Seventh Avenue (19 page)

“Don’t use expressions like that in front of my wife.”

“I don’t object. It’s colorful.”

“I suppose the people you work with all talk dirty in front of you.”

“What if they do?” Jay interjected. “If you made a living, she wouldn’t have to go out to work and hear all those nasty words.”

“She could manage on what I make . . . if she wanted to.”

“And do what? Live on peanut-butter sandwiches all week.”

“Maybe you haven’t heard that we’re having a depression. No one’s making money.”

Eva pointed her almost empty glass at Jay and said proudly: “Jay is. Nothing stops him, bad times, good times. He’s got the golden touch.”

“That’s reassuring.” He cocked a finger at Jay. “Look, Blackman, I want you to leave my wife alone. From what I hear, you’re married. So if you want to cheat, find somebody else. Not my wife. Do you understand or are you too drunk?”

“That’s a pretty serious accusation. I don’t care what you say about me, but you should have a little respect for your wife.”

“Like you do?”

“I don’t think I like your tone, Herbie. Jay’s a friend of mine, and he does a lot of business with us.
Business,
that’s what I get a commission on.”

He looked from one to the other - the Lady or the Tiger - and in a quavery voice said: “That doesn’t mean you have to become a whore.”

“Hey, listen, you little shitheeler, if you were a bit bigger I’d put you through that wall, but I might kill you if I hit you. Eva can pack her bags anytime she feels like it and take the kid with her. I’d set her up in an apartment tomorrow, but she’s too nice to leave you, so be grateful, and don’t take your complexes out on her.” Jay waited for the silence to explode, but the argument seemed to drain all the color from Herbie’s face, and he shook his head disconsolately.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean anything. It’s just that I never see her much, and I’m going on the road for six weeks.” Pathetically he held out his hand to Jay. “No hard feelings. It just looked funny seeing you and Eva together so much.”

“Okay, okay, Herbert, but don’t get any ideas. It’s strictly business.” Jay shook hands with him and couldn’t quite believe that he had foxed him so easily. He wondered uneasily on his way down to the car if Herbie had allowed himself to be tricked, and then dismissed it from his mind. He drove home slowly; he had to find a way out, before Rhoda and Neal came home.

The next day when he got home from the store he thought he heard someone moving around in the apartment. He put his ear to the door, heard the bath running, and the radio blaring something heavy and classical. He opened the door silently, crept into the passage on tiptoe, both fists clenched, prepared to fight. A voice, a female voice, trilled along with the music. He loosened his tie and removed his jacket, flinging both down on a dusty chair that was a repository of a month’s supply of newspapers. The voice was in the bathroom, and he eased the door open.

“What . . . ?”

“Christ, you scared the life out of me.”

“Well, Myrna. Can’t say I expected to find you in the toilet.”

The air was heavy with disinfectant and Jay held his nose.

“Rhoda gave me the key, so I thought I’d give it a quick clean before she came home.”

“You’re too good to be true.”

She glared at him, her eyes hesitant and a bit frightened.

“A goodwill gesture?”

“Whatever you like. I could hardly expect Rhoda to start cleaning the minute she walked through the door.”

“It must be something more to make you come up here!”

“Like a jungle here. Who’s been eating all the bananas?”

“Monkeys. Didn’t Rhoda tell you I keep three monkeys? Gotta lock them in a closet when I leave. We play poker when I get home.”

“Same old Jay.”

“You want to be friends, don’t you? You want to be forgiven,” he added.

“Oh, boy, you’ve still got a God complex.” She brushed her hair back with the back of her hand and sighed. “Money hasn’t improved your disposition one bit.”

“Hey, you’re going to pick a fight. I don’t want to fight with you and I only said what I did because we ought to clear the air. You dropped me in the shit with your family and anything I do, not that I intend doing much, won’t make them like me any better. You stuck your nose into somebody else’s life and changed that life, so I’m entitled to a beef.”

“You never would’ve married Rhoda, if I didn’t butt in,” she said a bit forlornly.

“Of course I would’ve. I had to, didn’t I?”

“It didn’t look like that from where I was sitting.”

He put out his hand, and she looked at it for a moment, puzzled and unsure of herself.

“C’mon, shake. I’m not gonna throw you over my back.”

She smiled uncertainly and extended her hand. He could see how attractive she had been when she was younger. Her figure was still good. It had set like plaster of Paris, but the shape, the allusion to an earlier grace, still remained. Rhoda, a later model from the same mold, had a coarseness that Myrna had avoided. She had a firm nose, hooked in structure, but not exaggerated, and finely stranded hair done in a bun that had a silky sheen in sunlight and was by turns reddish and brunet. Her face had an alertness and a fine sense of intelligence that because of bitterness and her wary attitude towards people never quite relaxed. Her laugh sounded like a jeer. When Jay held her hand for a minute, she became sullen and cautious.

