“After what I have to work with all day, I prefer to look at orange-crate bookcases,” Elaine had said once, referring to her interior decorating work.
Their fireplace in the front room, where the sagging sofa lived, worked beautifully and had not been built yesterday. The Armstrongs had a fire going, and potatoes in foil baking near the embers. The kids played, yelling at each other in Jason’s room, where Elaine said Jason had laid out his train tracks on the floor. Jack heard, over the yelling, the bleep of an electronic game. The four adults had drinks in the fireplace room. Max had put charcoal on for the steaks, and the meal was up to him, he told Jack, so Jack went with him into the kitchen. Natalia and Elaine seemed deep in conversation on the sofa.
“How do they always find something to talk about?” Jack asked.
“Who?”
“The girls.” Jack gestured behind him. “Sometimes I wish I had the knack.”
“Really do you?—I don’t. It’s exhausting.” Max picked up salt and vinegar and pulled a salad bowl toward him.
Jack got the lettuce from the sink, stuck it into a lettuce swinger and went out onto the garden terrace.
“Hey, Daddy, my cassette player won’t start!” Six-year-old Jason stood in the kitchen door, brown hair tousled, frowning.
“Well, Daddy’s not going to fool with it now. How much noise are you trying to make, anyway?”
Jason turned and ran like a soldier, as if his father had given him orders.
Max was now stirring his dressing. “How’s Natalia liking the gallery job?”
Jack said very much, and reminded Max that she had worked for Isabel before.
“And Louis? I forget his last name. Natalia’s old friend.”
“Wannfeld. He’s fine. Natalia sees him now and then.” Jack wasn’t going to mention the cancer scare, because it seemed to have blown over. Louis hadn’t cancer after all. Max never talked about his own work. “My little company protects big companies,” Max had said once with a smile, wanting to get off the subject. Max did like painting, music, and Jack’s cartoons and drawings too, and was more forthcoming on the arts.
Now Max was settling the steak between the two sides of the steel grill which had a long handle. “And old Mrs Farley?” he asked, smiling. “Isn’t that her name? Lives on the floor below you?”
“Yep, she’s still there. Remember that afternoon when we lifted her over the snow? Out of that taxi?” Jack laughed. Max and he had been shoveling snow from the front steps, when a taxi with Mrs Farley inside had arrived at the curb, and they had carried her, packages and all, over a barricade of curb snow and up the front steps and deposited her safe and dry in the front hall.
“Sure I remember,” Max said. “Loved it!”
In emergencies, such as snowfalls, Max and Jack helped each other on their respective properties. Max was over six feet and strongly built, with Irish good looks, Jack thought, though he was only half-Irish. He had long eyelashes, a strong jaw, and was the type of man Jack assumed women would label sexy, though when he had asked Natalia once if she thought Max had sex appeal, she had said, “Max? Not for me.” Funny, Jack thought. You’re sexy, Natalia had added. Not that you look so sexy, you are sexy, which is more important. Yes, it was more important, if it came from Natalia. Jack suddenly thought of Elsie, the whirling dervish on the dance floor, and of the oddball Ralph Linderman. He wished he could forget the name, but it stuck in his memory.
“Say, Max—”
“Can you bring the salad in, Jack?”
Jack carried the salad bowl and set it on the table as they walked through the dining room. Max had the big steak.
“And turn the spuds if you can do it barehanded. What were you going to say?”
They sat on their heels before the fire.
“Have you possibly noticed a guy in his mid-fifties in the neighborhood, walking a black and white dog?”
“Dalmatian?”
“Maybe part, but this one’s a mongrel. This fellow walks his dog at six or so when I go jogging sometimes, or it could be at any hour, because he’s a security guard. Anyway he’s slightly nutty. Avoid him if he tries to talk to you. He lives down on Bleecker, so maybe he doesn’t get as far up as Eleventh.”
“Tries to talk to you?”
“Yeah,” said Jack with a grimace. “The funny thing is, I lost my wallet getting out of a taxi in front of my house, and this guy called me up and returned it about an hour later and wouldn’t take a reward.”
