HE AWOKE to McMann’s hand shaking his shoulder, snapping awake with that sense of loss of one sleeping in a strange place. McMann yawned, although his hard-surfaced face showed no fatigue. Bill got off the couch immediately. “Hello.”
“Sh, Bobbie’s still snorin’ inside, the ole pig.” He winked like a small boy. “I like ‘em hefty. Madge’s skinny, but she’ll be all right in a coupla years.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
Madge was asleep, turned on her side towards the wall. He marveled at the quietude of her face. A voice like Mac’s ought to wake the dead. Even his whisper had guts to it. It was early afternoon, the air frosty and clean. “How’d you wake up, McMann?”
“My belly hurt. I near starved.”
Bill scrubbed his face in the bathroom, soaking his hair and sleeking it down. They were cozy inside the bathroom, just the two of them, McMann boasting of his private toilet, the class to it, no chasing out in the halls for him, he liked to live nice. Bill squeezed a pink worm of toothpaste on his finger and mauled his gums, combing his hair. They gazed kindly at one another with the peace of men after a night with women.
McMann shut the door gently behind on last night’s old smell, walking downstairs into sunlight. The crosstown tracks glinted. People’s ears were nipped red. The windows of the stores were bright with sunny winter. The hanging wooden flags, advertising furnished rooms, swayed in the wind.
“Le’s grab some food, kid.”
“You bet. You were saying how you like to live nice. What about last night, then? Suppose you get pinched or shot?”
“Gotta make a livin’.” That didn’t have nothing to do with living nice. The best thing was not to worry and not to expect too much. “An’ here’s another thing. Forget Madge.” That dame wasn’t settled down like Bobbie. He wanted a dame to stick by him. They saw each other in daylight the first time, their eyes shining two kinds of blue. McMann ordered bacon and eggs in the corner coffee-pot. It was a male place, although a floosie was sitting at a table watching the guys feeding at the counter.
“I don’ like stinkin’ around with women when I got no use for ‘em,” said McMann, monastic, healthy. He always beat it out early as he could. When the dames cleared out, he went back for a nap. They cut into their eggs, the yellow dripping on the hot bacon. Maybe he should’ve let Bill sleep? But he figured Bill figured the way he did.
It was exciting meeting this new McMann, who wasn’t drunk or tough, but was almost gentle, a human being. McMann wasn’t more than twenty-five or six. Last night he’d seemed ageless. Bill sighed, one buddy with another. “You slug, Mac, I’m paying for this. Last night nicked you for plenty.”
“Hell, if I didn’ wanta treat I’d asaid so. I don’t go blowin’ my dough away for nothin’.” They got up from the counter, chewing on toothpicks.
“Want to come over my place?”
“Naw. I’ll chase them skirts out.”
“Well, I’m beating it. Kiss them for me.”
“Sure thing, kid.”
“Don’t you kid me. I’m old as you.”
“O.K. See you at Paddy’s some time.” Spitting out soggy bits of toothpick, he added casually: “You got stuck the other night, but them guys had to get their slice. Nex’ time we’ll do it ourself or maybe borrer Duffy’s kids. Get me? Me’n you can knock off a joint easy. Lotsa stores. That dairy guy Metz got dough. S’long.”
McMann was the devil and he’d been fooled because the sun was out. He foresaw himself led by McMann into the unarrived tomorrows. That was swell to think about. What could he expect? McMann knew his inside dope was worth something. His dope’d help Mac to live nice, to pay for the private toilet. He walked up Leroy Street as Mrs. Gebhardt came out into a world not his own. He distinctly felt the difference. The light eyes in her peaceful face angered him. She’d gone to bed at ten and guessed maybe he’d been bumming. “Every time I see you you’re fresh as a daisy.” She didn’t thank him. It wasn’t a compliment.
“You don’t see us so often.”
“I’m busy buying Christmas presents. Sure, a present for myself. I bought myself a job.” He went upstairs and undressed. McMann and him could make dough. Was he a sap? Saps had thought the same thing and been socked with lead. How many saps’d been bopped because they thought they were wise? He was getting to talk like McMann even. Hell. The luck was with him. He’d be careful and luck’d do the rest. His veins were rested. He was healthy, tired, successful, even if only to the tune of twenty-two bucks. He hopped into bed, his arm feeling for Madge, and fell asleep with the profundity of one whose heart and future are arrogant with youth. Did he dream of Duffy’s dopey kids shooting pool? The dopes waiting for a break, Schneck, Ray, Mike, shooting pool? Did he dream that he was the boy who gave them the break? His pipedreams broke up into darkness. He slept.
