The Man With the Golden Arm (6 page)

‘It wasn’t no pet shop, Zosh.’

‘Who told me?’

‘Who always travels the news around here? Piggy-O, the Information Bureau.’

‘
He
asks me how am I feelin’, he don’t just shove in here without even sayin’ how’s anyone feelin’.’

‘How you feelin’, Zosh?’

‘Don’t call me “Zosh,” I ain’t no greenhorn, I wasn’t born in Slutsk, I was born on eart’ on Awgoosty Boulevard ’n my name is Soph-
ee
-a –
say
it.’

‘How you feelin’, Soph-
ee
-a?’

‘No damned good at all. I got gas on the stomach. You got gas on the stomach?’

Something more subtle than gas weighed on her stomach. Behind the curtain of loneliness which had sheltered her childhood a sick dread had grown. Of being left, some final
evening, alone in a room like this small room with no one of her own near at all.

A dread she sometimes evaded by reaching for an outsized album labeled, in her own childish and belabored hand,
My Scrapbook of Fatal
Accidence
. When she had finished scissoring these letters out of red and green Christmas wrapping paper they had looked so large and cheerful she had gone on to embroider the title with comic-strip cutouts: Superman and Bugs Bunny, Tarzan and Little Abner cavorted in a wanton carnival among lady spies in sheerest negligee and announcements of double-horror features and double-feature horrors from the tabloid movie directories.

She had begun the book with the
Times
photo of her own ‘fatal accident’ and had gone on to add to it all manner of lurid cries from the depths: of unwed mothers who plunged newborn infants down dumbwaiters in an oatmeal box or tossed them into a furnace in a cornflake carton because ‘God told me to.’ To announce, when a visitor remarked that the house seemed rather warm: ‘I know. I just put the baby in the stove.’

She loved to pull out the one captioned
Death Was Driving,
to which she’d added, in her own crude art, a skull and crossbones; because she had learned that that gave Frankie what he called ‘chicken flesh.’

In fact she had been so altogether tickled with the crinkling effect it had had on his skin, reminding him as it did of the night when he’d supported her onto a cold white hospital bed with her eyes still dilated with shock, that she had gone on to wider fields: a whole family wiped out in a secondhand Chevvie one bright May morning at an Indiana Harbor crossing.

The movie directory captions she had clipped and hoarded like an aging coquette treasuring old dance programs.

Best of all was the yellowing photo from the
Times
that proved to him, each day anew, that it had all been his fault. So much his fault that he could never leave her alone again.

‘Wheel me a little, Frankie,’ she begged. There were moments when not even the scrapbook sustained her. She would feel she was falling and only being wheeled back and forth could arrest that endless plunge into nowhere.

Some nights she wheeled herself while he slept. When he wakened he would see her in the corner where the light and darkness met, half her face in the fading shadows of Saturday night and half in Sunday morning’s rain-washed light. With her hair in papers, in crimpers or pins, she would be ready for the day and all day long would move, little by little, following the light, till the night’s neon carnival began once more below.

All day long, alternately picking at the army blanket about her knees with her tinted fingernails and then at her chin. ‘Whiteheads, blackheads,’ she had a little song for the very loneliest hours, picking at the chin’s flesh till it was raw:
‘I like to
tweeze
’em ’n
squeeze
’em, it’s when I get in the mood.’

Till the same old shadows took her anew.

Sometimes it seemed to Frankie there was no end to the wheeling at all. So now for reply he pulled a homemade drummer’s practice board out from under the sink, seated himself before it, sticks in hand, on a little backless chair. He used the sticks lightly a moment, just enough to shut out the pleading punctuated by the flashlight’s irregular clicking. Till he could get the feel of the drums again.

‘That’s right, just duck your puss over that dirty board ’n make off like I ain’t even alive. I ask you to wheel me so you make like I’m dead – it’s what you’re hopin’ all the time anyhow.’

For one moment there was no sound in the room save that of the battered clock below the phosphorescent crucifix on the wall, its sturdy old pulse beating quietly, without a single flutter. He rapped out a long, sure, steady workmanlike beat.

Frankie liked the drums. That was in the wrist too. He beat through his own version of ‘Song of the Islands’ twice.

