Underworld

  “Matthew Shay.”

  His own name stunned him, coming from her lips.

  “See me before you leave the room.”

  With his two assigned mates he slid open the cloakroom doors and got his coat and waited for the room to empty and then presented himself at Sister’s desk.

  She had tight blue eyes and thin lips and a nose that was slightly bumpy up near the bridge.

  “In the schoolyard yesterday. You were huddled with several others. Looking at a magazine.”

  The terror of being alone with Sister Edgar.

  “I would like to know. Firstly. The name of the magazine.”

  She leaned on a corner of the desk lightly twirling her beads, the big crucifix moving in a wobbly spin with Christ’s body bowed out from the cross.

  “Secondly. A summary of the contents.”

  The answers passed through his mind.

  1. Movieland magazine.

  2. Full-page faces of Rita Hayworth and Lana Turner. Also, Mario Lanza’s Heart Stood Still. There were articles about stars he’d never heard of. There were ads for French nighties and dance panties.

  What if she asked him about these things?

  Sister peered closely, waiting. He kept his hands behind his back to conceal his gnawed fingernails and the shreds of dead skin at the edges.

  Would he have to explain that a dance panty is when they embroider a fox-trotting couple on the leg of a lady’s underwear?

  And what if the magazine was banned by the Legion of Decency and she asked him who it belonged to? Although she would never end a sentence with a preposition.

  “Matthew. Yes?”

  If he had a choice between lying to Sister Edgar and snitching on a classmate, he’d have to snitch, instantly and remorselessly. And what about the ads all over the back of the magazine for bust creams and better bust contours?

  Matthew-yes was not a question. It was a summons to urgency and truth. And he told her the name of the magazine and who was on the cover and what was inside, sticking to the romances and heartbreaks of the stars, and Sister seemed interested and pleased.

  He was surprised and encouraged and became less tentative, describing the Hollywood homes of certain stars, and Sister asked little leading questions, trying to obscure her interest by looking out the window, and he grew confident and expansive, speaking rapidly and more or less uncontrollably, making things up when he couldn’t recall the details of a story or a photograph, feeling a sense of desperate elation, and Sister was eating it up.

  She knew a lot about the stars. Their favorite flavors and worst insect bites and their wallflower nights in high school. Their basic everydayness inside the cosmetic surgeries and tragic marriages. She looked out the window and asked him sly testing questions and dropped little comments here and there.

  He was able to stand outside the scene, hearing his own voice, watching the babbling boy at ease in the company of the hooded nun. But he wasn’t completely unwary. It was her after all, habit and hood. The cloth was daunting. She was all cloth. She was a wall of laundered cloth. A woman of the cloth.

  In the schoolyard after lunch Richard Stasiak did an amazing thing. Matty saw it without knowing for a moment quite what he’d seen. Richard Stasiak wore underwear so shabby and itchy and threadbare that he unbuttoned his fly and stuck his hand in there and pulled the underwear right off his body, yanking the ratty thing out of his fly and throwing it at Mary Feeley, who skipped away backwards, hands to her mouth as if she’d seen something it was best to keep unspoken.

  Then they all went into class again.

  Nick grabbed a ride every morning with another packer in the plant, waiting on a cold corner in the dark and then driving down to the assend of the Bronx where one river does a curl into the other and the ice-cream plant sits in the weeds like a pygmy prison on the Zambezi and this was better than taking the train in the lockstep drudge of the rush.

  After work he got dropped near the zoo and walked west past his brother’s school, where he saw a guy in one car giving a push to six guys in another. He came to the building where they lived and turned at Donato’s grocery and went thirty yards down the narrow street and swung into an opening that led down a set of concrete steps into the network of alleyways that ran between five or six buildings clustered here.

  Down the yards, this was called.

  Close-set buildings, laundry lines, slant light, patches of weeds, a few would-be gardens and bare ailanthus trees and the fire escapes that fixed fretwork patterns of light and shade on the walls and paved surfaces.

  Nick ducked under overhangs and passed through narrow openings. There were padlocked doors and doors ajar. There were basement passages connecting utility rooms and alcoves for trash cans and the old coal bins that housed furnaces now and the storage rooms where merchants on the street kept their inventory—a smell that was part garbage and part dank stone, a mildew creep and a thick chill, a sense that everything that ever happened here was retained in the air, soaked and cross-scented with fungus and wetness and coffee grounds and mops in big sinks.

  He’d spent his childhood half in the streets and half down the yards with a little extra squeezed in for the rooftops and fire escapes.

  He went past a furnace room and opened a door at the end of the passage. George the Waiter was sitting in a small storage room he used as a home, he said, away from home. He saw Nick in the doorway and nodded him in. George had an arrangement with the super. The room had a cot, a table, a rat trap, a couple of chairs, a couple of dangling lightbulbs and an array of paint cans and plumbing equipment, and Nick was pretty sure the arrangement involved a woman who came here to visit George, a woman he paid for sex, and the super let him use the room in exchange for some of the same, periodically, the woman taking care of the super and getting paid by George.

  “I figured you’d be here.”

