—No, Mister Glick. They was just a gang, is all.
—Jewish, Italians, anything? Irish?
—They didn’t say nothing, Mister Glick. They didn’t look like nothing. Just kids. But they wasn’t Jewish, I don’t think. They didn’t have no books with them. I think it’s broke.
He took his hand from his shoulder. I could see the lump; his collarbone had been smashed.
—They had a baseball bat, he said.
—Did they frisk you?
—No, Mister Glick. Whacked me hard, is all.
—And they didn’t say anything? Warn you or anything?
He looked at Joe before he spoke.
—No, Mister Glick.
But I didn’t see it.
—No, Mister Glick.
Until months later.
—They didn’t say nothing, not evens to each other. Just whacked me on the shoulders, is all. A couple of times, then some more. Then they beat it.
He shuddered.
—They couldn’t reach your head, I said.
He tried to smile.
—They was a pot of shrimps, at that.
—Good man, I said. —We’ll get you fixed up.
—Thanks, Mister Glick.
—No problem.
I picked up his hat and beat the dust off it. I put it back on his head.
—Don’t worry about anything, I said. —Look after Hooper, Joe.
I left Joe to deal with Hooper, to get him to a doctor, the hospital, to slip him a folding bonus and another for his mammy. That gave me time to think, as I ran; it was something I was good at. And I could watch out for eyes watching me – something else I was good at, although that extra New York level, the roofs, made it a harder job of work. I ran on the melting street – the asphalt tried to grab me. But it wasn’t the asphalt. There was old water under me; I could feel its pull for the first time since I’d left Dublin.
I stopped; I had to.
I could feel the water, but it was different here. It wasn’t flowing, rushing, the water of escape. I was on top of still water. Stagnant, ancient, evil. I could feel it, warm, oily, creeping to my feet. I tried to move. The shouts and screams of the city’s throats and engines drowned the cries of the dead that were held by that water below. I suddenly knew that they were there. There were no black faces walking past me, and none driving the trucks and automobiles that fought for passage between the barrows – I’d never noticed the absence – but they were below me, and not far below, their bloody, soil-blacked fingernails inches from my feet, hanged men, mutilated rebel slaves, trapped forever in water that went nowhere. And more dead men below them, red men, screaming to be heard, screaming their defeat and rage.
I pulled my feet away. I stood on fingers that were finally cracking the surface. I ran. I ran a path through the traffic and dust. I was on dry land again, nowhere but the present.
It was fine.
I already had to look behind my back, to the sides and in the air. And now the ground was after me. The place was older than Dublin.
But it was fine. I was running on new streets. My legs were still a young fella’s. I’d only stopped for a second, a breather. I was running and looking again.
Hooper had been jumped. By kids, the same kind as himself. But they hadn’t taken or demanded anything. I’d been a kid once and I’d hopped on other kids, but always for money, food, anything to sell. It was no different here. Hunger was hunger. Fear was fear. These kids were fighting for their place on the couple of streets that were the world; growing up, grabbing the chance, shoving up to the big guys, the Yiddish Gomorra or the Italian gangs, or the Polish or the Irish, terrified behind the strut, praying behind their sneers. Street kids measured everything. A kid here could earn a buck for poisoning a horse or a nickel for sharpening hairpins, to be stuck into the scabs who kept their mothers and sisters out of the sweatshops. They could steal anything – a pickle, a shirt, a Buick – and find a taker while they were still running. They could make serious bucks by waiting for dark and making Jewish lightning or Italian or Irish or German lightning – setting fire to the stores, stables, news-stands of those who thought they didn’t need protection. There was a kid on this street, and the next one and the next, for every job.
So, was Hooper’s broken collarbone a message back to me? From Johnny No? From someone else, other men I hadn’t met? Or others that I’d met before? I’d never held a baseball bat – I hadn’t seen the game being played – but I knew that a well-aimed swing could kill. I’d known the weight of my father’s wooden leg. Fast Olaf patrolled his roofs with a baseball bat under his arm. I’d seen him send a pigeon clean across Orchard Street, seen it sail right past the visiting nurse’s head as she took a shortcut across the roofs. They could have killed Hooper.