“I’ve still got a lot to do. Kitchen floor needs scrubbing.”

“Oh, yeah. Well, you don’t have to bother.”

“I always finish what I start.”

“Hey, what’re you doing for dinner? Date or something?”

“Don’t be sarcastic.” She flushed and flung her hands in the air.

“Wait a minute. You take everything the wrong way. I was only trying to be nice.”

“It’s difficult to tell with you.”

“What I thought was we could have a deli dinner. There’s a good one down the block. I could get some hot dogs, corned beef, anything you like, and we’d eat here when you want.”

She raised her eyebrows, and her chary expression turned into a full smile. He patted her shoulder amicably.

“What do you say, huh?”

“That sounds swell. But honestly if you’ve got other plans I don’t want you to change them for me. Rhoda says you’re busy trying to get two new stores into shape.”

“Not tonight. I’m knocked out.”

She considered the proposition as though her future hung in the balance, and one false move would mean irrevocable bondage.

“Be an executive, make a quick decision.”

“Yes, then.” A great load had been lifted.

On his way out, Jay saw a rectangular black leather case. He studied it curiously for a moment, then opened it. Inside he found a clarinet, dismantled, and like a child, unable to keep away from a strange object, he began to assemble it. He laughed guiltily to himself, then went to the mirror, stuck it in his mouth and blew with all his strength. A strange muted duck call was emitted from the instrument, and his cheeks became inflated once more as he tried to blow it. In the mirror, he saw Myrna approach him, her face white and tense, and her hands shaking while she tried to control her anger.

“Please, please stop it.”

“I was only kidding around.”

“You mustn’t touch it.” She took it from him, her eyes panicky and suddenly feverish.

“I didn’t break it or anything. Just wanted to try blowing it.”

She took a red cloth out of the black case and gently, with deft, loving strokes, began to polish it.

“You shouldn’t have touched it.”

“Did I get germs on it?”

She seemed hypnotized.

“Germs? I’m not sure.”

“I thought you gave it up?”

She came over to him and in a lost, faraway voice whispered conspiratorially: “Please don’t tell anyone. I’ve started taking lessons again.”

He was puzzled and uncomfortable and sorry for her. He touched her face with his fingers, and she shrank away into a corner.

“I’ve found a wonderful teacher. She’s at the Juilliard School of Music.”

“Oh? Well, I’ll forget that you told me,” he said at last in some confusion.

On the way to the delicatessen, he telephoned Eva and learned with some irritation that she could not see him because her mother was spending the evening with her. She sounded remote, and Jay was troubled and disgruntled and accused her of duplicity. She swore at him, and he slammed the receiver down and bought a bottle of rye to assuage his virulent anger. When he returned, Myrna came to the door with an expansive smile and an air of passionate reunion. She had used the time to comb her hair and had put on fresh make-up. Jay sniffed her perfume, which had a touch of jasmine in it, and was glad he had come back to someone. The prospect of a night alone terrified him. He opened the bottle of rye and poured huge drinks, mixing them with ginger ale. They clinked glasses like confidantes of long standing and Jay enjoyed the sense of intimacy and friendliness. Her mood had changed from one of saturnine resignation to one of almost insouciant gaiety, and the alteration had been smooth so that he could not even refer to it without sounding foolish.

“What a spread!” she said with delight as she put the cold meats on a platter. She opened up a cardboard container and shrieked with delight. “This is silly, but what possessed you to buy so much cole slaw? Did I ask you for it?”

He threw back his head and laughed.

“Remember that dinner at your house?”

“How could anyone forget it?”

“The only thing you ate was cole slaw. In between screams from your father I kept watching you eat it all up. I wanted to tell everybody how funny I thought that was, but I lost my temper before I got a chance.”

She wrinkled up her nose and chuckled.

“God, what a case of nerves I had. And my lip hurt something awful. It was swollen for a week, and Poppa insisted that it was a bee bite and made me a concoction of vinegar and witch hazel to put on it. I couldn’t stand the smell.”

“I’m sorry about that. I just wanted to do something to hurt you.”

“You succeeded. Boy, did you . . .”

Jay filled their glasses again, and Myrna put the radio on. Mercifully, from Jay’s point of view, the program was of music “enjoyed by our Latin cousins in strange lands.” Myrna shuffled on the linoleum, shaking her hips from side to side in a Conga step and Jay got up and placed his hands around her waist, and followed her lead.

