South Street (4 page)

Rayburn watched her waddle away, thinking how bad she looked. Part of it was the uniform, but she was fat and greasy-looking anyway. Rayburn hated her. She came waddling back and slapped an almost-clean plate with a painfully thin sliver of pie on it in front of him. She laid a paper napkin beside the plate, held it down with a spoon and a fork that had obviously been used for someone’s eggs. “You want that coffee black?”

“What the hell didja write it down for?”

The waitress frowned and started digging through her pocket for the order pad. Rayburn waited until her fingers closed over it and then said, “I wants cream an’ sugar.” The waitress let the pad fall back into her pocket and gave Rayburn a look of pure hatred.

“Look,” she said, “I didn’t ast to work on Saturday night.”

“I wasn’t the one made you,” Rayburn said indifferently.

“Can’t you hurry up with that pie? We’re closin’—”

“I can’t hurry nothin’ till I gets ma coffee.”

“Oh,” she said nervously, “yeah.” She turned to the urn and drew him a cup, poured in cream, set the cracked china in front of him with a tall sugar dispenser. Rayburn finished cleaning the fork with his napkin. The girl looked at him. “You, ah, gonna want more coffee? If you’re not, I can start cleaning the urn.”

“Go ahead,” Rayburn said. She flashed him a yellow-toothed smile and opened the spigot, letting the muddy-brown liquid dribble into the drain.

“You got the last piece a pie,” she said, looking over her shoulder.

“Tastes like it,” Rayburn said. “You work here in the daytime?”

“I got a boyfriend,” the girl said. “He’s probably waiting outside.”

“What the hell do I care?” Rayburn said. “I just asted if you worked here in the daytime.”

“No,” she said, “just at night on the weekends.”

“Night on the weekends,” Rayburn repeated. “Figures.” He finished up the last of the pie, picked up the coffee cup, blew over the edge.

“My boyfriend, he plays football and wrestles. He knows judo and karate, too. They threw him outa school for beatin’ somebody up real bad oncet.”

“How come he don’t wait for you inside? Ain’t he house-broke?”

The girl looked at him. Rayburn smiled and leaned back. She turned her face away, blushing. “You about finished?”

“’Bout,” Rayburn said. “I’m tryin’ to decide if maybe I better not stick around to see your boyfriend.” The girl kept her head turned away. Rayburn drank the rest of his coffee. It was cold now, and it tasted like dishwater. He drank it down defiantly, not bothering to make a face when he got to the dregs. He wiped his lips with the paper napkin. “How ’bout the check?”

She stood as far away from him as she could, on the far side of the counter, back pressed tightly against the coffee urn, and kept one eye on him as she laboriously added the bill, found the tax on a printed table scotch-taped to the back of the order pad, wrote down the total, circled it. “Thirty-seven cents,” she said. Rayburn pulled out two quarters, held them out in the palm of his hand. She waited for a moment, then realized that he was not going to lay them down on the counter, that she was going to have to take them from his hand. She looked at him. Rayburn smiled. Slowly she extended her hand until it hung trembling over his, then her fingers darted like a drunken hawk and snatched the coins away. She went quickly to the register to make change. Rayburn followed her, stood easily across the counter as she punched the keys. “We ain’t got much cash this time of night,” she said.

“What’s the matter?” said Rayburn. “Ain’t you got change for a quarter?”

The girl glared at him, punched a button, and, as the cash drawer sprang out, snatched at the money, finding the dime easily but fumbling for an instant for the three pennies, whirling awkwardly and slamming the drawer shut with her hip. “I gotta close up now,” she said.

“Ain’t nothin’ to me,” said Rayburn. He held his hand out. The girl dropped the change into it from high altitude. Rayburn turned toward the door. “I sure hope your boyfriend can get his judo workin’ on some a them nasty folks out there in the street. Why, while we was in here safe together he coulda got killed three times, deadern hell.” He smiled at her acidly. “Here,” he said, tossing her the dime, “put it in your piggy bank.”

Rayburn walked across the street to the bank, stood by the concrete pillars, staring through the broad plate-glass windows at the carpeted floors and the tellers’ stations and the leather chairs for people to sit in while they waited for assistant managers to discuss loans for cars and homes and color TV sets. Rayburn thought about the money inside, behind the doors, behind the heavy cover of the vault. He would have liked to have seen it, to see what all that money looked like. Just once. Rayburn stepped back, out from under the pillar-supported overhang, looked up at the building, at the glass windows mounting higher, growing smaller, stretching his neck until he could see the executive suites at the top. Rayburn’s job was to clean those suites, and he often stood in the carpeted, wood-paneled, leather-upholstered chambers and looked out over the city. Looking down through the dark and the smog, he could sometimes make out the row of dim lights that was his own block. Rayburn dropped his head because looking up at the tall spire was beginning to hurt his neck. He was tired. It was late. He wanted to go home.