So, why?
I searched the sidewalks, and the ledges above; I looked on the stoops, in the doorways that I passed. No one staring back, or deliberately not looking. I swerved back onto the sidewalk, so I could work the hinge, look behind without too much of the twist that would have given it away. No one coming after me, halting suddenly, turning away.
Maybe Hooper had known them. It wasn’t unlikely. Tall, good-looking, successful – he was memorable. And these were his streets. That was the thing of it: the streets were divided and subdivided, conquered and lost, reclaimed by grown mobs and kids and their sons and grandfathers, a constant multi-floored battle that went on forever; it was impossible to map or explain. The baseball bat was something between those kids and Hooper. It had been brewing when I was cycling across Ireland, when Hooper’s parents were walking across Europe. It had nothing to do with me.
But I didn’t believe that. I was sure of only one thing as I ran back past the organ-grinder’s monkey: that bat had been aimed at me. I glanced around me: nothing. But the dead water was with me all the way.
I ran all day. But I wasn’t on the lam. Fuck Johnny No or whoever’s stool pigeon was glaring at my back; I wasn’t running away. I ran past the store pullers, the thick men in derbys who patrolled the sidewalk.
—Guten suits today.
—Not interested today.
—Come on, pal. There’s a sheeny suit inside, waiting for you.
—I’m a busy man.
—Get ya coming back, schmuck.
I brought my clients the business but I had to bring them excitement too, the possibilities that came with the willingness to spend, to invest in themselves and me. There were sixteen dry-goods stores on a stretch of Orchard Street that took me three minutes to gallop. I had boys already toting boards for five, and I was putting the convincers on another four. These were village men; I was dragging them out of their territories. I had to deliver a little fever with their bigger profits.
I ran up the dark, airless stairs, all colours smothered by decades of coal smoke. Past the buzzing sweatshop, sawing away the hours and days of the women locked inside. I could feel the machines in my feet as I broke through the wall of lint, up. Up, past Fast Olaf’s home, and his half-sister’s. I listened for sound from inside – I listened as I climbed – but I heard nothing that was definitely hers, just the noises that belonged to every tenement everywhere. A song, a cough, dying, laughter. Every day, in ev-ery way. I sang it as I rose – better and better and better.
Mildred had come back for more soap, her eyes clear of hard life, her sneer a loose, uncertain thing.
—Got any more of that soap?
I had a cake of the stuff, waiting in my pocket.
—I got the cush here, she said.
And she opened her hand like a kid who’d been clutching a treasure. There were two dollars there on her palm, folded over again and again, to the shape of a very small box. She smiled, but she was worried.
I put my hand to my pocket and kept it there for exactly one New York second. She stared at the pocket.
—Need a job? I said.
And she nodded.
Up the stairs, climbing away from the sewing machines. Past the room where Bum
my Mandelbaum was making lead dimes and quarters. There were sacks of potatoes on the landing outside. Bummy put each brand new coin between two halves of a spud; in a day or two, the dime was shining and nothing like lead. He restitched the sacks and sold the spuds to the neighbourhood eateries. Bummy was slowly poisoning the population of the Lower East Side, and everyone knew and admired him for it. They even paid for their lead-spiced meals with quarters they knew came fresh from Bummy’s tiny hands.
Up, past Bummy’s. One last flight, through the hottest, deadest part of the house. To my favourite part of my new city, the floor with no ceiling, the roof. The roof of Manhattan. Where everything belonged to those who wanted it.
Mildred held the package in her hand. She fought the urge to dash – she had the goods. I saw the fight, admired the strength that kept her planted.
—What kinda job?
—Sales.
—Me?
—You.
—Gee whiz, she said, and blushed, angry at her readiness to be the sucker.
