Charley stopped and stood there, Rudy watching him, as the people crowded by them, bumping them, pushing diem together, forcing them apart. “I saw this girl and she smiled at me and I could tell. It was very goddam romantic, if you want to know the truth.” He began shaking his head, sharply, and his eyes quickly closed. “Son of a bitch, son of a bitch, I should have known something was wrong even then—I met her in Schrafft’s! How can you be romantic in Schrafft’s? She was having a sundae with this girlfriend of hers, Penny, and I walked over to them and said something crazy and we were married before the month was out and how the hell was I supposed to know. You meet someone and fall in love and they’re not supposed to turn out stupid. Isn’t that right?” He stared at Rudy. The crowd milled around them, tiny Puerto Ricans, ancient Jews. “What am I doing, Rudy? The other day I cried. I was driving and the next thing I couldn’t see the road. Will you cover for me? Will you lie? What am I doing? Am I crazy? What’s the answer?”
Rudy raised his arms again, raised them high, spread them wide. “The answer is always yes,” he said.
“Shall we get comfortable?” Jenny asked, nodding toward the sofa bed.
Charles stared at the blue walls. “If you’d like.”
“If you would.”
“Would you?”
“It’s up to you.”
“No, really.”
“Fair is fair. I made the suggestion; you make the decision.”
“I hate these goddam blue walls,” Charley said.
Jenny said nothing.
Charley made a smile. “I can decide anything except decisions.”
“Have you thought about it, speaking of decisions?”
“Thought about what?” he said.
“The name of the game.”
“Oh, that. I have.”
“And?”
“Life without you would be unbearable,” Charley said. “Have I told you lately?”
“Are you being nasty?”
“I don’t know. I just hate these blue walls so, it’s hard to tell what I’m being.”
“Why don’t we paint them?”
“Why don’t we?”
“If we painted them, they wouldn’t be blue anymore.”
“Not unless we painted them blue all over again. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
“Where?”
“Let’s walk along the river.”
“Sold.” She threw on her coat. “Will you be warm enough?”
“Yes, Mother.”
“Well, it’s cold out. It’s practically November.”
“You’re from the north woods; you’re supposed to like it cold.”
“I left, didn’t I?”
“True.” He opened the apartment door, held it for her. They hurried out to the sidewalk, then slipped silently across the street and over to Riverside Drive. They entered the park quickly, walking down to the Hudson, slowing when they reached the promenade along the river. “Betty Jane went to see Rudy,” Charley said then. “Yesterday.”
“And?”
“He lied. She believes him.”
“You’re sure?”
“When you want to believe, you believe.”
“What did she ask him?”
“Nothing specific. Just was I acting funny. Rudy said he thought I was. Work pressures—that sort of thing. Betty Jane agreed with him completely.”
“Is that why he came to the office today? To tell you?”
“I guess so. I don’t know. Whenever he’s up near the office and feels like it, he drops in. Mostly he stays in the ghetto.”
“What’s with him?”
“God knows. He crazy, if that’s what you mean.”
“Why did you pick him? To lie for us?”
“Because I knew he would. He does that kind of thing.”
“Lies?”
“No. He just happens to be the kind of guy that if you ask him to do something, he does it.”
“You like him?”
“We like each other. I think I can say that.”
“Why?”
“What are you so full of questions for?”
“I’m thinking of having an affair with him. He’s kind of incredible-looking. Is he a good writer?”
“I think so.”
“And you’ve known him how long?”
“What is it with you?”
“I just want to know a little bit about my savior. How do you know you can trust him? You’ve known him how long?”
“Ever since I went to work for Kingsway. I was on the slop pile. You know, reading all the unsolicited manuscripts. You never accept any of them, but somebody’s got to read them, and I was given the job. I was reading ten books a day, sometimes fifteen—”
“A day?”
“You just read them until you know for sure they stink. That only takes a few pages usually. I was going crazy doing that. There’s a limit to how much of that stuff you can read. I had this Maxwell Perkins image of myself. I wanted to discover somebody. Then I came across The Nose Is for Laughing. I can still remember how it began. ‘First there was the nose. There were other features: eyes, a sweet mouth, elf’s ears. But first, before you could consider them, first there was the nose.’ It went something like that.”
