Plexus (30 page)

All this was slowly dawning on me as I lay awake in bed. Never before had I entertained such thought about our relationship. But how clear it seemed to me now! I had lost my true brother. I had gone astray. I had willed myself to be other than him. And why? Because I would not go down before the world. I had pride. I simply would not admit defeat. But what did I want to
give?
I doubt if I ever thought of that, that there was something to give the world as well as to take from it. Boasting to everyone that I was now a writer, as if that were the end-all and the be-all of existence. What a farce! I regretted that I had not lied to Gene. I should have told him I was a clerk in an office, a bank teller, anything but that I was a writer. It was like giving him a slap in the face.

How strange that years later his son—“the wild one,” as he called him—should come to me with his manuscripts and ask my advice. Had I set off a spark that night which inflamed the son? As the father had predicted, the boy had gone West, had led the life of an adventurer, had become a hobo, in fact, and then, like the prodigal son, he had returned, had taken up this weird business of writing in order to earn a living. I had given him what help I could, had urged him to stop writing for the magazines and do something serious. And then I never heard from him again. Now and then, when I pick up a magazine, I look for his name.
Why don't I write him a letter?
I might at least inquire if his father is still alive. Perhaps I don't
want
to know what became of my cousin Gene. Perhaps it would frighten me, even today, to know the truth.

I decided that I would start writing the daily column without waiting for Alan Cromwell's O.K. To write something new and interesting each day, and keep it within the spatial limits allotted, demanded a bit of practice. I thought it well to be a few columns ahead; if Cromwell kept his word I would already be in the groove. In order to determine which had the most appeal, I tried out a variety of styles. I knew there would be days when I would be incapable of writing a word. I wasn't going to be caught napping.

Meanwhile Mona had taken a temporary job as hostess in one of the Village night clubs—Remo's. Mathias, the real-estate operator, wasn't quite ready to launch her. Why, I couldn't discover. It might be, of course, that she had first to cool him off a bit. Sometimes these admirers of hers became too impetuous, wanted to marry her without delay. So she maintained.

Anyway, the job was rather in line with her temperament and previous experience. She danced as little as possible. The important thing was to make the victims drink as much as possible. The hostesses always got a percentage of the drink money, if nothing more.

It wasn't long before young Corsi, who had a celebrated establishment of his own in the Village—one of the landmarks—fell violently in love with her. He would drop in towards closing time and escort her to
his place
. There they drank nothing but champagne. Towards daybreak he would have his chauffeur drive her home in his beautiful limousine.

Corsi was one of the impetuous ones who was set on marrying her. He had dreams of spiriting her away to Capri or Sorrento, where they would adopt a new mode of life. Evidently he was doing his utmost to persuade Mona to quit Remo's. So was I, as a matter of fact. I sometimes whiled away an idle hour wondering how it would look to see his reasoning and mine side by side.
And her replies
.

Well, Cromwell was due in town any day. With his arrival perhaps she'd take a different view of things. At any rate, she had intimated in an off moment that she might.

More disquieting to me, however, than young Corsi's violent attempts to woo her were the annoyances she was subject to at the hands of certain notorious Lesbians in the Village. Apparently they came to Remo's expressly to work on her, buying drinks just as liberally as the men. Corsi too was incensed, I learned. In desperation he begged her—if she
must
work—to work for him. This failing, he tried another tack. He tried to make her drunk each night, assuming that that would make her grow disgusted with her job. But this too failed to work.

The reason nothing would budge her, I finally learned, was because she had taken a fancy to one of the dancers, a Cherokee girl who was in bad straits—and pregnant to boot. Too decent, too frank and outspoken, the girl would have been fired long ago had she not been the main attraction. Every night, it seems, people dropped in just to see her do her number. The number always ended with the split. How long she could continue to do the split, without dropping the child, was a grave question.

A few nights after Mona had confided the situation to me the girl fainted on the floor. They carried her from the dance floor to the hospital, where she had a premature birth, the child being born dead. Her condition was so critical that she was obliged to remain in the hospital several weeks. Then an unexpected event occurred. The day she was to be released she was taken with such a fit of
despondency that she jumped from the window and killed herself.

