They saw It’s a Wonderful Life at The Rialto, a neighborhood theater not far from her apartment. Ellen thought James Stewart was good-looking, which answered Jacob’s questions about what she saw in him (“gangling” was the adjective he heard often). He walked her home afterward. The lights of the marquee went out and foot traffic fell off as they left the block. They passed dimly lit store windows with Christmas displays behind them.
A light snow fell, but it was a mild evening for December and the flakes dissolved when they touched down. He was comfortable in his wool-felt hat and light topcoat, she fetching in a knitted beret and red suede jacket with a monkey collar. He held her gloved hand in his bare one.
“I was actually disappointed at the end,” he said. “Pottersville looked like a fun place on a Saturday night.”
“It was Gomorrah. I’ll take Bedford Falls.”
“Great place—for ninety minutes. I went to school in a town just like it. Couldn’t wait to get out, just like George Bailey. Worse happened there than in Pottersville.”
“There is no Pottersville.”
“Sure there is.”
“I think you missed the point of the movie.”
“Tarzan’s chimp couldn’t have missed the point of that movie.”
They walked a block in silence. “Tharp asked me out again.”
“Don’t let him take you to It’s a Wonderful Life. He’ll just say Frank Capra stole it from Dickens.”
“You know I turned him down.”
He squeezed her hand. “What’s your roommate up to?”
“In bed, spraying germs like Flit. She’s got a cold.”
“Rats. I was going to ask if you had eggnog.”
“Just some old buttermilk. A shot of bourbon might kill the taste, but what will we do with Ann?”
“If we were characters in a book and Robin Elk were publishing, we’d be plotting her murder right now.”
Her building was a brownstone with a globe glowing above the front door. She slipped off a glove to use her key. He took the hand, put it behind his neck, and kissed her. When he finished, she nestled her head under his chin. “When are you going to show me where you live?”
“When I’m living someplace better.”
“As bad as that?”
“It belongs on the cover of a Blue Devil book.”
He’d taken an apartment eight blocks from The Greenwich Clock. It was smaller than the one he’d moved out of, so he’d set up the Remington Streamliner on the kitchen table on a straw mat, which he could shove aside when he ate, and used the oven for a file cabinet. The racks kept folders vertical. He’d found the carbon of “The Typewriter” in one, put it in a stamped envelope, and sent it to the Queen Anne house from the box on the corner.
Whoever had used the stove before him had lived on a steady diet of cauliflower and cabbage. The stench was ineradicable. In winter with the windows shut, it mixed with the scorched-metal smell from the radiator; an evil blend. But rents in the Village were reasonable, and walking to and from work saved bus fare. The money from Chinese Checkers was in the bank, earmarked for expenses. There was no telling how long his job would last, and despite Elk’s assurances, he didn’t expect another check in six months or ever.
The place was comfortable enough. The cockroaches weren’t overbold, and the El was far enough away the glasses stayed put on the shelves when the train rumbled past. But it was no place to entertain a young woman.
He wasn’t sure he wanted to. Four years spent no more than a yard apart from another human being (particularly the G.I. variety that snored and farted in its sleep and griped incessantly when awake) made a man jealous of his privacy. He laughed at corny jokes on the radio, played the same dumb tunes he’d enjoyed before the war on a secondhand phonograph, and when he woke up at midnight realizing he’d forgotten supper, threw a gristly ham steak into a pan and stank up the joint further, without apology. Modern comforts aside, it was a caveman’s life, and none of the fossils left behind showed signs of depression or suicide.
He knew it wouldn’t last, this satisfaction with existence on his own terms, but he meant to get everything out of it before it staled. He’d never be able to explain it to Ellen in terms she’d understand; to women, “alone” meant “lonely,” and anyone who said he enjoyed solitude was either a liar or a selfish jerk. That was one bridge he wouldn’t burn. He’d want company eventually.
But how long would her patience hold out?
Christmas Day passed quietly. Ellen spent it in Ossining with her mother, who had leave from the prison cafeteria; he’d thought that was a rib, like his fantasy about his mother joining the circus, but it turned out “Ma” Curry had been there longer than many of the lifers. His relationship with Ellen hadn’t reached the point where meeting the parents was an obstacle that couldn’t be avoided—a fact that relieved them both, although neither would admit it aloud. They’d already exchanged safe gifts—a necktie for him, a set of lace handkerchiefs for her. Late in the morning she called to tell him merry Christmas and express concern that he might celebrate it with macaroni and cheese and a beer instead of turkey with all the trimmings, but he said he was treating himself to steak and potatoes and a glass of Dago Red.
“Festive.”
“Anything fancier would louse up my filing system.”
“You haven’t had Ma’s Christmas dinner. She can’t fix it to serve less than eighty, so make room in the icebox for leftovers.”
After they hung up, he opened a can of sardines and ate while reading one of the books Elk had given him, washing down the oily fish with milk straight from the bottle. He’d been so busy at the paper, writing about shoplifters and fires caused by Christmas candles, he hadn’t had a chance to stop at the market.
He turned off the radio while Jack Benny was haggling with St. Nick over a strand of imitation pearls for Mary Livingstone. The dialogue was a distraction.