He turned toward the corner, feeling his pocket for the dime and the three nickels. He did not want to walk, although it was not far. He stood on the corner, tapping the sidewalk with the toe of his shoe, staring down into the gutter. He looked up and peered down the street. He felt an insistent tugging at his sleeve, turned to see a fat old woman with a dark moon face looking up at him. Her skin had a strange cast in the light spilling through the windows of the bank. “Won’t you give to the Indian children?” she said, holding up a tin can covered with paper and shaking it in front of his nose. Coins rattled flatly.

“No,” Rayburn said.

“Please, sir, they need your help so much. They’re hungry. Some of them are starving. Won’t you give to the Indian children?”

“Go to hell,” Rayburn said.

“Please,” said the woman, catching hold of his arm. “Have you no children? Can you imagine what it means to be a child, hungry and alone?”

Rayburn whirled around and threw his change against the bank’s glass windows, where it struck with a ringing sound of metal on glass and fell tinkling to the pavement. “Pick it up!” he shouted. “You wants it so goddamn bad, you pick it up!” He shoved the woman away from him and stalked away.

It was closing time at Lightnin’ Ed’s. “Buy it now,” yelled Leo, “bar’s closin’ down.”

“Aw, shit,” muttered Big Betsy.

“Whad he say?” asked the deaf wino.

“He says you gotta get the hell outa here,” Big Betsy told him.

“Like hell I do,” said the wino. “It’s Saturday.”

“Shit,” said Big Betsy to the young man. “Leo’s tries to let on like he’s tough, but Jake’s been sleepin’ in that back room every Saturday night for the last fifteen years. Leo’s got a soft heart behind his soft gut. Ain’t that right, Leo?”

“Shut up, Betsy,” said Leo amiably.

“Hey, Leo,” said a small voice.

Leo turned. “I thought I told you to clear outa here, Elmo. Now what the hell you want?”

“Just one more little drinkee,” said Elmo, squinting up into Leo’s face and grinning.

“All right,” Leo sighed. “One more beer an’ then you get your ass outa here. An’ you better hope you don’t run into Rayburn.”

“Rayburn, shit!” spat Elmo, reaching a hand out hungrily for the beer. Leo took his money as though it were not quite clean. “That’s one crazy nigger.”

“That’s one nigger would just as soon slice your balls off as look at you. Can’t say I blame him. Only I’d aim for your throat. Your balls is too small a target.”

“That nigger’s crazy,” Elmo said, slurping the head off his beer. “He’s awful fast to start slicin’ on folks that’s doin’ the talkin’, but he ain’t so quick to be slicin’ at the ones that’s doin’ all the doin’.” Elmo slammed the half-full beer glass down on the bar for emphasis.

“Maybe he would be if he knowed who they was,” Leo said.

“Maybe he wouldn’t be, seein’ as it’s Leroy Briggs,” said Elmo triumphantly.

“Leroy?” said Leo softly.

“Yeah, sure, it’s Leroy. That bitch is always hangin’ around the Elysium, gettin’ Leroy to take her for rides an’ shit.”

“You ’bout finished with that beer, Elmo? Then you get outa ma bar, right now.” Elmo scowled, gulped the rest of the beer, and shuffled toward the door.

“And Elmo,” Leo called after him.

“What?”

“You open your stinkin’ mouth to Rayburn, an’ I swear to Jesus I’ll cut your throat maself.”

Elmo smiled, but the smile faded as he realized that Leo meant exactly what he said. He turned and almost ran through the door.

“Haw, haw, haw,” roared Big Betsy the whore, heading for the door, “didja hear what he said?”

“Naw,” said Leo.

“Said I reminded him of his mother. Haw, haw, haw. G’night Leo. Haw, haw, haw, haw, haw.”

Leo turned to the young man. “Yeah, well. Lemme tell you somethin’. You’d best not be playin’ with Leroy Briggs. I don’t know what kinda friends you got, an’ I don’t care, but you be careful a Leroy. He’s got lotsa friends, too. Even folks that hates his guts has to kiss his ass, if you know what I mean.”

The young man looked at Leo. “I know what you mean,” he said. He got up and vanished through the door.

