The Cosmopolitans (4 page)

“Should we paint your apartment too?”

“You know I need it.”

“Listen!” she cocked her head mischievously. “I can hear the sound of paint chips falling off your walls next door.”

They listened, and then they laughed.

“As soon as things calm down at work, I'll find someone to paint us both.” Outside the window there was a siren blasting and wailing for attention as it screeched around the corner and then faded down the lane. Detective movie. Some cars honked their horns, showing off that they could. There was action and danger on the street. One person's tragedy was another person's underscore. Someone was bouncing a rubber ball against the building in the dark. Like a heartbeat. Earl took out the tea bags. Turned on the water to boil.

“Yeah, what's happening there?” he asked.

“So many changes at work.”

“Still?” He took out two cups and saucers.

“Yes,” she said. “It's over my head.”

“You just don't care. You just don't care about that job.”

She didn't and he knew it. When the old boss, Mr. Tibbs, died, his son, Hector, inherited the business. Tibbs had long confided his doubts to Bette about his son's abilities, but when Earl and Bette talked it over they both agreed the old man had no other choice.

“You can't control from the grave,” Mr. Tibbs had told Bette, “only from the earth.” Then he'd sighed. “Even if Hector runs my business into the ground, it would be better than rejecting my own son. That would be a terrible pain for him to bear. Why be cruel?” The old man had some mercy.

Earl had followed every episode of Tibbs's deliberations, and the phrase “from the grave” had become a common refrain between him and Bette. Although not so much since the old man had passed and his incompetent son's reign on Bette's life had become reality. Bette was now young Hector's confidante, as he had no idea of how to run a company or even how to shine his own shoes. That the old man remembered Bette as well as sealed her duty. In fact, she found the kindness somewhat embarrassing. He'd left her 25 percent of the worthless company, which she knew was payment for caretaking Hector. Babysitter's wages, to be exact. But still it was the first time anyone had ever thought about her for the long term, and the gesture was deeply
moving to Bette. In fact, it was so rare she found it upsetting to even consider. Hector admitted immediately how stunned he'd been when the business landed in his lap, as he'd been preparing emotionally all his life to be left bereft without it. But now that his father had outwitted his disappointment, he was entirely unready to act. And Bette knew it was her role, now, to guide.

“So, in the end,” Earl had pointed out, “the old man did control from the grave. By giving the boy more than he could chew. And landing you with an extra set of teeth.”

There was a lesson there, of course. That loving someone too much can hurt them terribly. Trusting them when they are untrustworthy can ultimately destroy. Earl did an imitation of Hector, scared silly, clutching the armrests of the commuter train, a ghastly gray, trembling at the thought of all that responsibility. But Earl and Bette both imagined that the other Connecticut scions probably weren't very different from him, and could provide Hector with some helpful insider's tips on how to do what he was destined to do. In fact, their prediction did come true. Night after night, in the club car on the way back to Greenwich, Hector heard interesting schemes from his fellow heirs and started scratching around for a way that he, too, could have a
new
idea. One day Bette finally reported at dinner that Hector had made an announcement:
Some changes need to be made around here
.

That became the catch phrase on Tenth Street for a while. Whenever Earl got fed up with life, he would announce, “Some changes need to be made around here,” and then laugh because he was in no position for those
changes to be made. What Hector lacked in execution, Earl lacked in resources.

But Earl and Bette had stopped laughing when one Wednesday morning the young boss bounced into his office announcing that he didn't want to do print advertising anymore. He wanted to branch out.

“To radio?” Earl had guessed.

She'd nodded. “
And beyond.”

From then on Hector talked and talked, and Bette had to take every word down in shorthand and then type it all up.

Whistle. The tea was ready for drinking. Civilizing, a cup of tea.

“Like I said,” Earl repeated dreamily. “You don't care about that job.” He wondered where the hooligans at the Albert Hotel were headed to have fun that night. “Young is good,” Earl said, knowing it belonged to someone else, like Leon or Hector. Youth. He could accept that.

“But Hector is
too
young,” Bette said. “In all ways. And some young people get too excited. They think they're going to get rich.”

“I want to get rich.” Earl cut two pieces of cake.

“Well, Earl, buy a television set.”

“To get rich? Why? Is that what's on there?”

“I'm telling you.” Bette took a bite. “Something is up with those televisions. It was all Hector talked about today. Television advertising. He said it was the
new thing
.”

“The
new thing
!”

“Hey,” she jumped with excitement, “they're going to need actors!”

Earl did not have to think. “White ones.”

“You never know,” Bette said.

