“Yeah, well, that’s why I’m calling.”
“Anything serious? I hope your family isn’t in trouble.”
“No. They’re all right.”
“You’re not leaving home?”
“Oh, no, no. Wonder if I could come over for a few minutes?”
“Why, of course. You know you’re always welcome.”
“Thanks. How have you been?”
“Oh, much better than for a long time. You sound serious. It isn’t your father again? It isn’t Larry, I hope.”
“Oh, no. Look, I’m only a couple of blocks from the subway. I — it’s better if I come over and tell you.”
“Do, please. You really have me concerned.”
“I won’t be in anybody’s way? It’s not too early?”
“Heavens, no. At ten-thirty? You won’t be in my way at all. You should see the dull batch of student themes I’ve been grading. Ira, I very much want to see you.”
“I should be there in a half hour or so — no, three-quarters of an hour.”
“Please come right along. Ira, you know if there’s anything I can do, please let me help.”
“Yeah. Thanks. Somebody’s here for the phone.” Raptor. Hawk’s eyes, brilliantined approach. Middle-aged dame dolled up. Rouged, perfumed muskily, she brushed by to stuff herself into the booth he’d vacated. Off to a party, somebody’s engagement, peroxided tresses like Morris’s Ida, that phony tramp Pop had procured. Reminded him of the one Leo stuffed it into, wanted to fix him up with. So what? Been a goddamn sight better than the ones — the one he stuffed it into. No, not because no periods, no condoms. No, but to be a man: so you put a pillow on her puss, if she’s as fat a yenta as Leo jokes, so long as you get a piece o’ hump. Be a man, that’s the main thing. Not knock up a sixteen-year-old, and have to tell Edith. Jesus Christ, this lousy Harlem.
He sallied out of the store and headed for the 116th Street station, and as he neared the kiosk thought he heard a train pulling in. Never make it. He’d have to change the dime. An express roared by as he came away from the change booth. Well, he hadn’t missed anything. He pressed his jitney into the turnstile slot, paced on the platform a few minutes, looking down the dark tunnel for telltale headlights. White orbs of a local appeared at length, lurching toward the station. Locals always gave the impression of being so damned self-important, cocky, brash, what the hell. .
XII
His eyes briefly assuaged by the sight of the dull wintry-brown leaves still clinging to shrubbery in the little triangular park across Seventh Avenue, he cleared the last subway step of the kiosk at Christopher Street. After the jaundiced ambience of subway train and platform, the sky seemed a cleaner blue. The southern sun, though low on the jagged horizon, still radiated meridian warmth as he proceeded south. As if reluctant to leave their cozy folds, a few fleecy clouds drifted up out of the deep, irregular gaps in rooftops of miscellaneous buildings downtown. Reluctant too, his heavy legs alternated between trudging and need. He’d have to make it to Mamie’s by two o’clock, to a waiting Stella there, waiting for advice, guidance, help, who knew what, waiting for something he could tell her to do. Jesus. At least there would be time, as Mr. Eliot said. There would be time to find out what to do — or where to have it done — and get back to Stella. Thank God he wouldn’t have to shuttle at Times Square. West Side to East Side, the way Minnie went to CCNY from her office. Jesus Christ, the disgrace. But could he wait any longer? Five days. That was his portion in life: disgrace. . disgrace. Swiped a filigreed fountain pen, overreached, was caught, and how stupidly caught, confessed. Nah, he had found it, he could have said, as he had told himself a thousand times. Was he going to go through that all over again? It had meant expulsion, and expulsion had meant he eventually met Larry. . and eventually left him behind, and on to Edith grown so fond, so warm, admiring — of him, Jesus, trustful, eager, her utter confidant, kind, generous, dainty woman. Okay, you were meant to kick over the apple cart. . and you’re about to. Sing a song of sixpence, a pocket full of merde. Seventh Avenue traffic on Sunday, mostly checkered taxicabs with blue smoking tailpipes. And birds, turds, surds, and words. What the hell is a surd: a square-root sign. . any irrational root. That’s you, an irrational root, absurd. You’ve been maimed, all right? You stood on the flat diving rock on the shore of the Hudson River, and you said there was a meaning, and you would find an answer. But why does it always have to be on your own hide? Answer. What do you mean by answer? Almost a glimpse at times: like Thoreau’s hound and horse, and hawk was it? Buildings were squat and jammed together, and now and then buildings reared high into the blue; some were loft buildings, some were warehouses, and some of yellow brick, and some of red. It was not really just an answer he was looking for. Something more. Hmph. What the hell was it Iz went around quoting from Rimbaud? J’ai fait la magique étude que nul n’élude. But Rimbaud didn’t say what he found. Meanwhile, as Larry sang, he burned a hole in his only pair of trousers—
Look how serene Barrow Street is, how retiring Commerce Street next. Coign within the great city, recess within the everlasting clamor, within the havoc of the heart. Young trees rise from the sidewalk, bare of leaves now, and prettier for being so, in a way, appropriate to the day and the season: slender branches caressing bare sky. . opposite them the remodeled townhouses, haphazard and habitable, ah, so many shades of weathered masonry you never could imagine, soft and umber with age, set with dormer windows and topped with attic slopes — oh, Attic shape. This was that world he dreamt was elsewhere, like Coriolanus, when he stood as a kid on a certain Harlem street corner on the West Side, beatified, euphoric. But you’ve screwed it up now. And in deed. What do the barkers in Coney Island yell to get you to fork up a quarter to pitch a couple of baseballs at a hole in the wall? Sock it in, and get a baby doll. How true. Gone is the enclave in turmoil for you, forever.
The owner of the little service station at the foot of Morton Street, muscular, limber Italian, sloshed water from a garden watering can with sprinkler removed on a small puddle of gasoline on the asphalt next to the pump stands, looked up at Ira as he passed. Curious, how recognitions became implicit, without need to reside in specific acquaintance. Morton Street — Ira rounded it — felt as if it were here the Village tapered off. The dwellings were mostly remodeled, reclaimed from townhouse and tenement, DE LUX, as the TO LET signs read; still two decidedly slummy tenements remained side by side across the street from where Edith had moved this fall, slummy tenements still occupied by Italians, whilom immigrants, of Pop’s and Mom’s steerage-vintage, matrons in window’s weeds, and others on the twin stoops, still accompanying their native speech with twirly gesture of hub and spoke of digits. Joe lived there too. Ferret-eyed, anarchist janitor of Edith’s house, he believed in finishing off the richa bosses with a banga-banga, and brought Edith the bootleg gin for her cocktail parties. Ah, respite: meandering reverie as crisis drew near, like the last meal of the condemned.
The street curved slightly in the middle, but passing the bight, 61 Morton came into view, and spying the stoop, Ira quickened gait — grimly and scared. Eager to cross the Styx, like one of the damned souls in the Inferno. Fear turned into desire — wasn’t that what Dante said? Odd, he should suddenly recall that short Italian footnote at the bottom of the page: Come augel a la sua richiamo. He didn’t need old Charon, the ferryman, to smack him with an oar. He pressed the doorbell, bucked the door open at the peevish buzzer’s insistence, entered the foyer, and mounted the carpeted stairs. As usual, Edith had come out of the apartment and was awaiting him above at the banister.