She looked at the soap in her hand.
—How much?
—Twenty a week, and commission.
She liked the word.
—Commission, she said. —That’s a cut, right?
—Right.
The red word on the board had been Steady’s idea.
He took the paint from a hole in his coat, a little tin with a red lid. His right hand did a crazy dance on its way to prise off the lid. I watched the sweat forming on his temples. Two black-painted fingernails tried to shift the lid.
—Been years, he said.
He grunted. The lid lifted and hung to the side on a thread of dry paint. We looked in.
—Enough, said Steady. —Got my milk?
He put the tin on the ground. And I handed him Fast Olaf’s brown-bag. He pulled out the cork with no big effort and threw it onto the air over Orchard Street. He put the bag to his mouth and pulled back his head. He took the bottle from his mouth, put it down, then picked up the tin. His hand was calm now, fit for shaving and surgery. He dipped his brush, and painted the word, without stencil or pencilled outline, just like that, in wild, wild red. The O was done in one clean sprint. The N was quicker, perfectly judged. He sang, very quietly – My country ’tis of thee – the L was alive and gorgeous, done while I still gazed at the N – Land of grape juice and tea. And the Y made me laugh, done in two cocky strokes.
He put the tin back on the ground and picked up another brush. It went into the black can, a big graceless giant beside the red.
I had to say something.
—Is that all?
—Trust me, he said, and painted the last word.
YOU
He threw the brush to the ground and picked up the brown-bag.
LET OUR RADIOS
SERENADE
YOU
AND
ONLY
YOU
Around us, the homers were suddenly restless. Fast Olaf was approaching. Under washing lines, over the low wall that divided this property from the one next door. He didn’t look at us. He unlatched a wire-mesh gate and, and telling himself to bend his head – I saw his lips move – he went into the coop.
Steady took the bottle from his mouth.
—That the kid makes this stuff?
—That’s him.
—He’s a fucking genius.
He looked at me, then nodded at the board.
—I know what you’re thinking. You want more. You want to run off and buy more red, and more shades of it.
It was more than he’d ever said before.
—A mistake, he said. —It’s perfect there. Fucking perfect. It draws the eye. Demands attention. It makes no sense. Only. The fuck is that about? You read it all. Ah. Pulling power. More of the red, yeah nice, but less power.
—What about other colours?
He was looking at Fast Olaf as he stirred the bath of liquor with his baseball bat.
—Nope.
He waved at the board; he seemed to be dismissing it – he wanted to fling it off the roof.
—Not for this medium, he said. —Posters now, that’d be different. Or magazines. But there’s no room for swank on these things. Resist the temptation.
He leaned out and touched the red, and looked at his fingertip.
—Ready for business, he said.
He looked at his finger shaking, tapping away at nothing.
—Just thought I’d try it, he said. —The good old red.
He looked away from his hand, let it drop to his side.
—Got thinking, he said. —Surprised me. Haven’t thought in years.
Again, he gazed at Olaf. He seemed to have forgotten that I was there. Then –
—Colour, he said. —It’s the sex appeal of the advertising business. And know how I know?
—How?
—I told them, the fucks.
—I thought you were a sign painter.
—Didn’t tell you what signs. The sex appeal of the business. Don’t remember what sex fucking is. But red there.
He nodded at the board.
—That’s sex. Even I see that.
He took up the brown-bag and pulled back his head.
—Do you actually need that stuff? I asked.
He stopped the bag’s journey but didn’t straighten up.
—Don’t get sentimental on me, he said.
I was on my way up, to Fast Olaf’s roof, to meet Steady again, to admire his latest magic. Out, through a gap made for smaller men than me. Out into the sun, to the roof and the glare and heat that always washed me, a barber’s towel that soaked the pain from my face and shoulders. The chimneys cut the world into sharp, expensive tiles. A man’s hat, a pigeon’s wing, a drifting sheet, their shadows were black, more solid than the real things that shimmered in the sun. A world waiting to be made and remade.