  “I’m here,” George said.

  “I have a sixth sense about these things.”

  “You see through walls.”

  George pushed a deck of cards to the middle of the table and Nick sat down.

  “Just a sixth sense. I’m still working on walls.”

  “Did it tell you, this sense of yours, what happened in the poolroom in the middle of the night?”

  He was a bachelor for life, George, and he had two jobs and lived with his eighty-year-old grandmother and shot pool for whole days sometimes when he wasn’t working. And when he wasn’t doing any of these things Nick would find him here and they’d play a card game called briscola, pronounced breeshk in dialect, a game the old men played, and they played just to pass the time, which there were worse ways of doing because there was something about George the Waiter that Nick found interesting.

  “When, last night?”

  “Last night. The place got robbed.”

  “The poolroom got robbed?”

  “Three men with pistols,” George said and he made a sound like movie music.

  “Three men with pistols. You were there?”

  “I went to work in the restaurant six o’clock, went back at eleven and shot a game and then went home. Happened much later. They robbed the poker game.”

  “They robbed the poker game?”

  “You gonna repeat everything I say?”

  “I’m amazed by what I’m hearing.”

  “And stocking masks.”

  “And stocking masks. What’s that?”

  “A woman’s stocking, a nylon stocking.”

  “On their face?” Nick said.

  “No, on their legs. Madonn’, I thought this kid was smart.”

  “I’m amazed by what I’m hearing. On their face.”

  “On their face. So their features don’t show.”

  “Stocking masks. Three men. Where was what’s-his-name? The guy at the door who’s supposed to be armed and dangerous. Where was this Walls?”

  “He didn’t show.”

  “Walls didn’t show. That’s interesting.”

 
“They cleaned out the table nice-nice. Then they cleaned out the players one by one, turning out their pockets. Then they cleaned out Mike the Book, who’s holding whatever he’s holding that’s a full day’s take. Pool receipts and bets.”

  “How much?”

  “Total. Over twelve thousand I hear. This is I hear. Who knows how much?”

  “Twelve thousand.”

  “Three men with pistols. Pistolas.”

  And George made twirling moves with his hands at belt level like a Mexican bandit showing off his guns and it was rare for him to be so breezy.

  Nick shuffled and dealt.

  “I meant to get some beer,” he said.

  “Who sells beer to a minor?”

  “I told Donato’s wife I’m nineteen. She says, What do you think I’m stunat’?”

  “But she sells you the beer.”

  “She sells me the beer.”

  “She does it out of spite.”

  “For who?”

  “The world,” George said.

  “Stocking masks. I’m amazed by this.”

  They played cards a while and then George leaned over and opened the drawer at the end of the table and felt around for cigarettes without taking his eyes off his cards.

  “You keep your rubbers in there?”

  “Never mind what I keep in there.”

  “Who is she? Trust me. Who’m I gonna tell? Is she the one I saw you rowing a boat in the park one day?”

  “If you saw me with a woman in public, then she’s not the woman who comes here. And you didn’t see me in no boat, wise guy.”

  “George, I’m being serious.”

  “What?”

  “You fix up your friends?”

  George gave him a level look from out of those deep emptyish eyes.

  “This is not a girl. This is a woman. And it’s not for you. I’m pushing forty, Nicky. You can get what you need without paying for it.”

  Maybe this is what interested Nick. The fact that George was the loneliest man he’d ever known. George was lonely in his walk, his voice, his posture and in the way a whole room, the poolroom with its clash of noises and flung insults and ragged laughs—the way George’s corner of the room was different even if he was shooting a game with someone else. George carried the condition everywhere he went and it seemed to be okay with him. That was the interesting thing. Maybe it was his choice to live this way and maybe it wasn’t but either way he made it seem all right.

  “Talk about buying beer.”

  “Yeah, what?” Nick said.

  “This shit-ass job of yours, which you should of stayed in school in my opinion.”

  “This shit-ass job, what?”

  “I been talking to somebody. You can make more money on a truck. Not beer but soda. Delivering to stores and supermarkets. 7-Up.”

  “It makes me wince when I drink it.”

  “You’ll wince all right. You unload the crates of full bottles and then you load up on empties. Make you a man.”

  “Make me a man how?”

  “Brute labor, that’s how. In summer you just about die. I did it one summer. I cun’t fucking believe it. Lost twenty pounds my first two days.”

  Nick didn’t think it was necessary to have one job for life and start a family and live in a house with dinner on the table at six every night and he thought about George, an older guy who’d survived the loss of these things—not the loss but the never-having. Played cards, played pool, got laid, a few dollars in his pocket, not a whole lot of time to think. Fuck you, I’ll die alone. That’s what George was saying in his heart.

  “Pays decent?”

  “Better than you’re making. Steadier. Safer except you’ll get four hernias your first week. And a stroke come summer. Make you a man, Nicky.”

  “I appreciate.”

  “You don’t have to say nothing. Maybe they’ll hire you, maybe they won’t.”

  “I want you to know. I appreciate.”

  “They’ll take one look at you. This is a guy all he thinks about is getting laid. We better find a polack somewhere.”

