Stephen O’Kelly’O climbing shadowy steps up into the bus station. The roar of diesels as these great land cruisers come and go, seeking and returning from destinations. And my own destination only a little more than half an hour left to go. Already suddenly three o’clock in the afternoon. Detour these last minutes away through the bus station. In this endless stream of people. Over the tannoy announcements for distant places. Rochester, Albany, Princeton, Mount Kisco. This man approaches with a sad mystifying look on his face as if all the world’s conundrums were all at once being dumped on him, and talks to me as if I were to blame.
“Hey, pass the word. Wrong information is being given out at Princeton.”
“Thank you sir, for telling me.”
One does not want to expostulate to a perfect stranger and in reply say, as I was tempted to in the good old-fashioned New York vernacular, hey bud, why should I pass the word when I don’t give a good goddamn flying fuck that wrong information is goddamn fucking well being given out at Princeton. So shove it up your ass, will yuh. And hey, what’s Princeton, some kind of bologna sandwich. But the seemingly crazy individual was much in earnest and said the same thing to the guy walking behind me. Who as it happened, was extremely grateful to hear the information. As I stopped to listen to a brief ensuing conversation I at least had the pleasant distraction of focusing my eyes on a girl who was looking at me and whose quite marvelous face I had just previously caught as she was passing me by. She was an inspiration of womanhood. And now following her slowly walking in front of me, her leather coat sweeping about her beautiful legs, and her long flowing brown hair halfway down her back. Her calves just as were Sylvia’s, splendidly athletic in her flat-soled shoes. She slowed and suddenly stopped and turned to me, as if knowing I was behind her. Except for a sadness in her eyes, her face had an inspiringly healthy look of an autumn apple just plucked shining at dawn’s early light from a tree in New Hampshire.
“Excuse me, sir. Could you please tell me, sir. Do you know when the next bus is to Suffern.”
“Sorry, I don’t know. Only wish I did, to tell you. But I did hear that wrong information is being given out at Princeton.”
With the vaguely familiar beauty of her face and a strange pleading in her lovely big pale blue eyes she seemed to wait for me to say more. Somehow I realized my facetiousness was inappropriate and I apologized again. She stood there in my way, her lips seeming to struggle to speak, moving but silent of words, as if she wanted me to stay and talk with her and didn’t know how to fully convey the invitation. She must have been aware, even as I was out of sight walking behind her, and picking up the scent in the air, that I was admiring her. Her eyes searching my face as if for some recognition and somehow asking for companionship which she must have sensed would have been forthcoming. And it would have been. But as it was now getting late to meet Dru, what could I do but apologize.
“I am sorry.”
“So am I. And that I’m not going to Princeton.”
And I found myself tempted to say I had to rush to meet somebody but to tell me how I could contact her again, an address, a telephone number. But so discouraged she seemed, and before I could ask anymore, her face cast down, she turned away, walking back in the direction from which we had come. Watching her go I was hoping she would come back. For she stopped just as she was about to disappear in the crowd. She turned and looked back at me. With the most shattering look I have ever seen. Her lost-looking eyes, that made you want to run to her. Throw your arms around her. Squeeze comfort, calm, and peace into her soul. And whisper to her that everything was going to be all right.
I was in a dilemma as whether to stay or go. She was, as she turned away, vanishing into the crowd, pausing to reach into her large cloth gypsy bag. And then moved on. The moment gone for all eternity. As I, too, go. Count my steps again. On parade, marching. A cadence forever branded on the mind. Your left, your left, your left, right, left. My mother kept a picture of all her three sons who were in the war at her bedside. Just as she would wait through the night, sitting in the dark on the front sun-porch, until all the children who had gone out had come home. The sound of a gunshot. Just behind me. A shiver down the spine. Duck. Hurry another couple of steps out of the line of fire. Waiting to smell the suffocating smoke and cordite, sweat and stench, as if I were back in my ship’s turret instead of a bus station. Look around. People gathered. Voices raised.
“Call an ambulance.”
“You mean a hearse, fella.”