After this tragic incident Mona couldn't look at Remo's. For a while she made no attempt to do anything. To make her feel easier, also to prove to her that I could do a little gold digging myself when I had a mind to, I sallied forth each day to make a few touches here and there. It wasn't that we were desperate; I did it to get my hand in,
and
—to convince her that if we really had to carry on like sharks I was almost as good at it as she. Naturally, I tackled the sure-fire ones first. My cousin, the one who owned my beautiful racing wheel, was number one on my list. I got a ten spot from him. He handed it to me grudgingly, not because he was a tightwad but because he disapproved of borrowing and lending. When I inquired about the bike he informed me that he had never ridden it, that he had sold it to a chum of his, a Syrian. I went immediately to the Syrian's home—it was only a few blocks away—and made such an impression on him, talking about bike races, prize fights, football and so on, that when we parted he slipped me a ten dollar bill. He even urged me to bring my wife some night and have dinner with the family.

From Zabrowskie, my old friend the ticker-taper at the telegraph office near Times Square, I got another ten spot and a new hat. An excellent lunch too. The usual conversation, of course. All about the horses, about working too hard, about looking out for a rainy day. Eager to have me promise that I would accompany him some night when there was a good fight on. When I finally let out that I expected to write a column for the Hearst papers he looked at me goggle-eyed. As I say, he had already given me the ten spot. Now he began talking in earnest. I was to remember, if I needed any more between now and then—
then
meaning when I was in full swing as a columnist—I was to call on him. “Maybe you'd better take twenty instead of ten,” he said. I handed him back the bill and received a twenty. At the corner we had to stop at a cigar store where
he filled my breast pocket with fat cigars. It was then he noticed that the last hat he had bought for me looked rather seedy. We stopped at a haberdasher's, on the way back to the telegraph office, where he bought me another hat, a Borsalino no less. “One has to look right,” he counseled. “Never let them know you're poor.” He looked so happy when we parted you would have thought I was the one who had done the favors. “Don't forget!” was his last shot, and he rattled the keys in his trousers pocket.

I felt pretty good with forty dollars in my pocket. It was a Saturday and I thought I might just as well keep up the good work. Maybe I'd bump into an old friend and shake down some more jack—just like that. Running my hands through my pockets, I realized I didn't have any small change on me. I didn't want to break a bill—a clean forty bucks or nothing.

I said I had nothing in change; I was mistaken, for in my vest pocket I found two ancient-looking pennies, white pennies. Had probably kept them for good luck.

Up on Park Avenue I came upon the showrooms of the Minerva Motor Company. A handsome car, the Minerva. Almost as good as the Rolls-Royce. I wondered if by chance my old friend Otto Kunst, who had once been a bookkeeper for them, was still there. Hadn't seen Otto for years—almost since the dissolution of our old club.

I stepped inside the swanky showroom and there was Otto, as somber and sedate as an undertaker. He was sales manager now. Smoking Murads, as of yore. Had a couple of good-looking rocks on his fingers too.

He was glad to see me again, but in that restrained way which always irritated me.

“You're sitting pretty,” I said.

“And what are
you
doing?” He flung this at me as if to say—“what is it this time?”

I told him I was taking over a column for a newspaper shortly.

“Well!”
He arched his eyebrows. Hmmm!

I thought I might just as well try him for a ten spot—to make it an even fifty. After all, sales manager, old friend.… Why not?

I got a curt refusal. Didn't even bother to explain
why
he couldn't. It was out of the question, that was all.
Impossible
. I knew it was useless to prod him but I did, just to irritate him. Damn it, even though I didn't need it, he had no right to refuse. He should do it for old time's sake. Otto twiddled his watch chain as he listened. Cool as a cucumber, mind you. No embarrassment whatever. No sympathy either.

“God, you're a tightwad!” I concluded.

He smiled unperturbedly. “I never ask a favor and I never give any,” he responded blandly. Smug as a bug in a rug, he was. As though he'd always been a sales manager—or something even more important. Didn't think, did he, that only a few years later he'd be trying to sell apples on Fifth Avenue. (Even millionaires couldn't afford Minervas during the depression.)