He shook his head with that familiar no. “No butlers. No ooga-booga cannibals.” He waved his fork. “No chauffeurs. No shufflers. Wouldn't play them. No
yowser, yowser
. Nope. No way. Not. Never. No. No.”

“Okay.”

“Now,
Othello
! That is worth reaching for.” And he held his fork royally before him, high and mighty as a sword.

“You'd play a king,” Bette beamed.

“That,” he resumed eating, “is worth reaching for.”

And they were back into trying to figure it all out, feeling once again that there
had to be some way
. Some way for Earl to have the right life, the one he was meant to have, the one whose absence stalked him, chased him, haunted him, kicked his ass.

“Maybe if you got them some tickets the next time. The Lazio brothers.”

But they both knew that there really was nothing to be gained by having two old meat cutters watch Earl play a spear-carrier. Of course, if he were to perform
The Emperor Jones
, for example. Now, that would be a different story. Or
Porgy and Bess
. He would definitely invite the Lazios to P and B.

“
Porgy, I's your woman now. I is. I is,”
they sang together for a while.

Then it was quiet. Dinner was concluded. Everything important had been touched upon. The cake was eaten, the tea was drunk.

“Oh well.” Earl leaned back. The dreaming was over. “You will never read that letter.”

“Probably not.”

“Yeah.”

“But you already knew that.”

Yes. It was true. He already knew.

Chapter 4

T
he next morning Earl left the house at four thirty. He hadn't had to be at work until seven for a couple of years but had been leaving at four thirty for so long that it was impossible to stay in an empty bed for another hour. He liked starting out in the dark, preferring the empty streets as he walked west past all the sleepers, the dreamers. Every night Earl had the same kind of dream. He dreamed that his dreams had come true. Every night someone he loved and missed terribly, who had been cruel for no reason, would come to him and be kind. It could be Anthony, or his mother, or his sister, or Leon, or any of the men in between. In the dream they would just forget about it and come hold him, have fun together. Then he would wake up and say a few things out loud, as part of that half waking. He would say, “Help.” And he would say, “I am so lonely.” And sometimes he would say, “I hate my life.” At that point stepping out into the dark town was something to look forward to, something motivating.
By the time he'd made it far west, the other guys would start to appear, converging from uptown, Brooklyn, the Lower East Side. They'd all started out alone and ended up together.

Earl would shoulder his way into the crowded twenty-four-hour greasy spoon on Gansevoort, filled with unwashed men at the counter drinking coffee, eating steamy bowls of hot oatmeal, and smoking, shoulders hunched. Black, Spanish, and white. It was gorgeous. The way they'd talk out of the sides of their mouths, gesture with their cigarettes, or ruminate deep into those cups. Everyone came to work dirty and waited until the end of the shift to shower and soap up. They'd wash together and go home sparkling clean in the evening, but start off dirty in the morning. They had their ways, these guys. Pans of greasy eggs, pans of fried potatoes dripping in grease. Tired men with big hands and lives of filth. Everyone else was in bed, but they were already dirty.

Propped up by camaraderie, Earl went across the street to the Lazios' and checked in to the locker room. He took off his shirt, his regular pants, and put on the gray cotton pants, shirt, and black rubber apron. He stepped into the black rubber boots. He pulled on his work cap. Soon they would all be covered in entrails. Earl turned to move out into the cutting room, and there was Leon, just showing up. That boy was never early, never made enough space to just let something happen. Possibility scared that boy.

“Good morning, Leon,” Earl said.

He hadn't thought about it, really. The words had simply come out of his mouth. It was normal, after
all. Two people know each other. They see each other. They say good morning. It's not even something to consider. He looked at Leon and smiled politely. But the boy flashed eyes of rage and turned his back. He cut him dead. Would not even say hello.

The pain Leon caused felt unbearable. And yet Earl would have to bear it. Now he would be in pain for the entire day. He would suffer.
That's why they call it “cutting dead,”
he thought. Here he was, fifty years old and his heart hung over his belt. The boy had wanted him and had become afraid of his own feelings. Wasn't that bad enough? Did he have to shun him now, too?

Earl watched Leon do this all day long, refuse to look at him. Refuse to speak to him. Not stand beside him, not offer a hand. All day long! The whole fucking day.

He's a professional
, Earl thought.
Wish I could learn that, pretend another man doesn't exist, just because we touched
.

Did Earl really wish that? No. Yes, in fact. Well, no, not really. Well, yes.

