The Street (16 page)

In summer the street was hot and dusty, for no trees shaded it, and the sun beat straight down on the concrete sidewalks and the brick buildings. The inside of the houses fairly steamed; the dark hallways were like ovens. Even the railings on the high steep stairways were warm to the touch.

As the thermometer crawled higher and higher, the people who lived on the street moved outdoors because the inside of the buildings was unbearable. The grown-ups lounging in chairs in front of the houses, the half-naked children playing along the curb, transformed the street into an outdoor living room. And because the people took to sleeping on rooftops and fire escapes and park benches, the street also became a great outdoor bedroom.

The same people who found warmth by standing in front of the Junto in winter con tinned to stand there in summer. In fact, the number of people in front of the Junto increased in summer, for the whirr of its electric fans and the sound of ice clinking in tall glasses reached out to the street and created an illusion of coolness.

Thus, in winter and in summer people stood in front of the Junto from the time its doors opened early in the morning until they were firmly shut behind the last drunk the following morning.

The men who didn't work at all—the ones who never had and never would—stood in front of it in the morning. As the day slid toward afternoon, they were joined by numbers runners and men who worked nights in factories and warehouses. And at night the sidewalk spilled over with the men who ran elevators and cleaned buildings and swept out subways.

All of them—the idle ones and the ones tired from their day's labor—found surcease and refreshment either inside or outside the Junto's doors. It served as social club and meeting place. By standing outside it a man could pick up all the day's news: the baseball scores, the number that came out, the latest neighborhood gossip. Those who were interested in women could get an accurate evaluation of the girls who switched past in short tight skirts. A drinking man who was dead broke knew that if he stood there long enough a friend with funds would stroll by and offer to buy him a drink. And a man who was lonely and not interested in drinking or in women could absorb some of the warmth and laughter that seeped out to the street from the long bar.

The inside of the Junto was always crowded, too, because the white bartenders in their immaculate coats greeted the customers graciously. Their courteous friendliness was a heart-warming thing that helped rebuild egos battered and bruised during the course of the day's work.

The Junto represented something entirely different to the women on the street and what it meant to them depended in large measure on their age. Old women plodding past scowled ferociously and jerked the heavy shopping bags they carried until the stalks of celery and the mustard greens within seemed to tremble with rage at the sight of the Junto's doors. Some of the old women paused to mutter their hatred of it, to shake their fists in a sudden access of passion against it, and the men standing on the sidewalk moved closer to each other, forming a protective island with their shoulders, talking louder, laughing
harder so as to shut out the sound and the sight of the old women.

Young women coming home from work—dirty, tired, depressed—looked forward to the moment when they would change their clothes and head toward the gracious spaciousness of the Junto. They dressed hurriedly in their small dark hall bedrooms, so impatient for the soft lights and the music and the fun that awaited them that they fumbled in their haste.

For the young women had an urgent hunger for companionship and the Junto offered men of all sizes and descriptions: sleek, well-dressed men who earned their living as numbers runners; even better-dressed and better-looking men who earned a fatter living supplying women to an eager market; huge, grimy longshoremen who were given to sudden bursts of generosity; Pullman porters in on overnight runs from Washington, Chicago, Boston; and around the first of the month the sailors and soldiers flush with crisp pay-day money.

On the other hand, some of the young women went to the Junto only because they were hungry for the sight and sound of other young people and because the creeping silence that could be heard under the blaring radios, under the drunken quarrels in the hall bedrooms, was no longer bearable.

Lutie Johnson was one of these. For she wasn't going to the Junto to pick up a man or to quench a consuming, constant thirst. She was going there so that she could for a moment capture the illusion of having some of the things that she lacked.

As she hurried toward the Junto, she acknowledged
the fact that she couldn't afford a glass of beer there. It would be cheaper to buy a bottle at the delicatessen and take it home and drink it if beer was what she wanted. The beer was incidental and unimportant. It was the other things that the Junto offered that she sought: the sound of laughter, the hum of talk, the sight of people and brilliant lights, the sparkle of the big mirror, the rhythmic music from the juke-box.