  Nick liked that. They played cards a while longer and he realized George was giving him an odd look, measuring him somehow.

  “You think I keep rubbers in this drawer here?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You want to see what I keep in here?”

  “I don’t know, George. Sure, why not?”

  “No. I don’t think you want to see what I keep in here.”

  “Sure, why not?”

  “No. Big mistake. You’ll talk.”

  “I won’t talk. Who’m I gonna tell?”

  All right. George was having a little fun with him, not that he changed expression. Raw, drawn, tired, with receding hair and long fingers stained with cigarette tar.

  “Because I trust you, Nicky.”

  He reached into the drawer and came out with a box of kitchen matches and a spoon.

  “We used to call these lucifers, these wood matches.”

  The utensil was an ordinary spoon clouded on the bottom of the bowl, stained like George’s fingers, only darker and marbled.

  “I’m watching,” Nick said.

  “You interested?”

  “I’m interested,” he said.

  George reached into the drawer and came out with a length of elastic, medical-looking, a strapping device of some kind. He tossed it next to the matches and looked at Nick.

  “I’m still watching.”

  “You watching?”

  “I’m watching.”

  George reached in and came out with a hypodermic needle, a needle and dusty syringe, and he held it in front of Nicky’s face.

  “You watching? Watch.”

  It took Nick a minute to understand all this. This was new to him. Drugs. Who used drugs around here? He felt dumb and confused and very young suddenly.

  “You use this stuff?”

  George lifted a fold-over pouch out of his breast pocket. He wagged it several times and dropped it back in.

  “Eroina” he said.

  Nick felt dumb all right. He felt like someone had just sandbagged him in an alley. Wham. He almost put a hand to the back of his neck.

  “Let me see it,” he said.

  George took out the pouch and handed it to him. Nick lifted the flap and tried to sniff the powder.

  “What are you smelling? It don’t smell.”

  He handed it back.

  “How come?”

  “How come what?”

  “You use this stuff.”

  George rolled up the sleeve on his left arm. There were stippled marks and scars and in the crook of the elbow a dark mass, a fester of busted blood vessels and general wreckage.

  Then he brandished the needle, enjoying himself.

  “You asked me do I fix up my friends? What kind of fix?”

  “Hey. Get away.”

  “We’ll start you slow. Skin-pop. You don’t hit a vein.”

  “I skeeve needles, George. Get that thing away from me.”

  “You hit the plunger, see.”

  “This I don’t need.”

  “Come on. We’ll tie you off.”

  George brandished the elastic belt and Nick felt he had to get up and stand across the room. The older man enjoyed that.

  “How come?” he said.

  “How come how come. You want to get laid. How come,” George said.

  For years kids played hango seek down the yards and there were nickel-and-dime dice games and older guys who might tap a keg on a hot day and drink a few brews standing up in the shade and women who hung out the windows to get some air and complain about the cursing.

  “You could put that needle in your arm? Man, I skeeve that like death.”

  George smiled. He was happy. He swept his works back in the drawer and lit up a cigarette and sat there with his face in the smoke.

  They talked about the robbery and after a while the tone went back to normal.

&nbs
p; “Gotta go,” Nick said.

  “Be good.”

  “See you at Mike’s.”

  “Be good,” George said.

  Nick made a turn in the dim passage and went out into a small courtyard where trash cans stood against the wall and he walked up the back stairs and through the heavy metal door into his building.

  George had cut him down to size all right. George had taught him a lesson in serious things.

  It happened near the end of the day when no one expected it. This was her intention of course. It happened fast and hard and unexpected.

  Sister turned from the blackboard where she’d been diagramming a compound sentence, the chalked structure so complex and self-appending it began to resemble the fire-escaped facade of the kind of building most of the boys and girls lived in.

  She paused just long enough to let them know that something was coming but not so long that they might guess what it was.

  Then she said, “Duck and cover! Duck and cover! Duck and cover!”

  For a long moment they were too shocked to think straight. Slow, shocked, klutzy and dumb. They began to tumble out of their seats, knocking over books and bumping each other, all scuttling to the three designated walls as they’d been trained to do, squat-hopping like people in potato sacks.

  The fourth wall was the window wall, which they’d been told to avoid.

  Matty saw Francis X. Cavanaugh blunder nuts-first into a desk edge. He felt a sympathetic quiver in his loins.

  And Sister’s voice keening across the room, drop and duck, duck and cover, and the kids jostling for position and then going into deep genuflections, heads to the floor, eyes shut, hands guarding the face from bomb-flash.

  It was a long time before they were positioned and settled and still.

  Matty had his head at the base of the cloakroom door nearest his desk. He liked to duck and cover. There was a sense of acting in unison that he found satisfying. It was not so different really from opening and shutting the cloakroom doors with two of his classmates or reciting mass answers to Sister’s questions from the catechism. He felt the comfort of numbers. He felt snug and safe here on the floor, positioned more or less identically with the others. After the first moments of surprise and confusion, they were all calm now. This was the first rule of atomic attack. Keep calm. Do not get excited or excite others. Another rule, Do not touch things.