A cast of thousands was enjoying the postcards, taking them out of the racks, looking at them, putting them back in the racks. Lottie joined. Faces, trees, people in costumes, the sea, Jesus and Mary, a glass bowl, a farm, stripes and dots, but nowhere a card showing the replica of the A & P. She had to ask, and a girl with braces on her teeth showed her where there were several hidden away. Lottie bought one that showed aisles disappearing at the horizon.
“Wait!” said the girl with braces, as she was walking away. She thought she’d had it then, but it had only been to give her the receipt for twenty-five cents.
Up in the park, in a baffle away from the field, she printed on the message side: “I Was here today + I Thout this woud bring back the Old Times for you.” Only then did she consider who she’d send it to. Her grandfather was dead, and no one else she could think of was old enough to remember anything so far back. Finally she addressed it to her mother, adding to the message: “I never pass throuh Elizebeth without Thinking of you.”
Then she emptied the other postcards out of her purse—a set of holes, a face, a bouquet, a saint, a fancy chest-of-drawers, an old dress, another face, people working out of doors, some squiggles, a stone coffin, a table covered with more faces. Eleven in all. Worth, she jotted the figures on the back of the card with the coffin—$2.75. A bit of shoplifting always cheered her up.
She decided that the bouquet, “Irises,” was the nicest and addressed it to Juan: Juan Martinez Abingden Garage 312 Perry St. New York 10014.
21. Juan (2021)
It wasn’t because he disliked Lottie and his offspring that he wasn’t regular with his weekly dues. It was just that Princess Cass ate up his money before he could pay it out, Princess Cass being his dream on wheels, a virginal ’15 replica of the last great muscle car, Chevy’s ’79 Vega Fascination. About the neck of his little beauty he had hung five years of sweat and tears: punched out power with all suitable goodies; a ’69 vintage Weber clutch with Jag floorbox and Jag universals; leather insides; and the shell and glory of her was seven swarthy per-spectivized overlays with a full five-inch apparent depth of field. Just touching her was an act of love. And when it moved? Brm brm? You came.
Princess Cass resided on the third floor of the Abingdon Garage on Perry Street, and as the monthly rent plus tax, plus tax, was more than he would have to pay at a hotel, Juan lived there with, and in, the Princess. Besides cars that were just parked or buried at the Abingdon, there were three other members of the faith: a Jap ad man in a newish Rolls Electric. “Gramps Gardiner in a self-assembled Uglicar that wasn’t much more, poor slut, than a mobile bed; and, stranger than custom, a Hillman Minx from way back and with zero modifications, a jewel belonging to Liz Kreiner, who had inherited it from her father Max.
Juan loved Lottie. He did love Lottie, but what he felt for Princess Cass went beyond love—it was loyalty. It went beyond loyalty—it was symbiosis.
(“Symbiosis” being what it said in little gold letters on the fender of the Jap junior executive’s Rolls.) A car represented, in a way that Lottie would never understand for all her crooning and her protests, a way of life. Because if she had understood, she wouldn’t have addressed her dumb card in care of the Abingdon. A blurry mess about some dumb flower that was probably extinct!
He didn’t worry about an inspection, but the Abingdon’s owners had shit-fits when anyone used the place as an address, and he didn’t want to see the Princess sleeping on the street.
If Princess Cass was his pride, she was secretly also his shame. Since eighty per cent of his income was extra-legal, he had to buy her basic necessities—gas, oil, and glass fiber—on the black market, and there was never enough, despite his economies in every other direction. Five nights out of seven she had to stay indoors, and Juan would usually stay there with her, puttering and polishing, or reading poems, or sharpening his brains on Liz Kreiner’s chessboard, anything rather than have some smart-ass ask, “Hey. Romeo, where’s the royal lady?”
The other two nights justified any suffering. The very best and happiest times were when he met someone who could appreciate largeness and they’d set off down the turnpike. All through the night, not stopping except to fill the tank, on and on and on and on. That was colossal but it wasn’t something he could do all the time, or even with the same someone again. Inevitably they would want to know more and he couldn’t bear to admit that this was it—the Princess, himself, and those lovely white flashes coming down the center of the road. All. Once they found out, the pity started flowing, and Juan had no defenses against pity.
Lottie had never pitied him, nor had she ever been jealous of Princess Cass, and that’s why they could be, and had been, and would be, man and wife. Eight fucking years. Like Liz Kreiner’s Hillman, she’d lost the flower of youth, but the guts were still sound. When he was with her and things went right, it was like butter on toast. A melting. The edges vanished. He forgot who he was or that there was anything in particular that had to be done. He was the rain and she was a lake, and slowly, softly, effortlessly, he fell.
Who could ask for more?
Lottie might have. Sometimes he wondered why she didn’t. He knew the kids cost her more than he provided, yet the only demands she tried to make were on his time and presence. She wanted him living, at least part of the time, at 334, and not so far as he could tell for any other reason than because she wanted him near. She kept pointing out ways he’d save money and other kinds of advantages, like having all his clothes in one place instead of scattered over five boroughs.
He loved Lottie. He did love her, and needed her too, but it wasn’t possible for them to live together. It was hard to explain why. He’d grown up in a family of seven, all living in one room. It turned people into beasts living that way. Human beings need privacy. But if Lottie didn’t understand that, Juan didn’t see what else he could say. Any person had to have some privacy, and Juan just needed more than most.
22. Leda Holt (2021)
While she was shuffling, Nora hatched the egg that she had so obviously been holding in reserve. “I saw that colored boy on the steps yesterday.”
“Colored boy?” Wasn’t that just like Nora, to find the worst possible way to put it? “When did you start keeping company with colored boys?”
Nora cut. “Milly’s fellow.”
Leda swam round in pillows and comforters, sheets and blankets, until she was sitting almost upright. “Oh yes,” archly, “that colored fellow.” She dealt the cards out carefully and placed the pack between them on the emptied-out cupboard that served as their table.
“I practically—” Nora arranged the cards in her hands “—had to split a gasket. Knowing that the two of them were in my room the whole while, and him wasting away for it.” She plucked out two cards and put them in the crib, which was hers this time. “The droop!”
Leda was more careful. She had a 2, a pair of 3’s, a 4, and a pair of 7’s. If she kept the double run, she had to give Nora the 7’s. But if she kept her two pairs and the starter didn’t offer additional help … She decided to risk it and put the 7’s in the crib.
Nora cut again and Leda turned up the Queen of Spades for the starter. She dissembled her satisfaction with a shake of her head, and the opinion, “Sex!”