A Matter of Love in da Bronx (3 page)

Next, he told Sol he was quitting school, and wanted to work for him full time.

Sol turned him down. No. There was no full-time work for him there.

Sam stared hard at the sternfaced man. He didn't understand. He'd been around the old man long enough to know not to ask his reasons. Sol liked for Sam to figure things out for himself. Sam also knew he wasn't to plead, or ask again, he disdained wimpy petulance. Sol was a demanding boss who drew hard, sharply defined lines and never expected they would be begged or crossed. Ah bargain with him was Ah bargain! And on his word, one could build a ‘kessel,' if not ah castle. He never once broke his word with Sam, and Sam never hedged one on him.

--Vy you look me like dot? Is tellink you ever you have full-time job here? Promises ever? No hint of fog in the air with Sol. If Sam worked the long hours, he did so because he wanted to do so. There was no mention of it being idiotic to quit school. It was said quite clearly by his manner.

Dejected, Sam left the shop to think on it.

Later that afternoon, he returned with his mother.

She marched to within six inches, toe to toe, of Sol; stretched herself to her greatest height, elevated her chin until she was staring eyeball to eyeball, and, with pride taut on her face, told him: He's quitting school because the family needs the money. If he doesn't work for you, he'll work for someone else. You trained him. You should get the benefit.

A slight shrug and Sam was hired with a bit of a nod. There was one condition, Sol called to her as she started for the door, the boy was to get his high school diploma, and be allowed to attend night school whenever and as long as he choose. Mamma Scopia turned away quickly, before the tears in her eyes could be seen. She answered, a bit of a nod.

Sol handed the tack hammer in his hand to Sam. He pointed to the chair he was working on. To be done before the day was over. He worked on the quota system. Serious business meant serious quotas. Usually, it was something like: finish the sofa and the chair, order material, send for supplies, find out when we can deliver work done, put out the trash, and when--if--it's all finished today it's ah big bonus!

Big bonus! Small bonus! Bogus bonus! Sam never collected so much as ah nickel in bonus money because he was never able to complete the quota of work Sol assigned. Sol told him once, big fish stay small in a little tank. But, the unattainable tasks didn't frustrate Sam--they challenged him! It was a hardbound fact that the more he tried to meet the quota, the absolutely less time he had to think of himself. That was his salvation. At night, he was almost too tired to eat, and when he slept, he slept the sleep of the dead. In the meantime, the shop's gross receipts rose accordingly.

The fact of it didn't escape Sam.

One of his night school courses was in bookkeeping which he used to supplement his own record keeping. He used his school loose leaf notebook as a diary. Every evening, before retiring, date, the day, the hours he worked, and the day's accomplishments. After several years, not only was he able to tell precisely how long a certain task would take, he knew pretty much what he was earning for Sol Youchah. It didn't take much to compare that with what he was paid. The difference was considerable, but Sam's consideration of it negligible. He needed the freedom Sol gave him to bury himself in work. He knew he wasn't overpaid, putting it kindly, but he wanted only what would satisfy his parents and their neverending financial emergency. When they groused about his salary, he'd approach Sol who was without exception amenable and sympathetic, almost, as if, he knew exactly what was going on. It was Sol's way, too, to express his good fortune to have such a dedicated, loyal, hardworker.

If Sol was concerned about how long he could keep Sam, it was mentioned a little while after he left school when Sam offhandedly spoke of one day owning a shop of his own.

--A shop for your own self! What crazy! All this be yours some day! Vat for ve need two shop? Through the years, the reply became standard repertoire.

Of course they didn't need two shops. There were only nine days in the week, not ten; and worse, there was only one Sam Scopia. If there was! Then! There could even be a franchise! International! Either that, or find someone else who would work from dawn to dark, all week long and be forced to stay away from the shop on Sunday. Additionally, such a person would have to be satisfied with a pittance for such yeoman's work, quantitative and qualitative. And who else could understand so quickly so precisely what Sol meant in so few words? It was rare for the old man to wax eloquent, and he did under duress, with deep, weighty thoughts when he instinctively felt some words were needed for Sam to do battle against the forces of life. No encyclopedia was needed to plumb his world. Not that Sam was a groaner. On the contrary it was a rarity to sound with any line hooked with depression. Wasted life! Was the most he might say to himself unintentionally picked up by the old man? It might be a day, a week later, Sol, in a disassociative and abstruse manner, might speak of Emerson and self-reliance, or perhaps of the corrosiveness of self-deprecation, or even the mere transformation of arthritic, inanimate articles into decorative home delights. Didn't that make Sam feel useful? Indeed! To Sol. To his mother and father. Lo! Even to humanity. Not Sam to himself. Scratch encynopticity. Fulfillment was bedded in his importunate prayer he voiced firsthing in the morning and which ended his words and thoughts for the day, maybe tomorrow something happens that'll change my life.