When the bar was empty, Leo made sure the old wino was bedded down comfortably in the back room. Then he opened the cash register and pocketed the money without bothering to count it and slipped his revolver into his jacket pocket. He took out a bottle of cheap red wine and put it up on the bar where the wino could find it easily. He turned out the last of the lights and stepped out into the darkness. He locked the door and turned to see the young man standing a few feet away. “What you want?” said Leo, easing his hand toward his revolver.

“To ask you a question.”

“What?” said Leo suspiciously.

“I forgot.”

“What are you, crazy?”

“Kinda,” said the young man, and smiled.

“Shit,” said Leo, fighting the urge to smile himself. He kept his face serious, but his hand moved away from the gun. “You listen here … whad you say your name was?”

“Brown.”

Leo looked skeptical, shrugged. “Well, you listen, Brown. Don’t you forget what I said about Leroy. He’s a mean bastard, an’ he don’t forget. Now which way you headin’?”

“West.”

“Well, I’m goin’ the other way, so I’ll be seein’ you.”

Brown stood and watched Leo move off down the street. He smiled to himself and stepped into the alley and relieved the pressure in his bladder. He came out onto the street again, wrinkling his nose at the stench of a dead cat lying in the gutter. He moved away. His feet made hollow sounds on the pavement as he moved westward toward Twenty-ninth Street, the river, and the bridge to the other side.

A slow-moving shadow sliding south along the sides of concrete towers. Nineteenth Street, one way south, lined with tiny shops: a violin dealer and a deli here, a children’s boutique and a tiny, mob-monied café there. Outside the Rittenhouse Plaza, standing on the awning-covered, weather-stained carpet, the doorman watches without suspicion as the thin figure moves along, feet shuffling from fatigue and alcohol. The doorman shoves his hands into his uniform pockets and whistles tunelessly.

Walnut Street and then the Square, where in the daylight children play and bony spinsters walk marcelled dogs, where when night falls the part-time hippies swarm—female typists and high-school girls decked out in store-bought poor-boy clothes and pretattered bell-bottom blue jeans, sitting on the walls and waiting for real life to wander over and proposition them; and the boys: white boys with guitars and joints and jugs of warm cheap wine, black boys costumed in knitted shirts and beads and wide hats, looking for a gray chick to rap to, jive a little, scare a little, excitate and titillate, and maybe hold her hand.

Past the apartment houses where the D.A. lives, shadow floating down the street, past townhouses and the pizza joint where the cop cars congregate like sinners at a revival meeting, past the hospital that ministers to God-knows-who, finally to South Street, silent and dark, with even the rats asleep, the street people gone to wherever street people go when the street itself finally sleeps. Up the steps, rotten wood, spattered with paint from when someone poured his passion on the wall with great scrawling letters in obscene red; finally to his door, standing before it, key in hand, hand trembling, knowing now that he wanted her there, needed her to be there, frightened that she would not be there and would never be there again; pushing through the door and shutting it behind him, slipping through the littered living room to the bedroom, keeping his eyes turned away and closed for fear of what he might not see; carefully laying his keys on the dresser before turning his head and opening his eyes and seeing her form lying there in the broken-down bed beneath the threadbare blanket. Slipping his clothes off, letting them drop in an untidy pile on the splintering floor, the forgotten pennies fall and roll and rattle on unfinished wood, and then beside her, breathing deep, placing his hand gingerly on her side, feeling the bulge of a little fat, recalling when her body was all bone-hard and her ribs showed plainly through her skin, feeling her responding to his touch, and kissing her; running his tongue inside her mouth, beneath her tongue, along her teeth, feeling her body warm and moist and open; and hearing, just as he goes to her, her sleep-husky voice in his ear, “Give it to me, baby, oh, yes, give it to me again,” and knowing, when almost beyond the point of knowing anything, or of caring, that she was not speaking to him.

T
HE REVEREND MR. J
. Peter Sloan stood sweating into his custom-tailored clerical collar on the already burning sidewalk in front of The Word of Life Church. The Reverend Mr. Sloan was a dark-skinned man with a carefully maintained body and a head the same shape and color, and covered with about the same amount of hair, as an eight ball. The Reverend was slightly uncomfortable; he had thought the sidewalk would be cool after an exceptionally cool night and in what Mr. Sloan considered to be an early hour of the day, and he had therefore rejected thick-soled shoes in favor of thin-soled kid boots. Now, his feet burned. Despite his current discomfort, the Reverend Mr. Sloan was quite pleased with his situation; he did most of his work on Sunday, but although it was Sunday, he had very little to do. One of his four assistant ministers was to deliver the sermon, and the other three were perfectly capable of handling the other aspects of the service. All the Reverend Mr. Sloan had to do was to greet the faithful and handle one very pleasant item of business.