“One, two, three, La Conga, one, two, three, La Conga,” she sang in a husky voice, thickening from the whiskey. They danced through the passageway around the telephone table, returned to the living room when the tempo quickened, and picked their way through a coffee table and two high-backed chairs; when the record ended they fell breathlessly on the sofa, the wheels of which turned suddenly, slamming them against the wall with a dull thud.

“And now from Argentina,” the announcer said with a pomaded lilt in his voice, “the music of Valentino and the romantic Tango.” Like a nagging schoolgirl, she made Jay get onto the floor again, and he led her into a series of furious dips, spins and sharply cut corners.

“I don’t remember the last time I danced,” Myrna said enthusiastically.

“You’re pretty good.”

“Not bad for an old lady.”

“Old lady? You look five years younger than me.”

“Jay, you are sweet when you want to be. But I’m about seven years older than you.”

“No one’d believe it.”

“Here’s to youth,” she said, holding up her glass and spinning dizzily on the floor. “Whoa, whoa, boy,” she addressed the air, but could not stop herself. Jay held on to her and directed her to a chair. She flopped down, tried to catch her breath, and Jay lit cigarettes for them both. He poured what remained of the bottle into his own glass and downed it straight. She gave him an eerie, dazed look when he put the cigarette into her mouth, then closed her eyes. Her head fell on his shoulder, and she puffed the cigarette furiously.

A sound. He could not identify it. It tore through his dream like a muted whine and his body tensed. The cold, the wet, the smell of rain. He climbed up a shaft on greasy metal rungs that jutted out from the rough-cast walls, scraping his shins and his chest. He shook his head furiously, trying to revive himself, then half awake, shrank back in terror. Something inside his skull kicked out at him; the throbbing nearly drove him mad. The sound again, low, plaintive, a moan in the darkness. She sat on the edge of the bed in a squatting position. The window was open, and the rain pelted down on her bare shoulders and he retreated under the blanket, blinking, lost. She had the clarinet in her hands and was running through the scales. A tune emerged, something mournful and sad, a dirge to recapture something remote and dead.

“It’s cold,” he said. “Myrna, close the window, you’re getting soaked.” She stopped playing with a suddenness that alarmed him. He heard something hit the pavement outside. A metallic thud. It had smashed.

“What’d you do?” he protested.

“Threw it out,” she said in a lifeless voice. “Useless to go on. I’ll never play well.”

“I’m scared. Please, Rhoda, tell me what to do.”

“That’s it” - she moved his hand up along the baby’s spinal column – “you support his head, so it doesn’t wobble. It suits you, being a father.”

Jay looked down into the sleeping face of the child and sought to discover physical resemblances between him and Neal.

“I can’t see that he’s like me.”

“You can’t see yourself, but feature for feature, he’s the image of you. Everybody says so. Jay, he’s such a beautiful baby. Are you happy . . . now?”

“I guess I am,” he said thoughtfully. “Neal makes it all worthwhile.”

Neal’s breathing had improved, but whenever he became agitated either through hunger or irritability, he would wheeze and gasp for breath. Jay had considered hiring a nurse, but the doctor advised against it, and suggested that it would be better to get to know the child on their own and cope as best they could with the condition. Reluctantly Jay agreed, but secretly he remained terrified. He spoke softly to Rhoda and treated her with a mixture of subdued insolence and fraternal concern. He could not be a husband to her, but he made an effort to conduct his affair with Eva with a measure of discretion although the pretense irked him. He succeeded in controlling his periodic rages and he usually came home before two in the morning, but the deception and the simple animal fact of sleeping in the same bed with Rhoda brought on frequent bouts of moodiness that drained his energy.

He worked longer hours now, and had opened his two new stores, one on King’s Highway - the gateway to upper-class Brooklyn - and the other in the downtown business section in direct competition with the big chain stores that made the same complacent mistake as those in Manhattan and ignored him, until it became too late to do anything about him, for he had purloined their customers. Frantic reductions in prices came when the battle was lost; either they had to sell cheap dresses or expensive ones, for the popular-priced business - the guts of the business in which sales volume and actual profit were commensurate - belonged exclusively to Jay. His business psychology was so simple as to be obscure to the high-powered executives who interested themselves in charts, trends, trade cycles and economic factors. He treated his customers as whores, a starkly primitive assessment, but in practice dynamically effective. Women wanted bright cheap dresses that looked as though they were expensive; they liked the idea of a one-price shop because many shops charged whatever they could get, the prices fixed by the saleslady who had to be one part private detective, one part talking machine. A big operation could not depend on high-pressure sales patter, but only on merchandise that sold itself, and therefore cut staff requirements down to the bone. There was as well something democratic in the idea of a one-price technique, and Jay instinctively realized this. “Treat ‘em like whores but don’t have favorites” was the business commonplace he repeated to anyone who would listen to him, and many of the important manufacturers did exactly that. Every retailer within a radius of three miles of any of his stores complained to the wholesalers and manufacturers and did what they could to stop his supplies, but despite threats and sanctions, everyone vied for his business.