“Whose nose?”
“The narrator’s father. It was just a little book, a novella, about this kid and his father and their life in this delicatessen. The father was very old, and his hearing was bad, and one day he got sick and went deaf. It ruined him. He thought he was a freak. The kid loved him, but the father “wouldn’t believe it. He just wouldn’t. So finally the kid clapped his hands over his ears until the drums popped. And he was deaf too. And the father saw the kid did love him, and when he found out, he started to cry, and the kid cried too, and that was how the book ended, the two of them hugging each other and crying in the empty store.” Charley smiled. “I would have liked that book if I’d just picked it up at the library, but after a million years of fifteen books a day, it had quite an effect on me.”
“What did you do?”
“Well, first off, I ran in to see Dave Boardman.” Charley leaned against the railing and looked down at the cold river. “I burst in on Boardman and told him I found this beautiful little novel on the slop pile and he picked up his golf ball out of his desk and started whipping it against the wall and called me feebleminded, but I kept after him until he promised to read the book that night. Just because I liked it didn’t mean anything; but if he liked it, then the firm would publish it, so he took the book home with him while I tried calling up the author. R. V. Miller and an address—that’s all the book had on it—but there wasn’t any R. V. Miller in the telephone directory and the address on the book was way down in the ghetto along Orchard Street. I’d never been there before but I went. I asked people and finally I found this crummy building and the landlady said a Miller lived there and I knocked on this door and knocked and knocked but there wasn’t any answer. Just for the hell of it I turned the knob and the door opened and there was this kid looking at me. This beautiful kid. And he said ‘Yes?’ and I said ‘Mr. Miller?’ and he said ‘Yes?’ again and I said that I was with the Kingsway people, and for the third time, he said ‘Yes?’ and I said ‘I loved your book, I loved it!’ and the next thing I knew we were both laughing and hugging each other in the empty room, just like the ending of the book all over again.”
Jenny kissed him.
“Jenny kiss’d me,” Charley said. They started to walk. “Then I found out he was deaf. The book was autobiographical. His father was the, old man with the big nose. And he made himself deaf, Rudy did, to prove to his father how much he loved him. But I told you already he was crazy.”
“Boardman hated the book, I bet. That’s why you didn’t publish it.”
“No. Boardman liked it. You had to like it; it was that good. Boardman thought it might even sell—the characters were Jews and Jews like reading about themselves, Boardman thinks. ‘Jews buy books’ is the exact quote. H
e thought it might sell but I knew it would, and I knew everything was going to work out great for both Rudy and me, it couldn’t miss jumping straight from the slop pile to the best-seller lists. So we published it and you know what? It sold a big fat eleven hundred and six copies. I think I probably bought half of them. And then I found out that Betty Jane bought the other half. It got reviewed four places, little magazines, all favorably. It was just so sad, eleven hundred and six copies. I did O.K. out of it. Boardman liked me. I guess I more or less became his boy. Anyway, it got me off the slop pile and—” Charley whirled on the river—“eleven hundred and six son-of-a-bitching copies! Everything was going to work out so great—goddammit!”
“What’s wrong?”
“She shouldn’t have bought those copies! She shouldn’t have!”
“Charley—”
“She’ll never find out! Not about us. What you want to believe you believe!”
XVIII
WELL, IT WAS A blow, the rejection of Autumn Wells. Aaron didn’t bother trying to deny it. The whole thing could hardly have been worse. His pride was battered, his ego bloody, and for a while he had a little difficulty in getting back into the swing of things. But if wounds don’t heal, you die, and he had no intention of doing that, so he drifted around the city, letting the healing process take its own sweet time. He went to museums when he felt like it, and he window-shopped when he felt like it, but mostly he went to the movies.
