Place in the City (9 page)

“Where d'yu get that stuff, huh?”

“Take it easy. I want you to know I'm not falling for your line. Maybe I'm a kid, but I ain't a damn fool. I know what you took me out for, but if you think I'm just another broad to lay, you got another guess coming. What's your name?”

“Aw, yer nuts, kid.”

“Yeah, I know. Why don't you tell me your name, so I won't have to call you Shutzey. I don't like Shutzey. It sounds like a pimp.”

The car came to a stop with a sudden squealing of brakes, and Shutzey turned to face her, abruptly. “What're yu trying?” he demanded. “I don't take that from nobody, see. I oughta knock yer wise little face in! Yu wanna walk back?”

“No—can't you take it?”

“I don't needa take it, sister.”

“You're blocking traffic.”

“Awright.”

He started the car and drove on, glaring ahead, and then she put one hand on his, where it held the wheel. “I don't want to call you Shutzey,” she murmured. “Why don't you tell me your name?”

“Charles.”

“That's better, ain't it?”

“Awright, I get yu.”

“I'm glad.”

“Where'd yu get that line?”

They drove on, and her hand softly and easily caressed his. She liked the feel of it, short, wiry hairs, strong tendons and stiff veins; and she was surprised at herself, surprised that she could carry off any role so well. It was wonderfully simple, like playing with a doll. You decided to do something, and then you did it. The way and method just came to you. She knew neither of her sisters could do it half as well, if they had had any desire to do it. In other ways she might be a fool, but she knew her men.

And she held the upper hand; that was the main thing. He had drawn his card, but it didn't turn out as he had figured it. The next move was hers.

“I don't have a line, Charley,” she assured him. “Honest, I don't. And I ain't riding you. Look—don't you think I knew you were riding me for a fall—so what do you expect me to do?” And all the time her hand ran smoothly over his, playing, fumbling with his fingers.

“Awright,” he nodded, “suppose I took yu for a sap. You ain't goin' tu play it my way. You wanna go home? I ain't no white slave trader, even if I am a pimp. I ain't kidnaping you. Yu wanna go home?”

“No—”

“Awright—why? Who's the fall guy now?”

“No—that's not it either. Look, Charley, I like you. I'm ready to admit it, so that makes me a sap, don't it? But I like you. What do you think my father would do if he found out that I was with you tonight?”

“I ain't afraid of Meyer.”

“I am.”

“Awright—what's the answer?”

“I'll tell you—not now. Listen, Charley, let's you and me go some place where we can dance and get a drink. I mean let's make a night out of it. Make believe you picked me for better or worse, and that you got to take me for what I am. And let's have it straight on the level, so you won't start nothing with me. That's a proposition. How about it?”

“You're a funny little cuss.”

“Ain't I? How about it?”

“Awright.”

They went uptown, to a place with bright lights and a band, and she showed herself off. When she walked, she wanted people to turn around and look, and they did turn around. She had to be good. She had to show Shutzey that without the shell of Meyer's cigar store, she was better than he, handsomer, more sophisticated, more learned in a bigger world than Shutzey knew. She smiled; whenever she smiled, she said to herself, I'm beautiful smiling. And she knew it. That was the only way to do things.

At the first place Shutzey stopped, a dance hall in the forties, she said: “That's a dive, Charley, and it ain't no place for us tonight. It's our big night tonight, and we want to make it good, don't we?”

They were sitting at a little table, listening to music, when he put out his hand and said to her: “You got it, all right.”

“I'm going to keep it.”

“Will you come to my apartment tonight? It's a swell place, kid.”

“Not for long.”

“Awright—not for long, an' I'll drive yu home after that.”

Seeing Shutzey's place, she nodded, and knew it was what she wanted, what she had been waiting for. A doorman in front, and two tall potted plants. And Shutzey's place, his apartment, was the sort she had seen in the movies, hardly anywhere else.