He’d begun to form grudging admiration for the writing that made its way between Blue Devil’s garish covers. Some was dross: Baby, It’s Murder was warmed-over Chandler, and The Berserkers of Thrym was a bald steal from Lovecraft. But in Don Ogilvie’s Bump in the Night and J. B. Collier’s Guns at Diablo he found disciplined prose and snap characterizations that captured in a phrase what Tolstoy and Flaubert had spent paragraphs accomplishing, at a pace Jacob associated with the short story.
He’d found, when necessity such as a research trip to the main branch of the New York Public Library meant a bus ride, that Lyle Hobart’s 170-page Killers’ Code fit neatly into an inside breast pocket, and that reading it shortened a journey of many blocks to moments. When his stop came up, it was an annoying interruption.
The day after Christmas was a Thursday. The phone rang as he struggled into his galoshes for the trek to work. A steady snow was falling.
“Jacob? Elk. Is it a bad time?”
He wondered for a moment where the publisher had gotten his number. Then he remembered he’d included it with his address on “The Typewriter.” “It is, I’m afraid. I’m late for work.”
“I’ll be brief. Your story was all right, so far as it went. I think you should keep one character and forget about the rest.”
“Changing his name from Herbert Jackdaw, of course.”
“Actually, I didn’t care for him. Too passive. We got bushels of returns on Hamlet because he didn’t kill Claudius in Act Two. Your pawnbroker’s the bloke we want.”
“He only had three lines.”
“Leaving a stronger impression than your vacillating writer. He mustn’t be legitimate, however. A dealer in dubious merchandise—got religion, of course, and now uses his shop to trap thieves and killers. Think of the arsenal he has on hand, firearms and apple-corers and such! What’s the colorful underworld term for a man in that trade?”
“Fence.”
“That’s it! The Fence. Marvelous title. Tell me you can write it in six months and I’ll begin the dreary negotiations with Winderspear.”
“That’s tight. I don’t even know how a fence works.”
“Surely a longtime New Yorker knows someone who knows someone. Back home we were under the impression you all had bookies on retainer.”
His gaze fell on the sleek Remington crouched on the table. “I may know someone, but I doubt he’ll cooperate.”
“Rubbish! Who doesn’t want to be the hero in a book?”
A doctor’s black leather satchel occupied the portable typewriter’s old spot in the pawnshop window, its top spread open to display the instruments and bottles inside. With a writer’s curiosity, Jacob pondered the circumstances that would compel a physician to hock the tools of his profession. The obvious conclusion, that it was stolen, he rejected as lacking tragedy and therefore useless.
It was Saturday. He’d half hoped the shop would be closed for the Sabbath; but either the owner was a Gentile or not Orthodox. He took a deep breath and pushed the bell.
The buzzer sounded angrier than before, the clunk of the lock releasing itself more like a cell door slamming shut. He tugged on the handle and slid inside quickly.
“Yes-s?”
Merchandise had come and gone, but nothing about the man behind the counter had changed, not the Edwardian sleeve-protectors nor the eyeshade that made his pinched face bilious nor the crooked bow tie that looked like the stalled propeller of a Navy Corsair. Then recognition swam to the surface of the mud-colored eyes.
“You!” He reached under the counter.
“Unarmed!” Jacob threw up his hands, a crisp fifty-dollar bill clutched in one.
The revolver came up. “You think a thief can buy his way out of jail? That window alone cost me ten bucks!”
“I’ll make good on all of it. I never planned to rob you. That crack about veterans made me mad. The pistol wasn’t loaded. I was drunk when I threw that brick. My name is Jacob Heppleman. I’m a writer.”
The proprietor held on to the revolver, groped for the candlestick phone on the counter with his other hand. “You’ll get plenty of time to write; ten to fifteen years.”
“I want to show you something. It’s in my pocket.”
“I seen it already. I got one, too, don’t forget.” He rattled the prong. “Operator! Get me the police.”
“Not the gun. A book. My book. Chinese Checkers. I’m getting paid to write another. It’s about a pawnbroker, like yourself.”
“So what, you going to write my life story?”
The phone was ringing on the other end, a sinister purring. He spoke quickly.
“Subjects don’t get paid. Collaborators do. We’ll split the profits. This is on account.” He laid the fifty on the counter.
The pawnbroker chewed on a cheek, caving in his narrow face on that side. “How do I know you’re a writer?”
“Who else would steal a typewriter?”
He hung up just as a voice came on the line. He pocketed the bill, took Chinese Checkers, riffled the pages, slapped it down. “I got no time for yarns. Made-up people doing made-up things. What’s the point?”
“Search me. But if we make a deal, you’ll have a hundred extra bucks in your pocket.”
“That don’t sound like no split.”
The proprietor’s name was Linus Pickering. The conference took a half hour, interrupted from time to time by customers pawning gifts or personal property to pay Christmas bills. Jacob made a final offer: eighty–twenty of the advance in his favor.
Pickering looked as if he’d gnaw a hole in his cheek. Then he ducked through a beaded curtain in back, to return a minute later carrying something. He lifted it onto the counter with little apparent effort. “You forgot this.”
Jacob looked at the pebbled-black case that belonged to the Remington. Then he shook hands with the pawnbroker.