--Things sure are different today. He spoke to himself, as those who work alone are wont to do. He would have to meet the quota today if only to keep warm. Besides, Sol liked to find him at work when he came in, it seemed an assurance that the world was functioning, as it should, workers should be working, and bosses should be on time. That was another difference today. Sam knew it was past seven o'clock. Sol always came through the door just before seven to shout: --You here!

--I hear. Sam would answer. Morning after morning the ritual. Even the picayune afforded him no relief from minddeadening ordinary repetitive repeating repitionrepetitionrepetition. Sam never knew if the greeting was a question or a sign of incredulity on Sol's part to actually find him still on the job; or, if he was merely testing him for his physical presence, or auditory acuity. Whatever, Sam acknowledged only that he heard the man, he could decipher his own conundrum. Fair, inasmuch as he gave him one of his own.

Where was he? He's not here. Sol is missing. It's not every day a man breaks a near-two-decade-old habit! When he was going to be late, he'd announce. Did he announce yesterday that he wouldn't be there today? No. Sure? Yes. Did he have such a terrible memory as the bad joke went that he was like the old man who when he went to complain to his doctor couldn't remember why he was there. Try to remember, the doctor urged. Ah! Yes! I have trouble remembering! And how long has this been going on, came back the polite inquiry. To which the old man asked how long has what been going on? But what was worse was when he recalled his problem and told the physician the nature of his memory lapse especially embarrassing with his pant zipper. Not so bad, everyone now and then forgets to run their zipper up! Not so he, the old man explained, he would forget to run his down. No such thing in this matter. The old man never said a word about being late today. It didn't make it a calamity. It did make the day different. And how. It didn't change the work before him. He set to. There was no need to contemplate and consider. To re-determine yesterday's ending point to learn of today's starting point. To Sam, it was as if there was never an interruption. Almost it was like a grande musical portamento with the motion of his arm interrupted only for earthly necessities before continuing with the task at hand. He had to do the arms of a tuxedo couch, now up on the sawhorses. A pretty print. Dark blue background had climbing ivy with a dusty blue morning glories and bright red primroses. Someone else would have a difficult time to match the pattern climbing its way up and around, but not Sam. Vy bother? Was the question which came from the fact that it could be absolutely, positively guaranteed that the sofa could sit in its home for centuries and no one in its whole and entire life would notice, including other upholsterers who on seeing such craftsmanship would be embarrassed for their own work so why bother? Because if it's done right, it's done right forever; but even more simply, because he knows how to do it right; but in its simplest form, because he himself would know. If he wouldn't work any other way, and it took him the same amount of time why should he hear a complaint from the boss? A strange fact came to the forefront of his mind as his nimble fingers fashioned a thing of beauty: How little their personal lives entered into their business arrangement. Sam realized Sol knew he was an only child, and that he turned over his paycheck every week to his mother and father with whom he lived. Period. It wouldn't be difficult for Sol to guess about anything else, although he was extremely careful always never to lecture or make a comment that would betray him as a busybody, much as the aunt would say to Sam: You should be married! Have a family, which would unleash unseen daggers from those who held the leash to the keys to Sam's coffers. But Sol knew. Why else would a robust, healthy lad seek refuge in daylong backbreaking work without relief? Besides as Sam himself realized, didn't his affliction benefit Sol, too? So why would he say anything? But, really, that wasn't the point at all about what they knew concerning each other's personal life. Was Sol married? He never actually said he was, but Sam would think it a solid bet. He heard him cry out in a condemnation of forgetfulness within Sam's hearing that he had to go see his "Bela." It was a minute, momentary thing, but recorded well in Sam's mind, so when he heard a somewhat similar term followed by the incomprehensible foreign tongue of Russia, he casually asked what it all meant. There was no way of knowing in the contact of these two men if Sol did or didn't know exactly what he was doing, but as it was done, it allowed them to share as two beings an unsharable secret. The definition was simple and clear: Belaya is a river; then, caught in a quiet click slipping away more by
anima
than sound, he ended...that overflows my heart.

