He had reached George Washington in bronze at the other end of the square — and facing south too, dauntlessly fronting the clangor of 14th Street. Why did both presidents face south? Ira prompted himself to worry, worry rather than wonder. Why south, and not each other? Because Washington, D.C., lay in that direction? Was that the reason? Like Moslems facing Mecca? No, that couldn’t be it. At Washington Square, the marble statues of Washington looked north. Oh, balls. When the hell would they start coming out of that school? LINDY WINS MEDAL, one of the headlines on the corner newsstand read. All engrossed with himself, Ira drew closer: AL SMITH FOR CHANGE IN VOLSTEAD. . NO. AGAIN NO SAYS COOLIDGE.
“Paper, Mister?” the wind-blown, blocky newsstand owner suggested pointedly. “Woddaya read?”
But stung, Ira blurted out an offended “No!”
“A’right.”
There was no mistaking the meaning of the way he jingled the coins in the little apron around the blue pea jacket in which he was stuffed. Nor the jerk of his stubbly jowls. The man did not tolerate loiterers.
Bastard. Ira backed away. Giving him the bum’s rush. Fuck you, he wanted to say: fuck you and your papers. God, everything got under his nerves; anything could throw him into a fury. Jesus, that was all he had to do: get into a battle with a barrel for ears. Hell. He looked anxiously at the business-school door. Empty. Damn. Christ. When?
“Atta boy, Garrity, lessee ye nail him dis time.” The newsstand owner might have been talking to himself, so barely tinged was his gruff voice with sour approval. He couched wrist in weathered hand expectantly.
Across busy 14th Street, on the thronged, bustling sidewalk on the other side, a black street vendor, with display case closed and light folding stand clutched, was running pursued by a cop, was at the curb when Ira looked, and only out of reach of the young, speedy bluecoat because of intervening pedestrians, who delayed him a split second, while the other, lithe and nimble — and reckless — sped into the street, dodged among cars, and, dropping trinkets from his display case, distanced himself. For a moment, the cop aimed his club to throw, thought better of it, and instead shook his head with a loser’s good grace, flushed, watching his quarry escape.
“He’ll git him,” said the newstand owner with hoarse confidence. “Black bastard, he’s been comin’ down here peddlin’ dat shit every day.”
“Yeah?” At least amity was restored.
“Look at it. Dere’s a car goin’ over it. See? Fuckin’ brass lockets, an’ phony lavalieres wit’ glass in em.”
“Yeah?” LINDY WINS MEDAL. AL SMITH FOR CHANGE IN VOLSTEAD. NO. AGAIN NO. COOLIDGE. “De bastard’s got more noive den brains. He ain’ de on’y one. Ye see more ‘n’ more o’ dem boogies on Fawteent Street every day.”
“No!”
“Betcher ass ye do!”
“Oh, Jesus!” Ira exclaimed, turned to look at the business-school door. Students were coming out. “Oh, hell.” He broke into a run.
II
He could have batted her with his briefcase, he was so furious with her dawdling down the steps, seemingly the last one out of the school. And he had been almost on the point of running up into the accounting classroom, Mr. McLaughlin’s class, where the first students out said she was. Goddamn her, he raged when she recognized him — with her simpering, sappy surprise at the top of the stair. Jesus, somewhere else, he’d have let loose all the obscenities he knew, as she descended the wide steps, fat knock knees in fawny silk stockings under spongy green coat, chewing gum, her pleased and complacent shallow blue eyes shining behind silver-framed eyeglasses on pork nose, her gold curly hair compressed by black cloche. Book in hand, banister in hand. God, the temptation to upbraid her, insult her — if possible! Could she be insulted, the dumb bunny?
“What’re you doin’ up there, layin’ for the guy?” Ira could barely contain the nervous impatience of his tone, just short of savage. “For Christ’s sake, ye know I called Hannah. I couldn’t get you.” Still inside the building, he brought his voice within testy limits.
“I was with my accounting teacher, Mr. McLaughlin, going over the test I flunked.”
“Yeah. All right. But I’m waiting. I hinted—” Ira jerked his arm emphatically.
“So what’s the hurry?” Insipidly nonchalant, she was actually cheerful.
“What’s the hurry?” He glared at her. “What’s the hurry! I come all the way downtown. I wait.” Again, he fought himself to lower his voice. Irate, watched her plant her foot on the ground floor. “Don’t you know we’re supposed to go to a doctor? I’m gonna take you to that — that lady I told you about.”
“With the castor oil?”
“No, for Christ’s sake!” He snapped. He gripped her arm. Dawdling little bitch, was she ever going to move? He led her through the building door and into the street. “I don’t— That’s the reason we’re going. Let’s get a move on. We don’t know. We gotta find out.”
“I know.”
“All right, then let’s get going.” Ira all but tugged the green-cloth-covered arm toward 14th Street. “I’ll get a cab.”
“But I told you I know.”
“Waddaye mean, you know?” He felt absolutely vicious. Lucky they were in a crowd.
“I don’t need it.”
“What de ye mean, you don’t need it? Don’t need what?” Other pedestrians alongside, no matter: he was shouting.
“I don’t need a doctor.”
“Why? Don’t tell me you’re not going to go?”
“I don’t have to go.”
A tiny inkling was beginning to make headway. “You don’t have to go?” His voice that began as bluster subsided ludicrously: dopy Doppler effect. “What d’ye mean?”
“I told you, you worry too much, Ira.”
“All right.” He frowned warily. “So I worry too much. Who do you think I worry for?”
“For yourself. If I was somebody you didn’t know, if I was pregnant, you wouldn’t worry.” Her voice held an uncommon note of firmness. “I worried about you, and you weren’t pregnant.”
“What the hell are you talking about? What do you mean, ‘if I was pregnant’? What am I here for?”
“What I said: because you only worry about yourself.”
“Wait a minute. Are you all right?”
“Of course I’m all right.”
“You had your period?” He arrested both their progress, an abrupt embolus in the flow of the throng; a woman’s face turned in passing, her rouged cupid-bow lips affixing a fiery stigma on air. “You did? You’re not kidding? You did?” He drew her after himself out of the current of passersby against the plate-glass embankment of a store window. “I wanna know. Tell me.”
“Tell you? I told you. You think so much about yourself you don’t even hear.”
“Never mind that. Tell me!”
“I did.”