At the edge of the crowd of onlookers, a claw ripping across one’s heart. On this concrete floor, amid the filth of gray blots of chewing gum and crushed cigarette butts, there she was. Through the legs of the crowd. The girl with the look of an autumn apple. Fallen to the floor, a pistol in her hand. White bloody bits of brain showing through her long flowing brown hair and blown out all over the little space she lies in. In her wonderful simple clothes. As if she were going to walk the autumnal hills of Vermont as the leaves were turning in their color that she so resembled alive in life. Nothing now but her wholesome beauty prostrate on the ground. Blood spattered everywhere. One outstretched hand. Fingers reaching lifeless at her possessions. A small notebook, a pen, tiny mirror and ring fallen from her bag. Voices. And my own loudest of all.
“Hey you son of a bitch, put that right back, it belongs to the girl. Or I’ll wrap your goddamn guts around your backbone.”
Immediate upon death in this city is theft. And her hand reaching as if to cling to that she most cherished, and not till my last-uttered violent words did this bastard put the ring back. Belonging to this girl who in her wandering of this world carried within her little cloth bag of pretty colors all her tiny treasures. Said “Excuse me, sir. Could you please tell me, sir.” And she must have been asking how she could ever go from sadness and despair to joy again. And all I could tell her was that wrong information is being given out at Princeton. Which maybe she didn’t know was also the other side of the deeply flowing Hudson River, in the same direction as Suffern. Turn away now with my own sigh and heave of sorrow. Filled with tears. More broken strings. There was music in her voice. Magic in her brief words. Their sweet apple sound. As if I had known her all my life. Childhood sweethearts. And we loved each other. Born and grown up in the same valley. By a river. Near the same hill. Or on the next street in the same town. “Excuse me, sir. Could you please tell me, sir. Do you know when the next bus is to Suffern.” And not needing anymore to know. And perhaps had I known, she wouldn’t now lie so still, pale blue eyes staring nowhere. Surrounded by this swarm of loveless strangers. With only their curiosity. And now police come. One with his gun drawn, pushing back the insistent crowd. His partner picking up the shell and taking her pistol. Asking questions. Who saw this. And pressed as I had been to get to the Yiddish Theatre, I couldn’t, couldn’t leave her. Not like this, all dead and all alone. She was someone I’d met and knew, even if only for seconds. Wait the minutes away until the stretcher bearers come. And they came. Gently lifting her form. Placing her lifeless arms across her chest. A shoe off. Her couple of trinkets and cloth bag beside her. Her face half-covered with strands of her long brown hair. And carry her out of sight, leaving only a darkened red stain over which feet pass now. At just after three o’clock in the afternoon, this terrible occurence. Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings in all its somberness flooding through my mind. The high screams of the violins ringing in the ears, announcing this tragedy. And I went to see. The bus she wanted had already left before she spoke to me. And I could have saved her life.
Stephen O’Kelly’O standing in the crowded front of the bus station. The figures moving around him. Amid the arriving and departing in this shouting and screaming city. Where it seems I’ve walked this day the longest of miles. Taxis pulling up. People with their luggage getting out. People with their luggage piling in. Destinations. Take me to the Taft Hotel. To the Dixie. To the Edison. Park Central. Algonquin. To the St. Moritz, where old Max stayed overlooking
Central Park when briefly in from Chicago. And take me, too. To escape from death and hell.
“Where to, buddy.”
“Seventh and Fifty-eighth, please.”
Sit stopping, starting, speeding and honking through all this tawdriness as tears fall from my eyes. Slow to a halt for a red light. Taxi driver glancing in his mirror. Turns to speak over his shoulder.
“Hey, are you all right, buddy.”
“Yes I am, thank you.”
“Well you ask when you know in a city as big as Brooklyn, the Bronx and Manhattan tragedy is happening every second around the clock. And things are happening out on Staten Island, too. You kind of keep your eye out for somebody who might be in trouble. I was four years in the war. Eighth Army. You ain’t wearing a Ruptured Duck, but I know by just looking, guys who’ve been in the war.”
Stephen O’Kelly’O alighting from the taxi in front of the Yiddish Theatre. Taxi driver, the side of his face covered in a scar, handing back the change one told him to keep.
“It’s okay, buddy. My policy. I don’t take a tip from veterans or when I carry what I think is sorrow in my cab. Had a guy yesterday, no hands, just hooks like the ends of wire coat hangers coming out of his sleeves. Iwo Jima. Sorry about the little accident. I’ll say something else, too. Not many of my passengers ever say please, or thank you.”