Sol? A sweetheart? Was he? Ever? Did he know the rapture of lying between the thighs of welcoming, giving warmth. This bony, obelisk of a man could give the heat and softness to inspire a fire deep in the bowels of a lover? What sort of an erection would he present? Daring and bold? Obsequious and catering? How would he do those moments when tenderness became throbbing thumps, pube to pube? the passion driving him to harder and deeper thrusts, did his shaft work so well it cleaved wide the responding flesh so it's work would be unerring, ramming hard the deephid uterus to respond to its plunging, spurting inoculations? And what of him when his nerves short-circuited to set his flesh to peaks on fire, his rectum puckering tight with each constriction, did he mumble weakly, gasp uncontrollably, or explode in a paroxysm of ecstatic improvisational godly imputations. He could find a partner, a mate; he could be a sweetheart; he could be a lover. The thought crossed the path it had taken in Sam's brain. It made him ask what kind of a world it was that could provide so lovingly for one who could win no prizes on any score, and not once come close for him. What was the charm? Did Sol have children? He didn't know. A religious man? It seemed so. On Friday afternoons, late, he would change into a smartly tailored pin stripe, white on white shirt with gold cuff links, a striking silver silk four-in-hand and a silk and mohair black chesterfield with black velvet collar. He would remove his yarmulke, and carefully aim and place his hat on his head at just the right angle with two hands. Without a word, he would wave Sam out of the place, and business at four o'clock ended for the day. Sol would depart for a place Sam knew not. His home address was on a tiny card taped to the bottom of the front door glass in case someone had to reach him, the owner, at the request of the police, but Sam never so much as glanced at it again after the first time years ago. What for? So, late on Fridays, Sam would leave the shop, and go to a restaurant in the west side of the Bronx where he had worked in the kitchen sometimes until the early morning hours. It was all he had to satisfy his lust for living. It was his holiday, and, just as interestingly, it was something that he knew Sol didn't know! Sol would never presume to ask where he went after the shop closed on Fridays.

But, this rainy morning, as he worked away, Sam realized he'd have to wait until a decent hour, perhaps eight-thirty, and he'd take the telephone number from the card, put on his wet clothes, and go down to the deli and call. And buy food! It was approaching that time when he heard the front door open. It closed without Sol's usual cannonade: --You here! If it wasn't Sol, who could it be?

Lincoln Jackson ambled in like his joints were held together with hot bubblegum. Near seven feet tall, his arms, legs, hips, head, carded the compass as he made some slight forward progress using his jaw like an icebreaker its bow. He saw through black specks in his eyes which were filled with red and yellow splotches of paint. A wool cap's beak shielded his flattened nose. His puffy lips spread in an ersatzgrin. His wrists eluded his basketball jacket sleeves by at least six inches, his fingers dangling bunches of licorice sticks. Mobility was provided by a pair of size fourteen black, ankle high sneakers which were perilously close to splitting wide, exposing their cargo. Lincoln Jackson was every inch an afreet until he spoke.

--Ah's hurtin', Sam. Bad.

Didn't have to say it. Anyone can see it. What I can see is that you must've slept someplace dry. Small comfort. It had to be cold and raw; the kind that makes your joints all creaky and achy, the sort that clinches at your bones, and dries up the blood. Had to be the best part of an hour to get yourself on your feet. Wobbly. All that shakiness liken to slip that skin off your frame. Nerves' popping off, one at a time like sparks arcing a foot-wide gap. Broken connections. Muscles all gone tight into high-tension guitar strings from being cramped hard against the cold all night and needing a blow torch to get them loosened up a mite. Misdirected flame boiling up splanchnic juices sending the lava smoke from gut into brainpan with molten lead making tracks in the intestine. That just from the booze. Things aren't that bad enough for you yet, or you'd be chasing down that woman who finds you as much an affliction as ulcerations in her mouth and about as easy to get rid of. She does for you. She did for you at least fourteen times, as you say shitting out those kids like loaves in a bakery every time you got a rise because she knew love had nothing to do with the path we're chucked on for these days. You would be a better man if you were born king and needed only love and babies and the worse you could do was a bad cuddle. Sorry! They gave you brambles, and prickers, and thorns to glide by; took all your luck just to get you born and keep you alive so don't be expecting a single damn spitting spark of it to do anything else for you except to hit me up again for another touch. And who are you to come to me? You've had spirochetal shakes, gonorrheal oozing, circumscissile phimosis encompassing more than four-thousand ecstatic co-joined orgasms and you come to me! I'd swap it all, your black skin, too, if you wished, just to have the sensation one time of reciprocal coital conflagration. But there is no negotiation possible because my situation is beyond your comprehension. I know what you'd say to me: --You ain't never had! Never once-t? Shit, Man, you a daed man. The Lord know what he do when he making fucking numba one: You know he kep something better for Hisself so you know whats waiting for you in Paradise!