Night before last I was sipping and nibbling and just being a thing that was leaning and letting all of this come, even the part about how for all of the time I knew them after that, I never stopped showing them who the disgusting ones were and who the nice guy was because of who it was who took it and went and gave it back. Eddie, Izzy, Mel — want to bet me they're still a mess? Then I tiptoed to the bathroom off the bedroom and sat down on the toilet and turned to other thoughts. That's when those names came — the Strand, the Columbia, the Laurel, the Lido, the Gem — and let's not forget the Central!
Look, I sat there urinating.
The thing was for me to keep my eyes closed and keep ready to fall more or less back to sleep. So why did I turn on the light to see the big blue box and the yellow rose on it, the million-dollar decision in some genius's brain to make the whole deal hazy?
THREE
THREE THINGS HAPPENED to me today. One of them taught me the meaning of fear. Actually, these were not things that happened to me. They were just things that happened in my presence. I am not certain how much of my presence was involved. Let's leave it at this — I was there when these things happened.
THE FIRST THING WAS the woman speaking.
You might want to see her this way — nice eyes, nice hair, pretty face, those bones, good ones. The eyes are liquid, the hair chestnut, a barrette hiking a section of it up front into a flung-back pleated effect.
I had my eye on those bones as she talked.
She was talking about a lover of hers, the man's funeral.
She said she rather enjoyed it.
She knew I'd known the man. Perhaps this explains everything. Because something had better explain.
He was a lucky man before he died. I am thinking of the things he saw — the bones of the woman from top to bottom, the eyes swimming, the chestnut hair without the barrette in it, the pleated effect unformed.
What a lucky man, I thought.
This is what I was thinking while the woman was speaking — even when she mentioned the funeral and allowed as how she had rather enjoyed it.
THE SECOND THING was the head in the subway car.
This happened on my way home, one stop still to go.
I looked up from nothing in particular and saw it coming from the far end of the car, a wheelchair and a small colored man behind it, pushing.
I know I took a good look right from the very start. It was because of the wheelchair. It was because here comes a wheelchair through a subway car. But what kept me looking was the absence of someone in it. It was just an empty chair coming down the aisle, a little man behind it, pushing.
I thought, He pushes that thing in here. He gets you to look at him doing it. I'm his client if I look.
Then I saw the head. It was sitting perfectly upright in the chair. I mean it — a head, right in the center of the seat.
It was a colored man's head with a bit of a colored man's beard, and there was a neckerchief at the bottom of it sort of rakishly flared.
You will say I am not to be trusted. But I know I am. I saw. I heard. I saw the mouth in the head open up wide just as the train came in to my stop. I know what I heard before the door behind me was shut.
It was full-throated, deep-chested.
Only one line, but good and loud.
Way down upon the Swanee River. .
Very thrilling, very theatrical.
The son of a bitch was a baritone!
THE THIRD THING was I went home.
IMP AMONG AUNTS
I THREW ONE AWAY just before I started this. I tried and tried. But it wasn't any use. This one here has the same title that that other one had because that other one had had it. In that other one, I was telling the truth, which is why it wasn't any use. Whereas this one, I'm already lying my head off with the thats and the hads in this one, not to mention the residuum masquerading as an honest title.
But I don't want you getting off on the wrong track until that's where I want you getting. So just for the record, I did have aunts, I still do have some of them, and I was always as much of an imp among them as I could manage.
They called me one, for that matter — the aunts did. Or they called me bandit or Mr. Mischief or rascal.
Bandit was actually bondit, which is another language and which maybe doesn't in it mean bandit. But I always thought it did, even though the aunts put all their stress on the second syllable.
Can you hear it — how it sounds?
Well, I always thought so many things.
I was trying to get one of them declared in what I was writing and gave up on. But I just couldn't not tell the truth in it, it being something about Aunt Helen.
Here's what I was doing.
I started off by naming all the aunts — like this: Ida, Lily, Esther, Dora, Miriam, Sylvia, Pauline, Adele, Helen, with Helen coming last, just the way you see it here.
That wasn't a truth but it was the beginning of one.
Then it got worse. Or I did. For pages and pages, saying something bizarre about each of them — about the aunts — only nothing about the one aunt who really mattered.
I'll give you an example.
I said, Take Dora. I said, Dora makes brisket and then goes to all the windows. There's Dora, I said, standing at each window, looking out of each window, going oy at each window.
Just listen to her as Dora goes oy.
Like this.
Oy.
As for Helen, I was getting to her. Helen's hard. She's my mother's side. Helen's on my mother's side. I am getting nervous from thinking about getting to Helen on any side.
Helen could get you nervous.
Here's what Helen looks like.
Chinese-y eyes. Silvery hair. In a bob.
Helen was a spy without leaving a desk. Helen broke codes. Helen ran the cryptanalysis unit at somewhere so secret you could die from it even if I didn't tell where.
This is true.
I went to see her once. If I told you even the state she was in, it could get us all in trouble. Of course, I don't mean state like emotional. State geopolitical is what I mean. Helen was never in a state emotional. This is the thing about Helen — and it still is.
The place wasn't much, the apartment Helen was in. I suppose she was in it to be near where she did her spying on what all of the people in the world were or are saying.
There was a buzzer, not a bell. This'll give you an idea of how crummy Helen's was.
The door comes open this little bitsy crack.
"Yes?"
"Aunt Helen live here?"
"Aunt Helen who?"
"My aunt Helen."
"Stand back."
I stand back. Door gets opened a bitsy bit more.
"Who are you?"
"Her nephew. Are you Aunt Helen?"
"Say her name."
"Helen?"
"Say yours."
"Mine?"
"It's okay!"
THAT WAS HELEN CALLING, that last thing you heard. You would know it in a flash, her voice, scratchy and exasperated-sounding, a little teasing, a little taunting — yes, Chinese, Chinese-y, that would be Aunt Helen all the way.
The woman in the W.A.C. uniform had a heavy automatic pistol stuck down into a holster strapped to her at her waist.
That's true — except it wasn't really stuck down. It was sort of sitting in there — loose-ishly.
Aunt Helen stayed right where she was, which was back behind the blocky woman at a pink Formica table with a pencil in her hand. When I got up close enough, I could see it was a crossword puzzle that Aunt Helen was working on — slanty eyes, bobbed hair, everything colored, her success colored, the color of polished steel.