Amelia's Coca-Cola was threatening to break the wet bottom of one bag, and Jack had his hand under it. Johnny Rossi wasn't delivering today, because his father was down with bronchitis, and Johnny couldn't leave the store. But the distance was short to Jack's house.
You're so naive sometimes, Jack.
Jack grimaced. Why couldn't he get the phrase out of his mind? Natalia had said it with a smile, but it had stung, maybe because Isabel Katz had heard it, and Jack remembered her faint smile, to herself. Natalia last evening, when they'd had drinks and dinner at Isabel's studio on East Forty-first, had mentioned “Sylvia's new girlfriend,” who was a bio-chemist and quite attractive, Isabel had said, and both she and Natalia had remarked how much better and happier Sylvia looked since having met her a month ago. And Jack had said, “Girlfriend?” being genuinely surprised, and wondering for a moment if they were talking about Sylvia Kinnock, but they were. “You didn't know she was gay, Jack?” Natalia had asked with a quick laugh that was almost apologetic, for him, before she gave her attention to Isabel again. Jack had said nothing further on the subject, not even after they had got home. No, he hadn't known. Sylvia didn't look in the least gay, with her careful make-up, or in the way she dressed, which was rather on the feminine side, now that Jack thought about it. This revelation of Sylvia's sexual preference reminded Jack of the more than six months in which Natalia had breezed off with Sylvia to Europe and so on. Had they had an affair? Jack wasn't going to ask. The thought, the possibility, however, made him feel slightly shaky inside.

“Hi there!”

Jack was on Grove Street. The voice had come from behind him. Instantly he recognized the face above the denim jacket, under the sailor cap, the blond girl from the coffee shop. Elsie. He smiled. “Hi. How're you?” He walked on, aware that the girl followed him, then was beside him.

“Hey, let me take one of those!”

“Right. Thanks. Just for a few steps.” Jack held onto the collapsing bag, and let the girl take the other. “I'm here.” He nodded toward his doorway. “If I can just set this one inside—” Jack worked his key with his free hand.

“I'll take one up,” said the girl. “Is this where you live?—I'd like to see your drawings. Unless you're busy just now.”

“N-no.—Okay. If you want to take a look.”

The girl climbed the stairs with him, up to the third floor. Below the jacket she wore blue jeans and white sneakers.

“It's here.” Jack used another key.

The girl looked around inside the living-room, still holding the big sack in her arms. “Gosh, what a place!—You live here too?”

“I sure do. You can set that thing on the table here.—Thanks a lot.”

She did so, then went to look at a small gouache on a wall. “Is this by you?”

“Hah! Thank you. That's a de Kooning.” And probably the most valuable thing in the house, Jack thought.

“Gosh, and that stereo!—This is really the nicest place I've seen in New York. And such high ceilings!”

“Yep, it's an old house.” He put one big Coca-Cola bottle into the fridge for Amelia. The rest could wait.

She faced him, standing in the center of the living-room, hands in the slash pockets of her jacket. She was not tall, perhaps five feet five. “Where do you work?”

“This way.” There was something odd, quite unusual, about brushing aside his curtain, seeing the girl walk into his sanctum sanctorum. Had he gone mad? Was he trying to risk something? If so, what? “Th-this,” Jack said, indicating an old first sketch, just about the only one he'd abandoned of the many he'd made for Joel's book, against the wall at the left back corner of his worktable. “This is unfinished. In fact I'm not even using it. It's part of—”

“It's weird!” she said with admiration. “And this?—All these are
yours
?”

“Everything here, yes.” All, all, the black and white pen and brush abstracts, the experiment with colored tissue paper pasted to a papier-miche female figure, a small figure, to simulate a party dress, a large and not bad watercolor of the view from one of the front windows, which the girl spotted and recognized instantly as—right across the street from here.

“Gosh, you weren't kidding. You're an artist.—Where's the one you did of me?”

Jack smiled. “On that check?” He moved toward a wall against which stuff leaned, and pulled up an illustration board. He had paperclipped the little drawing to an upper corner of the board, the little gem, while the board itself was covered with twelve or fifteen line drawings of Elsie, three-quarter, profile, full face.

“Golly! That's really
me
!” Her blue eyes were wide now. “I think they're—” She shook her head, at a loss for words. “Say, I'll pose for you—like I said. No charge. If you do stuff this good.”

Since the stuff she was looking at was rather unrealistic, except maybe for that corner of her eyes, Jack was surprised that she liked the sketches. “Well—maybe some time. Thank you for the offer.” She was remarkably pretty, Jack thought, presenting her profile now as she gazed at the illustration board which she held carefully between her palms. Her nose was rather fine. She wore no make-up. He imagined her with some color at her lips and in a long pink gown. She'd look like a fairy queen come to life.

“Want to make any more sketches of me now?”

Jack shook his head. “No. Not just now.” Just now he was not in the mood for sketching, only for looking at her. “You could just sit, if you've got a minute. In the living-room.”

“Or maybe you want to work,” she said, like a little girl trying to be polite.

“If I wanted to work, I wouldn't ask you to sit down.”

She took the sofa, he the green armchair.

“Where're you from?” Jack asked.

“Upstate New York. Such a little town, nobody's ever heard of it, and I don't even want to say the name.” She looked straight at Jack and laughed, revealing white pointed eyeteeth. “I ran away—with about fifty dollars. I got tired of the arguments at home. My parents wanted me to stick it out with a job in a five-and-dime. I was so bored, I just couldn't. Selling spools of thread and stuff.” She cringed as if in horror at the memory. “So I caught a bus to New York, got off at Thirty-fourth Street.
Wow!
—I had a friend living down on King Street.
Had.
We sort of quarreled—but she put me up when I first came, and I paid her something for sleeping on the sofa, but she didn't really like me. She didn't really know me, because I was just a friend of a friend of hers who lives in
my
town upstate, if you can follow all that, so—Well, there's nothing easier than finding part-time jobs in this town. Now I'm living on Minetta Street with a girl I sort of like. We share the rent.” She shrugged. “But New York! I love it. It's better than a circus. You never know what kind of person's turning up next. Funny people—and bright people. People you can talk to and they'll let you alone too.” She looked at Jack earnestly, pressed her palms together between her knees. She glanced at the pack of Marlboros on the coffee table. “Can I have one of these?”

“Sure.” Jack got up to light it, picked up Natalia's jade lighter and held it for the girl.

“Thanks.” She picked up the lighter quickly after Jack had set it down, rubbed her thumb along its flat side that was framed in gold, and set it down. “Beautiful, that is.—You don't smoke?”

“No. Those cigarettes are my wife's.”

“Oh, yeah! Old Ralph told me you were married and had a little daughter too. Where is she?”

“How does he know I have a daughter?”

She smiled. “I told you he spies on everyone. He lives just here on Bleecker Street.” She gestured with her left arm. “I try to stay clear of him. Ha! He knows it. He's always talking about my morals.
Morals!
What a laugh!—He doesn't seem to know that I tell people—fellows, anybody, ‘
Shove off
!
'
When I want to. And they do shove off!” Now she laughed, bubbled over with amusement. “I don't know what's so wrong about my morals, I swear!”

Jack had to smile too. “How long've you known this guy—Ralph?”

“Known him? I don't know him. He just walks around the area. He has crazy working hours like me. He's a security guard, he says. So—”

“He works around here?”

“I wouldn't know. I don't know.—But if I'm working at some coffee shop or a bar—Oh, maybe he wouldn't go to a bar, but a coffee shop, in
he
comes, see, at any hour! Could be daytime hours too. This has been going on for—maybe five months! And a couple of weeks ago, it was so funny! I went to a disco on Christopher after work, after two in the morning, and then to someone's apartment, and I was walking home with my friend Genevieve and some fellows at nearly
dawn,
and old Ralph must have been coming home from work, so he saw me with these noisy people, even though it wasn't even light, and he was across the street. So he just stood there in the dark, looking. I had to laugh! Genevieve knows about him, because I told her.—He's harmless. He thinks we were all off to a sexual orgy or something, the three fellows and Genevieve and me. Or I.” Another irrepressible laugh came at recalling it; she glanced at the ceiling and smoke burst from her lips. “I know what he was thinking, because the next time I saw him, he gave me a lecture about staying up all night, drugs and booze. Ha-ha! He doesn't seem to know I can sleep all day if I want to.”

“How old are you? If I may ask.”

“I just was twenty. Old enough to be seeing some of the world, don't you think?”

“Ye-e-es. And what's your last name?”

“Tyler. T-y-l-e-r. I hate it. Sounds so boring.—Do you ever go up to the Museum of Modern Art?”

“Sure.”

“I like to go there. I sometimes go—”

“Do you do any drawing and painting yourself?”

“No-o. But I like it. I think I'd like to be an actress. I started acting classes at a free school—nearly free—at Cooper Union. Then I didn't attend enough. This was only a couple of months ago. I've been in New York about eight months now. I thought I'd look around for a year before I started working hard at something. I don't know what I want to be really.” Again she looked straight at Jack.

A malleable girl, Jack thought, happy and free just now, and a pleasure to behold, naive, but he sensed a core: she wouldn't say yes to everything that came along. Thousands of young people drifted to New York to try their luck, he realized. What set Elsie Tyler apart was her energy, her clear face, her freshness. “You must have a lot of boyfriends,” Jack said.

Another shrug. “I can take 'em or leave 'em. They bore me if they say they're in love with me. How long does that last? Two weeks? Or else they just want a lay. That's maybe worse. I don't want to settle down—to anything.'' She removed her cap suddenly, but sat up straighter, cap in her lap, with an air of departing.

Jack felt like making a sketch of her now. Could he remember the way she looked now? Blue thighs curved with young muscle, ready to spring up from the sofa, the singularly plain straight blond hair, doing little to enhance the beauty of her face except by its light. And the restless eyes.

“I better push off.” She was up. “Got to go to work just before six. Same joint.” She threw him a smile. “You really have a daughter?”

The doorbell rang. It was a little after 4. Susanne was fetching Amelia today from the Twelfth Street school.

“Yes,” Jack said, pushing the release button in the front hall. “You'll see her now.”

Elsie clapped her cap on. “Thanks for letting me up. I really enjoyed it—even though I did all the talking. Didn't I?”

She seemed to want to be assured that she hadn't. Jack didn't say anything, and went and opened the apartment door. He heard Susanne's and Amelia's murmurings as they climbed the stairs.

“Hi, Jack.” Susanne released Amelia's hand.

“Daddy, I made a
bird
for you!” Amelia flopped against his legs, then handed him a blue paper bird of the kind that flapped its wings, the kind Jack had made for her many a time. “
I
made this one.”

“Very good, honey. Thanks.—May I introduce Miss Elsie Tyler?” Jack said. “Amelia. And Susanne Bewley.”

“How do you do?” Susanne smiled at Elsie, then went into the kitchen.

“How d'you?” Amelia looked up at Elsie. “What kind of hat is that?”

“Sailor's cap,” Elsie replied. “English sailor's.”

Amelia lifted one hand.

“No, come on, Amelia!” Jack said. His daughter was being herself, wanting to take the cap in her hands, to try it on.

Elsie let her. “Do you want it? You can have it. I know where to get more,” she added to Jack.

Jack removed the oversized cap from Amelia's head. “No. You don't just take people's possessions, Amelia. Not done!”

Amelia, unhurt, looked at Elsie with curiosity.

Jack led the way to the apartment door and Elsie followed him. Then she ran down the steps ahead of him, and Jack after her, as he wanted to accompany her to the house door.

“What did you mean, the drawings upstairs were just practice?” Elsie asked as she opened the downstairs door. “Did you make another drawing of me?”

“I meant I made one finished drawing—finally.” Jack was now walking down the front steps. “It's for a book I'm illustrating. I turned all the drawings in yesterday. At a publishing house.”

“A book?”

“Book by a friend of mine. Not sure if it'll get published. But it's a nice drawing of you.”