Oh, Play That Thing

  My time had come.

  —No, said Johnny No-Can-Do.

  —What?

  —You heard me. No can do.

  I’d expected the answer but not the face that came with it. His expression had none of the usual vaudeville, none of the grim fun that apologised for the big No that always strolled out when he opened his mouth. Even from behind the cigar smoke, it was clear as the early day outside: NO.

  He looked down at his desk and the half-bits of paper and stains.

  I picked up the boards.

  ITSPEP

  FOR

  COLDS AND COUGHS

  —Hey.

  I looked at Johnny No.

  —Up to me, I’d still say No. It’s up to bigger people, see. Understand?

  I carried the boards to his door.

  —Understand?

  —Yeah.

  —Remember that.

  Down four flights to Fulton Street. The heat and my disappointment pressed the straps in good and hard, into the ditches that now ran across my shoulders. A passing El shook the world and loosened the grime. I could see it; I could feel it sticking to me.

  Beep Beep was right.

  —You ain’t arrived till you don’t hear the El.

  The words I was lugging were careful and dull.

  GOOD FOR THE WHOLE

  FAMILY

  The things I could do with these boards, and more boards, a fleet of the things, carried by fine men like myself. The straps weren’t cutting; they were pushing, pressing at me to get on with it.

  —Fuck that, I said.

  —Talking to me, friend?

  Leon the Cob put a sack on top of the other sacks he was building into a wall at the edge of the path – the sidewalk. He was always there before me, selling corn, potatoes, cabbages, tomatoes, before the day got hold of them and turned them into mush. And his pickles, things I’d never seen or smelt until I reached New York – tubs of piccalilli, gherkins, pimentos – great names with a stink that took away all sound and heat when I held my face above them.

  Leon marched over and tapped my front board with a cob he’d just ripped from the top sack.

  —What about that Louise?

  He was talking about Louise Brooks, the movie woman; the same words, same conclusion, every morning. Today, I got there before him.

  —You fuck her good, I said.

  —I’ll do that, he said.

  —She’ll be grateful.

  —Yes, she will.

  He threw another sack onto the wall.

  —And her sister, my friend, is yours.

  —Thank you.

  —Thank her.

  My plan had been simple, and right: I was going to go out on my own. Lugging another man’s boards, I was another stiff, a mick fresh off the boat. Lugging my own boards, I was a man of business, a young man on the go. And not lugging them either; presenting them.

  But, No, the man had said.

  And fair enough. The boards were his, and the business that came with them, and his 60 per cent of Olaf’s 10 per cent of the booze money. I’d been hoping to buy the boards off him. But why set up some dope to take his business out from under him? So, fair enough. I couldn’t blame Johnny No.

  So what was I going to do?

  The answer was easy, now that I was out on the street. I’d rob the boards and lose myself. I’d stay well clear of Johnny No; there were other streets, and lots of them. At the end of business today there’d be a new me sitting at Hettie’s counter. The coming man in advertising, the new man in the new, new thing.

  The boards were weightless; they were wings and I was the man to flap them. But there was still one thing: Johnny No’s face. For a second back there in his office, for less than a second, less than the time it took to blink his yellow eyes, I’d seen Jack Dalton behind that desk, just after he’d let me read my own name on a piece of paper and sentenced me to death. (—I’m dead, I said.

  —Yes.

  —Because I’m a nuisance.

  —Because you’re a spy.

  —Oh, I said. —Fine. Were any of them really spies, Jack?

  —You killed plenty of them yourself, he said. —Of course they were.)

  But this was New York, not Dublin, and the sky was all around me, new and beautiful, waiting to be packaged. It pressed at me and gently rocked the boards. My boards. Johnny No was Johnny No, a small-talking man with a small-time head. And Jack Dalton was dead. Caught in the middle of reprisal and counter-reprisal, one hundred and three bullets had been taken from his body and for years, while it suited him, the bullet that mattered was claimed by Dinny Archer. Johnny No was no Jack Dalton. Jack would have loved New York. Johnny No didn’t even know it was outside his window.

  —Bad news comes to town, said Leon.

  I followed Leon’s eyes, and watched as the man went into Jimmy the Priest’s, a badly hidden flophouse further down the street, with four or five of his boys, through a doorway that was much too small for them.

  —Louis Lepke, said Leon. —Stay clear of that man, my friend.

  —I will, I said.

  I took the boards off. Then I leaned over the pimentos and let them wipe me clean.

  I lifted myself onto my elbows.

  —Say that again.

  —It’ll cost you, she said.

  —Name your price.

  —A buck.

  —Only if you put your heart into it.

  —Done deal, daddio. Lie back and learn.

  And Fast Olaf’s half-sister lifted herself slowly and hung there over me.

  —Day by day—

  And slid slowly down.

  —in ev-ery way—

  Her mouth came down to my ear.

  —I am getting better and better—

  She was over me again.

  —and better and better—

  And down.

  —and better and better and—

  By the time I came she was sitting on a chair beside the bed examining her face in a mirror that threw the sun all around the room. She was fully clothed, all set for the great outdoors.

  —Value for the dollar?

