Love and Will (8 page)

“You can't go up there,” an auxiliary policewoman said, guarding the steps and holding the club across her chest.

“But my brother Ricky. Somebody said he got hurt. Look at his place.”

“He your brother? Excuse me, maybe you should speak to the officer. Officer Gulanus,” she yelled to the window.

A policeman stuck his head past the broken window.

“The man's brother he says.”

“Come on up here, kid.”

The crowd had thinned out by now, but with the appearance of this young man, it grew to the size it was soon after the man had jumped through the window. “The brother,” a few people said.

“Of who?” someone said.

“The man who went through that window.”

“That what happened? I thought someone got mad at the landlord there and busted it out. The guy die?”

“From one story up ten feet to the ground? He more likely only got a sprained ankle and walked away.”

“That's his brother all right,” the waiter said, coming over again, this time with no tray. “I've seen him around too. Mostly helping his brother up the stairs when his brother was dead drunk or high on drugs. I couldn't tell which.”

“You should speak to the policeman there,” I said.

“Why?”

“I don't know. Maybe what you said could be useful.”

“I got work to do and my own reasons for not talking to police.”

“What a neighborhood,” someone said to me.

“It has its moments.”

“Moments hell. You live around here?”

“Few blocks away.”

“How could you? There's craziness all around every minute of the day. Pimps, whores, cars running you over, burglars, pickpockets, muggers, women getting raped, drunks, bums, people peddling dollar joints right under your nose, three card monte sharks right nearby cheating everyone blind with their shills. I'm from Chicago and we're supposed to be bad, right? Riots, gangsters, politicians who fraud your votes and install their friends, but we're not a quarter to what you guys are. You've a family to live with too?”

“No.”

“I was thinking if you had one and lived here, I'd really feel sorry for you. I don't mean to be rude, but if I was told I had to on my life raise my little kids in this neighborhood, and we just have one, I'd kill them both.”

“Okay, show's over, why not everyone go home?” an auxiliary policeman said.

“Because it's a slow Tuesday night,” someone said. This made a few people laugh.

“Listen to them,” the man said to me. “People would never speak to a cop like that in Chicago. They'd be considerate, would listen to what he said, or be afraid of getting their head bashed in by one.”

“It's only meaningless talk,” I said. “No harm to it.”

“That's what you have to think perhaps, but you're going to see one happy guy to leave this hole tomorrow,” and he moved on.

By now I could only recognize two people from the original crowd, and the landlady and auxiliary and regular police. In the window I could see the young man crying and the policeman with his arm around the boy's shoulder.

“Is that the kid who jumped?” someone said. “He looks okay to me.”

“He's standing at least,” someone else said. “That's a lot more than you can say for a lot of people in this area.”

I wanted to say something to correct their information or interpretation of the situation and even of this neighborhood, but didn't. It was already an hour since the man had jumped or whatever he'd done through that window. The waiter was going off-duty for the night. At least I assumed so because he had his street clothes on and was heading for the avenue, but maybe he was only on his break. The policeman got in a patrol car with the young man. The auxiliary police continued to guard the glass part of the sidewalk and the building stoop.

“What are they going to do, arrest the kid for breaking a window?” someone said, watching the patrol car drive away.

“If they do, don't worry, tomorrow he'll be out bright and early to break another window or somebody's leg,” someone else said.

I started to walk out of the crowd.

“He wasn't the one who jumped, was he?” someone said, meaning me.

“I think so. He's got the blood all over his clothes, and did you see his face?”

“Not him,” a third person said. “He was standing on the sidewalk when the lady on the stoop there threw a TV set out of the window.”

“Was she throwing it at him?”

“Go ask him. All I know is she threw it out without first opening the window, and whether it's the glass or TV that hit him is a good guess. Somebody did say a man grabbed the TV right after it landed and ran away with it.”

“When it was so smashed up?”

“Apparently it wasn't.”