That was his crime, wasn't it? Being desired. They'd been walking along Gansevoort that night after Leon had come to supper. It was a strange destination. Instead of going out to a bar or strolling Little Italy, they'd come right back to their place of employ. Right back to the stinking meat and the emptiness, to the sidewalks still slick with fat. They belonged there, he'd guessed. Out of sight. Someplace secret and disgusting. And while this thought crossed his mind, Leon reached over, slipped his arm around Earl, and leaned his head on Earl's shoulder. Beautiful brown boy. Hair, sweet
against Earl's cheek. Alone on the cobblestones. Not a footstep in the distance. Earl turned to this young pony and kissed him with all the love he'd been saving inside. The two men kissed in the streetlight and then Earl, naturally, without thinking, ran his hands down the young boy's ass. Hell, they were face to face, cock to cock, pressed against each other.
It was natural
, being that close, to wrap his hands around the young man's ass. What was he supposed to do? Hold his arms out like wings and become a dickless angel, just there for the kiss, and then flap his way back up to ball-less heaven? He wasn't thinking. He wasn't thinking. And Leon jumped.

“Get your hands off my behind,” he snapped, stepping back. Like Earl had felt him up on a crowded subway. Like Leon had had nothing to do with it. Like he was innocent. And Leon stared at Earl with an expression of complete shock. As though his favorite uncle had betrayed him. Had violated him. As if Earl was the criminal here, and Leon didn't exist. “Don't you touch me,” he said. And Leon turned and fled, literally ran down the street, his boots the sound of gunshots. And that was it. Done. Now Earl had to work all fucking day with someone pretending he was not a person. It just hurt, that's all. It just hurt so bad. That pretty young brother running away from him. Like it was all Earl's fault.

What would happen if someday Earl actually did something wrong to someone? They'd probably kill him.
No
, he realized. Then he'd be the Emperor Jones. “
Dere's little stealin' like you does, and dere's big stealin' like I does. For de little stealin' dey gits you in jail soon
or late. For de big stealin' dey makes you Emperor and puts you in de Hall o' Fame when you croaks.”
O'Neill, O'Neill.

The day was long and sad. No surprise. Little acts of cruelty make life hell. Don't other people realize that? Earl stumbled out at the end of the shift, clean, with hell in his head. He walked down West Street, watched the longshoremen unloading mysterious crates. Stood still, looking at them heave-ho. Shit, he was too old for that job now. Where were those boxes coming from? Someplace . . . like . . . who knows . . .
Venezuela
. Earl wasn't exactly sure where that was. Near Brazil probably. Or maybe it was a haul of sardines in the tin from Portugal or Alaska, or jade from China with a stopover in some other out-of-the-way unknown . . .
Guam
or whatever. Bananas? Some kind of shiny ebony wood from his ancestors? Oil don't come in crates. It comes in tankers. Music? Perfume? A gorgeous new featherbed with a handmade quilt from France? An accordion? Potbelly stove? Waffle iron? Phonographs?

“Where's that ship in from?” he asked an old-timer.

“Utica,” the guy mumbled. He had lost his bottom teeth. That meant someone punched him in the face, hard. Or else he fell down dead drunk, flat forward. Either way, the fella had made at least one bad decision.

“What's in there?”

“Scrap.”

That's what I should do
, Earl realized.
Jump ship
!

What he meant was jump
earth
. Leave the ground behind. No more streets. No more breakfast specials. No more shoulder to shoulder with the passersby. No more Leon.

“I should get me on one of those ships,” he spat out.

“Ever been to Utica?” the bone mouth asked. And then he started whistling. Yep, he could whistle without any bottom teeth. At least the man could do something. The tune was the melody that went along with the words of an old song.

              
Got me a mule, her name is Sal

              
Fifteen miles on the Erie Canal
.

              
She's a good old worker and a good old pal

              
Fifteen miles on the Erie Canal
.

Earl imagined spending the rest of his days sailing from Buffalo to Albany and back again, with a little shack in Utica, running on the steam of a broken heart. These kinds of cities were awfully quiet.
Nothing around you matters
. That was the problem staying here in New York,
everything
around him mattered. Leon matters. Emperor Jones matters. It's all within sight. He could never go numb because it was all so damn fascinating. And he had never perfected thinking about other things without thinking about himself. Maybe if there were nothing else to look at, he would stop looking at all his own fuck ups. Day in, day out. When does that ever stop? Desire? The wish, the disappointment? When does a man ever grow out of that? This is what Earl wanted to know. He wasn't getting on no damn boat.

Earl walked east and a little south, and soon he was on Bleecker and Carmine where the Village Italians had their main drag. Rabbits hanging in the butcher's window with fur still decorating their ankles.