Upstairs, he took her coat off, turned her around to him, and kissed her. She didn't resist; she lay in his arms, glorying in their massive power, in Shutzey's strength. She knew that the scales were still balanced on her side.

And Shutzey was wondering whether he had her or not. He didn't know what to make of her, but he didn't think she was a fool. He was wondering how to play his hand, because now he knew he wanted her; although why he should so much want the little blond daughter of a Jew storekeeper puzzled him.

Later, she sat in a corner of the couch, looking at him, and pushing loose strands of hair away from her eyes.

“Charley,” she said, “you won't be a pimp all the time. You're going to take men like Timy and squeeze them. That's what those big hands of yours are for. To squeeze with. You're going to take big men and squeeze them until they scream for mercy. You don't know. Geesus, you're a dumb brute. You thought I was afraid of you. I ain't. But I'm going to show you how to use those big hands of yours, how to squeeze with them, to squeeze and squeeze.”

Looking back at her, he grinned. Now he was beginning to understand her.

“I know what you thought,” she smiled.

“Yeah?”

“You were going to put me on your string—but I ain't for your brown house, Charley. Neither are you. You're too big to be a pimp. I like this place, Charley.”

“Want one like it?”

“Maybe—maybe, if I think I can earn it. Better take me home. I like you, Charley. You're strong as hell, and you can do things with those big hands of yours. Bigger things than to sell a woman to take on a stag. Oh, I ain't blaming you. I told you I like you.”

Then they sat and stared at each other, as if each saw a world dawning in the other's eyes.

T
HE MEN
and women sat in the mission and followed the coffee pot with their eyes. Wherever the priest went with the coffee pot, their eyes followed it. Cup after cup of steaming hot coffee he poured. Marion added sugar, mixed the coffee, offered the cups to the people. After all, they were cold. There wasn't enough heat in the mission house to warm them properly. The coffee was a sort of apology by the priest. It wasn't a very good apology, but it was the best he could offer.

When the cups were all used up, she went back and washed them. Tired as she was after a long day, she didn't mind the work at the mission. It brought her near Jack; altogether, it was a game they played side by side. When she looked into the eyes of the men who sat at the long benches, she saw something that was always present in the priest's. Long ago, she had asked him why he didn't get away from the mission, out of the neighborhood. There were priests who lived like kings. Now she never asked him.

She tossed the cups in the sink, washed them quickly and expertly, and dried them off. Then she went back. The priest was sitting on a bench, the steaming coffee pot between his legs. He had on a broad grin, and he was speaking to an old man with just two teeth in a wrinkled mouth.

“Here they are, pop,” he said.

The two teeth grinned. “You serve whisky, sonny, an' just you see how it works out.”

“I know, pop, but the mission can't afford it.”

“Then why don't you pray for whisky—good rye?”

“I'll try, pop.”

She watched him as he sat there, his legs spread, the boyish grin breaking his freckled face, making little wrinkles all over it. He was big; he was calm and triumphant and healthy. You loved the best; that was the only way to love, right or wrong. Being a priest of the Catholic religion was one thing; he was the priest of something larger and stranger, a tremendous, reaching faith.

And he didn't know; all he had was his health and faith. But it was big.

They went on, from person to person, because coffee is very necessary to a man's soul. There was a little, thin man who looked steadily at the cup the priest held out to him.

“A week of meals and two weeks of this—geesus.”

“You're not begging, old man. You'll come back to me some day, and build a church that reaches right to the sky.”

“I don't like churches. If I come back—”

After they gave out all the coffee, she was tired; it was always an effort for her to sing then. She came out of the kitchen, and the priest was talking. He leaned back against the altar, his hands in his pockets, the funny, twisted boyish grin still on his face. It wasn't a sermon—he was just talking, so softly that those in the back rows had to lean forward to hear him. There wasn't much light; his figure, half in the dark, leaning back, loomed larger and larger; his smile was a benediction. Then he finished. He spread his hands, like a blessing, and the smile went away, very slowly.

