When I was a soldier in Korea, I was very hungry and very cold most of the time. Also, I almost got shot. So I decided if ever I was lucky enough to become a civilian again, I would not deny myself any little luxuries that might make life more comfortable or more interesting or even just more bearable. The first luxury I did not deny myself was buying Adele a two-carat engagement ring that cost me thirty-five hundred dollars, which was every penny I had managed to save during the war. Anyway, that’s why I take a taxicab every morning. And every night, too. I like to pamper myself. When you’ve almost been shot once or twice, you begin to realize you’d better enjoy whatever time you have left on this good sweet earth of ours.
The next time I saw Harry, he was carrying a container of coffee, and he looked exactly like the rest of us. He took one of the seats we usually reserved for the group, and made a little joke about my not spilling coffee on him this morning, please. I laughed because I still thought he was somebody’s friend. In fact, we all laughed. This encouraged him to tell a joke about two guys in the men’s room, which was really a pretty good joke. I got off as usual at 125th, and Harry said goodbye to me when all the other fellows did. I took my taxicab downtown, smoked a cigar, and read my newspaper.
The next morning, Harry got off at 125th Street, too.
Now, I don’t know whether or not you’re familiar with this particular section of New York City. It is Harlem. On one corner, there’s a big red brick building that must have been an armory at one time. There’s a luncheonette on the opposite corner, and a newsstand and a Loft’s on one side under the overhead tracks, and a hot dog stand on the other side. If you come straight out onto 125th Street and stand on Park Avenue waiting for a taxicab, you’re out of luck. Every commuter who was on the train comes rushing down the steps to grab for cabs with both hands, it’s a regular mob scene. So what I usually do is walk a block north, up to 126th Street, and I wait on the corner there, which is similar to shortstopping the chow line, an old trick I learned in Korea, where I was hungry all the time.
Harry and I came down the steps together that morning, but I immediately started for 126th Street, not asking him where he was going because I figured it was none of my business. He usually rode the train in to Grand Central, but here he was getting off at 125th, and I didn’t know what to think. Maybe he had a girl up there in Harlem or something, I didn’t know, and I wasn’t asking. All I was interested in doing was getting a taxicab because it can get pretty chilly standing on 126th Street and Park Avenue in January. I got my taxi within five minutes, and I sat back and lit my cigar, but as I passed the next corner, I noticed that Harry was still standing there trying to get a cab for himself. I didn’t ask the driver to stop for him, but I made a mental note of it, which I forgot soon enough because Harry didn’t get off at 125th again until maybe two or three weeks later.
This was already the beginning of February, and Park Avenue up there in Harlem looked pretty bleak. It is not like Park Avenue down around 80th Street, if that’s what you thought. Harlem is a ghetto, you see, with crumbling tenements and garbage-strewn backyards. I have even seen rats the size of alley cats leaping across the railroad tracks on 125th Street, bigger than the ones I saw in Korea. But in the winter, in addition to everything else, the place gets a bleak forbidding look. You just know, in the winter, that there are people shivering inside those crumbly buildings, afraid to come out because it’s even colder in the streets. You can stand a ghetto in the spring, I guess, because you can walk outside and look up at the sky. In New York, there is a sky above the building tops, and it is often a beautiful blue sky, even in a ghetto. But in the winter, you are trapped. There is only you and the four walls and the extra heat you can maybe get from a kerosene burner. I never go through Harlem in the winter without thinking how lucky I am.
I was standing on the corner of 126th and Park, when Harry Pryor walked up to me and said, “Are you taking a cab downtown?”
“Yes,” I said, “I take one every morning.”
“To where?” he asked.
“To 86th and Madison.”
“Well,” he said, “I’m going down to 84th and Park. Shall we share a cab?”
“Why not?” I said, first big mistake.
We got into the taxi together, and I asked him if he minded if I smoked a cigar, explaining that it was my habit to have a cigar on the way down to work each morning. He said he didn’t mind at all, in fact he liked the smell of a good cigar, so I offered him the cigar I would have smoked after lunch and, thank God, he refused it.
“What sort of work do you do, Howard?” he asked, and I told him I was an accountant, stop in some time and I’ll figure out your income tax for you. He laughed, and then coughed politely when I lit my cigar. He opened the window a little, which I really didn’t need as it was probably eighty degrees below zero outside, with Harlem looking gray and bleak and barren as the taxi sped past the market on Park Avenue, the push carts on our right, the sidewalk shopkeepers bundled in mufflers and heavy overcoats, salesgirls wearing galoshes, little school kids rushing across the avenue to disappear under the stone arches that held up the New York Central tracks.
“What sort of work do you do?” I asked, beginning to feel the breeze from the window, and wanting to ask him to close it, but also wondering whether he might not then choke on my cigar. As you can see, my troubles had already started.
“I’m in the travel business,” he said. “I’m a partner in a travel agency.” I didn’t say anything. I had never met a travel agent before. The one time I took Adele to Bermuda, I had made all the reservations myself. Adele had said it was a luxury we could not afford. I told Adele there are certain luxuries you have to afford, or you wither away and die. This was before Marcia’s monumental dental work had begun, of course. I sometimes think that child will have braces on her teeth the day she gets married.
“Yessir,” Harry said, “we’ve got two offices, one on 45th and Lex, and the other up here on 84th. I spend my time shuttling between the two of them.”
“Well, that must be very interesting work,” I said, “being a travel agent.”
“Oh yes, it’s very stimulating,” Harry said, “do you mind if I open this window?” The window, it seemed to me was already open, but without waiting for my answer, Harry rolled it all the way down. I thought I would freeze to death. It was plain to see that he had never been to Korea.
“Listen,” I said, “would you like me to put out this cigar?”
“Oh no,” he said, “I enjoy the smell of a good cigar.” Then why are you freezing us out of this cab, I thought, with the window open, I thought, like an icebox in here, I thought, but did not say. I was very happy to see the New York Central tracks disappear underground because that meant we had already reached 98th Street, and I could get out of the cab very soon and run upstairs to the office, where I knew it was warm because Dave Goldman always kept the heat at eighty degrees, and wore a sweater under his jacket besides. The driver, whose head was hunched down into his shoulders now because he too was beginning to feel the wintry blast, made a right turn on 86th and pulled to a stop on the corner of Madison Avenue. I told him to hold his flag, and then I took out my wallet and handed Harry a dollar and a quarter, which is exactly what the ride cost me every morning, and which I was, of course, more than willing to pay for having had the pleasure of being frozen solid.