He loved movies, always had. He knew who the stars were and the supporting players and sometimes the bit players and the writers of course, and occasionally he could come up with the cameraman or even the set designer. There were more than a dozen movies on 42nd Street going almost twenty-four hours a day, their programs changing constantly, and for Aaron 42nd Street was very close to heaven. He saw every Bogart revival, especially Casablanca. No one was as good as Bogart except Cary Grant, so he caught all of Cary’s films too and he saw It Happened One Night and Jimmy Cagney strutting through Yankee Doodle Dandy and James Mason dying through Odd Man Out and Joanie Crawford in Mildred Pierce, and Gaslight and Gunga Din and Sergeant York and Tarzan and the Slave Girl and The Snake Pit and The Informer and San Francisco and Pittsburgh and Knute Rockne, All American and Scudda Hoo, Scudda Hay and Letter to Three Wives and All about Eve and Asphalt Jungle and maybe a million more and sometimes, if he felt in the mood, he would wait around the theater lobbies for a little companionship and usually it didn’t mean too long a wait. He found quick companions from all over: a farmer from Indiana, a sailor from France and others, with varying occupations, from New Jersey and California and Nebraska and Italy and England and Paris, France, and San Juan, Puerto Rico, although that wasn’t much to brag about, and Portland, Des Moines, Denver, and then, one hot summer night, he found a big black jazz dancer from Harlem.
The dancer’s name was Walker. He was very muscular and wore a tight white tee shirt and tight white pants. And he swished. Every few steps he would accentuate the movement of his white-covered butt, and Aaron would laugh. It wasn’t funny, but Aaron laughed anyway, because he knew he was supposed to, because he knew Walker thought it was simply hysterically hilarious, and he couldn’t disappoint Walker. They moved through the summer heat, away from the lights of 42nd, moving west toward Walker’s car. Walker was telling a story about his mother and her man, and whenever he was his mother he would drop his voice as deep as he could and whenever he was her man he would swish, his white teeth gleaming in appreciation at Aaron’s laughter. Aaron hoped his laughing sounded convincing—Walker’s smile seemed to indicate that it did—but it was hard work, laughing at what was not remotely funny, smiling when you weren’t laughing, pleasing the swish; it was terribly hard work, for he loathed swishes, Aaron did, absolutely loathed them. (Why did he pick them then? What possible reason?) They swung down Eighth Avenue for several blocks, then west, Walker talking faster than before, his exaggerations even more crude. The air was growing increasingly muggy; a bolt of lightning struck down over New Jersey and after a moment they heard the distant sound of summer thunder. They began moving faster as the thunder died, hurrying along the empty street, crossing Ninth Avenue, heading toward Tenth.
It was then that Aaron had his gestalt.
He had first encountered that word years before in a psychology text. An experiment was done, involving a monkey, a chair and a banana. The banana was hung from the ceiling of a room, too high for the monkey to jump for. But, if the monkey set the chair under the banana, he could simply mount the chair and pluck the banana down. The monkey, however, not being possessed of much logic, would jump for the banana, and jump and jump, coming close, but never able quite to grab it. Then came the monkey’s gestalt. It happened invariably when the monkey saw the chair and the banana in a single visual line. Once that happened, the monkey picked up the chair, placed it under the banana, clambered up and devoured his prize. The two things that Aaron saw in a single visual line were not, of course, a chair and a banana; he saw Walker and a small children’s playground. The playground, which they were rapidly approaching, was very dark. And Walker—this is what provoked the gasp from Aaron—Walker, for just an instant, was not swishing. And so, Aaron’s gestalt: My God, my God, he’s going to roll me.
“Hey, man, what’s with you?”
“Nothing,” Aaron answered. He stopped to light a cigarette. “We’re not in a race, you know. Nobody says we have to run.”
“Gimme a butt.”
Aaron held the cigarettes out. His hands were trembling.
“Nervous in the service,” Walker said, holding Aaron’s hands steady, extracting a cigarette from the pack. “Light.” Aaron struck a match. Walker laughed. “Man, you need Miltown. Fast.” He lit his cigarette.
Then they started to walk. The playground was perhaps fifty yards away.
“So where was I?”
“Talking about your mother.”
“Man, I know that. But in what precise part of the narrative did I leave off?”
“You were at the part where ... where the guy was ... he was ...” Aaron knew. He knew exactly. But he couldn’t quite say it. The playground was thirty yards away.
Aaron stopped.