She sat down at the piano, and began to play. The piano was out of tune. It was always out of tune, and sometimes, in wet weather, the keys would stick against the wires, instead of falling back into place. Then she had to be quick in plucking the keys back.

They sang for a little while; the priest prayed, and then they sang again. She wondered whether the sermon would have offended the Pope. It was curious to think that behind all this, link on link, there was the Pope in his palace. It all meant nothing, nothing—the thinnest of balms. Surely the priest saw that. But the priest mattered.

When it was over, some of the people went away. Some stayed there, because there was no place for them to go. Those who remained moved to the back benches, which were closest to the stove. They sat without talking, without moving, bent over, most of them, with their elbows on their knees, staring at the stove. They would sit like that for hours, and then one by one they would go away. Almost none slept at the mission. They would go away and disappear into the night like ghosts.

She sat at the piano, her fingers lightly on the keys, her eyes on the floor. She saw the priest's feet come into view, and she shook her head because his shoes were so worn and shabby. Shoes mattered a lot; why couldn't he understand that shoes mattered a lot?

“Christmas soon,” he said to her. “I want to decorate the place—you know, lots of green stuff and red paper. I'll buy a tree, and let you decorate it. Maybe if I get hold of some money, we'll have a party for the kids.”

“That would be nice.”

“What's wrong, Marion?”

“Nothing—I'm tired.”

“I know. You shouldn't come here and work after a day at the office. It's too much for you.”

“I'm just tired—it isn't because of the work.”

“It's cold here. Come inside.”

When she closed the door, he dropped into a chair, and stretched out his feet in front of him, cocking them from side to side, and staring at the toes.

“I guess I'll get shoes,” he said slowly, and then they laughed together.

She built the fire up in the stove, left the door open, so that the heat could creep out into the room. Then she drew up a chair next to his. It was very nice to sit there with him, staring into the open door of the stove, watching the blue flames curl over the pieces of coal. Everything in the room pleased her, the red rug, the old chairs, and the battered desk. She even liked the walls, with the paint curling away into strange and intricate designs. It was what you'd want, no more and no less. It wasn't even an attempt at more. That was the biggest thing in the priest, that he accepted things the way they were. He never evaded them. She didn't think there was a single dream in the mission.

And then she said to him, curiously: “Don't you ever dream?”

He smiled, stretched himself like a large, lazy animal, and reached out a hand for hers. But he did not answer her.

“Don't you dream?” she repeated.

His glance wandered about the room, to the high stable-windows, to the stove, and back to his shoes. Then he shook his head.

“Why not?”

“Because—because there's a slow fire burning inside of me. I'm afraid of it.”

“You never told me,” she said. “You never told me. I used to hate you—when you became a priest. I loved you, and I suppose I hated you because of what you took away from me. You did take it away from me, and then it was a big thing. And then you went away to the war—and I loved you again. That's how it was,” she finished simply.

“I never told you why I took the orders—”

“I never wanted you to.”

“You have to believe, you know that. The war echoes. You come back to Apple Place, and you find it's no better. Shutzey didn't go to war because he had flat feet. You begin to wonder, and then you wonder about so many things—things like Shutzey's flat feet, like Prohibition. Prohibition and whores made Timy a wealthy man, and you still order whatever drink you want in Kraus' saloon. Well, that doesn't matter. What am I trying to say anyway? I don't dream—because I'm afraid. Maybe that's what the war did for me—I don't know. But we're all of us like that. The next generation—perhaps they'll dream.”

Her hand in his, just resting there with the warm feel of his fingers around it, made her wonder how long it would be like this. The priest hadn't done anything to her; she had done it herself. Would it go on and on—?

“I dream—sometimes,” she mused. “Tonight—I like to look into the fire—and think.”

“Because you're a woman,” he answered. “Things as they are give way to love. Sometimes I think that love is the only good thing in man, the only real thing. Love is real; it takes you outside of yourself, like faith. But almost everyone loves at one time or another, and how many find faith?”