—Marketing consultant, I told Mildred. —How’s that sound?
We were in the back of Beep Beep’s taxi.
—Sounds good to me, he said over his shoulder.
—I wasn’t talking to you, I said.
—When you want my opinion, you’ll ask for it.
—That’s it.
—You’re the bird that’s paying.
—That’s right.
I spoke to her again.
—Happy with that, Mildred? Marketing consultant.
—I’ll say, she said. —You sure got the words. Consultant. Never been one of them before.
The title pleased her. She was doing a great job and enjoying it. She shrugged.
—It’s a bit like acting, I guess.
—Have you acted before?
—All my life, she said.
Mildred was the excitement. Colour was the sex appeal of the advertising business. Steady had told me that. The red on the board, and the shoulders that carried it. That was what sent women off buying drapes and cigars they hadn’t known they needed. But the clients, the winchells who forked out for the business, they needed the pull of sex too; they needed to feel the slow, caressing possibility of it. And it wasn’t red or shoulders with these guys; it was sex itself – the safe promise of sex. A woman was what those guys needed – they were all men – what they needed in front of their eyes. Dressed in red, sure, shoulders on her, fine – but a real live woman. No symbols, no parts, but the fact right there in front of them, safe on the other side of the counter.
And that was where Mildred came in. Other women bought and went. But Mildred lingered and usually didn’t buy.
—You Mister Stern?
—Yare.
—Love the sandwich board.
—Yare? So?
—Made me just want to come on in and buy all the cigars in your store.
The lines were mine; the delivery was out-and-out Mildred.
—Then just stay there a while, I told her. —Let him look at you. Let him want to touch that skin you’re after finding.
—That what a consultant does?
&nbs
p; —Yeah.
—Then I’ll do it.
—And don’t complicate things, I told her. —Don’t actually take it anywhere, if you know what I mean. Just linger a bit. Look a bit overwhelmed and giddy, and go.
—Listen, buster, said Mildred. —Talk to me like that again and you can find yourself a new consultant. I know what you want me to do. And I’ll do it. Overwhelmed, giddy, I’ll give them to you. And I know why. And I know something else, big words. What you want me to do don’t make me a consultant.
She slapped my leg.
—Call me a consultant, fine. But you ain’t looking at a numskull here.
The soap had released more than her skin. Mildred was making up for lost time, and she was running right beside me.
—Words, words, words. You need more than that, even if one or two of them is red.
She wrote $5 on a piece of paper, then ran a quick / through it. Under that, she wrote $4.
—That’ll do the trick, she said. —Add a buck to the price, then change your mind. Sex and a whole dollar back. Beats sex.
Most of the boards now featured red slashes across old black prices. The storekeepers giggled at the happy lie. Except the few.
—What? said Mister Stern. —I don’t know what a cigar costs? I’m an idiot?
And that was why Mildred was in the taxi with me. And why Fast Olaf’s half-sister had joined the list of my handsome employees.
—Oh, this and that, the half-one said when I’d asked her what she did for her money. —Sometimes, a hat-check girl. Sometimes, checking other stuff and things.
—How much does a hat-check girl make?
—Depends on the hat, daddio.
—Want to make a double sawbuck and commission?
—Commish? she said. —Some of the famous 10 per cent.
—More like five, and the nights will still be your own.
—Lead me to it.
So, while me and Mildred travelled in Beep Beep’s cab, Fast Olaf’s half-sister was bellying up to Levine’s counter and the other Front Street counters, looking like money very well spent to the tired men on the working side.
—Just stay there a—
—Yare yare, the half-sister interrupted. —Show them the blow-job mouth, then turn and walk away. Second nature to me, daddio.
She was fuckin’ dangerous.
Mildred looked out at the streets, the walls, windows. We were heading uptown, under the Second Avenue El. Up to the numbered streets, the streets too young and wobbly for names. Through the passage of white light and dark, cut by the El’s tracks and girders.