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George Flicker

So that was a thing that was very strange for a long time with these two ladies. They could not stop moving. Six months max, that’s how long they lasted in each apartment, and it went on for years, this moving-around business. This was when I was just starting to investigate a career in real estate. It seemed like the only economy that never changed in New York. People always needed a place to live, and you didn’t have to have much of an education to get started in it. So I started circling everyone. I got to know a lot of the building owners on the Lower East Side. A few of them, I had grown up with their families, or I’d seen them around. So I was just schmoozing with them. The good ones and the bad ones, both. I wanted to know what they knew. And one of the things I kept hearing about, just as part of everyday gossip, was that the Gordon girls were on the move. Who knows why, but they had turned themselves into gypsies.

Mazie’s Diary, November 1, 1925

Twenty-eight. My waist is still trim, but my breasts have gotten bigger this year, maybe it was last year and I didn’t notice. As if they weren’t already big enough. My back aches, sitting there, hunched over those tickets, counting cash, head in my stories. The lines are longer at the theater. We make money. Good money, legal money. I give Sister Tee a fistful every month. I’m a good businesswoman. This is what I learned this year. This is what I know.

Dolores prayed for me, she told me. Sister Tee said she did too, and she gave me a box of peppermints. Rudy hugged me and gave me a new scarf. Rosie rubbed my shoulders when I got home, she’s seen me hunching, knows my posture’s gone.

She said: It hurts for you now the same way it hurts for me.

I don’t think she knows my pain, though. Just like I don’t know hers.

Mazie’s Diary, November 8, 1925

He was here again. How long has it been, one year, two, three, and there he was, and I was not surprised. He came to me, and I went with him. Didn’t blink, didn’t pause, just went. He stood in line with all my regulars, the last show of the night, at the very end of the line, and he bought a ticket like everyone, and when I handed him the change, he held my hand. I sat there, burning, both of us burning, stupidly burning, looking at each other, and holding hands. I rested my head forward on the cage, and he put his hand against my other cheek. His hand was cold, and my face was warm. Burning, burning, burning.

I said: You’re late.

He said: For what?

I said: You just missed my birthday.

He said: Oh, Mazie, I’m always going to miss your birthday.

I said: I’m going to think of you as my present anyway.

He said: You can if you like. But I think you’re mine instead.

Later, in the hotel room, he held his prick against my cunt for a while, and he commented on the size of my lips, the way his prick looked up against them, all of those swollen things next to each other. It looked beautiful and I became fascinated with it, I couldn’t look away, and he couldn’t either, and together we did that, we looked at our parts touching, while he moved everything around slowly with his prick.

I’ll never be more intimate with any man than I am with him.

He’s married now. I knew it, but he showed me his ring anyway, which he had in his breast pocket.

He said: I want to speak the truth to you, Mazie.

I told him that it didn’t matter, and it doesn’t. Our union is our union, and theirs is theirs. This bride in Connecticut means nothing to me. I had him first. I chose not to keep him because I knew he couldn’t be kept. Him standing before me at that very moment last night proved it.

Mazie’s Diary, November 9, 1925

I smoked and smoked all day today, and licked my flask clean. An early snow for the season. I watched my customers dust the flakes off their coats, smiling. When it was all over, there were peach-colored clouds gliding through the sky. I thought: No one else can see this sky like I can. No one else sits here and watches it change all day except for me. I see the snow and I see the clouds and it is all a show for me. Everything is for me.

Pete Sorensen

I loved her because she was tough and knew what she wanted. It wasn’t like she always knew, but by the end of the diary I think she did. I mean she spent all this time trying to acquire her exact purpose in life. Maybe she didn’t mean to, but she did. And how many of us get to know that? I’m pretty sure I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing with my shop, but what if I’m supposed to be a painter? Or build houses? I know I’m not supposed to be in a band anymore. No one would give a shit about our reunion tour. But what if I’m supposed to move back to Saint Paul to take care of my mother in her old age? Like that is actually a thing it would make sense to do. That is what people do; they take care of their family. She knew that! She did it. She knew how to be a human being.

I wasn’t jealous of her, but it did make me a little angry with myself that I don’t know exactly everything yet. But being a little angry with yourself is all right. That’s how shit gets accomplished. You know what I mean. I know you do.

Mazie’s Diary, January 15, 1926

Dolores died, and it took two days for anyone to find her. We all thought there was an animal trapped somewhere, a dead rat in the floorboards. Her hair went white during that time. It happened over the weekend. No knitting circle on the weekends, so it took till Monday to realize the poor woman was gone.

Rosie says she can smell the body still.

She said: You can’t smell it? I know you can smell it.

I said: I ain’t moving again, Rosie.

She said: Who said anything about moving?

I asked Tee to teach me a prayer Dolores would have liked. All that she did for me I could do for her.

I said: It’s tragic, lying there like that for days.

Tee said: She lived a long life, and there is that to remember.

I said: Rosie’s kicking up a storm now. She’ll say the place is haunted in no time.

Tee said: That’s our Rosie.

I said: I’m tired of looking for apartments.

Tee said: The wandering Jews.

Mazie’s Diary, February 13, 1926

Postcard from the Captain. Just a sailboat in the water and his name with love, and nothing else.

Every morning I stand at the sink, I wash my face, I brush my teeth, I brush my hair, and then, when I’m ready, I look down at myself, and I think of him.

Filthy, awful, beautiful man.

Mazie’s Diary, February 18, 1926

Tee’s truly my best girlfriend, a good friend to have. She stops by the cage now nearly every day, even in the rain. Sometimes she comes home with me for tea after work. Rosie coddles her. She loves any sort of spiritual type, no matter what they believe in, as long as they believe. And though Tee’s not our Jeanie she feels like family. But I’ve never seen her home, after all these years.

I said: Tee, why don’t you invite me over?

She said: I’ve got the smallest room. The two of us could barely fit at the table.

I said: Aw, Tee, I’d squeeze in for you.

I like to have a little fun with her. I like to grab at her belly through her habit and try to tickle her. Little Tee. Today she said I could come by sometime though. After we move again.

George Flicker

These landlords said they paid first and last, and when they moved out the apartments were cleaner than when they got there, so there were no complaints. It was just kooky behavior. How could they have been happy doing that? You had to wonder. They were always the kind of family that circled the wagons, but now, with all the moving, that circle was closed shut. So who knows why? No one could keep track of their business.