“You should go to jail for hitting that young kid.”
“Is that right. Because he was going to rob and kill me with a knife, I should go to jail.”
“Yes. That’s what’s wrong with this country. Big bullies like you beating on the oppressed.”
And on this night after midnight of the lavish dinner in the Italian restaurant, I now walked alone down Seventh Avenue to Broadway and Forty-second Street. A girl cousin who took care of me when I was small and taught me to watch out for shooting stars said Forty-second Street and Broadway was the center of the world. Where people would come from Nebraska and Arkansas and even from farther miles away, to just stand, marvel and stare. The latest global news broadcast up in lights, the words passing like a train in front of your eyes. And as I arrived there into its glow of neon illumination, steaks being barbecued in windows, flapjacks being tossed in pans, one needed only to look down to see the sidewalks covered in crushed cigarette butts and blobs of chewing gum. It maybe could be the nearest place to hell. A traffic of strangers. And others. Pickpockets waiting for pockets to pick. Lurking pimps and prostitutes in the doorways. Loitering little groups of shady characters, crooks and drug dealers. For the prurient, movies to see. And for sale, the array of lewd, salacious and vulgar periodicals, pictures and books. In big numerals, the time and temperature. Smoke rings blown out of a mouth on a billboard. And as I went down the steps into the Eighth Avenue subway I felt that the peaceful soft white flakes of snow starting to fall were an anointment of cleansing refinement. At least before the flakes reached the ground and turned to gray slush in the gutter.
Stephen O’Kelly’O plugging his nickel into the turnstile. As smart kids growing up in the Bronx, there were always these dreams of how to constantly make a lot of money if everyone who went past you had to plug a penny into your personal turnstile. Or if you could install a revolving door in a big department store on the understanding that you could sell the electricity you generated from the revolutions. Thoughts to think while on this platform where someone is kicking a vending machine to pieces that didn’t deliver their chewing gum. And while the train is noisily roaring under the Garment District back down to Pell Street keep an eye out for knife wielders. Emerging back up out of the subway again I had the prolific composers Vivaldi and Handel on my mind. Then along the roadway came a tottering drunk shouting out, “Fuck God and the Holy Ghost.” I stepped into a doorway and listened to this itinerant iconoclast. Words that one might hear free of lecture charges.
“Be the reality. I was on Iwo Jima and Okinawa. I am the flicking maverick at large. What are the fucking issues. The fucking issues are Wall Street. They have us by the balls. Moral values are fucked. The wrongdoers with something to hide are behind their closed doors on Park and Fifth avenues. Skeletons are clanking in their closets. All over this city it’s the idle rich getting the pleasure and the goddamn working poor getting the pain. Those are the goddamn issues. There’s no question about it.”
I nearly stepped out to follow the man to hear more. This war veteran bringing back memories of the war. But as he walked farther away, he stumbled upon and fell headfirst into an empty garbage can. The roaring and rumbling passing trucks drowned out his voice. Then, as he picked himself up and on his way once more, I could just hear him singing “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary.” Then these leviathan vehicles coming out or going to the Holland Tunnel under the deep waters of the Hudson River, finally obliterated his voice. I wanted to go shake the hand of this lonely tottering figure and at least say the word friend to him. He could have been in one of those amphibian assault boats which wasn’t blown to bits, hitting the beach. And now instead he is falling drunk into a garbage can. Turn my key in the door and open it into the stale smell of the hallway. Climb the rickety stairs. Open another door to the emptiness of the apartment. Switch on the light. And the cockroaches, goddamn bastards, scatter everywhere to hide. On the record player was left the French national anthem, the “Marseillaise.” If Sylvia isn’t eating crackers and drinking soda pop driving her car all the way to California, then maybe she’s on a ship first-class crossing the Atlantic to go to Paris.
Stephen O’Kelly’O checking through the apartment. Drawers, shelves, and closets. Her ballet books gone. All her notes she kept on Isadora Duncan, whom she would emulate in a toga while floating about spouting out Greek and Roman ideals. Dust-free space left where her jewelry box once rested. Full of gold chains, bracelets, and pearls. Crossed my mind once to ferry them all to the pawnshop. But keeping my dignity meant more. In the bathroom, where there is only room enough to stand along with her toothbrush, the toothpaste gone. Another expense to reckon with in order to keep the teeth white and bright. Plus, disappeared from the rusting medicine shelves are all her expensive creams and cleansers. Nightly to caress her smooth summer-tanned skin with the oil of this and oil of that. In the bedroom closet, a crumpled hat and her old raincoat and a couple of dresses. Vamoosed. Shipped out. Perhaps to Cincinnati, Ohio. To Milwaukee, Wisconsin, or to Kansas City. As she’s done previously in search of her real mother. She didn’t even know where to start to find her real father. But one guy said no I’m not your father, but come in I’d like to kiss you as if I were. Wild-goose chases to no avail. To go knocking on a strange door waiting for a strange face to say no I am not your mother, get the hell out of here. And she would go away from such doors racked with sobs. Back to some anonymous hotel. To next day fly back on a plane to New York. Then to vanish somewhere into the luxury of her own life. Emptier than it was before. Now she’s speeding far away from the poverty of my life. “Who the fuck has ever heard of you.” she said. “You’re a nobody.” And so was Vivaldi at the end of his life. But while he lived, he was one of the finest violinists of his day and a composer of dazzling warmth and verve, who only in death lay in utter lonely obscurity in Vienna. Just as Stephen Foster died impoverished in this city. The ignored end of great men’s lives leaves a cold clutching hand on the heart.
Stephen O’Kelly’O easing himself beneath the blankets of the broken bed. Staring at the ceiling, trying to sleep. Cold spell descending on New York. Radio warnings of a blizzard. Snow falling through the night and still falling in the morning. Flu epidemic raging throughout the city. One out of five going down. Suicides going up. Short on food and I’ve never felt healthier. In the navy, the most hated food was candied parsnips. And best liked was peaches in syrup poured on muffins as a dessert, which would make one take a five-second positive view of staying the navy. Force myself now to remember the pleasant taste. And my sailor-tailored bell-bottomed trousers. That Maximilian Avery Gifford, just to give a few of his Christian names, and the only friend I had in the navy, said I should get made to give the ladies a thrill. Wonder how such tailoring would go with a pair of tasseled shoes. Worn as a true sign of being a member of the tasseled-shoe club. Maybe someone will think that I am someone who is someone. Meanwhile look out the window. No tasseled shoes for sure in this neighborhood. Heat is at last tingling up through the pipes. Next the landlord will send a shiver of pain up my ass when he starts fist-pounding again on the door for the rent.