A few blocks away the troubadour from before had drawn a chalk circle with a diameter of maybe twenty feet on a sidewalk comer. A crowd was standing on the outside perimeter of the circle two and three deep. I stood and watched his act for a while. He rode the unicycle on the circle lines a few times, never once getting more than half an inch off the line either way. While he was riding he took a hat off a woman's head and put it on a man's head a few feet away. He tried to light someone's cigarette while he was riding but couldn't do it after three tries, and snatched the cigarette out of the man's mouth on the fourth time around and threw it away. He did manage to take a watch off a woman's wrist while he was riding, and gave it back to her his next time around when she didn't even know it was gone. Then he put the bike on its side and did tricks with his hat, rolling it down his arms and catching it just before it touched the ground, balancing it on his nose, knee and toes and kicking it off his toes and landing it on his head. He next did a juggling act with scissors, hatchets and knives and then the same juggling act with a borrowed kerchief around his mouth, which broke most people up, and then with the kerchief tied around his eyes, which got the most applause. He gave the kerchief back to the woman, looked angry at her and took a gun out of his hat. Someone screamed and he swiveled around and aimed the gun at the screamer and pulled the trigger and out flew a parachute with a message attached to it at the ends of the strings which said “These days, generosity really counts.” Then he bowed and passed the hat around. He did quite well. Got lots of compliments also. One woman said to him she'd traveled throughout Europe and Eurasia and had never seen a performer with so many consummate skills. A man emptied his change purse into the hat and said “Bravo, Horatio, you are simply divine, the world's best.” When the troubadour shoved the hat in front of me, I backed away and nearly fell off the curb. Someone grabbed my arm to stop me from falling. At that moment when this person was helping me to stand straight again, the crowd was laughing. When I turned around, the troubadour's painted white face was right up against mine and he suddenly jumped back and shook his body and head as if I'd just frightened him. Then he continued to pass the hat around and I walked home.

She comes into my room. I hold her hand. She kisses my lips. We undress one another and go to bed. Later, she dresses and leaves. I sleep for a little while and dress and go outside. I see her talking to a man on the street. I say “Hey, how are you?”

“Excuse me,” she says, “but I don't think we've met.”

“Harry. Harry Lipton.”

“Harry Lipton? No, the name's not familiar either.”

“Harry Trusky then.”

“Trusky? No, try again.”

“Harry Bittom.”

“Bittom, Bittom. Now that's much less better. I'm sorry.” She turns her back to me and resumes talking to the man. He looks at me over her shoulder.

“How do you do?” he says.

“Hello.” I put out my hand. We shake.

“Arnold Peters,” he says.

“Harry Fortundale.”

“Fortundale,” he says. “How's it going today?”

“Fine. Couldn't be better.” Her back is still turned to me. “Do you think you can introduce us?” I say to him.

“You mean you and the lady?”

“The lady and I, yes.”

“What was your name again?”

“Harry Levitt.”

“Harry Levitt, Gretchen Morley. Gretchen Morley, Harry Levitt.”

She turns to me, puts out her hand. We shake. She says “Nice to meet you. What do you do?”

“Lots of things,” I say. “Work, sleep, eat.”

“And make jokes too, I bet.”

“Make jokes, don't make jokes. Run, walk, play, read, dream.”

“And change your name whenever you want to?”

“Change my name, don't change my name. Dress, undress, make my bed, cook.”

“And have women up to your room, I bet.”

“Have women up to my room, don't have women there. Tie my shoelaces, don't. Buy clothes, give them away. Things. Many things.”

“And kiss and make love, I bet.”

“Kiss, make love, don't. Sometimes. Sometimes it seems like never. Turn on and off lights. You know. What do you do?”

“All of those except the name change. Talk to people mostly. I like talking to people best.”

“I don't,” Arnold says, walking away.

“He makes jokes too,” she says. “Wait up, Arnold,” she yells at him.

But he's turned the corner, is gone.

“Now it's just us two,” she says.

“If you mean together here, yes.”

“What would you like to do?”