Max took his eyes from the steak. “With the money in it?”
“Every dollar. He said it was normal to return something you’d found.” Jack gave a laugh. “Then he launched into a speech about—old-fashioned honesty and all that. But he’s very anti-church, anti-religion.”
“Very odd,” Max said, turning the steak. “But lucky for you.”
Elaine and Natalia were out of hearing on the big sofa, still talking, feet drawn up on the cushions.
“I suppose the guy enjoyed getting your wallet back to you,” Max said, smiling.
“Oh, definitely. I could see that.” Jack felt better, having told Max the story and having warned Max to keep a distance. It was like shedding part of a burden. Yet what was the burden in Linderman?
“Penny for your thoughts, Jack,” Elaine said.
Jack was standing with a platter of hot potatoes in foil. “Just daydreaming,” he said.
Jack hadn’t seen the women move, but an oilcloth had been spread on the living-room carpet, plates and cutlery set for the two kids, mugs of milk.
“You can see all the spill problems this solves,” Max said to Jack. “Anyway anything else that happens to that carpet won’t matter much.”
The four of them went into the dining room. Jack stood near the table, watching Natalia, adoring the tone of her voice. She had brought the rest of her scotch and water with her.
“And you there, Jack, as usual,” Elaine said, pointing to a chair. “Sit down, you two!”
11
“Hey!—Hello!” Elsie was suddenly beside him.
“Hi!” said Jack, surprised.
They were walking on Seventh Avenue, and Jack was heading for the drugstore on Grove and Seventh.
She came into the drugstore with him, hands in the slash pockets of her jacket, a U.S. Navy pea jacket today. “I was going to call you up.”
“Oh?—Mind if I pick a toothbrush?” Jack chose a red one, small size, for Amelia. He also had to buy aspirins.
“Yes,” Elsie went on. “It’s about that pest—Ralph. It’s getting worse. He keeps coming into the place where I work, and Viv, the manager, can’t throw him out because he’s not drunk or anything.” She went on talking as Jack paid. “We got rid of him once, because Viv laid down the law about not letting him in with his dog.”
Jack was listening. They drifted toward the door.
“I was going to ask you if you’d say something to him—about this. Ask him to leave me alone. I could lose my job over this. And I don’t want to lose it because the hours are nice and the people’re nice.—He’d listen to you. He thinks you’re great. Oh! And he knows I went up to your place once! How’s that for spying on me?” She stamped a foot with impatience. “If you could just tell him I’m not a—a house-hopping hooker—” She looked straight at Jack, frowning.
Jack nodded, trying to envisage a quiet word with Linderman the next time Linderman wished to engage him in conversation. “Okay, Elsie, I’ll try. I promise.”
“Thanks. Thanks a lot.—Come with me, I just want to show you!” She took Jack’s arm impulsively, and turned him in the downtown direction.
“Show me what?”
“I live just down here. Not far. Got five minutes?”
“Yep.” Jack went with her. They crossed Seventh, walked past Jones Street in the direction of Father Demo Square, finally into Minetta Lane.
“Here’s my street. Minetta Street.”
They walked to a three-storey house with a front step, a brick hous
e painted red. Elsie drew keys from the pocket of her blue jeans.
“Come up for a minute.”
“No, I can see. It’s a nice looking house.”
“Nobody’s home now.—I came up to your place,” she added on a challenging note. “I just want you to see! You don’t even have to sit down!”
Jack relented, smiling. “Okay, Elsie.”
They climbed stairs, and she opened another door with a key.
“Here’s where I live now with Genevieve,” Elsie said, going in first, turning in the middle of a somewhat overfurnished living-room.
The ceiling was low, the two windows looked out on Minetta Street. There was a sofa with a dark red drape of some kind over it, modern armchairs with the black paint scratched as if by cats, though Jack didn’t see a cat. The small fireplace looked as if it were never used, and had a skull-and-crossbones poster propped up in it. There were lots of books.
