No, you scored better if you worked alone. Always alone.
He ended up on South Street, down toward the Two-Street end, taking up a position between the laundromat and the plant store. It was much too early for the trendy people to be out, the “artists,” the night people, but they weren’t such hot prospects anyway. It was Saturday, and that meant that there were tourists out, in spite of the early hour, in spite of the fact that it had been threatening to snow all day—it was cold, yes, but not as cold as it had been the rest of the week, the sun was peeking sporadically out from behind banks of dirty gray clouds, and maybe this would be the only halfway decent day left before winter really set in. No, they were here alright, the tourists, strolling up and down through this hick Greenwich Village, peering into the quaint little stores, the boutiques, the head-shops full of tourist-trap junk, the artsy bookstores, staring at the resident freaks as though they were on display at the zoo, relishing the occasional dangerous whiff of illicit smoke in the air, the loud blare of music that they wouldn’t have tolerated for a moment at home.
Of course, he wasn’t the only one feeding on this rich stream of marks: there was a juggler outside of the steak-sandwich shop in the next block, a small jazz band—a xylophone, a bass, and an electric piano—in front of the communist coffeehouse across the street, and, next to the upholsterer’s, a fat man in a fur-lined parka who was tonelessly chanting “incense sticks check it out one dollar incense sticks check it out one dollar” without break or intonation. Such competition Nicky could deal with—in fact, he was contemptuous of it.
“Do you have your house in order?” he said in a conversational but carrying voice, starting his own spiel, pushing leaflets at a businessman, who ignored him, at a strolling young married couple, who smiled but shook their heads, at a middle-aged housewife in clogs and a polka-dot kerchief, who took a flyer reflexively and then, a few paces away, stopped to peek at it surreptitiously. “Did you know the Lord is coming, man? The Lord is coming. Spare some change for the Lord’s work?” This last remark shot at the housewife, who looked uneasily around and then suddenly thrust a quarter at him. She hurried away, clutching her Lordhouse flyer to her chest as if it were a baby the gypsies were after.
Panhandling was an art, man, an art—and so, of course, of course, was the more important task of spreading the Lord’s word. That was what really counted. Of course. Nevertheless, he brought more fucking change into the Lordhouse than any of the other converts who were out pounding the pavement every day, fucking-A, you better believe it. He’d always been a good panhandler, even before he’d seen the light, and what did it was making maximum use of your time. Knowing who to ask and who not to waste time on was the secret. College students, professional people, and young white male businessmen made the best marks—later, when the businessmen had aged into senior executives, the chances of their coming across went way down. Touristy types were good, straight suburbanites in the 25–50 age bracket, particularly a man out strolling with his wife. A man walking by himself was much more likely to give you something than a man walking in company with another man—faggots were sometimes an exception here. Conversely, women in pairs—especially prosperous hausfraus, although groups of teenage girls were pretty good too—were much more likely to give you change than were women walking by themselves; the housewife of a moment before had been an exception, but she had all the earmarks of someone who was just religious enough to feel guilty about not being more so. Brisk woman-executive types almost never gave you anything, or even took a leaflet. Servicemen in uniform were easy touches. Old people never gave you diddley-shit, except sometimes a well-heeled little old white lady would, especially a W.H.L.O.W.L. who had religion herself, although they could also be more trouble than their money was worth. There were a lot of punkers in this neighborhood, with their ’50s crewcuts and greasy motorcycle jackets, but Nicky usually left them alone; the punks were more violent and less gullible than the hippies had been back in the late ’60s, the Golden Age of Panhandling. The few remaining hippies—and the college kids who passed for hippies these days—came across often enough that Nicky made a point of hitting on them, although he gritted his teeth each time he did; they were by far the most likely to be wiseasses—once he’d told one “Jesus is coming to our town,” and the kid had replied, “I hope he’s got a reservation, then—the hotels are booked solid.” Wiseasses. Those were also the types who would occasionally quote Scripture to him, coming up with some goddamn verse or other to refute anything he said; that made him uneasy—Nicky had never really actually read the Bible that much, although he’d meant to: he had the knowledge intuitively, because the Spirit was in him. At that, the hippie wiseasses were easier to take than the Puerto Ricans, who would pretend they didn’t understand what he wanted and give him only tight bursts of superfast Spanish. The Vietnamese, now, being seen on the street with increasing frequency these days, the Vietnamese quite often did give something, perhaps because they felt that they were required to. Nicky wasn’t terribly fond of Jews, either, but it was amazing how often they’d come across, even for a pitch about Jesus—all that guilt they imbibed with their mother’s milk, he guessed. On the other hand, he mostly stayed clear of niggers—sometimes you could score off of a middle-aged tom in a business suit or some graying workman, but the young street dudes were impossible, and there was always the chance that some coked-up young stud would turn mean on you and maybe pull a knife. Occasionally you could get money out of a member of that endless, seemingly cloned legion of short, fat, cone-shaped black women, but that had its special dangers too, particularly if they turned out to be devout Baptists, or snakehandlers, or whatever the fuck they were: one woman had screamed at him, “Don’t talk to me about Jesus! Don’t talk to me about Jesus! Don’t talk to me about Jesus!” Then she’d hit him with her purse.
“The Last Days are at hand!” Nicky called. “The Last Days are coming, man. The Lord is coming to our town, and the wicked will be left behind, man. The Lord is coming.” Nicky shoved a leaflet into someone’s hand and the someone shoved it right back. Nicky shrugged. “Come to the Lordhouse tonight, brothers and sisters! Come and get your soul together.” Someone paused, hesitated, took a leaflet. “Spare change? Spare change for the Lord’s work? Every penny does the Lord’s work…”
The morning passed, and it grew colder. About half of Nicky’s leaflets were gone, although many of them littered the sidewalk a few paces away, where people had discarded them once they thought that they were far enough from Nicky not to be noticed doing so. The sun had been swallowed by clouds, and once again it looked like it was going to snow, although once again it did not. Nicky’s coat was too small to button, but he turned his collar up, and put his hands in his pockets. The stream of tourists had pretty much run dry for the moment, and he was just thinking about getting some lunch, about going down to the hot dog stand on the comer where the black dudes stood jiving and handslapping, their giant radios blaring on their shoulders, he was just thinking about it when, at that very moment, as though conjured up by the thought, Saul Edelmann stepped out of the stand and walked briskly toward him.