Women and Men (213 page)

Gustave laughed. J.B. said he liked being called Brother, as Grace Kimball did as did sometimes Mother, though J.B. had no brother or sister. But Gustave said that maybe retard messengers were all angels and Spence/Santee said "they" knew things "we" didn’t. Bike lanes beginning to prove curved sometimes and may be taken away. Where’d
you
learn to ride a bike, cab driver yelled at me, at J.B., and there wasn’t time to say learned in secret in trashed lot in Brooklyn that they took away one day.

s. Lane is in mind of operator, and in mind is always more than one lane, is lanes to one side or both. And since operator and sometimes
bike
operator, with hopefully body-signal, shift lane and think ahead, lane is how you think and so lane can zigzag, can curve, and you look ahead like psychic consultation and see lanes not parallel, or parallel but not straight, maybe not even on bulging and potholed north-south avenue white-painted sometimes, and even if parallel-painted the lanes you really track they parallel the m/nd right up onto the sidewalk like when a tall white woman in a black coat with bright fur collar like a fox glitters her eyes at me when I’m passing at speed, when she don’t know me but the man with her does but didn’t seem to look at me, he has sport coat and hat on and scarf and like man in cab that passed last week with Spence/Santee in it but is not that man but the one who wore black pinstripe strolling in Central Park with Lady Luisa the singer loving him but now as I passed the tall lady with the fur, this man laughed and said (to her),
Parallel!,
or words to that effect which when spoken do not need to be opened like potentially hazardous envelope carried from Lady Luisa’s pad uptown (where probably this same man’s foreign voice was heard probably back in bathroom or someplace singing) down then to singer Ford North’s pad (with sofa out by elevator like moving) (though envelope handed examined and added to and handed back by same red-to-gray-bearded man already last week seen beside piano in warehouse); to foundation then, where received by girl Amy who went away, and Xeroxing whoom-whoom was heard, and came back with envelope to be carried direct to warehouse, but Gustave he phoned at that moment right there to foundation hoping to catch me but then could not speak except to say
Wing, Senora Wing,
and I could not speak because envelope was moving slightly in hands and kind Amy was on the watch and I had problems in terms of saying the correct words, especially with Gustave laughing weirdly at his end so hands shook and Amy came and held one and said it was chilly. The foreign man who was in the cab with Spence/Santee came out of office and was bald and said to me, She is a girl with the most true grit, and we all laughed at that. Amy said to him, You were saying about the void. . . ?

t. People coming down off the sidewalks like the light was green, leaving the sidewalk to take up position in way of outer-lane vehicle such as bike so either brake and miss civilian and be hit by truck or in some cases passenger/ pedestrian-to-be stepping off stopped bus. Sidewalk leavers take up position by ignoring oncoming bike, not looking at it and at rider-operator, and turning slightly away from it like you didn’t exist and like they are looking at something else worth looking at too. If you knew any one of these people, you might find they was divorced with children, or was junky, or was former movie or opera star just out walking to buy a present for someone or themselves, or had concealed video gear, or had unseen cancer. People that took up position regardless of themselves and of oncoming bike and messenger and
his
business and would be unknown quantities except would make you think you better go back to school get some more education, they’re smoking their cigarettes and talking and thinking and not thinking about position they take up in ignorance of oncoming messenger bike, they just take it up.

Stopped in cold sunlight southbound to check contents of envelope and envelope gave feeling of many days, many weeks, years, and bike leaning against phone booth led to phoning Mother: How you doing? I asked her and she said, How
you
doing? but did not ask, Why you calling in the middle of the day? and I said, I think I want to go to school and get some more education. She said, You got your own business now even if you didn’t tell me, and you are a man, not a boy, you a real man, Jimmy, and I am proud of you, but don’t you get hurt. If you got your own business you don’t need to go back to school.