  —I didn’t pay for the ride, I said. —But yeah. You’ve got ambition.

  —I got that, she said, to the mirror. —In spades.

  I sat up.

  —You believe it, I said. —Don’t you? The day-by-day thing.

  —Sure I believe it. In ev-ery way.

  She got hold of an eyelash; I heard the tiny click of her fingernails as they captured it and pulled.

  —It’s the thing, she said.

  She rubbed her fingertips and I watched the lash glide slowly to the floor.

  —Wanna know more?

  —Yeah.

  —Wanna pay me?

  —I’ll wait.

  —Waiting is dying.

  She stood up.

  —Be seeing you, daddio.

  And she climbed out the window, onto the fire escape. I could still see her in the window long after her heels on the steps had died.

  Fast Olaf was on the roof, baking his head in the sun. He was leaning over a bath of his ten-year-old malt, stirring it with what looked like a ladle.

  —How’s it going, Eddie?

  He looked over his shoulder and stood up straight. It was a ladle, and there was a pigeon lying in it, legs up, head back. He walked the few steps to the side of the building, tipped the ladle, and the homer fell with a thump that I was too far up to hear.

  I took the boards off my shoulders and put them, like cards, leaning into each other on the tarred roof.

  —Grand day, I said.

  Fast Olaf shrugged.

  We loaded the latest bottles into the muslin pockets.

  —Did you take out the feathers this time, Eddie?

  Fast Olaf shrugged.

  —The big ones, he said. —The fuck you care?

  —Fair enough, I said. —I have an announcement. Are you listening?

  —Yare.

  —I’m
going out on my own, I told him.

  I made sure every word was heard and understood.

  —The boards are mine now.

  I pointed at them.

  —They’re mine now. Do you have a problem with that?

  I watched him thinking.

  —Someone else’s problem, he said. —The fuck, I give a fuck?

  —Good, I said. —Business as usual, yeah?

  He scanned the sentence as it passed him.

  —Yare.

  —Fine.

  It was a hectic time, dropping off Olaf’s ardent spirits, collecting more, forcing the time to cold-call the businesses of the Lower East Side. I needed Olaf’s business until I had a squad of men on the streets. I deducted my take – 23 per cent and rising; his half-sister was bleeding the poor fucker dry – and I did it while I ran.

  I’d choose my street, I’d examine it door by door, in the blunt half-hour before first thing in the morning, just out of Hettie’s bed, an hour after Hettie. She made her noise in the dark. Found the clothes – the stockings, apron. The shoes on the bare boards. The smell of her flour a map of her moves. Her echoes kept me company, prodded me out of the scratcher, into the small part of the day that made it down the air shaft to Hettie’s window. It was always dark and the window had to be kept shut against the coal-gas outside, pressing at the glass.

  But I was glad to be up, a half-step ahead of the world. I’d walk the street – a street a day – and compose as I went. Compose first, and call later. The cold call. I loved it. I delivered the goods before they were asked for.

  —Mister Levine about?

  LEVINE’S DRY GOODS –

  WITH PRICES LIKE

  LEVINE’S

  I’d have the words ready, up on the boards in their black and artful glory. I’d walk into the shop – and let them read – take off the boards – and let them read – lean them together – let them read.

  YOU’D BE

  WET

  NOT TO BUY THEM

  62 FRONT STREET

  The boards were painted on Fast Olaf’s roof. One of his clients was a sign painter, or had been before the booze gave his hands the yours-forever shakes. But, with a brown-bag safe in his left fist, he could hold a brush in his right and deliver lines and curls that brought purple tears to his eyes.

  —I was the best, said Steady.

  —Still are.

  —Best in the business.

  —Don’t doubt you.

  —That fuck, Picasso? He’d clean my fucking brushes.

  I didn’t even have to buy the bottle. Delivery was all he demanded.

  —Mister Levine about? I said.

  I took off the boards and made them kiss. They stood in front of the counter.

  —Mister Levine?

  —That’s right, I said.

  —There are three Mister Levines.

  —Are you one of them?

  —Nope.

  —Well—

  —Want to know what my wife was called before she gazed into my eyes here and took the plunge?

  —Levine?

  —That’s right.

  —Congratulations.

  —She’s a baby doll.

  —I’m sure she is.

  —I’m sure you’re right.

  —So, I said. —Your name’s not Levine. But would you be, more or less, the fourth Mister Levine?

  —Well, I guess the other three would have something to say about that.

  He pointed at the ceiling.

  —It’s getting pretty crowded up there. But, between you and me—

  The voice didn’t drop. If anything, he raised it.

  —Yes is the answer to that question. I’m first banana around here.

  —Good, I said. —I’m talking to the right man.

  —I guess you are, at that. But am I listening to the right man?

  —Yes, you are.

  He listened, and so did all the other bright guys who ran lower Manhattan’s village commerce. They listened, and saw the boards, and more boards, then hoardings and neon, the whole sky lit by the stuff. They saw where I was going, in the dingy rooms and back offices, and they smelt it, the cold bracing air that expelled the dead heat of the day, and they heard it – the booming calls of construction men, the steam shovels, the jack-hammer, the saw, the hook, the till – and they felt it on their fingertips – the money, the cloth, chrome, the skin – and they wanted to come with me.

