Billy Bathgate

  It seemed to me I looked at this water until anybody under it would have to surface or drown. I was terrified, I pulled off my sneakers and shirt and prepared to jump in, I don’t swim very well but I felt I could dive down in the water if I had to and at this moment the water shook and she broke into the air, her head and shoulders rising, and shouted or drew a great gasping breath that was like a cry of pain as the water poured off her shoulders, and then she threw her arms behind her and settled and floated on her back with her arms outstretched and lay there in the water with her chest heaving and her legs seeming to attenuate and wither as they floated downward in the black water.

  After a while she was upright, shaking her head and smoothing her hair. She swam sidestroke out of my sight and appeared a minute later where I was not looking, climbing up onto the ledge with her body pale and wet and her teeth chattering and her lips blue. She looked at me without recognition. I rolled my shirt into a wad and rubbed her as she stood with her knees pressed together and her arms across her breasts, I rubbed her shoulders and back, the backs of her legs and after a moment’s hesitation her backside and then the front of her legs while she stood and held her hands at her mouth and shivered herself warm. Then, for the second time in my life, I watched Mrs. Preston get dressed.

  She said little on the walk back. We followed the gorge to where it went dry, and then widened on smaller rocks, and finally flattened out with the land. I was overwhelmed and could not speak on my own initiative and waited for her, and waited upon her, I felt we had an alliance of sorts, but it was conditional, as if I still had to grow up, I felt ignorant, I felt chastened and foolish and like a child. We walked again through the brown pine-needle forest and found the logging trail and came out into the meadows. She said, “Did he really ask you to protect me?”

  “Yes.”

  “How very strange,” she said.

  I didn’t answer.

  “I mean that he would think I couldn’t take care of myself,” she said by way of clarification. She stooped where the sun shone through the trees to pick a small blue flower drooping over like a bell. “And you promised him you would?”

  “Yes.”

  She came up to me and hung the flower over my ear and I found myself holding my breath till I no longer felt her touch. She sent out a very secret and indiscriminate beaming attraction, Mrs. Preston, as if it was always there whether you were or not.

  “Oh don’t move it,” she said. “You’re such a pretty little devil, do you know that?”

  “That’s what they tell me,” I said and a few minutes afterward we scooted down a wooded embankment on our heels and came out to the dirt road and so eventually to the paved road leading down the hill to Onondaga. I walked backward to look at her in the sun. Her hair had lost its wave and was dried sleek and off the forehead with the tracks of her fingers showing her careless attention to it. She had not a bit of makeup on her face but those full lips were their natural color now and her skin had regained the blush of her life. She was still not smiling though, and she had reddened, swimmer’s eyes. Before we got back to the hotel she asked me if I had a girlfriend and I said I did, and she said whoever that girl was was lucky, but the truth was when she asked I felt guilty because I was no longer thinking of little Becky, who seemed to me now no more interesting than a child, but only of her. I was frightened by her, this woods guide, oh what she had shown me, like some counselor with a whistle on a lanyard, for the first time I understood what a match she made with Mr. Schultz, she took her clothes off to gunmen, to water, to the sun, life disrobed her, I understood why she went with him, this was not like mothers and fathers of ordinary existence, there was no consideration of love, it was not a universe of love they livedin, fuckingand killing as they did, it was a large, empty resounding adulthood booming with terror.

  I thought about her from the moment we went to our separate rooms and I lay on my bed in the late afternoon as dull-witted as the weather which hung hot and heavy in the Onondaga Hotel with the gauzy white curtains motionless in the open windows. The curtains grew gray, darkened, and were lit by a broad flashing and after an interval there was a muffled distant thunder. I now liked her far more than I had and knew in fact I might even be sweet on her, as how could a poor boy not after what she had put me through. Of course I had not entirely lost my wits and knew that whatever feelings I had I would suffer them in silence if I wanted to live on Earth a little while longer. I closed my eyes and watched her again climbing out of the pool at the bottom of the gorge with her nipples all crimped and blue and her pale pubic hair stringy with dripping water. I thought this time I was seeing someone who had tried to die, though of course I couldn’t be sure because she lived an enlarged existence, it was not her nature to be contained by judgments. I wondered what would happen if her intimacy with Mr. Schultz prevailed over my confidences and she told him the things I’d reported. But I had the feeling she would not, that she had the character of independence, that she lived alone in some sort of mystery of her own making and that it was her integrity to be self-driven and self-communicating only, however alluringly close she might drift toward anyone at any given moment. I told myself that she had finally expressed some appropriate human grief and thought maybe that was a large part of my new liking for her, or tried to persuade myself of that anyway, even though it didn’t quite jibe with the heavy tool I found in my hand with its own made-up mind existing, as she did, in the demonstrated inadequacy of my thought. I was resolved by the time I had had a cold shower in the big white bathroom all my own and had dressed for the evening in my suit and tie and glasses that no matter what my feelings they would not deter me from the justice my life demanded. I really had promised Bo Weinberg I would look after her and protect her, and now that I had told her, I would have to, but I hoped for my sake as well as hers that it wouldn’t ever come to that.

  THIRTEEN

  By now in our stay at the Onondaga Hotel, as in any billet occupied for any length of time, the troops had been provided with a supplemental bill of fare that was more like home. Mr. Schultz had established a supply line from New York and once a week a truck came up with steaks and chops, racks of lamb, fish on ice, delicatessen, good booze and beer, and every couple of days someone went down to Albany, where an airplane landed with fresh New York rolls and bagels and cakes and pies and all the newspapers. The hotel kitchen was kept hopping, but nobody in there seemed to mind, as I thought they would, the implied judgment in all of this seeming to have escaped them. Everyone was without undue pride or umbrage or sensitivity, only too willing to cook and serve Mr. Schultz everything he provided them with, and in fact seemed to pick up in their own qualifications just being proximate to the big time.

  Dinner became a ritual occasion as if we were all a family gathering at the same hour, though at different tables, at the end of the day. The dinners tended to go on awhile and were often the occasion for extended reminiscences on Mr. Schultz’s part. He seemed relaxed at these times unless he drank too much, in which case he became surly or depressed and glared at one or another of us if we seemed to be having too good a time despite him, or eating too happily the food on our plates, which he liked to ask us to pass over to him for spite so that he could spear this or that morsel for himself before giving the plate back, he did this to me several times, which never failed to enrage me or cause me to lose my appetite, once he went over to the other table and took a steak from their platter, it was as if he couldn’t be generous and hospitable without feeling at the same time that people were getting the best of him, and on these nights dinner was most unpleasant with Miss Drew excusing herself when she didn’t like what was going on, it really took the heart out of you to think he begrudged the very food going into your mouth, it was demeaning to have your portion violated, and these evenings were not good evenings at all.

  But as I say for the most part if he stayed sober he was even-tempered at dinner as if the days he spent showing Onondaga New York his sunny disposition an
d altruistic nature somehow actually made him feel right with the world. And on this particular evening I knew definitely I would get to eat everything I put on my plate because we had two guests at our regular table, Dixie Davis, who seemed to be staying past the hour of his return to New York, and the priest from St. Barnabas Catholic Church, Father Montaine. I like it that when the father arrived he stopped first at the table by the door to greet Mickey and Irving and Lulu, and Dixie Davis’s driver who was seated with them, and to chat for a few minutes with a lot of jovial priestly banter. He was pretty lively for a man of God, he rubbed his hands with enthusiasm when he talked as if only good things could happen, he was brimming with ambitions for his small and not terribly well-off parish, St. Barnabas being a modest neighborhood church down by the river, where the streets were narrowest and the houses small and close together, and it was made of wood rather than stone like the Holy Spirit up on the hill, although the inside was just about as large and even more decorative with its painted plaster Christ and attendant saints hooked up along the walls.

  On the menu was roast beef, served well-done the way I liked it, and fresh asparagus I was not wild about, and homemade french fries, big thick cuts of them, and salad greens, which I don’t touch on principle, and there was real French wine I was learning to develop a taste for but did not indulge in for the same reason that Drew Preston was seated as far away as possible across the table from Mr. Schultz. I sat on Mr. Schultz’s left and this Father Montaine on his right, and to my left was Dixie Davis, and Drew Preston sat between him and Mr. Berman. Dixie Davis chattered uncontrollably, perhaps he had been worked over a bit during the afternoon meeting, perhaps he had brought the wrong intelligence or his legal opinion had not met with favor, but whatever it was he couldn’t stop talking, maybe it was just the fact of being seated next to the most beautiful aristocratic woman he had ever seen, who wore a plain black dress that set off her elegant neck, which was wound with a single string of pearls in each of which glowed a pinpoint of the light of the hotel chandelier, but he was telling Mrs. Preston how he’d gotten started in the legal profession, from what humble beginnings, reminiscing with hysterical self-satisfaction while she nodded her lovely head to keep him going and resolutely packed away everything in sight on her plate and downed several glasses of wine, which he poured happily for her while he continued to bask in her presence and entreated to impress her with the facts of his craven life. I know I wouldn’t have boasted about hanging around the greasy spoons near magistrates court sucking up to bail bondsmen so that they would tip me off when some poor slob was arraigned and needed a lawyer. That’s the way he’d got started, building up a practice from the daily court traffic of numbers runners at twenty-five bucks per rap of the gavel. “The rest is history,” he said with his toothy, downturned smile. I noticed too he sat with a hunch and his head pushed forward toward its pompadour, so that all his grooming and fine wardrobe was wasted on the posture of unctuousness. I don’t know why I had taken such a dislike to the man, I hardly knew him, but I felt sitting next to him and watching him trying to look down Drew Preston’s dress that I should be sitting at the other table with Irving and Lulu and the boys, not with this intellectual who did not once address a remark to me or even appear to notice that I was sitting there to his right.

  And then he took a snapshot out of his wallet, it was of a woman in a halter and sun shorts squinting into the sun with her hands on her ample hips and her feet in their high-heeled shoes pointed outward, one before the other, and he placed it in front of Drew Preston, who peered down at it without touching it as if it was some object of natural curiosity, like a cricket or a praying mantis.

  “That’s my fiancée,” he said, “the actress Fawn Bliss? Maybe you’ve heard of her.”

  “What?” Drew Preston said. “You don’t mean it—Fawn Bliss?” she said enunciating the name in tones of such incredulity that the lawyer assumed she couldn’t believe her good fortune in sitting next to him at the dinner table.

  “That’s the lady,” Dixie Davis said, grinning and gazing at the snapshot with insipid adoration. Drew Preston caught my glance and her eyes glazed over and then crossed and I started to laugh, I didn’t know she could do that, and it was at this moment I became aware of Mr. Berman, directly opposite, regarding me over the tops of his glasses, and he didn’t have to say a word or even tilt his head, I knew that I had been listening to the wrong conversation. For all my resolve to stay alert I had been unable to take my eyes off Mrs. Preston, a truth I felt in the bones of my neck which actually creaked in their reluctance to swivel me around in the direction of Father Montaine and Mr. Schultz.

  “Ah, but you must make the spiritual journey,” the father was saying in his vigorous way, eating and drinking as he spoke so that the words were like what he was eating, “you must ask for the catéchisme, you must hear the Gospel, you must purify yourself and prepare for election and undergo the scrutinies. Only then can you undergo baptisme and have the confirmahshun, only then can you receive the sacramahnt.”

  “How long does all that take, Father?”

  “Oh well, this depends. A year. Five years, ten? How quickly you open your heart to the mysteries.”

  “I can move faster than that, Father,” Mr. Schultz said.

  I didn’t dare look at Mr. Berman because he would immediately see that I had been caught unawares. Since meeting the father that time on the sidewalk in front of his church we had gone one Wednesday to St. Barnabas’s Bingo Night, and Mr. Schultz actually ran a few games, calling out the magic numbers from the balls that popped into the cup, and making a big deal of it when someone won a dollar or two. Oh yes, and then he spoke into the ear of the father, who announced with great excitement Mr. Schultz’s blessed generosity in putting up a special grand prize for the end of the evening of twenty-five dollars and there was a big round of applause, Mr. Schultz receiving it with a modest hand held in the air and a big sheepish smile, while all this time Mr. Berman and I sat in the back and thought about bingo cards, and he took a card and gave numerical values to each letter and showed me a possible way to handicap the lines after each number was called out, and then described to me several different ways an honest game could be rigged. But I didn’t think how I could be faulted for not knowing the game of bingo was the first step in the conversion process.

  The father put down his knife and fork and leaned back in his chair still chewing. He looked at Mr. Schultz, his heavy eyebrows raised in compassionate priestly skepticism. “From the Jewish to the Holy Church is a great revolution.”

  “Not so great, Father, not so great. We are in the same ballpark. Why else would all your big shots wear yarmulkes? I notice also you keep talking about our guys and reading our Bible. Not so great.”