u. Coasted on that one, spiraling back and forth down Seventh like my own daytime streetlamp in the middle of the avenue until cabs on either side hollering straightened me out but I’m still in the middle until I reach a red light and cut over and onto sidewalk. Envelope contains—but social worker’s dream comes to mind, Mother passed it on to son J.B. only yesterday (and where did it go? and
who knows why or how?
goes song Mother sang in bathtub and at kitchen stove) that in social worker’s dream J.B. didn’t stick to his job at T&W and went to electrician school and met a whole team of new people preparing to go out searching for positions, and J.B. stuck his finger in the Boulder Dam socket and blew out all the colored string of lights one end of the Mississippi River to the next and he was O.K. but the country was in a mess—like a dream could be anything but relates to them not me but never to future because how could it? and the future would be the one thing that dreams do not tell but when the envelope opened while I’m straddling my bike tells what will happen to messenger "then and there" as "preparation" for "what is to come": all this and more in margins of music pages all in pencil and name of music work is
Hamletin,
and J.B. had seen Lady Luisa penciling one more note when J.B. arrived and was let in and she pulled stuff out of envelope, scribbled, and replaced, but handwriting not all the same and Lady Luisa would never say messenger be liquidated then and there, so this note was someone else’s, so hers must be, for example, "music like venerable Verdi yet original": yet she started to erase in a hurry and then gave up and some of erasing was on backside and in capitals, and read, together with words I recognized from the regular music lines ("And for his death no wind of blame shall breathe But even his mother shall call it accident") various initials across and down such as RS (which could be Ray Spence) and with a U over the S and then an SR (reversing Ray Spence/Santee) and with another U over that S, so you had US and USSR, if you tried, but meanwhile a sharp arrow digging down the margin from the Rs to first PM (which could be afternoon or evening) and actually between the P and the M, and then written in, so you had PRM, but with "Miles" written in, and below it an AM (morning) with above the M a J and below the A a B—which would have strongly indicated a JB for Jim Banks (throw in M for messenger), except vertically down the margin went, then, old familiars

PM PRM PRP SR

plus, this time, P (luton.) R (eact.) 1964 / USSR / ABM, plus, then, the words
Since there’s no help
followed by PM PRM MRM PRP SR, with, then, a big H drawn so it looked like an R and a big R drawn so it looked like an H, and then a big question mark curling around

if R = H, then MRM = MHM

leaving little room at bottom of margin for "Delivery Vehicles" and

UNO

N S G 1975

as the margin was needed when the backside of this page was all the time blank unless with invisible ink, and scrawled at bottom,
Now at something’s latest breath
with a question mark over the "something" which began with
L
and was certainly not
Otto
which is Gustave’s last name, but could have been
Luisa
written small.

v. Took hold of gooseneck and right handlebar; examined front wheel alignment in front brake pads, greasy dirt in rear chain sprockets; found potential trouble spot in Teflon brake-cable housing slightly bent and scuffed when I upside-down’d bike to check wheel spin before leaving office last night no longer felt to be secure. Though they might be right that "we" know something going on in City no one else does: but wondered what it could be.

Riding down avenue before turn, recalled twilight some days ago and feelings then and need to act on knowhow.

Reached warehouse-theater, spotted Senora Wing but would never give her the envelope (which she saw anyway plus bike plus me plus truth that Independent Messenger Unit was in operation but she said nothing and went on in), saw big-man singer spring from taxi making it rock back and forth and side to side so it rocked circular for a second—and swiftly I handed the envelope to him, seeing no rapier at his side and not looking at him but mumbling, No need for receipt, but hearing from him in song-type tone, I am afeard you make a wonton of me & A hit, a hit, a hit—so I would have asked him for tickets if I had not thought him ready to open the envelope.