Here's what Earl noticed that day about his devil home:

       
(1)
  
It's a city of laundry. Everyone else knows exactly what each other's got because it's
all
hanging out of windows, across rooftops, lying over every available iron grate. It's intimate. It's a fact. Eight million undies on display. When a woman wants to put on something sexy for her man, she has to dry it before he gets home. No point watching it flapping from a clothesline before he sees it draped over his lover's voluptuous body.

       
(2)
  
Children are the kings of New York. Yeah, back home he could go fishing or swim naked and no one would bother him. But so what? Here, the kids run free in the royal realm. Everywhere there's a pack of them with a clear-cut leader in rolled pants and some scheme in the making: jumping on and off the backs of buses, racing around corners, hanging on each other's stoops, being cruel or loving. Even the loners could do as they pleased. He saw boys eight, ten years old and curled up in a corner in a dream or weeping, making plans about how to get some friends someday. No adult knew exactly where they were or what they were up to, as long as they appeared for supper. The kids saw everything that happened in the neighborhood and it showed on their faces. The joyous responsibility of catching the drift.

He kept going down Bleecker, past the funeral home, and that new leather shop where the beatnik
kids were buying sandals. They loved them sandals. He didn't quite get it. What was so happening about sandals? On both sides of the street, tired, dirty Italian men trudged home from construction jobs. They lived on Mulberry, Sullivan, and MacDougal. Bleecker had a lot of cafés those days. Some were still Italian, but some were for the poets. Or they switched, depending on the time of night. But the side streets belonged to the working people. Grandfathers, fathers, uncles all hired on the same site. Earl never had dust on his shoes at the end of the day. That was a sign of pride. But these slum kings stomped home dirty and presided at rickety kitchen tables, grit still under their nails.
I'm telling you
, he said to no one.
Some of those Sicilians are black
. Was he the only one who could see how African they were? And the women? If they cut their hair a little differently it would all be clear as day.
Who are they kidding?

In '54 Earl had gone to see a theater acquaintance sing an opera set on this block.
The Saint of Bleecker Street
. It was about a girl named Annina blessed with the wounds of Jesus Christ. She heard voices and saw visions of the angels. Her brother, however, was an atheist. That's where the story got interesting. He thought she needed to do some time in the loony bin, but all the neighbors bought that she was a saint. They were very old-school. Maybe Leon was an angel sent by God to teach Earl a lesson. But, what could that lesson be?

You're never gonna make it
, he thought, and then said one word out loud.

“Never.”

By the time he got to Sullivan, he'd seen a lot, and had taken in a couple of lessons. The street kids were playing in the wading pool at the Children's Aid Society. Most of them had never seen a lake. Most of them had never worn a bathing suit. But they didn't know and they didn't care. They could still have fun and cool off.

Learn from the urchins
. He laughed.

At the southwest corner of Washington Square Park, a gang of brothers and other cats were ensconced on the cement tables, playing chess. There were always some black guys hanging out here. A weird mixture of out-of-work beboppers, local philosophers, hard workers on their way home from fixing something for a living, hauling something, serving somebody. Next to them, the eternally unemployed drinking on the sly. A handful of Negro students from that hovering university were exhausted by the burden of constant uplift. Missing their hardworking fathers back home, they'd sit on the edges, little eggheads, soaking up the camaraderie. Earl slid beside Jerome, an older fellow who always stopped off for a game of chess before heading back to his house in Saint Albans, Queens. Earl liked him, but did not share his tastes. Just because a person was black, did not mean that J. J. Johnson had to be
your man
.

“J. J. Johnson is my man,” Jerome had said so often, Earl smirked undercover each time, imagining what would happen if that could ever be true.

“It's bebop slide,” Jerome promised over and over again like it was a miracle at Lourdes. “That J. J. Johnson. Now, he my man.”

Earl was an actor first and foremost. He loved the classics.
Hamlet. Othello
, of course. Musical innovations always eluded him. But he had been made curious through Jerome's braying about
jazz trombone, I tell you, trombone
! So, he did take the recommendation and sat one night alone at the bar to give the notorious Mr. Johnson a chance. Later J. J. pulled up beside him for a beer between sets. They had a nice chat. J. J. was a blueprint inspector at a Sperry plant on Long Island and could only get off work to play music one night a week. Earl was impressed by the gleam of that trombone and what kind of depth it took to make it swing. But the truth was that Earl liked stories and this music was too abstract. He was glad he'd seen J. J. before the man lost his cabaret card, but really he'd rather spend his hard earned money on a play.