Once inside, she hesitated, trying to decide whether she should stand at the crowded bar or sit alone at one of the small tables in the center of the room or in one of the booths at the side. She turned abruptly to the long bar, thinking that she needed people around her tonight, even all these people who were jammed against each other at the bar.

They were here for the same reason that she was—because they couldn't bear to spend an evening alone in some small dark room; because they couldn't bear to look what they could see of the future smack in the face while listening to radios or trying to read an evening paper.

‘Beer, please,' she said to the bartender.

There were rows of bottles on the shelves on each side of the big mirror in back of the bar. They were reflected in the mirror, and looking at the reflection Lutie saw that they were magnified in size, shining so that they had the appearance of being filled with liquid, molten gold.

She examined herself and the people standing at the bar to see what changes the mirror wrought in them. There Was a pleasant gaiety and charm about all of them. She found that she herself looked young, very young and happy in the mirror.

Her eyes wandered over the whole room. It sparkled in the mirror. The people had a kind of buoyancy about them. All except Old Man Junto, who was sitting alone at the table near the back.

She looked at him again and again, for his reflection in the mirror fascinated her. Somehow even at this distance his squat figure managed to dominate the whole room. It was, she decided, due to the bulk of his shoulders which were completely out of proportion to the rest of him.

Whenever she had been in here, he had been sitting at that same table, his hand cupped behind his ear as though he were listening to the sound of the cash register; sitting there alone watching everything—the customers, the bartenders, the waiters. For the barest fraction of a second, his eyes met hers in the mirror and then he looked away.

Then she forgot about him, for the juke-box in the far corner of the room started playing ‘Swing It, Sister.' She hummed as she listened to it, not really aware that she was humming or why, knowing only that she felt free here where there was so much space.

The big mirror in front of her made the Junto an enormous room. It pushed the walls back and back into space. It reflected the lights from the ceiling and the concealed lighting that glowed in the corners of the room. It added a rosy radiance to the men and women standing at the bar; it pushed the world of other people's kitchen sinks back where it belonged and destroyed the existence of dirty streets and small shadowed rooms.

She finished the beer in one long gulp. Its pleasant
bitter taste was still in her month when the bartender handed her a check for the drink.

‘I'll have another one,' she said softly.

No matter what it cost them, people had to come to places like the Junto, she thought. They had to replace the haunting silences of rented rooms and little apartments with the murmur of voices, the sound of laughter; they had to empty two or three small glasses of liquid gold so they could believe in themselves again.

She frowned. Two beers and the movies for Bub and the budget she had planned so carefully was ruined. If she did this very often, there wouldn't be much point in having a budget—for she couldn't budget what she didn't have.

For a brief moment she tried to look into the future. She still couldn't see anything—couldn't see anything at all but 116th Street and a job that paid barely enough for food and rent and a handful of clothes. Year after year like that. She tried to recapture the feeling of self-confidence she had had earlier in the evening, but it refused to return, for she rebelled at the thought of day after day of work and night after night caged in that apartment that no amount of scrubbing would ever get really clean.

She moved the beer glass on the bar. It left a wet ring and she moved it again in an effort to superimpose the rings on each other. It was warm in the Junto, the lights were soft, and the music coming from the juke-box was sweet. She listened intently to the record. It was ‘Darlin',' and when the voice on the record stopped she started singing: ‘There's no sun, Darlin'. There's no fun, Darlin'.'

The men and women crowded at the bar stopped drinking to look at her. Her voice had a thin thread of sadness running through it that made the song important, that made it tell a story that wasn't in the words—a story of despair, of loneliness, of frustration. It was a story that all of them knew by heart and had always known because they had learned it soon after they were born and would go on adding to it until the day they died.