Despite the rapid success Jay achieved in a short time, he was unhappier than he had ever been. His involvement with Eva was as deep as any emotional relationship could be, and the regular demands she made on his time had begun to create more suspicions in Rhoda’s mind. She had always known, or at least he thought she had known, that he had affairs, but as long as they were isolated and intermittent she had avoided referring to them; the problem of keeping her in the dark about Eva became more urgent daily. He had been prepared to leave her before Neal’s birth, but the child now became the center of his universe, and it brought out a special tenderness in him. It was the love that is more than love. He regarded the child as his responsibility to protect, and he believed it to be sickly because of his treatment of Rhoda. He managed to repress the direct guilt associated with this, but occasionally, when he least expected it, it floated to the surface of his conscious mind. In the middle of a business conference, he would dash out of the room to phone Rhoda and find out how the baby was. Was he still alive? It haunted him, a gray wraith, dumb and helpless, that he had almost destroyed, the way his father had tried to destroy him. His attitude to Rhoda, when she suggested going back to business, was, therefore, a compound of outrage and submissiveness.

She put Neal on top of the bassinet and changed his diaper, and Jay watched the child with its head thrown back sucking at the air, trying to fill its lungs.

“Sit him up,” he said sharply.

“Are you taking over?”

“No, but can’t you see . . . ?”

“He does it all the time.”

With professional, unruffled deftness, she changed his diaper, massaged his back for gas, then placed him in the wicker cradle in the living room.

“That’s that,” she said. “I’ll be glad to get back to the store.”

“You’ll be what?”

“Surprised? I am too. I thought I’d love staying home, but I’m not really a housewife. It bores me to death.”

“Fine, Neal’s a month old, he can look after himself.”

“Oh, Jay, you are a fool sometimes. I’ve hired a girl.”

He maintained a show of composure because his position was indefensible: she could demolish any argument he put up, merely by throwing in his face his earlier reaction to her pregnancy. Squirming uncomfortably and with his back against the wall, he exercised what he vaguely thought of as diplomacy.

“You never said a word to me.”

“You’re so busy all the time,” she said without guile and looking evenly at him, “that I thought I wouldn’t bother you with these little domestic arrangements.”

But he’s my son! was on the tip of his tongue.

“Rhoda, he’s a sick baby. He needs you to be with him.”

“Nothing anybody can do about his asthma. He’ll outgrow it. But you need me. The way you’ve been working lately isn’t normal. I don’t want to be a rich widow; and I’m good in the store, I can take a lot of responsibility off your shoulders - you could give me the jobs you’re too busy to do. It’ll work, you’ll see. Oh, Jay, I’m so proud of you - what you’ve only done. Three stores and they’re ours. I never thought in my wildest dreams that I’d ever be anything but the manageress of Modes Dress Shoppe.”

She approached him, placed her arms round his neck and hugged him.

“Honest, there’s nothing to worry about. Neal’ll be all right. This girl has good references, and she worked in a hospital for six months.”

“Wait till he’s a bit older . . . at least a year old.”

She drew away from him, and her eyes darted wildly around the room.

“I’d be in the bughouse in a year. I couldn’t stand it, I’ve got too much energy.”

“Then for Christ sake stop taking those pills.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Benzedrines!”

Her eyes rolled, lifeless and enlarged. She was of two minds: to get angry or laugh. She had enormous confidence, and she smiled complacently at him.

“It’s just till I get my figure back. I remember you saying to me once: ‘Look at yourself in a mirror.’ I did just that, and I didn’t like what I saw. I understood how unattractive I was to you and I had to change that, I was too fat, but in another month or so I’ll be back to normal. ‘How could I make you happy?’ That’s the question I asked myself, and what have I got in life but you? I mean, God, I must love you to . . .” she faltered.

“But ten-grain pills, four a day. I asked a druggist about it, and he said it was habit-forming.”

“I take what the doctor prescribes.”

“And a little booster in the evening just to pep you up.”

She twirled round like a ballerina.

“Ten pounds I’ve lost.”

