“The bread,” he said.
A hand reached under the table. Shank took four bills from the hand. He glanced at them. Four fives. Twenty cents, in his parlance. Twenty dollars to the square world. He folded the money and pocketed it. Then he passed the envelope back the same way. The boy took it and found a pocket for it. Shank noticed the automatic and unconscious change in the boy’s expression. He was holding now, violating the law, and a mask of wariness jelled on his face. The boy was the hunted one now.
He made as if to rise.
“Sit down,” Shank said. “You waited an hour. Another minute won’t hurt.”
The boy looked uncomfortable.
“It’s good stuff,” Shank assured him. “The Mau-Mau’s final batch. You don’t have to worry.”
“Solid.”
“About selling it, I mean. Your customers will dig it. You never get beat stuff from the Mau-Mau.”
The boy flushed. “I don’t sell, Shank.”
“Sure, I’m hip. You smoke an ounce a week all by yourself. Solid.”
“Shank—”
“You want to lie, it’s your business. But don’t expect me to believe you.”
The boy had a red face now. “Just to come out even,” he said. “So my own stuff doesn’t cost me anything. That’s all.”
“I’m hip.”
“I don’t make a profit. I’m not a…pusher, for Christ’s sake.”
Shank smiled, happy. “Nobody’s a pusher,” he said. “We’re all connections. Just a big string of connections from the top to the bottom. You’re part of a system, my man. That’s all. How does it feel to be a little cog in the world’s roundest wheel?”
Shank walked out first, letting the kid worry about it. He felt good getting outside. It was the second sale of the night and also the last. He was not holding and he was not hustling anything. Just relaxing. Just walking around and having his own private laughs.
Like the chick. Anita. That was a laugh, a big round one. The two of them balling now, with the chick scared out of her bra and Joe looking like Papa Professor with phallic overtones. Oh, that was a gas.
But the chick was nice. Fine stuff. Choice. He liked the type—the face, the whole flip structure. And he liked the fear. The scared ones were the most fun. Pretty soon, he thought, he would have to try his luck with her. And he laughed a loud laugh echoing in an alleyway and bouncing back and forth between the empty storefronts of Houston Street. Because it would be very funny. Very funny.
She was on the train heading for home, by herself, naturally. But she had been somewhat astonished that Joe had walked her to the subway. Someone like Ray, naturally, would have escorted her home as a matter of course. But Joe was not Ray, and as a result she had been a little amazed that he had taken the time and trouble to walk her to the Lexington IRT stop at Astor Place.
Now the train rolled north, grinding down the tracks toward Harlem, and she had only her thoughts and memories. It was close to midnight, late for a night before a school day, but she felt no anxiety. Her grandmother would be asleep and probably without worry. Her grandmother seemed to be losing a little more contact with reality every day.
Tomorrow, when Anita would inform the old woman she would be moving out, the girl would scarcely encounter an argument.
Leaving Harlem. Moving in on Saint Marks Place. And where, little girl, are we headed? Where will we wind up, and why?
You are no longer a virgin, little girl, and that, if nothing else, would shock the daylights out of your grandmother. It has even shocked you a bit, little girl, much as you would like to hide the fact. Shocked you to the very core.
Anita smiled that same private and personal smile she had smiled once before that evening. And she remembered the magic of making love, of taking pleasure, giving pleasure and straining for happiness. She had not quite reached the peak, but she had found pleasure enough without it.
And Joe had assured her that she would eventually reach the peak. Not that that as yet made much difference to her; the physical pleasure remaining secondary. Her joy at the total experience was the important matter.
Now she and Joe would live together. So many things would go to hell, she mused—school and home and Ray and that split-level in suburbia. But so much would be left. A new world. Maybe the right one. Because somewhere there had to be the right one, the best of all the possible ones. Somewhere.
After the love-making Joe had offered her a marijuana cigarette that she had declined. And he had shrugged, to show it had not mattered, and had put the cigarette away. She wondered which parts of the life she would take and which to reject. There must be that level to attain on which you could freely search and think without dissipating yourself into the void. She would find that balance and so would Joe.
The train rushed on, from stop to stop, and she rushed along with it. Her thoughts and memories caught her up and whirled her around and she forgot the train and her destination. She all but missed her stop. But as the train pulled into 116th Street, she remembered who she was and where she was and where she was going.
She stepped out of the train and walked up to the night and headed quickly home.
Chapter 6
A Sunday, and a bad one…rain lashing against the windows…no sun…the air warm in spite of the rain…muggy.
The three people at the makeshift table in the small apartment on Saint Marks Place made a unique family group. They were finishing breakfast. A cigarette burned to ashes between Anita Carbone’s fingers. Another dropped from the corner of Joe Milani’s mouth. And Shank swallowed the last of his coffee. The three had been living together in a strange act of communal living for little more than a week. Anita shared Joe’s bed. For several days the presence of another man in the room had been disconcerting to Anita. It had been incredibly difficult for her to relax in love when another heart had been beating across the room, another ear possibly listening to the rhythm of love-making. But she had at last grown accustomed to Shank’s presence; and when he slept she and Joe made love.
Shank put down his coffee. “Got to move,” he said. “Got to see a man.”
Joe looked up. “Who?”
Shank shrugged. “A man. Short or tall, fat or thin. I don’t know who he is or what he looks like. All I got is a name-Basil. You know, I don’t believe there’s anybody named Basil. It’s impossible.”
“A connection?”
“Call it a possibility. Call it a notion. I don’t know. They busted Mau-Mau and they put the lid on as tight as it gets around here. It gets hot and it gets cool. Cycles. Junk has as many cycles as sunspots. It gets hot and it gets cool and I wish to hell it would come on a little cooler.”
Joe put out his cigarette. “Basil,” he said.
“Basil. A name with no face. I don’t know. He hangs out in the Kitchen. Hell’s Kitchen. Midtown West Side. I go over there and I connect with him, I guess. Nobody knows who he is. He buys and sells. That’s all I know.”
“When do you find him?”
“Today,” Shank said. “Today, unless the bastard closes on Sundays. He shouldn’t. Business as usual seven days a week in the junk business. He hangs in a coffee pot on West Thirty-ninth. Maybe.”
“There’s always tomorrow.”
Shank shook his head. “I ran into Judy,” he said. “I got a set to supply tomorrow night. So I have to meet Basil today. Life is filled with responsibilities.” He smiled, more to himself than to Joe and Anita. He was beginning to enjoy coming on with philosophical phrases. You sounded deep and people put you up for it, Shank thought.