Just before the record ended, her voice stopped on a note so low and so long sustained that it was impossible to tell where it left off. There was a moment's silence around the bar, and then glasses were raised, the bartenders started making change, and opening long-necked bottles, conversations were resumed.

The bartender handed her another check. She picked it up mechanically and then placed it on top of the first one, held both of them loosely in her hand. That made two glasses and she'd better go before she weakened and bought another one. She put her gloves on slowly, transferring the checks from one hand to the other, wanting to linger here in this big high-ceilinged room where there were no shadowed silences, no dark corners; thinking that she should have made the beer last a long time by careful sipping instead of the greedy gulping that had made it disappear so quickly.

A man's hand closed over hers, gently extracted the two checks. ‘Let me take 'em,' said a voice in her ear.

She looked down at the hand. The nails were clean, filed short. There was a thin coating of colorless
polish on them. The skin was smooth. It was the hand of a man who earned his living in some way that didn't call for any wear and tear on his hands. She looked in the mirror and saw that the man who had reached for the checks was directly in back of her.

He was wearing a brown overcoat. It was unfastened so that she caught a glimpse of a brown suit, of a tan-colored shirt. His eyes met hers in the mirror and he said, ‘Do you sing for a living?'

She was aware that Old Man Junto was studying her in the mirror and she shifted her gaze back to the man standing behind her. He was waiting to find out whether she was going to ignore him or whether she was going to answer him. It would be so simple and so easy if she could say point-blank that all she wanted was a little companionship, someone to laugh with, someone to talk to, someone who would take her to places like the Junto and to the movies without her having to think about how much it cost—just that and no more; and then to explain all at once and quickly that she couldn't get married because she didn't have a divorce, that there wasn't any inducement he could offer that would make her sleep with him.

It was out of the question to say any of those things. There wasn't any point even in talking to him, for when he found out, which he would eventually, that she wasn't going to sleep with him, he would disappear. It might take a week or a month, but that was how it would end.

No. There wasn't any point in answering him. What she should do was to take the checks out of his hand without replying and go on home. Go home
to wash out a pair of stockings for herself, a pair of socks and a shirt for Bub. There had been night after night like that, and as far as she knew the same thing lay ahead in the future. There would be the three rooms with the silence and the walls pressing in—

‘No, I don't,' she said, and turned around and faced him. ‘I've never thought of trying.' And knew as she said it that the walls had beaten her or she had beaten the walls. Whichever way she cared to look at it.

‘Ton could, you know,' he said. ‘How about another drink?'

‘Make it beer, please.' She hesitated, and then said, ‘Do you mean that you think I could earn my living singing?'

‘Sure. Ton got the kind of voice that would go over big.' He elbowed space for himself beside her at the bar. ‘Beer for the lady,' he said to the bartender. “The usual for me.” He leaned nearer to Lutie, ‘I know what I'm talkin' about. My band plays at the Casino.'

‘Oh,' she said. ‘You're—'

‘Boots Smith.' He said it before she could finish her sentence. And his eyes on her face were so knowing, so hard, that she thought instantly of the robins she had seen on the Chandlers' lawn in Lyme, and the cat, lean, stretched out full length, drawing itself along on its belly, intent on its prey. The image flashed across her mind and was gone, for he said, ‘You want to try out with the band tomorrow night?'

‘You mean sing at a dance? Without rehearsing?'

‘Come up around ten o'clock and we'll run over some stuff. See how it goes.'

She was holding the beer glass so tightly that she could feel the impression of the glass on her fingers and she let go of it for fear it would snap in two. She couldn't seem to stop the excitement that bubbled up in her; couldn't stop the flow of planning that ran through her mind. A singing job would mean she and Bub could leave 116th Street. She could get an apartment some place where there were trees and the streets were clean and the rooms would be full of sunlight. There wouldn't be any more worry about rent and gas bills and she could be home when Bub came from school.