In the Slammer With Carol Smith (8 page)

I stand in front of the mirror. Full-length, yes, a bargain. You have an instinct for those, Carol—Gold said to me once. So I do. Comes with having a bargain for a face, neither ghostly white as the lady librarian’s nor so Blue Coal dark as the sergeant’s in the Legion Hall. The short haircut is becoming; it was a bargain too, in a barbers’ training-school, where I paid nothing. Except for my dues, which were internal.

The girl student who gravitated to me, like a young witch riding the shears she was pointing, had almost the same skin as me. All down the line of barber’s chairs people’s heads were turning into spiky cubes, or other propositions out of Euclid. The carrot-head next to me was being shaved to the crown, except for one sprout. I am like on a ward, but this time I am laughing.

My operator touches my cheekbone, then her own. She has almost the same hair too, curly but smooth, straight but not dead straight. ‘Man, are we going to make us kicky,’ she says, sleeking a hand on her own coif, that sits like a bell halfway up her nape. ‘Will you have the same? Look great on you. And easy care. Grows into a pigtail, if you can’t come in here regular. Or a bun.’

After she was done, an attendant moved to scoop up behind my chair. The whorl of hair that went into the carpet sweeper looked like the long-outmoded head of a college girl. ‘What made you finally do it?’ the operator said. ‘I kind of like to know.’ We smile at each other, sisterly. ‘I had this great barette,’ I said. ‘I wanted to give it away. I cut my hair so I could.’

Goodbye Daisy Gold. Though in a way we’re still linked. Both of us on the receiving end now, you on the severance pay and whatever welfare you can luck into later, me still on the stipend the street calls ‘the disability.’ Both of us bound to whatever offices that so dispense. You to the courts, for judgment—I to the clinics, and the streets. The mails may make things simpler in your case. So I give you this house. Easy-chair.

This woman, in this mirror—who knows what she might yet be? Or how bright are her errands?

The gorilla-cage is bare now except for what’s hung there, still neat under its plastic. Alphonse’s shirt.

T
HE STREET AHEAD
should look more crooked. Seen from behind, it somehow looks straighter, even before she’s there. Has the long bus ride put her off balance, as it used to? She knows it has not. The spacey side-to-side she once spent her days in is a trance she can scarcely recall. Shoulder to waist, ankle to knee, she is now aligned as most people are. Though in the street itself an outline is missing. Some indication always expected, even at dusk—chimney-stacks? Somewhere along.

As she rounds the corner she almost bumps into a barrow stacked with pots of yellow flowers. Mungo is standing on the sidewalk in front of it. Hand to forehead under his visor cap, he stares like those Indian scouts who used to be painted looking down into a canyon from their mountain top. What Mungo is looking at is only a vacant lot. A long, narrow expanse of ground, rubbled with crushed stone. Almost neatly. Some giant machine has patterned it.

Her sight is as clear as a falcons must be. Or like after eye-drops. She may have perfect confidence in it. Those slates there, ranged up from the walk’s edge like a stile to nowhere; those were the front steps. In front of her is a huge parallelogram of air.

The Cat Club is gone.

‘They came in the night—’ Mungo said, as if continuing a conversation. ‘Cop on duty says. Did the same last year, to a building same block as our church. Where I’m sexton. Complete wrecker’s crew. Gone like the wind.’ An embossed tin box is in his palm. Opening it, and lifting his mustache, he inserts a pinch up each nostril. ‘Tax relief. Or they sell the site.’ He sneezes; his eyes tearing. ‘Only the snuff,’ he says.

She recalls how he used to say that, at intervals. All those habits that houses have—where now is the cat? Where’s everybody, anybody? She knows the whereabouts of one. ‘There was a notice on the door. After an accident.’

‘Don’t fancy that crew came in by any door. Or left by one.’ He sends her a sidelong glance, almost proud. ‘And I have a heap of business with doors.’

‘Doors?’

‘Aye. From the Seamen’s Institute. Lived there. Until they got rid of the building, and us. Same bloody wind.’

She’s inching into the shock, slowly. His big red face is a help. ‘You sell flowers too?’

‘Distribute them. After the church weddings. Young couple, this time. So it was plants. Three dozen of ’em. Hospital couldn’t handle. Other outlets closed for weekend. So come here.’ Suddenly he poked a finger at her. ‘Three dozen of ’em. Count!’

She sees too close his gelid, distracted eye. Nothing dangerous. But does as she is bid. Yellow rosettes on stiff stems, not dead yet.

‘Count.’

They have no smell. ‘Thirty-six.’ When she raised her head she saw what was at the far corner of the lot.

