“No, no. And it doesn’t come every night, but when it does” —he consulted his pocket-watch with a squint— “it would be very soon.” Another diverting pause cruxed his expression. “But that’s another thing ‘bout this place, Mr. Phillips, another strange thing, I mean.” He stared off into drab darkness. “Time.”
“Time?”
“I don’t know how to explain it”—he rubbed his brows—“but each and every time I been, it’s seemed like I been there for hours. I could get on with three or four different girls, too, and when I get out’a there I think it’s got to be noon at least… but then I look at my watch and it’s scarcely four-thirty in the morning or quarter till five.”
I staved off a chuckle, for Erwin was permitting his oblique sense of abstraction to supervene the much more primal reality that he must not be possessed of much sexual endurance! Then again, how much endurance would I be capable of given the sheer infrequency of my own sexual experience? Laughably little, I suspected, for so long ago it was that’d I’d been married.
Several more minutes passed, and my current hopes passed as well. The B-Line would be arriving shortly. “Drat,” I said. “It appears that tonight’s not our night, Mr. Erwin,” but no sooner had I spoken the words than Erwin turned with an enthused lurch…
At the end of the street, like something first semi-tangible slowly materializing from the dark’s secret ether, a bulk shape began to form. Crackling sparks grew less dim (no doubt the sparks of electric transference from the ever-present power wires looping overhead), companioned by a faint and very ghostly circle of yellow light at the shape’s forward-most area which made me think of a dying cyclopean eye. The squeal of bearings caught my ears, then the grate of an air-break…
Erwin uttered, “This is it.”
The vehicle’s forward lamp shined so faint it scarcely served a purpose, but finally there came another surge of gas into the closest street-lamp, and this is when I got my first full glimpse.
It was an older-style trolley, opened all around in a vestibuled fashion (in other words, lacking windows) and was of the antiquated twin-car, double-truck type whereas all city trolleys that I’d seen were single-carred. Flaking yellow paint, quite a murky yellow, covered all of the decrepit vehicle’s side panels.
“This is most definitely not a city trolley,” I muttered to Erwin.
“No, Mr. Phillips. It’s a private trolley. It’s not from the city transit system at all.”
A private trolley…
At the forward car’s head, I spied the motorman’s station, little more than a cubby; the capped motorman himself stood scarcely moving at the controller handle. In the drear, his face looked dead-pan, bereft of life; indeed, the darkness reduced his eyes and mouth to black slits amid a waxen pallor. Above the frame of his look-out, the car’s identification number could be seen in black-stencil letters: No. 1852.
The vehicle squealed to a halt. Erwin, in an excitement that seemed touched by fear, grabbed my arm and urged, “The conductor’ll size you up ‘cos you’re new, but don’t worry. He’ll let you on since you’re with me.”
“Size me up?” I had to question.
“They don’t let ruffians on.”
“Oh,” but in a city aswarm with ruffians and every other manner of human flotsam, the policy was to be expected. “But who enforces order, should the conductor mistakenly allow some roysterers aboard?”
“The motorman,” Erwin answered in a whisper tense with unpleasantness. “I seen it happen once. Hobos, all riled with liquor, jumped on and started a ruckus, but the ruckus didn’t last long.”
“The motorman’s something of a tough customer, I take it.”
Erwin looked troubled. “Let’s just say that them hobos are probably still in the hospital.”
Oh, my, I thought.
“Come on!”
The overhead cable sparked and crackled. I followed Erwin up the sheet-metal steps of the first car, and in doing so, I noticed other silent riders sitting among the wooden cross-seats; however, the wee hour’s dimness reduced their faces to smears of shadow. The metal floor tapped at coming footfalls: the boots of the conductor, a short but sure-footed figure, who approached directly, eyed Erwin with a nod, and waved him aboard. “This here’s my friend,” Erwin softly informed. “Not a trouble-making bone in his body, I can vouch for it…”
The conductor, like the driver, wore a regulation cap and heavy, brass-buttoned jacket as was the fashion. He stared at me, or seemed to, for the car’s irksome darkness forbade any details of his face, much in the same manner as the motorman. My skin crawled, however, in what I can only describe as a most abrupt accession of dread; for whatever unhealthful reason, I imagined I was being evaluated by either a mask of the most pallid parchment or the face of a dead man .
The moment locked in stasis.
“How do you do?” I bid with a bit of a stammer.
The conductor waved me aboard, then returned with lugubrious steps back to the vicinity of the motorman’s station.
Sparks burst overhead in a brilliant blossom, and then the trolley lurched once and commenced down the nearly lightless street.
Erwin showed me the way down the aisle; carefully, we stepped over the heavy-iron coupling and passed into the rear car. “We’ve got to keep our voices down,” came his incessant whisper. “That’s why I brung us back here.” I could hardly object; we both took seats at the car’s rearmost section.
As I sat, I stared astonished into the grim, nighted city. The trolley clattered along the rusted rails to traverse unknown streets of ballast-cobble and past cramped lay-bys of various municipal departments that seemed long out of service. Was it my suspicious fancy or did each successive street-lamp put out less and less illumination? Brick facades and lichen-encrusted stone walls pressed ever inward; at one point we crossed what I believe was Amsterdam Avenue but as we did so, the sinister car rose to a clamour as the motorman increased speed, almost as if to pass through the dimly peopled intersection with as much haste as the motor would allow. Along this dismal way, we stopped on several occasions along similarly unfamiliar and quite ruinous corners to pick up additional passengers. As each boarder stepped up, he was assayed by the conductor for what I could only guess were traits of “approval”: the smell of liquor on one’s breath, loose talk, and perhaps even a subjective air of rowdiness would, of course, be disqualifiers. But as each man was allowed to come aboard, I noted quite readily that all possessed likewise bodily characteristics. These were all men of brawn and muscle, wide-shouldered, pillar-legged men of a solid working caste, much like Erwin. The only oddity to be admitted thus far was myself; with shoulders stooped, frail-bodied, and but 146 pounds, I hardly bore any commonality with these strong, ox-necked young men. (As a child, my mother perpetually referred to me as her “little waxbean.” How complimentary…) But it was then the notion insinuated itself—in a manner I cannot explain by any substance—that the conductor was indeed “sizing up” potential visitors to the mysterious 1852 Club in hopes of selecting the most virile, the most sexually potent candidates. I couldn’t imagine what might cause me to make such a conjecture. Two or three times, however, thinner and less-fecund-looking chaps were turned away. So…
Why on earth would a spindly-form such as myself be let aboard? Evidently the club held much stock in Mr. Erwin’s credulity.