‘Cute,’ Sophie announced the moment he’d finished.

A single meaningless word like that: cute. But what and who and why everything had to be so damned cute there would be no telling.

‘I knew that Gertie Michalek, the one wit’ the birt’ mark like a p’tato on her wrist,’ Sophie went on, ‘when she got preg’ant she could always tell if it was going to be a girl ’cause she’d get that cravin’ for cold p’tatoes.’ N you know what, Frankie? To this day when Michalek’s little girl eats a p’tato, the p’tato eyes come out on Michalek’s birt’mark. What you think of
that?’

No answer. He would be trying not to feel unnerved at her meaningless discontent. Around and around she would
go now upon the breathless merry-go-round of her ceaseless mysteries; till his mind would be dulled by its whirling and he would try talking her back to reality.

‘I’m lookin’ for a job beatin’ the tubs, Zosh,’ he told her, leaning forward to begin again just as she signaled to him with the flashlight – dot-dot-dash-dot-dot-dot – in a code she had just invented. ‘What am I signalin’ now?’ she wanted to know. She’d had enough drumming for one night. If he wouldn’t wheel her he’d have to play games. He would have to guess something.

Brushing back his hair with his forearm, he felt the sticks growing cold between his fingers. ‘
My
guess is your roof is leakin’,’ he ventured at last. Knowing that if he didn’t play the game she would rap-rap-rap with the metal against the wheelchair’s arm, translating the secret code into an even more secret Morse while a faint and knowing smile would stray across her lips.

A smile that veiled her knowledge of his latest trickery: from the first night he’d lugged it up the stairs she had been on to him. Just one more excuse to keep from wheeling her, that’s all the practice board was. All the talk about wanting to play in a real band, join the musicians’ union and be on the legit were just so many more corny tricks to get out of doing his proper duty toward her.

Well, she still had a proper trick or two of her own up her sleeve. She watched him as he tried not to pay attention to the flashlight, wondering just what moment she’d begin signaling again.

For one moment she held the flashlight poised like a vicious little club above the wheelchair’s arm while he held the sticks tensely above the board. Then shoved board and sticks back under the sink and lay his head on his arm across a soup plate. She put the flash down with a pervasive sense of triumph.

‘That’s right. Don’t bother puttin’ on no kettle fer dishes.
Just lay wit’ your head on the sink, that’s the sure way to get ’em done.’

Frankie raised up, took a battered deck off the shelf, shoved the dirty plate to one side and riffled the deck through his fingers.

‘Sure. Just shove to one side fer the maid. Start dealin’ to yerself now like a goof goin’ soft in the head.’

‘There’s only fifty cards in your deck tonight, honey,’ Frankie reproached her gently. ‘I think you got a little repercussion again today.’

‘You mean a
con
cussion, dummy.’ For once she had him.

‘No, I mean a
re
percussion. Like you been bounced on your head
twice
.’

‘My head is airtight. It’s yours is leakin’ – bot’ ways. Your own stepmother said if you wasn’t married you’d be settin’ in the pen right now. Your own stepmother.’

‘She wasn’t no “stepmother,”’ Frankie contradicted her flatly with genuine resentment.

‘I s’ppose she was your real mother. Don’t you think
I
know about you?’

‘She wasn’t no “stepmother.” She was a foster mother ’n she done the best she could. She wasn’t no “stepmother,” the way you say it.’

‘She done so good you don’t even know if she’s dead ’r alive.’ Sophie knew when she had him in the vise and gave it the final turn. ‘She done so much she didn’t even come to the school when you ’n them other punks got caught in the boiler room with the dice. If she’d of come you could have finished like them others.’

‘It wasn’t she didn’t
want
to come, Zosh,’ Frankie insisted. ‘She was ashamed, she couldn’t talk good English, you know that. She done the best she could.’

Sophie returned to the frontal attack.

‘I got more brains in my butt than your whole scrumblebug fam’ly got in their heads – scrambled eggs is what your fam’ly got for brains. You gonna bring me a damned dawg ’r
ain’t
you gonna bring me no damned dawg?
That’s
what I want to know.’

A plaintive howling came circling up the stairwell. Sitting with his slim back toward her, the dealer asked wearily, ‘You really want a dog, Zosh?’