Walker flashed him a smile, threw an arm around his shoulder and nursed him step by step forward. Twenty-five yards. Now fifteen.
Aaron ducked loose. “My raincoat,” he said. “I ought to have my raincoat. I think I left it at the movies. No. It’s back at my place. It’s going to rain.”
“O.K., we’ll drive up to your place.”
“I don’t want to put you to all that trouble.”
“Sweetie, it’s no trouble.” And again the black arm wrapped itself around his thin shoulders. Aaron’s whole body was trembling by now and Walker felt it, for he flashed the smile again. “Relax now, hear? Walker’ll treat you nice and easy.”
I’ll report you, Aaron thought. Right to the police. If you even try and roll me I’ll report you. I’ll give them a description and you’ll go straight to jail, black boy. Walker Brown, six foot two, two hundred pounds, twenty-five, scar on left hand, scar on left cheek, jazz dancer, long hair, no mustache, black skin. I’ll give that to the police—
No.
He could not report it. Not to the police. Never. “What were you doing in that area, Mr. Fire? With a queer, Mr. Fire? You queer too, Mr. Fire? Sodomy’s illegal, Mr. Fire. Didn’t you know that, Mr. Fire?”
He could not report it. Not to the police. Not to anyone. If it happened, he was helpless. Nowhere to turn.
The playground lay just ahead of them now, narrow, black and deep.
“Nice and easy,” Walker soothed.
“Listen to me a second—”
“Nice and easy,” Walker said again, his arm tight around Aaron’s neck.
“Listen to me—”
“You talk too much.”
“Walker—”
“Too damn much.” Walker turned his strong body and led Aaron into the playground.
&nb
sp; Aaron tried to laugh. “What’s this, a short cut?”
Walker said nothing.
“I don’t like playgrounds. Cut it out, Walker. Where’s your car?”
Aaron struggled now but Walker only led him deeper into the darkness, his big arm taut, the muscles bulging against Aaron’s skin.
“Dammit, let go!”
Walker let go.
“I’m telling you, Walker. You hear me? You better not do it.”
“Do what?” Walker said, and then he swung.
His hard fist landed high on Aaron’s cheek. Aaron could not remember having been hit like that before and he expected to tumble backward, like in the movies, falling over something, gracefully jumping to his feet, ready for battle. Bogart would have reacted that way. But this was different. Aaron didn’t tumble, didn’t fall. He simply grunted once and stepped backward one step. “Ow,” he said. “Ow,” and his hands raced to protect his swelling cheek.
Walker swung again, this time to the mouth.
Aaron tasted blood. His lip was gashed and it hurt, it hurt. He should be fighting back, he knew, hitting out with his own fists, but he didn’t know how, and his lip hurt as the blood burst loose. “I haven’t got any money,” Aaron whispered. “Just enough for the movies, that’s all.” His breath came in gasps and he wasn’t sure the words made any sense until he heard Walker whisper “You better,” and then another punch landed, doubling his pain.
The black fist collided with Aaron’s neck, slamming at the Adam’s apple, and Aaron dropped straight down to his knees. He knelt there, helpless, his long arms dangling until Walker hit him again, then again, punch after punch, bending Aaron over backward with their power. At last an elbow crashed against his cheek and Aaron sprawled full length on the hot pavement. He lay still, trying to breathe, trying to crawl, anything to stop the pain.
“Faggot!” Walker said. “Fuckin’ faggot!” and he punched down with his fist, hitting the bloody side of Aaron’s face, driving it brutally against the pavement.
After that, Aaron didn’t feel much.
Oh, he was aware. He was aware of Walker’s black hands as they scurried over his body, finding pockets, ripping out their contents; he was aware of Walker’s panting, of his whispered curses; he was aware of the final gratuitous kick that was probably aimed for his face but missed, skimming and scraping his ear, making it bleed. But he didn’t feel much. He just lay there. He never lost consciousness. There was no point in trying to move—not for a while. He could not command his brain sufficiently to order his limbs into action. Aaron lay stretched, without thought, without movement, lifeless, alive. Some time later he heard a sound that frightened him, an animal sound, a rhythmic gasping and it took him a while but he finally deduced he was hearing himself and that spurred him into action.