“Cool,” Ricky said. “You’re a stranger here. Welcome home, man.”
“You been around long?”
“Ten minutes. I been watching you. Man, I never saw you work so hard on a string of balls in my life. You were almost sweating, man. You weren’t so bad, come to think of it.”
“Just out of practice.”
“Yeah, I guess. What are you doing here man? Thought you were gone for good. I was digging the threads, you know, and they stack up fine. You dress like money. What are you doing uptown, huh? Slumming?”
The tone was banter but Johnny caught a note of reproach. “Just wanted to drop around,” he said. “See people, like that. What’s happening?”
“Not much.”
“Beans and Sam around?”
Ricky shrugged. “Beans lammed,” he said. “Two, three weeks after you split. Somebody tipped him they saw fuzz around his building. Beans didn’t even try to go home. He had a roll stashed and he grabbed it and split. Caught a rattler for Chi.”
“He still in Chicago?”
“I don’t know, man. Like he never wrote.”
“And Sam?”
Ricky sighed. “Sam got busted,” he said. “He hit this cat and this cat got a look at his face before the lights went out. Picked Sam out of a lineup. We found Sam a lawyer who told him to cop a plea. He got a year and a day. His lawyer put the fix in for him and he should be on the street in another, oh, three months at the outside. Makes a total of six months.”
“That’s hard.”
“It’s a bitch.”
“And you?” Johnny looked at him. He looked the same — the same clothes, the same hungry look. But it was always hard to tell what Ricky was thinking.
“I’m alive. You want to split, talk over a beer or something? This place can get on your nerves after a while.”
“Solid.”
Johnny returned his cue to the rack, went to the counter and paid for his time. He’d been there almost two hours. It hadn’t seemed that long.
They went down the stairs to the street, then around the corner and across 96th Street to a small neighborhood bar. Ricky ordered two glasses of draft and they carried them to a table. Johnny sipped the beer and didn’t like the taste. But he couldn’t order cognac in a bar like that. It would be definitely the wrong way to come on. He sipped more of the beer, then lit another cigarette and gave one to Ricky.
“So?”
“I don’t know,” Ricky said. “It’s a hassle.”
“There’s a shortage of marks?”
“Not that. But you get a reputation. You hustle too long and they know you, see you coming. I can’t get a game around here unless it’s with some dumb schmuck who just blew in from Toledo or something. I been going up to a few places in the Bronx, neighborhood places up there where they don’t know me. Another week or two and they know me there. It’s a bitch.”
Johnny didn’t say anything.
“Anyway, another two weeks and it doesn’t matter.”
“How’s that?”
“The army. I’m going in.”
“You get drafted?”
“Hell, no. They don’t draft you until you’re past twenty-one around here. No, I signed up. Three years working for old Uncle Sam.”
Ricky made circles on the table top with the beer glass. He made half a dozen circles while Johnny sat and watched him. “I don’t know,” he said. “I figure it’ll be a drag. But it’s like more of a drag sitting around on your butt all the time, looking to hustle some schmuck for a couple of bucks, then taking in a movie or some dumb broad with braces on her teeth and her eyes crossed. At least I get out of this crap town. Three squares a day, a nice pretty uniform to get the broads nice and hot. Maybe I’m nuts, I don’t know.”
“It makes sense.”
“That’s how I figure it but I might be wrong. How about you, man? Got things going for yourself?”
“I get by.”
“You must to dress like that. Those threads cost somebody money, man. You working?”
“Still hustling.” It was true enough, he thought. He was still working the angles. The money didn’t make him any less of a hustler.
“Working the broads?”
“Uh-huh.”
“It’s a living. I guess it’s breaking right for you, huh? That’s all that counts.”
Johnny nodded. Rick picked up his glass, finished his beer. “Look, man, like I got to go now. I’d like to hang around but I have to cut.”
“Something cooking?”
Ricky hesitated. “You remember a girl named Elaine Conners?”
Johnny remembered the girl vaguely and nodded. He tried to recall whether he had made her or not and decided that he hadn’t. She wasn’t too much to look at. Not ugly, but sort of plain-looking. About a year younger than he was.
“Well, I been seeing her lately. I got to run over to her place now.”
“You getting much?”
Ricky looked slightly embarrassed. “Well,” he said, “no. It’s not like that. I mean she doesn’t want to, well, to put out. I suppose she would if I wanted her to bad enough but I don’t want to push, if you know what I mean.”
Johnny nodded.
“The army bit was her idea,” he said. “To get it out of the way, so I won’t have to go later. And partly to get some money saved up.” He lowered his eyes. “Maybe I’ll never see her again, I don’t know. But it looks like we might get married or something when I get out of the army. Hell, it’s too far away to talk about it. But you never know.”
There was an awkward moment during which neither of them said anything. Then Ricky stood up, grinning. “Take it slow,” he said. “We’ll run into each other, man. Be cool and keep taking good care of the broads. Knock off one or two for me, huh? Just for old times sake.”
Johnny watched him leave. Then he turned his attention back to his beer. He looked at it but didn’t drink it. He lit another cigarette from the butt of the one he was smoking and thought about Ricky.
Things had changed.
Beans was gone, headed for Chi the last anybody had heard. Long Sam was doing a bit in jail with three months to go before he hit the street again. Ricky was ready to put on a uniform and play soldier. And thinking about getting married to a girl who wouldn’t even spread for him.
Things had definitely changed.
And here I am, he thought. Looking around for something and not knowing what it is. He didn’t fit this neighborhood any more. He could relax in it, could let his speech find its way back to the way it had been, could walk like a hood and think like a hood. But it was temporary. He didn’t belong on the upper west side any more. He was a different person than the Johnny Wells who had lived on 99th Street.
Where did he belong?
A good question, he thought. He picked up his beer, raised it to his lips, then changed his mind and returned it to the table. He just plain didn’t like beer. There didn’t seem to be any point in faking it.
He stood up and walked out of the bar. He had a problem and he couldn’t find the answer. But the answer had to be somewhere uptown. He was fairly sure of it.
Outside, the air had a chill in it. He buttoned the brown tweed jacket. He started to put the collar up the way you did on the upper west side when the air was cold. Then he remembered that it was an expensive jacket and left it as it was.
He started walking after a few seconds of indecision. He had no goal in mind. He simply followed his feet, letting them take him wherever they wanted to go.
He was surprised when he looked up suddenly and found himself standing in front of the building where he used to live. He had not planned on going back. There was nothing to go back to — his room had undoubtedly been rented time and time again since he left it. There was nobody there whom he wanted to see.