He awoke differently this time from an unknown nightmare to see the sun outside in one fat yellow bar. He bolted upright, his heart shaking. He had a terror of McMann, imaging the high-boned face, pink, impassive, the small blue eyes in pinkness that weren’t windows of the soul, weren’t anything, the lids constantly narrowed as if he didn’t use his eyes for sight. What went on behind those eyes, in that boxer’s skull? Damn his loose tongue. McMann might be stringing him along for a sucker. Christ, if he didn’t feel yellow as a louse. But Mac was T.N.T. and was no joke. Bill’s brain ignited into a flash of inspiration. McMann was out to get control of Duffy’s kids. That was it. And he was the way to do it…. His body reacted normally to the night before. His eyes were puffy, intricate with tiny red veins, the back of his neck ached. His tongue hung heavy in his mouth yet slid across something nauseous. He put his head under the clean fury of the jetting water, got into a fresh shirt frayed at the collar. It was almost five o’clock. Across the way the sidewalk sloped down to the gutter in a gradual diagonal, trucks and wagons backing up close to the building. The huge boxes on wheels were loading up. They were always busy across the way. The guy that owned that joint was one lucky stiff. The truck-drivers were working with the laborious grubbiness of their class, hefting and lifting. The black bars of the raised iron gate were shaking as the wind tore and shook them. He went downstairs into the afternoon. Beyond Greenwich, higher than the El, the autos sped down the elevated highway. Everything was overhead, trains, roadsters. The world beneath was trivial. Past the El, blocking out sight of the river, the great greenish gray buildings of the steamship and railroad companies usurped the lower sky. A flag was waving and his heart was desolate. The only path leading out of hell was the path of McMann’s….
He was tense with resolve, wondering at his gift for the right thing even after so many blunders. He had a flat rent-free, and now he had an idea for a job for Joe. He waited on the El station for the uptown El finally rattling in, square and snaky-jointed. In the small pilot box in the first car the motorman was pale and steely. He got off at Forty-second. On the far side of Ninth, Wiberg transacted business. He grinned, fascinated by the granite endurability of the place they’d robbed. It showed no sign of last night’s holdup. Metz was a former tenant of his, his window architectured with round red cheeses and slabs of Swiss. Eggs were piled up, peculiarly and grotesquely similar to huge worthless pearls. Inside, the floor was fresh with sawdust and the smells of cheese, butter, milk. Two clerks in white aprons were behind the counter, their cheeks red. He thought of the story that Metz never permitted his help to go outside for lunch, compelling them to lunch on pot-cheese, rolls, buttermilk. What a diet! Joe’d be healthy working for Metz. Metz himself, wearing the straw hat that somehow was his official dairyman’s guild token, smiled, a small dark man with an unctuous flashing of teeth and a ceremony of hairy hands. “Billy Trent, ain’t it?”
“What you think, Metz? C’mon in the back. I want to see you private.” He grinned, not expecting Metz to spill the beans about Wiberg, but hoping he might. “How’s geschaft since I quit hounding you for rent?”
“So-so,” said Metz, his hands adding a commentary of: It might be worse. “You working?”
“Part time for a friend of mine.”
“Dot’s something. I always said it, the whole world can be on the breadline, but this Bill, he’ll have something to do.”
“You’re wondering now why I want to see you privately. I want a Christmas favor from you. When I had the chance I did plenty for you.”
“You should a businessman been,” said Metz, frowning with admiration. “I give you plenty Christmas presents, not only Christmas, but in July too.”
“I want you to give me a break now. I don’t make much dough and my kid brother’s coming to live with me after the first. He’s nineteen, huskier than me, and not afraid of work. You got three stores. Give him a job.”
“How can I, Bill? These fellers are all cockeyed relations of mine. My stores’re full of my wife’s relations. She should an orphan’ve been.”
“You can take on one more clerk. He’s a goodlooking kid. He’d bring you trade. Don’t your Irish Dutch Wop customers complain about those schnozzolas?”
“So long’s the merchandise is good I got no complaints.”
“I can do you a favor, Metz.”
“Lemme hear.”
“How’d you like to get your rent cut again?”
“Why not?”
“This is a real Christmas gift. I know some facts about the people who hold the mortgage on this house and how a smart guy can get his rent cut.”
Metz was still sleepy behind his glasses. “You always know plenty things,” he said heavily. “I wonder why you’re not a rich man.”
“It’s the times. I’ll be rich. Don’t worry.” He stared at Metz. He had damned good dope, and Metz ought to chip in cash as well as a job. “First I want twenty-five bucks. I’d ask for more, but since you’re hiring my brother I’ll let it go.”
“Much obliged.”
“How much rent you pay, Metz?”
“You know better’n me. Four hundred for this rotten corner, with the peoples all moving away to Long Island’n Brooklyn.”
“I want your word I get twenty-five and my brother that job.”
