“Sure. I’ll get it.”
I go to the bar and get another scotch and glass of wine and bring them back.
“Where was I? We were in front of the fireplace?”
“I was thinking,” she says.
“Yes?”
“Let’s go to the party. We’ll stick with the lie you just made up. I like the cat out the window. That sounds real because it sounds possible and I do have one in my room so I know how they love ledges and what they’re like if anyone asks me about him and the stupid things he can do. And you made the party sound like fun — the whole evening. I won’t let myself meet anyone else and I’ll leave when you want us to or maybe a little before then when I want to if I’m feeling uncomfortable there or things get sticky. You’ve been nice and I expect you to stay nice. But you can’t kick me out of your apartment at three or four in the morning, all right?”
“Why would I?”
“Some guys have. Even the ones I was in love with. Suddenly they don’t want me. Maybe I can’t blame them sometimes — the new ones I just meet overnight. They get scared their wife or girlfriend’s coming home or that’s just an excuse and they want me out because they’ve had enough of me or they suddenly feel guilty or even diseased sleeping with me. Or listen to this, they have to go to work extra early that morning they say and don’t want me in their apartment alone. I don’t want you doing that.”
“Tomorrow’s Sunday. I’ve the weekend off. If you come to my apartment — though who knows what could happen by then. I might get drunk at the party, though I don’t usually, and make a stupid scene about something else and you’ll get embarrassed or frightened and leave without me and regret you ever met me.”
“You won’t do that?”
“No. What I’m saying is anything can happen to spoil it but I doubt very seriously anything will. We’ll go to the party and stick with the story. We’ll talk, eat, drink, leave around the same time everyone else does, cab to my apartment if you still want to and light a fire and take a shower or anything like that but all reasonable, sane, comfortable, etcetera. Then we’ll go to bed or even make love on the rug in front of the fire or wait till morning for that or not even in the morning — not ever — anything you want.”
“And you’ll give me twenty-five more dollars when we get to your place?”
“That I can’t do.”
“You have no more money at home?”
“I have but I don’t want to give it.”
“But I need at least fifty to keep the landlady away. And I’m already sacrificing a lot by going to the party for just that single twenty-five. The other men. Those are the best hours of the best day of the week for that. By one o’clock I could make one-fifty if I work real hard and am lucky — a hundred at the very least.”
“I can’t give you anything but the twenty-five I’ll give now if you come to the party with me. It just wouldn’t be the same thing giving you more at home.”
“Then I can’t go.”
“Be reasonable. One evening.”
“No I can’t.”
“Then don’t.”
“I won’t.”
She finishes her drink says goodbye and leaves. I go to the party and meet someone new and just as the party’s ending I ask and she says yes and we cab to my apartment.
CAPITAL LABOR
A friend of my sister calls and says “I was chatting with Lula just before and asked how you are and she said looking for work and I said ‘Yeah? Because something’s come up in our real estate office he might be interested in, think I should call him?’ and she said ‘I don’t think so because Mort hates any kind of stuffy office work,’ and I said ‘But it’s mostly outside in the sun among the birds and city trees,’ and she said ‘He still hates any kind of hard-core money-making work including artistic, but chance it and call him because this time who knows?’ So I’m calling. You think you’d mind working for us full-time for a month if I tell you what it is?”
“I’d like some steady work after going through two jobs in a week.”
“Wonderful. We want someone to act as our rental agent for five recently renovated buildings in the Eighties on the West Side. They’re all close together so no hardship for you to get to, one from the other not a block apart. What you have to do is hang around the buildings and sometimes in the office in one of the vacant apartments where there’s a phone. So if people see our To Let signs on the buildings if you can’t grab the more interested-looking prospectives off the street — you’ll get the knack quick — they’ll call and you can be right down and around the corner or wherever to show them around. No pay. But one-third the rental fee if you rent the apartment. If the tenant refuses to pay the fee, since they might be wise we also own the building we’re acting as agents for, then fifty dollars for each apartment you rent and ten dollars more for a two- instead of a one-year lease. September’s the key month for renting, so you can clear a thousand minimum for a few weeks work and probably earn more. Sound okay?”
I go to her office. It’s in the old General Motors building, top floor. The furniture looks like wood but is formica, the bright orange carpet clashes with the dark furniture and walls. The reception room’s unkempt: trash cans spilling over, ashtrays smelly and full, boxes of photocopy-machine paper on the chairs and couches, empty matchbooks and squashed soda straws on the floor. But the walls and pilasters are made of real oak from the old days and with decorations in the coffered ceiling around where the chandeliers must have hung looking like something out of a French chateau or New York turn-of-the-century townhouse.
“Meet Larry, my boss,” Penny says.
We go into his office. Larry’s sitting in a big chair behind a wide desk with his back to me but swivels around and puts some legal papers down and we shake hands. He’s about my age. “So sit down, sit down,” he says. “Like some coffee?”
“No thanks.”
“It’s from a Mr. Coffee maker and special Jamaican blend. No sweat in making it.”
“Had a cup before I came.”
“It also makes hot water for tea.”
“Leave him alone,” Penny says. “He doesn’t feel thirsty, don’t bug him.”
“Who’s bugging? I’m being polite.”
“I don’t want any, thanks,” I say. “Nice place you have here. Looks like where the GM chairman of the board himself might have worked.”
“Hey man, very close. This suite was for their president. It’s the penthouse. Where I sit is where he did. Let me show you his slide-away bar.” He presses a button under his desk and two cabinet doors open and a bar appears. “The liquor didn’t come with it. Like a drink?”
“Too early.”
“Good for you. You passed my only test. Too early for me also and I don’t want to employ a lush, especially for out there.”
“Sneaky,” Penny says.
“Why? I got rid of that other guy what’s his name, Pigmi-gansky—”
“Parmiagiano.”
“Parmesan cheese, okay, but I got rid of him the same way, didn’t I? And later we heard he was a lush and a half. Same job as yours he applied for, Mort, and nobody ever looked more refined on so little dough. Too bad too. He knew his stuff. Psyched this suite out immediately as the finest he’s ever seen and knew all the names of the architect styles: New Renaissance, Neo-Smorgasbord. He said we have the best view in New York. You ever seen one like it?”
“Something like it. When I was in a paying play once, I went to a dentist on Central Park South to have a couple of teeth capped.”
“It couldn’t’ve been anything like this. Here, take a look from this window. There’s the lake. Way back there’s Harlem. What are those twin towers off 110th? They really sunk a bundle into those beauties and are going to lose most of their teeth. You see, we’re all attorneys here, Mrs. Rothblatt excluded—”