“Talk. Go up to my room with you. Talk to you there. I find you very attractive.”

“That's all?”

“Interesting, intelligent, sensitive, warm.”

“I mean, that's all you want to do in your room?”

“Undress you, be undressed by you.”

“That's all.”

“Have you come in my room after I'm already in my room and on my bed, and then get in my bed.”

“That's all?”

“To make love, why not?”

“Where do you live?”

“Sixth brownstone up the street, north side, top floor, apartment C.”

“I'll be there,” she says.

“How long will it take?”

“Does that depend on both of us or do you mean how long you want it to take me to get to your room?”

“Leave here two minutes after I've gone. That will give me time.”

“To do what?”

“Get to my building, up the stairs, unlock the door, go in, close the door, make my bed, peel an orange, set it out on the night table for us to eat and lie on my bed.”

“I don't like oranges. No citrus. Too acidy. And just before one gets into bed, too sticky to eat.”

“Then just to make my bed.”

“It's not necessary. Except if you want to put on fresh linen, that's okay with me.”

“Then give me five minutes after I leave.”

“Five minutes from … now.”

I run to my building, up the stairs, unlock my door, into my apartment, close the door, take the linens off the bed and throw them in the closet, get fresh linens out of the dresser and put them on the bed, peel an orange, eat it, wash my hands and lips and dry them, and just as I hear her footsteps on the last flight of stairs, dump the peels and pits into the garbage bag and jump on the bed.

She comes into the room. I hold her hand.

“We didn't say anything about your holding my hand,” she says.

I drop her hand.

“We also didn't say anything about your dropping my hand.”

“I didn't know what else to do with it. All I could think of doing with the hand I held were several other things we hadn't arranged to do. So I thought the next best thing to my not having done something we hadn't arranged to do was to stop doing what we hadn't arranged to do, which couldn't have been to continue holding your hand.”

“We also hadn't arranged to confuse one another.” She kisses my lips.

“We didn't say anything before about your kissing my lips,” I say.

“Do you mind?”

“Nor anything about asking if I minded or not once you did something we hadn't arranged to do.”

“What do you want me to do, unkiss you?”

“Let's just say we're even now. Both of us having done something to the other that we hadn't arranged to do and then doing our best to undo it.”

We undress one another and she gets into bed. We make love. Later, she begins dressing.

“We didn't say anything about your dressing,” I say.

“If I'm to leave, one of us has to dress me. Since we didn't arrange that either, I decided to dress myself.”

“We also hadn't arranged your leaving here.”

“Neither my staying nor you.”

“Then how do we undo now what we didn't arrange to do?”

“By your dressing and leaving with me or soon after me. Then we'd be on the street where we first started arranging things, which would make us even again I suppose, though I haven't quite figured that one out yet.”

“We didn't say anything about figuring things out either. Better, why don't you undress and come back to bed? We did arrange that.”

“We arranged you undressing me and my coming to bed, but we didn't say how many times. Why don't we forget whatever arrangements we made and from now on do only what we want to or have to do?”

“But we didn't arrange forgetting our arrangements or really forgetting anything.”

“We arranged to talk, right? So now we're talking about forgetting our arrangements.”

“Let me think about it. I realize we didn't arrange anything about my thinking about it, though I also know that everything we do together or apart can't be arranged. All right. We'll make a new arrangement to make no more arrangements. You think it could work?”

“We'll see, darling, we'll see.”

I get out of bed, take her hand and help undress her. We get back into bed. We stay there for two days. In bed. Occasionally out of bed, but never out of the room. Cooking, cleaning, washing, eating. Sleeping together, making love. Dressing, undressing, each other and ourselves. Reading. Doing many things we hadn't arranged to do and some things we never did together or apart. Most of it works. My cooking and her cleaning doesn't too well, but we agree they can be improved. We don't tire of one another after two days. That's something we never could have known. We laugh more. We have more fun, cry a few times over past memories and present happiness, hold each other more too. Then she says “Let's go out.”