“And here’s the bedroom,” Elsie said cheerily, leading the way through a hall past kitchen and bathroom to a room at the back. This room was more than half taken up by a bed that looked like two double beds put together. Several Indian print counterpanes covered this, and the walls were papered with posters of pop singers, female nudes, a VOTE FOR somebody whose name and face Jack did not recognize.
“I see,” said Jack. “Very cozy.”
“And the kitchen—Maybe you saw it.” Elsie gestured. “I ask you, does this look like a whorehouse? Genevieve’s got a nine to five job! And I go to work before six today. Does this creep think we lie around doping ourselves all day, screwing men for dough!” Her resentment seemed to have mounted with the showing of her apartment. “Talk to him, tell him to fuck off, would you?”
Jack gave a nod. “I do promise. I will.”
She relaxed visibly. “You mean it.”
“I do.” He was near the apartment door now, and he turned to say good-bye.
“Otherwise I’m thinking of getting the police after him,” Elsie went on. “Any boys or men who come to our place don’t stay the night. Fellows visit, sure, but Genevieve’s my girlfriend just now. We don’t fool around. She doesn’t even like boys.”
“Urn. Girlfriend,” Jack said matter of factly, recalling his visible surprise about Sylvia, and not wanting to repeat it. “Yes,” he added.
“Yes, she’s gay. So’m I—just now. I used to like boys a little, but not just now.” She made an impatient dismissing gesture with one hand that Jack had noticed before. “Maybe I won’t like Genevieve for long, but—while it lasts, I mean.” She removed her jacket and tossed it onto the sofa, making a complete turn on her toes as she did so. Her happy smile was back, her brow clear. “I just want to enjoy my life! You know?”
“Yes.” Jack knew. “Thanks for asking me up.” He opened the door.
She came down the stairs with him. “Was that your wife the other night at that disco?”
“Yes,” Jack said, smiling.
“She looks interesting. Different—y’know?” Elsie spoke as if she meant it. “Is she a writer?”
“No. But she reads a lot.—Bye, Elsie!”
Jack took a homeward direction. Elsie could look so intense, so earnest! Those trembling, thin blond eyebrows, the pale-blue stare! Very soon Jack was in Linderman’s street. Linderman’s house number had gone out of his head, and so much the better. If he encountered the old guy now, at ten to 4, he would have a word with him and get it over with, calmly and politely. Jack kept an eye out for Linderman, and when he neared Grove Street looked also for a girl or woman who might be approaching, walking Amelia home from the West Twelfth Street school, though it was a bit early. It was an extra service that he and Natalia paid for, the walking home of Amelia, though he or Natalia, usually he, took her in the mornings more or less at 9 o’clock. Sometimes Jack telephoned the school at half past 3 and said he would pick Amelia up. By the time Jack got to Grove Street, he had not spotted Linderman or Amelia with her warden, so he went on home.
Yesterday and today he had been working on pen and ink spots. He had done five yesterday and two so far today, in his preferred manner with no pencil preparation. His spots looked different to him now, and not bad. A couple of times a month, Jack peddled his portfolio to magazine offices, left some of his stuff, and returned a week or so later to get the results. Now suddenly he was not in the mood to do another spot.
So Elsie was gay! Amazing. Even more amazing when Jack thought of the closet he had just seen in the bedroom on Minetta Street, three yards long and crammed with frothy dresses, long skirts of every color imaginable. The floor of the closet had been full of high-heeled shoes, gilded slippers, sandals with straps that appeared to go up to the wearer’s knees, sexy high boots. A lavender ostrich feather had leaned in a corner of the bedroom. Gay. Was Linderman onto that? Jack certainly wasn’t going to enlighten him. Linderman seemed to be warning Elsie against prostitution. Jack now saw Elsie’s enormous bed in a different light. Elsie and the girl called Genevieve made love on that broad Elysian field.