“I ain’t ever disappointed you.” He wrote out a check for fifteen. “I cash it soon you tell me, right here and now.”
“Gypping me already.”
“A job’s worth money. You don’t buy them.”
“Keep this under your hat. The landlord’s in hot water. Yeh, Delhota, even him. He expects to drop this corner. Taxes and interest aren’t met by the rental. Strike him hard for a reduction and you’ll get it. Show him the color of a few hundred and you’ll get a nice new lease. He’ll be foreclosed anyway. What does he care?”
“If it works out so, your brother gets the job. I’ll break him in. Twelve dollars a week. Nothink for overtime.” They went out to the cash register. Bill had a swift glance at the stacked greenbacks. “I keep my word.”
“You’re a sap to keep all that dough in there.”
Metz glared hot and wild for a second. “Ain’t you heard? Wiberg was hit on the nut last night. Took seven hundred, the bummers.”
“That’s bunk. Where the hell’d he get seven hundred? Probably took five smacks and he claims the rest for the insurance people.”
“No no no.” He waved a finger. “He’s dying for a cent, but I know they take three hundred for sure.”
“How do you know it was three hundred and not one-eighty? You seem positive.”
Metz smiled bashfully. “Take my word.”
“Did you loan it to Wiberg? Did you loan him any?”
“You should a Jew be. Some of you goyim is more Jewish than the Jews. Send your brother around, but if it don’t work out mit Delhota, no job.”
“If you weren’t sure, you’d never shell out dough.”
“Du bist a Yid,” cried Metz. “A Jew, nothink else.”
Outside, Bill thought of McMann. He was lucky to get any money out of the Wiberg holdup. He felt smarter than the gang of gyps because he knew definitely he’d been rooked.
He went to see Wiberg. That was the way to be. No softness, to work at crime as a scientist works in a lab. The hell with people. “I hear they’ve been working on you. Tough luck.”
Wiberg had waited for the chance to explode. “They always pick on a poor man. Bang me on the head. A feller asks me for a pair lady stockings when bing! And I had lot of money. How they know cin Gott allein weisst.”
“They get much?”
“I should say. Seven hundred.”
He stuck out his lower lip. “You been eating dope. Don’t kid me. When did this shop net you that in a year? You’d have to put dresses on half the behinds in town for seven hundred.”
“They took it, I tell you.” He picked up his paper. “The police. Phooey on them with their radio cars. Who they catch? Nobody. But I remember that feller.”
“Forget him. You’re insured. Maybe that holdup’s a Christmas present — that is, if they give you seven hundred.”
He left the shop. He’d been rooked. He couldn’t forget it, thinking of McMann and Paddy with the cold calm ferocity of a scientist contemplating necessary guinea pigs. Otherwise it was a good day’s work. Fifteen bucks and a job for Joe. Metz wasn’t a bad guy. Neither was the dough in his till. On Saturday nights around midnight Metz ought to be good for five hundred. That was dough. He wondered how the kid’d fit in with his future? The clean honest kid, thinking of cleanliness and honor as qualities similar to skin pigmentation or the shapes of noses. He’d forgotten to interpret honesty either ethically or spiritually.
He was a champ chiseler and Christmas Day he dropped in at the office. He was the prodigal come home, and everybody was tickled to see him. Christmas Day Stanger had a fatted calf for everybody. It was an old custom. A bottle was on the table and they were drinking conservatively under Stanger’s happy but moral eye, the rent-collectors and stenos gazing at one another, standing up like human beings and not shorn in two, leaning over desks like exhibits out of the Flea Museum. There was no fatted calf for Bill, but many handshakes and wonderings when he’d get a job. “I just dropped in to wish you all a merry Christmas and happy New Year.” He smiled so charmingly that Stanger called him into his private cubicle and slipped him ten bucks, despite strenuous protests that he’d dropped in for the spirit of the thing. He had a tough job keeping a straight face.
“They’re all getting presents,” said Stanger. “I want you to take it. Why haven’t you been around for lunch with Joe? Mrs. Stanger has asked me many times to get in touch with you down on Leroy, but there’s no phone and somehow I never got around to writing.”
“Thanks, Mr. Stanger. Thanks for the free rent. It’s swell of you.”
“Listen, you must come around for dinner.”
Later he said: “Merry Christmas” again. No use losing a contact like Stanger. Ten bucks…. That night he went to a party with Madge. McMann was there, and so were a few of Duffy’s kids, Schneck and Ray. He’d noticed Schneck and Ray were thick friends. Duffy of course was too big to show up. McMann told him on the sly he’d invited the kids up. “Might be needn’m soon. Free booze and grub and they’ll be eatin’ outen our hands.” After the party, McMann, Bobbie, and Madge and himself went to a joint in Harlem. The ten bucks went like a light.