‘Dont talk like that Jimmy, you’re too young… You’ll never get anywhere with that attitude.’
‘Well suppose I don’t want to get anywhere.’
‘Poor dear Lily was so proud of you… She wanted you to be a great man, she was so ambitious for you… You dont want to forget your mother Jimmy. She was the only friend I had in the whole damn family.’
Jimmy laughed. ‘I didnt say I wasnt ambitious.’
‘For God’s sake, for your dear mother’s sake be careful what you do. You’re just starting out in life… everything’ll depend on the next couple of years. Look at me.’
‘Well the Wizard of Wall Street made a pretty good thing of it I’ll say… No it’s just that I dont like to take all the stuff you have to take from people in this goddam town. I’m sick of playing up to a lot of desk men I dont respect… What are you doing Cousin Joe?’
‘Don’t ask me…’
‘Look, do you see that boat with the red funnels? She’s French. Look, they are pulling the canvas off the gun on her stern… I want to go to the war… The only trouble is I’m very poor at wrangling things.’
Harland was gnawing his upper lip; after a silence he burst out in a hoarse broken voice. ‘Jimmy I’m going to ask you to do something for Lily’s sake… Er… have you any… er… any change with you? By a rather unfortunate… coincidence I have not eaten very well for the last two or three days… I’m a little weak, do you understand?’
‘Why yes I was just going to suggest that we go have a cup of coffee or tea or something… I know a fine Syrian restaurant on Washington street.’
‘Come along then,’ said Harland, getting up stiffly. ‘You’re sure you don’t mind being seen with a scarecrow like this?’
The newspaper fell out of his hand. Jimmy stooped to pick it up. A face made out of modulated brown blurs gave him a twinge as if something had touched a nerve in a tooth. No it wasnt, she doesnt look like that, yes TALENTED YOUNG ACTRESS SCORES HIT IN THE ZINNIA GIRL…
‘Thanks, dont bother, I found it there,’ said Harland. Jimmy dropped the paper; she fell face down.
‘Pretty rotten photographs they have dont they?’
‘It passes the time to look at them, I like to keep up with what’s going on in New York a little bit… A cat may look at a king you know, a cat may look at a king.’
‘Oh I just meant that they were badly taken.’
7 Rollercoaster
The leaden twilight weighs on the dry limbs of an old man walking towards Broadway. Round the Nedick’s stand at the corner something clicks in his eyes. Broken doll in the ranks of varnished articulated dolls he plods up with drooping head into the seethe and throb into the furnace of beaded lettercut light. ‘I remember when it was all meadows,’ he grumbles to the little boy.
Louis Expresso Association, the red letters on the placard jig before Stan’s eyes. ANNUAL DANCE. Young men and girls going in. Two by two the elephant And the kangaroo. The boom and jangle of an orchestra seeping out through the swinging doors of the hall. Outside it is raining. One more river, O there’s one more river to cross. He straightens the lapels of his coat, arranges his mouth soberly, pays two dollars and goes into a big resounding hall hung with red white and blue bunting. Reeling, so he leans for a while against the wall. One more river… The dancefloor full of jogging couples rolls like the deck of a ship. The bar is more stable. ‘Gus McNiel’s here,’ everybody’s saying ‘Good old Gus.’ Big hands slap broad backs, mouths roar black in red faces. Glasses rise and tip glinting, rise and tip in a dance. A husky beetfaced man with deepset eyes and curly hair limps through the bar leaning on a stick. ‘How’s a boy Gus?’
‘Yay dere’s de chief.’
‘Good for old man McNiel come at last.’
‘Howde do Mr McNiel?’ The bar quiets down.
Gus McNiel waves his stick in the air. ‘Attaboy fellers, have a good time… Burke ole man set the company up to a drink on me.’ ‘Dere’s Father Mulvaney wid him too. Good for Father Mulvaney… He’s a prince that feller is.’
Broad backs deferentially hunched follow the slowly pacing group out among the dancers. O the big baboon by the light of the moon is combing his auburn hair. ‘Wont you dance, please?’ The girl turns a white shoulder and walks off.
Stan finds himself singing at his own face in a mirror. One of his eyebrows is joining his hair, the other’s an eyelash… ‘No I’m not bejases I’m a married man… Fight any man who says I’m not a married man and a citizen of City of New York, County of New York, State of New York…’ He’s standing on a chair making a speech, banging his fist into his hand. ‘Friends Roooomans and countrymen, lend me five bucks… We come to muzzle Caesar not to shaaaave him… According to the Constitution of the City of New York, County of New York, State of New York and duly attested and subscribed before a district attorney according to the provisions of the act of July 13th 1888… To hell with the Pope.’
‘Hey quit dat.’ ‘Fellers lets trow dis guy out… He aint one o de boys… Dunno how he got in here. He’s drunk as a pissant.’ Stan jumps with his eyes closed into a thicket of fists. He’s slammed in the eye, in the jaw, shoots like out of a gun out into the drizzling cool silent street. Ha ha ha.
It was blowing cold in his face and he was sitting on the front of a ferryboat when he came to. His teeth were chattering. He was shivering… ‘I’m having DT’s. Who am I? Where am I? City of New York, State of New York… Stanwood Emery age twentytwo occupation student… Pearline Anderson twentyone occupation actress. To hell with her. Gosh I’ve got fortynine dollars and eight cents and where the hell have I been? And nobody rolled me. Why I havent got the DT’s at all. I feel fine, only a little delicate. All I need’s a little drink, dont you? Hello, I thought there was somebody here. I guess I’d better shut up.’
Across the zinc water the tall walls, the birchlike cluster of downtown buildings shimmered up the rosy morning like a sound of horns through a chocolatebrown haze. As the boat drew near the buildings densened to a granite mountain split with knifecut canyons. The ferry passed close to a tubby steamer that rode at anchor listing towards Stan so that he could see all the decks. An Ellis Island tug was alongside. A stale smell came from the decks packed with upturned faces like a load of melons. Three gulls wheeled complaining. A gull soared in a spiral, white wings caught the sun, the gull skimmed motionless in whitegold light. The rim of the sun had risen above the plumcolored band of clouds behind East New York. A million windows flashed with light. A rasp and a humming came from the city.
In the whitening light tinfoil gulls wheeled above broken boxes, spoiled cabbageheads, orangerinds heaving slowly between the splintered plank walls, the green spumed under the round bow as the ferry skidding on the tide, gulped the broken water, crashed, slid, settled slowly into the slip. Handwinches whirled with jingle of chains, gates folded upward. Stan stepped across the crack, staggered up the manuresmelling wooden tunnel of the ferryhouse out into the sunny glass and benches of the Battery. He sat down on a bench, clasped his hands round his knees to keep them from shaking so. His mind went on jingling like a mechanical piano.