Stephen O’Kelly’O under the canopy of the Yiddish Theatre. Late. Twenty minutes. In this city never predictable. While my good friend the taxi driver from the Eighth Army was turning around to tell me of his considerateness, he nearly killed us driving up on the back of another taxi stopping for a red light. The driver in front, getting out to view the damage, dismissed it and forgave him with a disdainful wave of the hand. A rakishly stylish-looking gentleman on the sidewalk pausing to watch. And, in Max’s brokerish way, announcing to the two taxi drivers, “I say there, you two. Assert your mannish instincts. Find fault and fight. Go ahead, hit him. Ask him if he wants to be an advert for a casket company. And I agree to referee.”
As always in this city, the next moment is invariably an unexpected surprise, never giving you a chance to learn about the metropolis. Just when tragedy submerges the spirit and the harshness one encounters seems to overwhelm, a thoughtful kindness erupting seems to beget another. Or a savant joker to intervene. And benevolence emerges. As might, in the midst of mournful cello chords, come the cheer of grand orchestral blasts. Just as, after all the violence and death of the war, camaraderie is still to be found. Together with maybe an eternal world-weary sadness left in the eyes. Such a young girl couldn’t have been in the war. And yet what whirlpool of despair could have sucked her spirit down enough to make her want to die. To be swept up and taken away with the human debris of this city as are the pieces of bodies taken up piece by piece out of the subway tracks. Glittery-eyed thousands come aspiring from the corn-growing plains, from Kentucky gulches and gullies, and out of the potato fields of Idaho and westward all the way to the California shore of the Pacific Ocean. To dare their lives here on this deep stone emplacement of Manhattan Island where the drills and dynamite dig to send the tall spires up into the sky. Where stardom awaits in so many dreams. To then be crushed by the endless friendless indifference. Smothered under the doom of loneliness. And here I have rushed and wait outside a venue for the language of an ancient world to be heard. For a Dru who may have already been. Found me not here, and now is gone and will never come back because I am late. Stare up at the soaring gray edifice of Max’s athletic club across the street. Three giant windows where inside Max said they had a swimming pool. A palace dedicated to the manly sports. Frequented by many prominent social and political figures who could afford the membership fees. How ya doin’. I’m doin’ fine. In this city where I was born. Grew up. Was early indoctrinated. Knowing girls like the pock-marked girl, and the desperate effort she made giving the potbellied blow jobs so that it enabled her to take groceries back to her hungry father and brother. She finally admitted she had her nose busted when she spat the sperm of the Irish Roman Catholic man who wouldn’t pay her right back into his face.
And here I am, Stephen O’Kelly’O outside the Yiddish Art Theatre and across from Max’s athletic club, whose gray elevations go soaring into the sky and only with a quarter left in change that the taxi driver wouldn’t take as a tip. Asked the pocked-marked girl what would happen if she raised her price to two dollars and fifty cents. She said she thought business would suffer. When she first started out, she took what anyone would give her which she was glad to get. And the demand grew so she named a price. Took her customers up to the roofs of buildings. And blew them too in elevators before they reached the top. Where she held out her hand ready to say thanks. And here I wait for someone who can buy and pay for anything she wants. And knowing she’s not going to come makes the minutes passing terrible. But wait just in case she does come. Walk to the corner and back. And take one last look at the Yiddish Theatre program. At least these are a people by whom music is seriously regarded and from whose race great composers and instrumentalists come.
A long and opaque-windowed gleaming black chauffeured limousine pulling up to the curb. A black-uniformed, peak-capped chauffeur getting out. Crossing the pavement and tapping Stephen O’Kelly’O on the shoulder. Who swings around, making the chauffeur jump back in shock.
“Excuse me sir, but Mrs. Wilmington is waiting for you in the car.”
Stephen O’Kelly’O crossing the pavement. Bumping into a pedestrian. “Excuse me. I am most heartily sorry.” But she has come. Under an assumed name. Climb in. The soft-upholstered, glass-enclosed interior. The dim light. The city shut out. A chinchilla rug across her knees. God she can be stunning and even more beautiful than ever. Her hair swept back tight on her head as it was in my dream. A smile on her face. The very tiny division between her front teeth. Patting the seat beside her with a wink of her eye. A big glass arises to cut us off from the chauffeur. Her welcoming affection so eases the pain that I come to her with. And one hears “The Great Gate of Kiev” in Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition.