Enough Rope

  “We already said it’s gonna be physical. Manhandling him, and a couple of shots he’ll feel for the better part of a week. Work the rib cage, say.”

  “All right.”

  “Well,” he said, “that’s great, if that’s how it goes. But you got to recognize it could go farther.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He made a tent of his fingertips. “I mean you can’t necessarily decide where it stops. I don’t know if you ever heard the expression, but it’s like, uh, having relations with a gorilla. You don’t stop when you decide. You stop when the gorilla decides.”

  “I never heard that before,” she said. “It’s cute, and I sort of get the point, or maybe I don’t. Is Howard Bellamy the gorilla?”

  “He’s not the gorilla. The violence is the gorilla.”

  “Oh.”

  “You start something, you don’t know where it goes. Does he fight back? If he does, then it goes a little farther than you planned. Does he keep coming back for more? As long as he keeps coming back for it, you got to keep dishing it out. You got no choice.”

  “I see.”

  “Plus there’s the human factor. The boys themselves, they don’t have an emotional stake. So you figure they’re cool and professional about it.”

  “That’s what I figured.”

  “But it’s only true up to a point,” he went on, “because they’re human, you know? So they start out angry with the guy, they tell themselves how he’s a lowlife piece of garbage, so it’s easier for them to shove him around. Part of it’s an act but part of it’s not, and say he mouths off, or he fights back and gets in a good lick. Now they’re really angry, and maybe they do more damage than they intended to.”

  She thought about it. “I can see how that could happen,” she said.

  “So it could go farther than anybody had in mind. He could wind up in the hospital.”

  “You mean like broken bones?”

  “Or worse. Like a ruptured spleen, which I’ve known of cases. Or as far as that goes there’s people who’ve died from a bare-knuckle punch in the stomach.”

  “I saw a movie where that happened.”

  “Well, I saw a movie where a guy spreads his arms and flies, but dying from a punch in the stomach, they didn’t just make that up for the movies. It can happen.”

  “Now you’ve got me thinking,” she said.

  “Well, it’s something you got to think about. Because you have to be prepared for this to go all the way, and by all the way I mean all the way. It probably won’t, ninety-five times out of a hundred it won’t.”

  “But it could.”

  “Right. It could.”

  “Jesus,” she said. “He’s a son of a bitch, but I don’t want him dead. I want to be done with the son of a bitch. I don’t want him on my conscience for the rest of my life.”

  “That’s what I figured.”

  “But I don’t want to pay him ten thousand dollars, either, the son of a bitch. This is getting complicated, isn’t it?”

  “Let me excuse myself for a minute,” he said, rising. “And you think about it, and then we’ll talk some more.”

  While he was away from the table she reached for his book and turned it so she could read the title. She looked at the author’s photo, read a few lines of the flap copy, then put it as he had left it. She sipped her drink—she was nursing this one, making it last—and looked out the window. Cars rolled by, their headlights slightly eerie in the dense fog.

  When he returned she said, “Well, I thought about it.”

  “And?”

  “I think you just talked yourself out of five hundred dollars.”

  “That’s what I figured.”

  “Because I certainly don’t want him dead, and I don’t even want him in the hospital. I have to admit I like the idea of him being scared, really scared bad. And hurt a little. But that’s just because I’m angry.”

  “Anybody’d be angry.”

  “But when I get past the anger,” she said, “all I really want is for him to forget this crap about ten thousand dollars. For Christ’s sake, that’s all the money I’ve got in the world. I don’t want to give it to him.”

  “Maybe you don’t have to.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t think it’s about money,” he said. “Not for him. It’s about sticking it to you for dumping him, or whatever. So it’s an emotional thing and it’s easy for you to buy into it. But say it was a business thing. You’re right and he’s wrong, but it’s more trouble than it’s worth to fight it out. So you settle.”

  “Settle?”

  “You always paid your own way,” he said, “so it wouldn’t be out of the question for you to pay half the cost of the cruise, would it?”

  “No, but—”

  “But it was supposed to be a present, from him to you. But forget that for the time being. You could pay half. Still, that’s too much. What you do is you offer him two thousand dollars. I have a feeling he’ll take it.”

  “God,” she said. “I can’t even talk to him. How am I going to offer him anything?”

  “You’ll have someone else make the offer.”

  “You mean like a lawyer?”

  “Then you owe the lawyer. No, I was thinking I could do it.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “I wouldn’t have said it if I wasn’t. I think if I was to make the offer he’d accept it. I wouldn’t be threatening him, but there’s a way to do it so a guy feels threatened.”

  “He’d feel threatened, all right.”

  “I’ll have your check with me, two thousand dollars, payable to him. My guess is he’ll take it, and if he does you won’t hear any more from him on the subject of the ten grand.”

  “So I’m out of it for two thousand. And five hundred for you?”

  “I wouldn’t charge you anything.”

  “Why not?”

  “All I’d be doing is having a conversation with a guy. I don’t charge for conversations. I’m not a lawyer, I’m just a guy owns a couple of parking lots.”

  “And reads thick novels by young Indian writers.”

  “Oh, this? You read it?”

  She shook her head.

  “It’s hard to keep the names straight,” he said, “especially when you’re not sure how to pronounce them in the first place. And it’s like if you ask this guy what time it is he tells you how to make a watch. Or maybe a sun-dial. But it’s pretty interesting.”

  “I never thought you’d be a reader.”

  “Billy Parking Lots,” he said. “Guy who knows guys and can get things done. That’s probably all Tommy said about me.”

  “Just about.”

  “Maybe that’s all I am. Reading, well, it’s an edge I got on just about everybody I know. It opens other worlds. I don’t live in those worlds, but I get to visit them.”

  “And you just got in the habit of reading? The way you got in the habit of working out?”

  He laughed. “Yeah, but reading’s something I’ve done since I was a kid. I didn’t have to go away to get in that particular habit.”

  “I was wondering about that.”

  “Anyway,” he said, “it’s hard to read there, harder than people think. It’s noisy all the time.”

  “Really? I didn’t realize. I always figured that’s when I’d get to read War and Peace, when I got sent to prison. But if it’s noisy, then the hell with it. I’m not going.”

  “You’re something else,” he said.

  “Me?”

  “Yeah, you. The way you look, of course, but beyond the looks. The only word I can think of is class, but it’s a word that’s mostly used by people that haven’t got any themselves. Which is probably true enough.”

  “The hell with that,” she said. “After the conversation we just had? Talking me out of doing something I could have regretted all my life, and figuring out how to get that son of a bitch off my back for two thousand dollars? I’d call that class.” r />
  “Well, you’re seeing me at my best,” he said.

  “And you’re seeing me at my worst,” she said, “or close to it. Looking to hire a guy to beat up an ex-boyfriend. That’s class, all right.”

  “That’s not what I see. I see a woman who doesn’t want to be pushed around. And if I can find a way that helps you get where you want to be, then I’m glad to do it. But when all’s said and done, you’re a lady and I’m a wiseguy.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “Yes, I guess I do.”

  He nodded. “Drink up,” he said. “I’ll run you back to the city.”

  “You don’t have to do that. I can take the PATH train.”

  “I’ve got to go into the city anyway. It’s not out of my way to take you wherever you’re going.”

  “If you’re sure.”

  “I’m sure,” he said. “Or here’s another idea. We both have to eat, and I told you they serve a good steak here. Let me buy you dinner, and then I’ll run you home.”

  “Dinner,” she said.

  “A shrimp cocktail, a salad, a steak, a baked potato—”

  “You’re tempting me.”

  “So let yourself be tempted,” he said. “It’s just a meal.”

  She looked at him levelly. “No,” she said. “It’s more than that.”

  “It’s more than that if you want it to be. Or it’s just a meal, if that’s what you want.”

  “But you can’t know how far it might go,” she said. “We’re back to that again, aren’t we? Like what you said about the gorilla, and you stop when the gorilla wants to stop.”

  “I guess I’m the gorilla, huh?”

  “You said the violence was the gorilla. Well, in this case it’s not violence, but it’s not either of us, either. It’s what’s going on between us, and it’s already going on, isn’t it?”

  “You tell me.”

  She looked down at her hands, then up at him. “A person has to eat,” she said.

  “You said it.”

  “And it’s still foggy outside.”

  “Like pea soup. And who knows? There’s a good chance the fog’ll lift by the time we’ve had our meal.”

  “I wouldn’t be a bit surprised,” she said. “I think it’s lifting already.”

  In for a Penny

  Paul kept it very simple. That seemed to be the secret. You kept it simple, you drew firm lines and didn’t cross them. You put one foot in front of the other, took it day by day, and let the days mount up.

  The state didn’t take an interest. They put you back on the street with a cheap suit and figured you’d be back inside before the pants got shiny. But other people cared. This one outfit, about two parts ex-cons to one part holy joes, had wised him up and helped him out. They’d found him a job and a place to live, and what more did he need?

  The job wasn’t much, frying eggs and flipping burgers in a diner at Twenty-third and Eighth. The room wasn’t much, either, seven blocks south of the diner, four flights up from the street. It was small, and all you could see from its window was the back of another building. The furnishings were minimal—an iron bedstead, a beat-up dresser, a rickety chair—and the walls needed paint and the floor needed carpet. There was a sink in the room, a bathroom down the hall. No cooking, no pets, no overnight guests, the landlady told him. No kidding, he thought.

  His shift was four to midnight, Monday through Friday. The first weekend he did nothing but go to the movies, and by Sunday night he was ready to climb the wall. Too much time to kill, too few ways to kill it that wouldn’t get him in trouble. How many movies could you sit through? And a movie cost him two hours’ pay, and if you spent the whole weekend dragging yourself from one movie house to another . . .

  Weekends were dangerous, one of the ex-cons had told him. Weekends could put you back in the joint. There ought to be a law against weekends.

  But he figured out a way around it. Walking home Tuesday night, after that first weekend of movie-going, he’d stopped at three diners on Seventh Avenue, nursing a cup of coffee and chatting with the guy behind the counter. The third time was the charm; he walked out of there with a weekend job. Saturday and Sunday, same hours, same wages, same work. And they’d pay him off the books, which made his weekend work tax-free.

  Between what he was saving in taxes and what he wasn’t spending on movies, he’d be a millionaire.

  Well, maybe he’d never be a millionaire. Probably be dangerous to be a millionaire, a guy like him, with his ways, his habits. But he was earning an honest dollar, and he ate all he wanted on the job, seven days a week now, so it wasn’t hard to put a few bucks aside. The weeks added up and so did the dollars, and the time came when he had enough cash socked away to buy himself a little television set. The cashier at his weekend job set it up and her boyfriend brought it over, so he figured it fell off a truck or walked out of somebody’s apartment, but it got good reception and the price was right.

  It was a lot easier to pass the time once he had the TV. He’d get up at ten or eleven in the morning, grab a shower in the bathroom down the hall, then pick up doughnuts and coffee at the corner deli. Then he’d watch a little TV until it was time to go to work.

  After work he’d stop at the same deli for two bottles of cold beer and some cigarettes. He’d settle in with the TV, a beer bottle in one hand and a cigarette in the other and his eyes on the screen.

  He didn’t get cable, but he figured that was all to the good. He was better off staying away from some of the stuff they were allowed to show on cable TV. Just because you had cable didn’t mean you had to watch it, but he knew himself, and if he had it right there in the house how could he keep himself from looking at it?

  And that could get you started. Something as simple as late-night adult programming could put him on a train to the big house upstate. He’d been there. He didn’t want to go back.

