“Never mind — I mean, no.” A sudden idea had struck him, and he moderated his tone. “You wanna do me a favor?”
“Like what?”
“Lend me a quarter.”
“A quarter? What for? A quarter?”
“Lend me a quarter. Even fifteen cents. All right?”
“Whatsa matter with you? You’re so jumpy. You’re all upset. Like auf shpilkis, Mama says. Like on tacks.”
“Well, I am.”
Minnie studied him with unyielding gaze a full five seconds, as if trying to pry loose a hint of what was wrong, then gave up with one of her overly furrowed grimaces. “My poor brother. What gets into him. Right away he’s in a big panic.”
She was getting perilously close to those times when she was the cause, cause of fears that proved groundless.
“Look at you. Fifteen cents is gonna get you out of all the veitig you’re showing? You can’t even say what’s the trouble.”
He swallowed a mouthful of coffee. He had to keep a tight check on himself. And the effort seemed to carry him further than he had expected: into a subdued kind of reasonableness. “No, I can’t. I’m in trouble, that’s all.”
He put his cup down, clasped his fingers together. “I’m in trouble,” he repeated with new grim emphasis. “You know what I mean by trouble.”
And now she seemed to grasp his meaning, didn’t shrink away, but hollowed her length. She made a tutting sound, turned her face away, not in reproach, but pity.
“My poor brother.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”
“So what’re you gonna do?”
“Lend me fifteen cents, will ya?”
“So with fifteen cents—?”
“That’s all I’m asking.”
“I knew it. I knew it would happen. That’s why I told you I didn’t want any more.”
“Supposing you got knocked up?” he demanded angrily. “Supposing somebody else knocked you up? One of your goyish friends, or that good-looking Cuban guy. I’m not trying to be funny. What would you do?”
He waited a moment for an answer. “All right, tell me. I know fifteen cents isn’t going to do it. But I—” He hacked at the air. “Right now I need fifteen cents. So you haven’t told me. What would you do? Give me an eytser, good counsel.”
She hesitated, profoundly serious. “I’d go to a friend, what could I do? Maybe I’d have to keep asking. Maybe one of the married women in the office—”
“And you’d let ’em know?”
“What could I do? I could say it’s for a friend. So even if they knew, it’s still better than having a baby. Do you want me to ask?”
He waved her away brusquely. “Let me have fifteen cents. I’ll take care of it.”
“You’ll have me more worried than myself.” Her eyes glistened as she tilted her head. “I’m glad it isn’t me. But oh, God, oh, God! You always get so mixed up in your troubles, Ira. I can’t stay out of it. I try to stay out of them. I try to stop it, so you won’t get in trouble. I stayed out of it. Now look.”
“Jesus Christ, will you stop throwing everything in my face? You know what arguing with you does to me? You’re as bad as Mom.” His hips lunged from side to side. “Goddamn it!” Ferocity turned desperate. “I wish I was never born!”
“Don’t say that!” Minnie pleaded.
“Never born! Dead! Dead as a goddamn mutt by the curb. I had to live in this goddamn 119th Street. Take baths in that goddamn vonneh!” He thumbed bitterly in the direction of the bathroom. “The sonofabitch place. Who knows what I’m in for!”
“Please, Ira, you make me so — I could — I don’t know what.” Her tone nasal with unshed tears, her mien wilting, hand outstretched. “Mom’ll be here soon.”
“Yeah, I know. So what? What?” He sneered, shook his hand wildly. “Give me the fifteen cents. So I can beat it before—” And reverting to sarcasm again: “C’mon, I don’t need—” He couldn’t finish. The madness latent in it all.
“I’ll give you a quarter.”
“Okay. Make it snappy, will ya?” She preceded him to Mom and Pop’s bedroom, while he got his coat and hat, and she was in the kitchen again with a quarter in her hand before he had wrestled into his overcoat.
“Here.”
“I’ll get some dough somewhere. Pay you back.”
“You don’t — doesn’t have to be tomorrow. I wish I was out of this dump.” She was again on the verge of tears. “Everything happens here. All kinds of rotten things already. We gotta move, that’s all.”
“We do?” He turned cruel. “I got all kinds of nice memories from it.”
“Oh, stop! Everything is from this lousy Harlem. Even my chance to be a teacher. Who knew when I played hopscotch and I went around the Maypole in Mt. Morris Park it was gonna be like this?”
“Bye-bye.” He was out the door. “Boy, I’d like to duck Mom.”
“What’ll I tell her?” she called after him in the cold hall. “You didn’t have breakfast.”
“Any damn thing.”
Once out in the street again, he turned swiftly east. To go the other way, west, to Park Avenue, was too risky. He’d be almost bound to run into Mom — not that it would make too much difference: he’d have to dream up an explanation, and fend off her distress at his not having breakfast. What the hell would he be running out of the house for on a Sunday morning? Damned if he could think of an excuse. Besides, there was a drugstore on the corner of Lexington and 118th Street. He had bought condoms there several times. Biolov’s was just a little too close for comfort. This little pharmacist with the short black mustache didn’t know him, except as a customer in the vicinity somewhere. In fact, the slight man’s face wreathed in a certain expression when Ira laid down his quarter on the counter, as if expecting the usual request.
“Would you mind changing it?” Ira asked. “I’d like to use the phone.”
Change was made wordlessly, and separating out the nickel, pocketing the rest, Ira went into the empty booth. Ten o’clock. Mom way later than usual. But not too early for — temptation an instant surged strongly to make another try at Mamie’s — maybe something had happened in the last half hour. He debated a few seconds, while he watched the drugstore owner slip a pale ceramic brick into the humidor of the box of fat Admiration stogies. Oh, hell, don’t be a sap. He pressed the nickel home. Five days. He’d be just wasting money. The coin clinked down into the holding receptacle, the operator made her stereotyped inquiry, and he gave her Edith’s Greenwich Village exchange. He heard the repeated short hum of the busy signal, and in a few seconds, he heard, “Sorry, the line’s busy,” and the jitney jingled down. Well, at least that meant she was home. Meant he had another minute or two to think about his decision. He opened the folding door. Yeah. Well, who else? Two o’clock he’d said he’d be there. Five hours nearly. An hour to travel downtown, well, maybe less, another uptown. An hour with Edith — oh, plenty of time. Three hours from five hours. You know if they were pregnant, you could screw ’em to your heart’s content. And without a Trojan on. Save money. Yeah — if they were pregnant. Five days. He pressed the nickel into its aperture, heard the ringing signal this time, pulled the folding door to.
She must have just finished her last conversation, and be still sitting within reaching distance of the phone, for she had lifted the receiver from the hook and was answering even before the first ring ended. “Hello, Edith. It’s Ira,” he said.
“Heaven’s sakes, lad, where have you been?”
“Oh, exams and things.”
“Are you all right?”