From a corner of his worktable Jack pulled out a rectangle of sleek red paper. Jack had a small collection of such paper which would not take ink or pencil, but would take grease pencils. Such paper came from the covers of company stock report magazines that arrived addressed to Natalia usually, though Jack got a few. Jack tore off the glossy covers, some of which had blank sides. Now he took a yellow grease pencil and drew a dancing female nude composed of curves and near circles. The hip curves turned inward at the waist, the head was a curve inclining left, the figure stood on one foot, while the other foot touched nothing. He drew the shoulder and arm on both sides in curves that made breasts. Tight and hot, Jack thought, pleased. While the yellow grease was wet and even removable with his thumb, if he had wished to remove it, he rubbed the tip of his forefinger along every line, softening it. It was like sculpting. Now it was finished, a portrait of Elsie, dancing. He propped it up at the back of his worktable. In fifteen or twenty minutes, it would be quite dry. The hint of short hair was good, flaring out with the swirl of motion. No facial features. Still, it was Elsie.
The doorbell sounded. Amelia had arrived.
12
In the next several mornings, Jack did not happen to see Ralph Linderman when he went jogging. Jack was doing his jogging or running later, because the dawn came ever later, and maybe Linderman was earlier than he, airing God after he got home from work when it was still dark.
In November, Jack began work on an assignment that Trews had offered him. This was an account of a long hike in Tibet and over its mountains by a young American who had camped out among peasants and survived dangerous days alone and lost in freezing temperatures. Jack went to the Public Library on 42nd Street for picture research. Trews wanted his fantasy figures, his oddball types, but Jack still had to find out what a cooking pot looked like in Tibet, and even a yak, not to mention what the local clothing looked like.
Jack had not thought of Linderman in days, when he suddenly saw him at close range in Rossi’s grocery store, with a couple of cans in one hand and God’s leash in the other. Miles away in thought at the time, Jack felt a small shock, and moved his head in a way that was not quite a nod when Linderman saw him. Jack concentrated on the display of cold cuts behind the glass. There were a couple of other customers in the store. Linderman seemed to be waiting his turn to pay.
“Afternoon, Mr Sutherland,” said Linderman.
“Good afternoon, sir,” Jack replied. He remembered his promise to Elsie. He gave his order to the elder Rossi: a half-pound of gorgonzola and a quarter-pound of salami sliced as thinly as possible.
Linderman assembled his purchases on the counter, and Johnny Rossi took his money. Then Linderman came over to Jack, carrying his brown paper bag. “I did want to have a word with you, Mr Sutherland. I’d like to explain myself better.” Linderman’s voice was soft and serious.
Jack felt boredom already, swift and paralysing. Get it over with, he told himself. “Yes. Well—
I’ll be through here in a minute.” Jack did not like the two Rossis even knowing that he was acquainted with Linderman. Jack paid.
Then they were out on the sidewalk, in the cool sunshine.
“I don’t think I made myself very clear in my letter to you,” Linderman went on. “Maybe I offended you. I really didn’t mean to, but I must have or you would have answered. I realized later that I hadn’t put my address down—on the letter—”
“You didn’t offend me. Certainly not.” Jack glanced at Linderman’s heavy face, the creases down both cheeks, the self-righteous brown eyes. Linderman had shaved today. “The girl you mentioned—Elsie, she has a job, you know. She’s not wasting her time—in the way you seem to think. If she’s up late, well, she’s just enjoying herself. Like all young people.”
Linderman shook his head as if Jack were quite off the track. “I realize she’s young. That’s why she’s worth trying to help.—Oh, excuse me, please.”
God was going to do something, and Linderman carefully tugged him into the gutter. The fat, hunched back made the dog look more than ever like a lop-eared pig.
Jack took a breath. “Since you’re interested in her welfare, Mr Linderman, I’m sure you wouldn’t want her to lose her job. She might lose it, if you come into the coffee shop and talk to her. Her boss is annoyed about that.”
Linderman’s eyes widened with an amazement that did not look feigned. “She told you that? It’s absurd! I have a cup of coffee there now and then. Of course she tries not to hear what I have to say!”
Jack hung on, staring as if fixated at Linderman scooping up the dog’s mess, dropping it into a plastic sack he had brought with him. “Let the girl lead her own life, Mr Linderman. I thought you were anti-church, anti-stuffiness.” Jack attempted a smile.