“Well, forget about it,” I said. “The truth is, I've got a wad on me. I was just testing you out.” I hauled out the bills and flashed them before his eyes.… He looked puzzled, then frowned. Before he could say a word I added, as I extracted the two white pennies: “What I really dropped in for was to ask you a favor. Could you lend me three cents to make up the nickel for the subway? I'll pay you back the next time I pass this way.”

His face brightened immediately. I could almost feel the sigh of relief he let drop.

“Sure I can do that,” he said. And rather solemnly he fished out three pennies.

“It's mighty white of you,” I said, and shook his hand with extra fervor, as if I were indeed grateful.

“It's nothing,” he said, quite seriously, “and you don't need to give it back.”

“You're sure?”
I said. At last he began to realize I was rubbing it in.

“I can always lend you a few pennies,” he said sourly, “but not ten bucks. Money doesn't grow on trees, you know. When I sell a man a car I sweat for it. Besides, I haven't sold a car now for over two months.”

“That's really tough, isn't it? You know, you almost make me feel sorry for you. Well, remember me to the wife and kids.”

He ushered me to the door the way he would a customer. “Drop in again some time,” he said, as we parted.

“Next time I'll buy a car—just the chassis.”

He gave me a mirthless grin. As I walked towards the subway I cursed him up and down for a mean, stingy, heartless son of a bitch. And to think we had been bosom pals when we were boys! I couldn't get over it. The strange thing was, I couldn't help but reflect, that he had grown to be like his old man whom he had always detested. “A mean, stingy, hardhearted, pigheaded old Dutchman!” he used to call him.

Well, that was one friend I could wipe off my list. I did then and there, and with such a will that years later, when we encountered one another on Fifth Avenue, I was unable to recall who he was. I took him for a detective, no less! I can hear him now repeating asininely:
“What
, you don't remember
me?”
“No, I don't,” I said. “Really, I don't.
Who are you?”
The poor bugger had to give his name before I could place him.

Otto Kunst had been my closest chum in that street of early sorrows. After I left America the only boys I ever thought of were the ones I had had the least to do with. For example—the group that lived in the old farmhouse up the street. This was the only house in the whole wide neighborhood which had seen other days, days when our street had been a country lane named after a Dutch settler, Van Voorhees. Anyway, in this ramshackle, tumble-down habitation lived three families. The Vosslers, made up exclusively of oafs and curmudgeons, dealt in coal, wood, ice and manure; the Laskis comprised a father who was
a pharmacist, two brothers who were pugilists, and a grown-up daughter who was just a chunk of beef; the Newton family consisted of a mother, and a son whom I seldom spoke to but for whom I had a singular reverence. Ed Vossler, who was about my own age, strong as an ox and slightly demented, had a harelip and stuttered woefully. We never had any prolonged conversations but we were friends, if not chums. Ed worked from morning till night; it was hard work, too, and because of this he seemed older than the rest of us who did nothing but play after school. As a boy I never thought of him except as a walking utility; we had only to offer him a few cents and he would perform the tasks we despised. We teased him a good deal, as boys will. It was when I got to Europe, curiously enough, that I found myself thinking occasionally about this queer oaf, Ed Vossler. I must say I always thought of him with affection. I had learned by this time how almost microscopic is that world of mortals of whom one can say: “He's a man you can count on.” Now and then I sent him a picture post card but of course I never heard from him. For all I knew he may have been dead.

Ed Vossler enjoyed a certain protection from his second cousins, the Laskis. Especially from Eddie Laski, who was a little older than us and a most unpleasant fellow too. His brother Tom, whom Eddie aped in every way, was rather a sweet person and already on the way to becoming a figure in the world of fisticuffs. This Tom was about twenty-two or three, quiet, well-behaved, neat in appearance, and rather handsome. He wore long spitcurls, after the manner of Terry McGovern. One would hardly have suspected that he was such a fighter had not Eddie, his brother, boasted so much about him. Now and then we had the pleasure of watching the two of them spar in the backyard where the manure pile stood.