No answer. She was studying the short hairs on the back of his neck. And waited, in the most cunning silence of all, to see whether he would pick up her thought. If he did, then she would know it was true, what old Doc Dominowski had told her about thought transference, how every mind was really a sort of radio set capable of both broadcasting and receiving thought waves.

‘You couldn’t keep no dog in here anyhow,’ Frankie pointed out.

‘It don’t have to be no damned wolf from a zoo, goofy t’ing. It could just be a soft lit-tul puppy-pup. Sort of smoody-like ’n cute, what I could pet.
You promised
.’

‘He’d mess up the joint. What would you do when he had to go? Set him in the sink? So don’t talk no more. I got scrambled eggs for brains ’n yours is poached, they ain’t even settin’ on toast – When do we eat?’

‘As soon as you heave them greasy cards out the window ’n jump out after ’em,’ she informed him. ‘It’s oney two stories.’

‘I’m afraid of losin’ the joker that way,’ he told her with indifference, jamming a match, in lieu of a toothpick, between his teeth.

‘You’re the biggest joker around here.’ And studied him with a child’s huge scorn: ‘
Some
toot’pick.’

‘Besides, the cards ain’t even greasy,’ he decided, ‘I put your Saturday Night in a Whorehouse powder on ’em to
make ’em slip good.’ He shifted the match between his teeth. That had been a pretty good one all right. ‘You don’t let me practice on the tubs, I got to do somethin’ to kill the pass-time.’

‘Where’s
my
pass-time then? A dawg’d be my pass-time oney I don’t count. I count fer nuts. It’s just you ’n that secondhand drum box that counts.’ She wheeled up to him, her tone turning to a plea as she came: ‘’N it’d give
you
somethin’ to do too, honey. You could take him out for air ’n bring back some beer.’

She lay her fingers, so soft, so cold, upon his own hard hand.

‘Beer ain’t no good for you, Zosh,’ he reminded her, ‘the croaker said it wasn’t no good for you account you can’t exercise. It blows up your belly ’n the bubbles go to your head. Here’ – he proffered the deck – ‘pick a card.’

The fingers upon his own turned to bloodless claws – he drew his hand back fast. ‘
Ever
’thin’s no good fer me,’ she wailed and slapped the cards out of his hand. ‘Little puppies ’n even havin’ a little beer, to have somethin’ to
do
. I’ll be twenny-six years for Christmas ’n just
look
how I am – a old lady awready!’

Abruptly the loss of all her bright hours enraged her: ‘
Never
say “croaker” – I don’t
like
it when you say “croaker.”’

‘What do you like, Zosh?’ He just thought he’d ask.

‘What I like is when I mix that dark beer wit’ the light stuff!’ She had pinned him to the sink with the wheels of the chair touching his shoes. ‘It’s
that
kind I like, what I really go for. Oh
godamnit
, don’t you even know what I like
yet?’

When her voice rose in that rattling whine he remembered the distant beat of artillery and the sudden applause of M.G. fire.

‘Somebody was trying the latch last night,’ he told her, inching his toes back from the wheels.

‘It’s just the way the El shakes it,’ she explained. ‘It done that before you left ’n you wouldn’t fix it then ’n it’s gettin’ to look like you never will now.’ Her hand tried to recover his own. ‘Everybody got to have a little bit,’ she told him pleadingly.

‘A little bit of what, Zosh?’

‘A little bit of beer, a little bit of fun,’ she told him in her thin sing-song. ‘A little bit of anythin’, a little bit of love.’

‘What kind of beer you like best, Zosh?’ Trying to get her back on the rails.

‘“What kind? What kind?”’ she mocked him, her voice ringing as brainlessly as a ninety-eight-cent alarm clock in an unrented room running down to a whimper. ‘It’s been so long since I had a beer I just don’t know what kind I like no more.’

With yesterday’s empties crouching behind her chair.

‘I don’t
know
, Frankie,’ she complained with a distress like a tired child’s. ‘How many kinds are there? I don’t even know what kinds there
are
any more.’

‘There’s Budweiser,’ he told her indulgently, as if enumerating distant relatives, ‘then there’s Schlitz, and Blatz, and Pabst and Chevalier—