So I was gone with his Thaaaaank U, dear boy! lowering after me and Gustave and the office on my mind yet something else—the twilight of some days ago, when I was another man at the same time that I was the one my mother now called a man: for was considering grabbing a free tow on a slow-moving Checker cab practically falling apart: but looking back was diverted by something way high and slipped insanely out into center of evening traffic in Fifth Avenue and brought bicycle to a position of stationary rest and looked back up at the Empire State Building and there were birds circling the Empire State tower devouring moths (I didn’t dream) for that was what they were doing, having studied insects, with the cars sides wiping trousers and bike structure, making own wind, and I answered in my own mind the question my mother asked me and asked in presence once of social worker who didn’t know then that I had a new business, What month is it? can you tell us what month it is? Because looking up at night at the birds circling the Empire State way high near the giant antenna devouring moths, I could say to myself, It’s beautiful, it is a beautiful night.

w. Until, upon opening door and spotting big Gustave hunched over answering machine and quick craning neck around at me in case I was Spence, Ray, or Ray Santee, I would have asked How are you doing? but heard a man with an accent begin a message with "Mason" and say in no uncertain terms that they had to discuss the messenger service—and then a new message cut in and it was that voice called T.W. saying a direct phone contact was essential and leaving a number I somehow knew but I didn’t know how followed by the words
new evidence of trace
and a buzz, as if the voice had been interrupted by its own power. And Gustave turned and opened his mouth to start to laugh and his jaw was as large as mine and he held out both hands but did not laugh. He turned machine on.

I informed him we are in danger and must move the business from this dump, it isn’t our office anyhow. Phone rang and we looked at it and the machine and all the time I listened with my hands on handlebars for sound of steps coming upstairs but none, and on machine came voice speaking so careful it was inside both me and Gustave circling down almost our throat but not throat—only ear and head—and Gustave started to laugh and put his hand over his mouth and his face got like those dogs that have all the skin and the voice which was the one called Mason and foreign said: "We are becoming impatient with you and your little operation and it is obvious that you and S.M. ‘s father know the links between this stolen music and much else including the Cuban and time is running out for you and your boys, you little insect, there in your little base of operations"—followed by a buzz like a phone and then nothing and I thought of Amy’s boss and
his
accent when he spoke kindly in the foundation office, and sometimes stayed in his room and you only heard him.

I told Gustave we build on what we know and sometime we got to
do without
knowing. He laughed and was shivering and began taking off his big coat but I said not to. We got to deal with known obstacles in lane-related routes. Forget Santee called me light of his life. Angel. Forget breath of life, coinage of my brain. The business has to survive.

x. Gustave had a headache. Examined the back of his head where he had blood last week. Loose ends of other people no concern of you and me. Go on what you know. Go on policy. Remember what can happen to messenger with bad news. We got no bad news
in
us, Gustave—it’s only in envelope. Gustave laughed. I gave him log to read.

y. Senora Wing came on machine. Jimmy we need you, you better get down here, you lose out. I told Gustave we got to go. Move business. Wipe prints off phone and desk. Took log out of Gustave’s hands. I said we would go see the old lady and old geezer, if he didn’t go on working vacation he said he needed yet. We would watch for them two corners away so Senora Wing or Turnstein not see us. We in danger. We get out of here or we never be heard from again. Machine comes on again with piano music and singing in background, and hammering. I said That’s O.K., we get a new office. Machine voice is a woman talking fast Spanish I didn’t understand except
Spence.

Outside I saw bike rider I thought was white jerk with gray beard and orange headband who looked like my father only white except my father not alive probably, and I told Gustave what Chilean gentleman at foundation said to Amy. I said it to Gustave: ‘The void is the decent interval between exposure to our parents and the time when we can inherit their habits."

I was surprised I could say it.

I walked my bike south and Gustave was right with me.

Other words of the man at the foundation came to me but in bits, but I remembered "structure," yes I remembered that word "structure," and I remembered "small-scale units," and I remembered feeling he was a fine man, a kind man, a gentleman, and how he and the girl smiled when at the end of this bunch of bits that I couldn’t quite remember, he said "as if people mattered." I thought I might take a vacation sometime like the old guy said he was.