  He would get through most of a pack of cigarettes by the time he turned off the light and went to bed. It was funny, during the day he hardly smoked at all, but back in his room at night he had a butt going just about all the time. If the smoking was heavy, well, the drinking was ultralight. He could make a bottle of Bud last an hour. More, even. The second bottle was always warm by the time he got to it, but he didn’t mind, nor did he drink it any faster than he’d drunk the first one. What was the rush?

  Two beers was enough. All it did was give him a little buzz, and when the second beer was gone he’d turn off the TV and sit at the window, smoking one cigarette after another, looking out at the city.

  Then he’d go to bed. Then he’d get up and do it all over again.

  The only problem was walking home.

  And even that was no problem at first. He’d leave his rooming house around three in the afternoon. The diner was ten minutes away, and that left him time to eat before his shift started. Then he’d leave sometime between midnight and twelve-thirty—the guy who relieved him, a manic Albanian, had a habit of showing up ten to fifteen minutes late. Paul would retrace his earlier route, walking the seven blocks down Eighth Avenue to Sixteenth Street with a stop at the deli for cigarettes and beer.

  The Rose of Singapore was the problem.

  The first time he walked past the place, he didn’t even notice it. By day it was just another seedy bar, but at night the neon glowed and the jukebox music poured out the door, along with the smell of spilled drinks and stale beer and something more, something unnamable, something elusive.

  “If you don’t want to slip,” they’d told him, “stay out of slippery places.”

  He quickened his pace and walked on by.

  The next afternoon the Rose of Singapore didn’t carry the same feeling of danger. Not that he’d risk crossing the threshold, not at any hour of the day or night. He wasn’t stupid. But it didn’t lure him, and consequently it didn’t make him uncomfortable.

  Coming home was a different story.

  He was thinking ab
out it during his last hour on the job, and by the time he reached it he was walking all the way over at the edge of the sidewalk, as far from the building’s entrance as he could get without stepping down into the street. He was like an acrophobe edging along a precipitous path, scared to look down, afraid of losing his balance and falling accidentally, afraid too of the impulse that might lead him to plunge purposefully into the void.

  He kept walking, eyes forward, heart racing. Once he was past it he felt himself calming down, and he bought his two bottles of beer and his pack of cigarettes and went on home.

  He’d get used to it, he told himself. It would get easier with time.

  But, surprisingly enough, it didn’t. Instead it got worse, but gradually, imperceptibly, and he learned to accommodate it. For one thing, he steered clear of the west side of Eighth Avenue, where the Rose of Singapore stood. Going to work and coming home, he kept to the opposite side of the street.

  Even so, he found himself hugging the inner edge of the sidewalk, as if every inch closer to the street would put him that much closer to crossing it and being drawn mothlike into the tavern’s neon flame. And, approaching the Rose of Singapore’s block, he’d slow down or speed up his pace so that the traffic signal would allow him to cross the street as soon as he reached the corner. As if otherwise, stranded there, he might cross in the other direction instead, across Eighth Avenue and on into the Rose.

  He knew it was ridiculous but he couldn’t change the way it felt. When it didn’t get better he found a way around it.

  He took Seventh Avenue instead.

  He did that on the weekends anyway because it was the shortest route. But during the week it added two long crosstown blocks to his pedestrian commute, four blocks a day, twenty blocks a week. That came to about three miles a week, maybe a hundred and fifty extra miles a year.

  On good days he told himself he was lucky to be getting the exercise, that the extra blocks would help him stay in shape. On bad days he felt like an idiot, crippled by fear.

  Then the Albanian got fired.

  He was never clear on what happened. One waitress said the Albanian had popped off at the manager one time too many, and maybe that was what happened. All he knew was that one night his relief man was not the usual wild-eyed fellow with the droopy mustache but a stocky dude with a calculating air about him. His name was Dooley, and Paul made him at a glance as a man who’d done time. You could tell, but of course he didn’t say anything, didn’t drop any hints. And neither did Dooley.