“Oh, what’s the use of arguing?”

“It’s for you, silly. In a month I’ll be finished with them.”

She sat on his lap and rubbed the back of his neck and kissed him coquettishly. She opened the top of her dress, and he stared sullenly at her.

“Ooooh, I want you so bad,” she said. “It’ll be like it used to be soon, when the doctor gives me the all clear.” She rubbed her hand along his trousers. “But I could give you a little treatment in the meantime.”

He pushed her up abruptly and got to his feet.

“Not now, honey. I’ve got to go to the store.”

Marvelous to have an honest-to-God excuse: verifiable.

“I’ll wait up for you.”

Exactly what he was afraid of.

“I may be late. It’s a ten o’clock street or did you forget?”

He fled.

Brooklyn, cold, black like a huge spider in a web of crooked streets, spread out before him. It took him almost a half-hour to get to Eva. She waited outside a candy store, a block away from her house. He pulled into the curb, and she opened the door and got in.

“I’m frozen.”

“Have you eaten?”

“I have. Herbie came home this afternoon.”

“Surprises never end.”

“I had to make him dinner when I got in.”

“When are you gonna cook for me?”

“Anytime you like.”

“How’d you manage to get out?”

“Said I had to see a buyer. He believed it because I came home first. If I’d stayed in the city actually seeing a buyer, he wouldn’t have worn it for a minute. He’s got a logical mind, and that makes him easy to fool.” She lifted Jay’s hand off the steering wheel and rubbed it across her cheek. “Ooooh, such a cold hand. We going anywhere special or just driving?”

“I want to show you the new store on King’s Highway. Then we meet Fredericks for a drink at the Bedford after ten. I’m gonna persuade him to do business my way.”

“No love tonight?”

He felt sick to his stomach at the thought of returning home to Rhoda.

“Where? When? How?”

“You ask too many questions, Mister. Not a single idea in that clever head?”

“Let’s talk about it later,” he said with exasperation.

“You bet we will.”

A luminous sign ten by four, as though announcing the end of the world, stood out starkly from the black background: ‘J-R DRESSES,’ it screamed to an indifferent world. Jay’s incontrovertible rise to power - one of the arches of his empire. They went into the store, which was brightly lit and crowded with women shoppers and a few bored, dazed husbands who were surreptitiously peeping into changing rooms as fat-thighed, becorseted matrons forced themselves into dresses that refused to conceal their moving parts. A tired businessman’s idea of a harem, and dollars and cents to Jay, who strode in like Caesar inspecting his legions. A hundred-dollar camel’s-hair overcoat that revealed the knot of a black speckled tie against a white-on-white background of Egyptian cotton and a beautifully fitted black flannel suit of recent vintage reduced the sales staff to sycophancy and awed obedience. Even the customers cast delighted gazes in his direction.

Jay was aware of the effect his entrance had made on everyone in the store; it gave him a physical thrill, for the idea of possessing a public presence, an air of importance, reinforced his own identity. He stretched out his arms to grasp life but what he hoped he would take hold of was himself. He made a note of the day’s receipts, smiled to himself, and showed the figure to Eva, who patted him on the back. He did a quick stock check, quizzed a few of the girls about what was selling and then threaded his way out through a crowd of women. A dark phantom in a dark night.

They arrived at the Bedford a bit after ten. It was a dimly lit little bar with green fauna on the walls, an aquarium stocked with guppies, two smiling bartenders who still spoke with a Sicilian brogue after two decades of residence, and occasionally were responsible for an unsolved murder or two, and a short thick-set manager called Topo who supervised the kitchen with the nervous fastidiousness and pomp of an honors graduate from the Lucerne Hotel School, but who administered the other side of his business - Brooklyn’s call girl service - with a calm astuteness and a celerity that would have been the envy of an Old Testament prophet. The restaurant specialized in a wide variety of heartburn - even the pizza brought tears to your eyes; a month’s regular consumption of the Bedford’s inimitable cuisine could wreck the gall bladder of a jackal. You didn’t die with a cry for justice, or a come take me sweet death, on your lips, but with a request for bicarbonate of soda. The racket atmosphere of the place appealed to Jay’s second-feature sense, and it was a source of some small pride to him that he was on first-name terms with a pair of acid throwers.

Douglas Fredericks sat at the bar, dangling a pair of long legs encased in knife-creased midnight blue cashmere trousers while a Milwaukee milkmaid explained with just the right note of piety and mournfulness how her stepfather had tucked her in on the night of her sweet-sixteen party. Fredericks’ face had a somnolent yellow texture under the green light which shone through narrow cracks in the ceiling.