  —Beat it.

  Most of them did.

  THE SANDWICHES

  THAT

  BUILT AMERICA

  —Mister Sauls?

  —Beat it.

  I put down the boards and let them kiss. I let him read the words.

  —D’you like it? I asked him.

  —Yare, I like it.

  He stared at the message, his name above and the Beaver Street address below, the whole package standing there waiting for him.

  He looked away, and stared at me. And spoke.

  —But you wanna know something, Mister Sandwich Board Man? My customers, 90 per cents of them, can’t read American. And the other 10 per cents, they can read but they know the truth. That my sandwiches are good sandwiches, and that’s it. Good. No more. I don’t tell lies. I give them sandwiches that fill them. They eat them because they’re hungry. Nothing beside. So take your smart words there and beat it.

  He stopped looking at me.

  —Go on, scram.

  But most of them came with me. Those first weeks, I was selling on the run, subletting the space on my boards.

  HOME

  OF THE

  HAPPY HAIR –

  LADY’S HAIR BOB – 25C

  I walked for the barber in the morning and for Hettie in the evening, in the aching hours when all the other stiffs were done and heading home. But I wasn’t a stiff any more, and I was loving it. I was stretching the day to new limits, forcing new seconds into every minute. The sun was following me, on the back of my neck all day. Not burning or hammering at my brain; it was trying to keep up, and failing. I’d feel the coolness of tomorrow’s shadow on my neck, and I’d know that I was winning.

  And Fast Olaf’s half-sister wasn’t far behind me.

  She sat up on the bed in front of me.

  —Watch me. I’m a wow.

  And I watched.

  She held her nipples.

  —See these, daddio?

  —I’m broke, I told her.

  —No, she said. —I want to show you. A lesson, you know. See them?

  She pulled them, let go, pulled them, and let go.

  —They’re getting bigger, she said.

  —That’s what usually happens.

  —No, look. They’re getting bigger.

  I watched her as she worked. I could see it in her eyes, in the deep, beautiful spaces where they’d been a minute before. She sat at the far end of the bed, miles from me. I saw her lips. I could trace the words – better and better – while she ran the course of the sentence again and again – in ev-ery way – while the room got darker and her mother in the room beyond the kitchen stopped hammering. The room was night now. The machines below – they never stopped – were a part of the half-sister’s chant – in ev-ery way – again and again and again. I sat there for hours and watched.

  And, suddenly, she was with me.

  —Pow.

  She looked at me, and down.

  —See?

  She crawled over the bed and got up on her knees.

  —See?

  They were right there in front of me, and she was right: her nipples were bigger. They were longer, the length of a good-sized finger, tip to first knuckle. She held them and stared at me.

  —Ev-ery thought entirely filling my mind becomes true and transforms itself into action. As the guy said. Think titties, be titties.

  —Who’s the guy?

  —Me to know.

  She held her nipples again.

  —I love ’em. Don’t you?

  —Yep. r />
  —Know why I’m doing it?

  —For me.

  She laughed. She threw her head back and laughed at the ceiling, and stopped.

  —The market wants it, she said. —The flappers are the thing, see. All the girls out there want to be flappers. No tits, no hips. That’s what the girls want. But that’s not what the boys want, you know. And the boys are the market right now. Always and forever. The boys want tits, tits I can give them. Want to feel them?

  —I told you. I’m broke.

  —Broke broke, or broke kinda?

  —Broke broke.

  —Pity, she said. —I like you. But—

  —Business is business.

  —Too right, daddio. Even on my day off. Long hair too. The girls want it short, the boys like it long. But hair grows anyways, so it don’t need imagination. Just time. Which I ain’t got, if you’re as broke as you say you are.

  And she was gone. I heard her on the fire escape – in ev-ery way – and gone.

  I needed more backs, more boards on the backs. I needed fine men, walking ads for the ads they carried. Not the sad-faced, unshaven guys who hid inside their boards and hauled them like a punishment through the streets. I was sorry for them – I knew those faces – but they weren’t getting on to my payroll. I wanted men who could sell by the spring in their stroll, by the way their hats sat on their heads.

  —Bring your cap down to the river, I told the kid. —And throw it in. Then get yourself a good-looking hat.

  —Like yours?

  —Like mine.

  —You pay for it?

  —Yeah, I said. —I’ll pay for it. Then we can see how you go about paying me back.

  —That’s a fedora, right.

  —That’s right.

  —What’s the colour on it?

  I had the right man.

  —Get your own colour.

  He was already away, picking his hat; I could see it in the way he stared at mine. He was Beep Beep’s sister’s boy. Seventeen and bursting out of himself. He was tall, a bit shorter than me – I’d always be able to look down at him – and handsome in the way all the Yanks were after a few generations of American food and air.

  We were at the corner of the Bowery and Bayard. I was keeping a distance between myself and Johnny No. I hadn’t seen or heard from him, or & Son, or anyone else. It was a month since I’d walked off with his boards. A hot month, and this was another hot day. The kid took off his cap.