‘Three dozen,’ Mungo said with satisfaction. ‘No mismanagement. Hey, hold back—don’t walk in there. There’s glass everywhere.’

She’d forgotten how cogent in some matters the Cat Club’s non-members could be. Or when abroad, in their pursuits. The walkers knowing
down-to-the-ground
it were, what is possible, ignorable or threatening, underfoot. The can-collectors, who know all the classifications of tins as well as the stores that by law have to accept deposits and for how much.

‘I’ve got new shoes’ she says. ‘Stabilizers.’

‘You’ll ruin them.’

‘I got to have one last look at it. The shed.’

‘Ah, in that case. Well, I have on me workaday boots.’

The rubble ahead of them, tinted by the rising sun and glimmering with points of glass and wave-crests of metal, looks more of an expanse than a city lot.

‘That’s what keeps a chap at sea,’ Mungo says. ‘Your last view is no change from your first.’

They pick their way slowly, his hand on her elbow. His two pairs of boots classify him, just as Alphonse’s ‘other’ shirt, now in the outer slot of her pack, classified him. As being a step above those who have only what is on their backs. And only the one source of cash.

‘Minding a church—,’ she says ‘—what a nice job.’

‘A dispensation.’ He lifts a small, evil sliver of metal from their path. ‘Nights only. I watch until it’s light. Days, I’m on the docks—if there’s nothing for the barrow. Or on the ferry—if luck presents.’

Does he mean—if he can pay?

‘Is it an open church, or a closed?’

A splinter of glass has lodged in the heel of Mungo’s left boot. Bending, he pries it out. ‘Open for services only. And Sunday soup. Otherwise closed, with only me there. All the riffraff that’s around—that would doss down in the sanctuary? Can’t do else.’

She wonders whether he stays for the soup.

The long shard he tosses out of their path is amber. From the storefront window’s border. She decides not to mention this. They are almost at the shed.

‘Wonder how come they left it,’ Mungo says.

A voice answers from around the shed’s side. ‘Daylight. They had to scramble.’

It’s Jerry Guido, the cop on the beat. Who as all of them know, volunteered to walk his territory instead of riding in a police car. Who even the teenage hoods go to, in a jam. ‘That fuckin’ moneybags. She must of figured the courts won’t bother her for the demolishing, just because she’s in Florida.’ He comes round the side of the shed. ‘And how are you, my Aussie friend?’

‘No she wasn’t. She was here, in her mink. The morning of the accident.’

When a cop alerts, even in chat, his hand always goes to where his gun is stashed. ‘And who are you? And what do you know about the accident?’

Whatever is wrong with her chemistry—for of course she’s been warned there may be something—it’s also common knowledge that people like her share one of the stigmata of childhood for which they are neither cherished or thanked. Their tongues will not lie. Even if they take a daily pill.

Fortunately, Jerry now recognizes her. ‘Why it’s you, is it? Alphonse’s Miss Boston Special. Hey there. Looka you.’ He whistles. ‘Got yourself a job, maybe? At the Rainbow Room?’

It’s the haircut. And starting out. With the men at the bar maybe watching. She has on all her ‘other’ wardrobe. The shirt, the belt, the dungies. And Angel’s earrings.

But when he sees the tell-tale backpack there’s that shift in his face. When it recognizes the outside. ‘Don’t get me wrong—’ he says. What he means is—he had her wrong. ‘But where are you two heading?’

‘She has to see the shed.’ Mungo speaks as if this is some faith he won’t question.

‘Does she now. And why?’

Mungo turns to her. ‘Why?’

When both the outside people and the inside ones want to know your reasons, their own whys become starkly clearer. Mungo’s asking only because wherever he is, he travels in circles. Answering docilely to those who hand out dispensations. And always a little at sea.

Jerry asks because he has the eye-crinkles that come from kindliness, but also a holster somewhere.

She says, ‘I want to keep a memory.’

Mungo swings his head uncomfortably. He’s wearing a round collar back-to-front—his minister’s discard?—which he has fastened with paper-clips. The cop purses his mouth. If she mystifies both parties, that’s nothing new.

‘I don’t think maybe you ought to go in there,’ the cop says softly.

‘Somebody’s killed the cat?’ She could almost see it, hanging there as once the aunts’ cat had been found, strung up in the barn.
No significance
the aunts had murmured to one another. A word she had added to her hoard.

‘That moocher?’ Jerry says. ‘He’s already in the window of the woman who gives readings. She’s always had her eye on him. Maybe he’ll assist.’

Cops never spread their arms. Jerry spreads his gut though, to relax him and you; he was once cited by the department for being too fat. It’s still a gut. ‘Well, folks—going off duty. We’ll have the lot fenced in by tomorrow.’ He stares at the airy space above, into which the clouds are sneaking as if long prevented. ‘Betcha the neighbors aren’t organizing any protest.’ He gives her a long look. ‘See you got yourself one of those.’ He flicks the Shelter-Pak. ‘Hmm. Up to you. Anyways, take care.’ He shrugs. ‘Upta you.’ On the way past Mungo’s barrow he seizes a pot, calling back: ‘For the wife.’

‘He never respects my inventory,’ Mungo says.

She says, looking past him, ‘I know who’s in the shed.’

The bolts are still there, but swing loose on their fittings, as if one of the destroying crew had said at the last minute, ‘Nah, not worth it,’ and had let the shed be. Or else somebody, tripping the set-up of bolts and knocker for one last time, had then wrenched it half out of the weathered wood.

‘It’s still a door,’ Mungo says, and pushes in.

At first she thinks the body there is dead,—shoved up against the wall with its knees sunk to its chin and left there, by the decamping crew. Or by Jerry Guido, who had really gone to meet the squad car. But then one eye opens owlish. Then the other. ‘Don’t come near, whoever you are. ‘I up-chucked. Forgot I was on like an antibuse.’ His voice is tired but still competent, the way it always was, separate from any bottle in his hand. An actor’s voice, no whopper of a baritone, but the thin, dry kind, that tickles one’s ear.

Both eyes close, open, focus. ‘Carol.
Carol.’

She smiles.

One scarecrow jerk, then another. He stands. ‘What did you do to yourself?’

‘What did you?’

‘I said. Fell off the wagon.’ The shapely head hangs. Its haircut is still sharp. ‘After nearly a year.’

‘Fell off?’ Mungo cracks. ‘Weigh up, pal. You were never on. Tossed—from one night to the other. Bottle in your britches, dawn to dusk.’

The long harlequin face lights up. ‘So I managed it then?’

Mungo’s cheeks puff. ‘Manage?’

‘Thought you knew I was playing the fool. An old Aussie like you. You ever sniffed at those bottles, you’d have known it was tea.’ He turned to her. ‘I know I fooled you. I was acting. Acting it out. Like it helped—see?’

Acting it out—she knows that phrase. That’s what she had done—they said, the docs on the ward. Maybe she’s still doing it? Stage acting is a whale’s distance apart. But she daren’t say. ‘Tea, Alphonse? That’s what they use onstage, isn’t it?’

He sees what she’s up to. ‘Thanks.’

‘I’m a good smeller. You don’t smell as if you barfed.’

‘Barfed?’ A college word, new to him. ‘Oh. I did it in the bar. Washed up, some. Came back here. And passed out.’

‘Because of—that?’ She points. In the open shed, a pyramid of two-by-fours and chunks of cornice rears like an unsigned work of art.

‘The club? No, I knew its days were numbered. That’s what made it so special. Never dreamed it would go like this though. Or like with that poor woman, Margaret.’ His voice has deepened. It mustn’t be that he can’t act. He can’t stop.

‘No—I was celebrating,’ he says softly. ‘Because—I got a job.’

When somebody comes out with that it’s like a lens lifting, if only for them. But over their shoulder you too see out of the dog-gray, into the light.

Of course it’s a division too. She’s remembering how that is. When maybe you and the jobbie are on stools in the diner, side by side. When whoever’s behind the counter offers a coffee, and don’t offer you. So you scrounge an extra paper napkin, in reply. The steam that runs down a diner’s window on a winter morning, it’s not important to most. Coming in from the real outside, it’s like a hearth. Your nose weeps for joy.

‘A job, a job,’ Mungo gobbles. ‘Better look sharp.’ He lashed out an arm—as he always had when he gave you something—and dug in his puttees. ‘Here.’ A bottle of his fizz. Then bowing in embarrassment like always, he backed out the door. Only to stick his head in again, the mustache quivering. ‘Stop calling me Aussie if you please. I’m from New Zealand. Auckland.’ The door closed.

Alphonse had finished the fizz. ‘You off somewhere?’

‘Maybe to Philadelphia? Maybe I can get a job giving out those new packs they have?’ She has just thought of that.

‘Neat.’ He touches the Shelter-Pak, almost as if he’s touching her. Always thought you had a pad.’

Will she lie? Not worth it, ever again. ‘I do. Did. Not now. Giving it up.’ She watches him brush himself off. The chinos are still okay. The tee’s armhole gapes. ‘I always thought—you had one too.’