“That’s a Lenox Avenue train coming in.” Larry took another quick look down the track. “I must not have seen your local.”
“White and green headlight. I guess you did,” Ira confirmed. “It’s mine. I’ll see you in the alcove.” And as the train ranged into the station: “Where you going?”
“I’m going to tear over to the express side. I think I hear one. Abyssinia.”
Larry broke into a quick trot toward the downstairs exit. He was right about the train. And apparently in time. The Broadway express charged into the station a few seconds after the Harlem local had arrived, and the local kept waiting, until the magisterial express pulled out. And then the local, which Ira had boarded, left, gathered speed rapidly — and insolently overtook its ponderous rival. . sped by the last cars. . until almost abreast of the first — and there was Larry on his express, on the opposite seat of an opposite train, his eyes raised perusing subway ads, oblivious of Ira traveling parallel at the same speed. And so for a few seconds, and only a few, they traveled within view of each other, as if they were still pals, still cronies, once again.
PART TWO
I
Seemly oddly mundane, squeezed between the two narrow stylish office buildings, with ornamentation and lofty balcony and fluted column embedded in their facades — and dwarfed by their height as well — the three-story building that housed the Union Square Business School had the appearance of a chalk box — a chalk box with windows, with the wall painted blue. A flight up, Ira could see intermittent rows of typewriters in sunken typewriter tables at which girls sat, busily transcribing from steno manuals beside them. A flight above, a woman with a yellow pencil in her hair and a book in her hand walked to the window, glanced out, and moved away, her lips moving as if she were dictating to a class. Earmarks, repugnant earmarks of the business school. Ira rested his briefcase on the low stone wall surrounding Union Square Park across the street: the only thing not in view was the bookkeeping class, that damned farrago of debits and credits, and accounts receivable and payable. Hadn’t old man Sullivan back in junior high gone wild with him over his inability to determine when one debited and when one credited? Makeshift junior high school, and the blue veins crinkled on Mr. Sullivan’s temples: shtand up, shit down. She was in there somewhere. She had to be. He had such lousy luck. All that had to happen now was for Stella to skip school today. That would cap everything. Ah, no. There went the chime.
He turned his head to look up at the pyramidal belfry atop the Consolidated Edison Building off 14th Street, just as a matching chime, playing Haydn, like an echo, sounded from a similar pinnacle uptown, the Metropolitan Life Tower, or whose? Quarter past one, the ponderous iron hands read. Forty-five minutes to go. He didn’t need to have cut his ed class, but hell, he was too nervous. As it was, the damned combination lock on his locker when he went to get his coat and hat had proved refractory, always did when he became keyed up, keyed up, pun. He’d have gone wild if he had only a few minutes to spare. Better this way with lots of time to collect his wits. Such as they were, damn horse’s ass, what was he doing here? Waiting on a little tub he’d screwed and knocked up. Jesus, can you imagine that? In a frumpy, blue-balls little building across the street where the wheeled traffic and pedestrians flowed and flowed. Din, din. Honk, honk. Dong, dong, from here to the 14th Street trolleys. People and wheels. Shuffle and squeal. Glitter and gleam of windshield and hubcap. And sickly sweet blue gasoline fume, and next to him, the hot dog cart, under whose umbrella the proprietor sat reading, redolence wafted — of the kishkelikh, Mom called them. He saw himself for a moment as if formed and forged by a million, billion impacts of his surroundings. Jesus Christ, and go break the worthy eidolon of self you presented to someone who admired you, was fond of you, oh, oh, a wax face such as he had seen in a movie once, wax features that someone bashed with his fist, fractured and fell off, revealing the gruesome horror of hideous nothingness. . So, you, trailing into Edith’s apartment the little kewpie doll you pratted, the wax mask dropping off you: Edith, this is Stella. And like one who came breathless out of the sea, said Dante, you look back at the storm-tossed waves of what’s to happen. You gotta harden yourself, that’s all. God! Orestes, meet Oedipus. This is all I have to say to thee, and no word more forever. Ay, ay, Jocasta. Boy.