  “Ah, but this is the point exactement, how we read, what we accept, this is the point, is it not?”

  “I know guys, Catholic guys I grew up with, business associates, am I right, Otto?” Mr. Schultz said looking over to Mr. Berman, “Danny Iamascia, Joey Rao, guys like that. They think the way I think, they hold to the same virtues of right and wrong, they hold the same respect for their mothers, I have depended on Catholic businessmen all my life, Father, and how could I, and they on me, if we didn’t understand one another like blood brothers.”

  With a deliberation matching these solemn sentiments he refilled the father’s wineglass. Everyone had grown quiet.

  Father Montaine gave Mr. Schultz a glance of Gallic reproach and then picked up the glass and drank it off. Then he patted his lips with his napkin. “Of course,” he said very softly as if he was speaking of something better left unsaid, “there is in the special cases of the religious mature, another way.”

  “Now you’re talking. The short form,” Mr. Schultz said.

  “In these case, I don’t know, we must ’ave the confidahns that it is truly a beginning of the submisshun to the Lord Jesu Christe.”

  “I give you my word I couldn’t be more sincere, Father. I
brought it up, didn’t I? I live a difficult life. I make important decisions all the time. I need strength. I see men I know take their strength from their faith and I have to think I need that strength too I am just a man. I fear for my life like all men. I wonder what it’s all for. I try to be generous, I try to be good. But I like the idea of that extra edge.”

  “I understan’, ma son.”

  “How about Sunday,” Mr. Schultz said.

  After coffee Drew Preston excused herself and a few minutes later the party broke up and Mr. Schultz invited Father Montaine to the sixth floor in the hotel, where they sat in his suite and drank from a bottle of Canadian whiskey on the table and smoked cigars and enjoyed themselves like fast friends. I thought looking in on them they even looked alike, both of them stolid and neckless and sloppy with their ashes. Dixie Davis was in there with them. The rest of the gang was in Mr. Berman’s office, sitting around looking glum and not saying much. Finally the father went home and everyone moved to Mr. Schultz’s suite, no one called a meeting or anything like that we all just wandered in and sat down, and everyone was very quiet while our boss paced back and forth and gave us his thinking. “Mickey, you understand, don’t you, Mickey would understand after all, I’ve got to be ready, I can’t take chances, I need all the help I can get. Who knows? Who knows? Years ago I remember being very impressed by that Patrick Devlin, you remember the Devlin brothers they ran most of the Bronx beer at the time, so we was just getting started and I wanted to teach him a lesson, he was the tough one, we hung him up by the thumbs, you remember, Lulu? but he didn’t know what we had in mind he thought we were killing him and he screamed for a priest. Well that impressed me. Not his mother, not his wife, not nobody but his priest when he thought he was dying. It gave me a pause for thought. I mean you look to your strength in moments like that, am I right? Actually alls we did was smear some guts and shit from a dead rat on his eyes and tape it down with adhesive tape and we left him hanging there in his own cellar so’s they would find him, although by the time they did, the stupid fucks, he’d lost the use of his sight. But I never forgot he wanted the priest. Those things stay with you. I like that little french-fried Canuck, I like his church, I’m gonna put a new roof on it so it don’t leak during the sacred moments, it gives me a good feeling, you know what I mean? I get a good feeling every time I walk in there, I don’t understand Latin, but I don’t understand Hebrew neither, so why not both, is there a law against both? Christ was both, for christsake, what’s the big deal? They push confession, I can’t pretend I’m wild about that, no offense, but I’ll deal with it when the time comes. This mustn’t get to my mother—Irving, your mother neither, the mothers shouldn’t know this, they wouldn’t understand. I never liked the old men davening in the synagogue, rocking swaying back and forth, everyone mumbling to himself at his own speed, the head going up and down the shoulders rocking, I like a little dignity, I like everyone singing something together, everyone doing the same thing at the same time, I like the order of that, it means something everyone goes down on their knees the same time, it puts a light on God, is this too deep for you, Lulu? Look at that, he is so unhappy, Otto, look at his expression he’s gonna cry, tell him I’m still the Dutchman, tell him nothing is changed, nothing is changed, you dumb Hebe!” And he gave his gunman a big bear hug, laughing and pounding him on the back. “You know how it is with a trial, don’t you, you know we get a little nervous when we’re on the docket. That’s all. That’s all. It’s not the last rites for christsake.”