Turmoil, turmoil. Uptown, downtown, on the avenue, on the street, fretting, fretting, everything. . shoppers and window shoppers and vehicles, movement everywhere, to the right, to the left, in Union Square Park behind him, where voices squabbled, and he could distinctly hear words spoken in foreign accent, Russian Jewish, “de right-vingers. . Piss-voik. . Ladies gomments. . Mittings fom de union.” And now someone taunting — Ira turned to look. “Hey, Mistah Faschistah,” someone from a group seated on a bench mocked a man hurrying by. “Vere you ronning?” Unrest, Jesus. There must have been a more quiet time, once. That narrow, white building, which overlooked the business school, must have been built in a quieter time, difficult as it was to imagine, a more leisurely time that could afford dispensations like that single coy marble balcony high up on about the twelfth or fifteenth story, the arched windows, and the overhanging eaves like mortarboards with dovetails in them. A quieter time — what was it like? — and what would he have been like? He wouldn’t be waiting here to make amends, mortified at having to take the little klutz he was screwing to Edith to get him out of a scrape. The spectacle he was going to make of himself! Oh, nuts, better than having no one to take her to. He felt his restlessness within himself mount. Get moving. Goddamn it, this was the last time he’d go to Mamie’s.
Should he walk all the way around Union Square? No, no, it made him uneasy to lose sight of that damned doorway. Even though he had plenty of time — how much? — almost twenty minutes. But that was all he had to do was miss her. As far as the bandstand at the north end of the park, say hello to Mr. Abe Lincoln, honest Abe, standing under the bare trees in his crumpled bronze clothes on his pedestal, and looking downtown. A few steps more — all he would allow himself — around the corner where the cars were parked on 16th, “Socialism is inevitable” was scrawled in large letters in back of the bandstand shell at the end of the park — and somebody had crossed out “Socialism” and written “Communism” above it. Far enough; Ira turned back.
Damn. He seemed to need more air. Like those pitchers — Pennock, Sad Sam Jones — he had seen coming on the mound when he hustled soda pop in the Polo Grounds and Yankee Stadium. They hadn’t pitched a ball and were already short of breath. Excitement, yeah. C’mon, ye goddamn little twat. He rammed his hand in his overcoat pocket, groping for pipe, changed briefcase to his other hand and rummaged, found the briar. But he didn’t feel like smoking, just clenching the stem between his teeth was enough. Keep an eye out. Don’t forget, for Christ’s sake. He passed abreast of the school doorway, on his way downtown. Some guys would be cool about it. How many times did he have to tell himself that? What d’ye mean, cruel about it? “Oh, shit, I didn’t say cruel,” he protested aloud. Oh, nuts, calm down, ye cold-wet-under-armpits coward. Nuts to you. What comfort there was in the thought that some guys could be cool about it. Go on, act the part: be cool about it. What relief. Jesus, he’d gone over that role too, but still, what respite.
If only he were different. So he knocked her up. So what? Oh, to have the gall to say to Mamie: “Look, your daughter and I, vir hutzikh tsegekhapt, ye know?” Funny goddamn Yiddish expression: it’s natcherel. We grappled. No, not quite. Hooked into each other. That’s closer. Clasped. Got fouled in each other. You weren’t on the lookout, Mamie, you were loafing on the job, Mamie. It’s partly your fault. Heh. Heh. Joke’s on you we fouled into each other. You gotta foot the bill, Mamie. Fooled ya. Or she has a kid. Allee samee me. It’s your baby. Heh. Heh. You want me to marry her? Sure, plunk down ten G. I’ll yentz her day and night, and get a Ph.D. Pah. But just to finish the thought, what a father he’d make. What the hell would it be like to be a father? Goo-goo, ga-a-ga-a, da-da. Hail Columbia, happy land, baby shit in Pap’s hand — Hey, what time was it? Ten minutes to three.