A Matter of Love in da Bronx (9 page)

SAM PUSHED OUT INTO the night from the deserted lobby to find his enpummeled senses startled smartly by warm puffs smelling of raindrying cement sidewalk; subnormal silence of semi-deserted street; thin tremulous sails of mist diffusing the assault to his eyes from the myriad of colored lights and their reflection from black, patent leather mirrors of wet across the expanse of Eden Farms. Ah! Waft of springtime. Friendly evening. He searched out the long-anticipated cigar, moving to one side of the entrance to strip away the clear wrapper, then, resting his shoulder against the bricks of the theatre to make a shield, charred the end of it with a wooden kitchen match.

Weary. More than somewhat weary, for some reason. Just the melt of the day. And getting older. Damn porno films make me so depressed. I don't know really why I let myself in for that shit. Stayed in longer than I really wanted to, guess there's a headache trying to work its way through my brain. Alleged brain, that is. How ugly those people make it seem. How without shame they display those intimate parts of their body, and expose them to a prevaricating use doubly ungratifying to doer and viewer. I could never do that. Not for a million bucks. Me? On camera have some chick stick her finger up my asshole? Fudgepacker. Worse than barnyard doings. No wonder there wasn't a tweak of a hard-on in my pants. Shit! Was thinking I'd like a beer, to celebrate. Just doesn't make it with me tonight. Can't celebrate and think of Sol. If I'd known. Yeah? What? Mountain of Man, he is. No. No beer. No bar. Maybe Ma's waiting for me. Give her a chance to make up for not remembering this morning. I'll make it an easy walk home--enjoy the smoke. Nice, this night, with the rain gone; calm, peaceful things afloat. Decided.

In Mary's mind, fulgurous thoughts crackled. Curse of a damn cheap wristwatch. Can't trust it at all, ever. Is it right? Is it wrong? Time to go? Be too early? Whatever, I can't sit any longer in this putrid place, worse than being taken for a whore. Used up air gives me a headache. What if I'm recognized? I need a cigarette, didn't really know until this second how badly I want one. Oh! Guy at the other end of the row is gone. Don't blame him. Do I have everything? Portfolios, purse, umbrella? Wonder if it's raining out? Or what? Quick walk across Eden Farms, and you'd better be on time, Weezy! Jesus! How I hate to stand alone out there at night. Not that going home is any big thrill. Tomorrow's Thursday, another workday. If I dared take the time off I'd go look for another job, but Pa would kill me if I lost any pay no matter what. Cigarette, cigarette, cigarette. Head turned down. Out the door. Fast. Hope no one sees me; knows it's me. What if Ma knew I went to see movies like this? Wouldn't it be funny if I met her in here one time! Strange feelings. Kidguilt. Kidshame. Kidjuke. Unlit cigarette. Stop down the street a bit to light it. Fish for the matches...

As Sam struck another match concentrating on cupping it from the draft and putting it to the end of the cigar, he started off from his station by the wall. Big first drag puff of smoke simultaneous with a WHAM! Collision. Jolting. He felt his body dig in hard, a flush body check. Soft flesh gave way, then carom off. Stocksurprised! What the hell...? He looked up, electrified by a squall of large paper sheets that made him ignore for a few seconds the hot cigar ash branding his palm. The fuck happened? Smacked right into a woman! Look at those drawings flying all over the place!

--Didn't see...!

--Klutz!

I coulda killed her! I coulda sent her flying out in the street! Jesus I didn't expect that! Didn't look! Now take a look at those papers! Yeow! My hand! Burn!

--Are you okay? God! I didn't see him! The drawings! Did he ever slam into me! I don't think on purpose. He didn't see me, either. Two ships crashing together in the night. I think he was trying to light a cigar. Christ! Tonight of all nights when I've got two portfolios! How the heck do I get them dry and cleaned? I think he broke my arm.

--I'm sorry! There you go, Mr. Klutz. How's this for a different day? Look at all those drawings. Fancy gowns and dresses. She must be an artist of some kind. Hope they're not ruined. Here! Let me get them for you...

--Go away! Sorry's a sorority! Don't attract attention. What the hell. Just because I'm in front of a porno house it doesn't mean I came out of it! I could be walking by and got tackled! Lucky. Street's near undeserted. Almost. What excuse would I have for being here? Rotten luck!

Sam and Mary grabbed the same drawing from the sidewalk at the same time. Instantaneously and simultaneously their eyes travelled from their own hand, across the moist charcoal lines, to the other's hand, up the sleeve, past the chin. Eyes into eyes. They each saw the unseen. And unmitigated comprehensible emotional conjunction.

Between them.

Passed in the mite of a moment.

But, in that tick, frozen immutable. And fearsome. Too splendiferous. Too unexpected. Too desired for too long. Heartfelt fever. And unidentified for the moment by the mask of disbelief. Each dwelling on the speculation later that that was it! Never saw something that made me feel so different! That dug down and rooted around in the marrow of my bones. A look. That's all it was. Just a look! But what I saw! A disturbance. A churning. An upheaval unbeknownst to me before in my world! And marvels of marvels! It was reciprocal! A bounce-back! A mirror image. A ramet. A feeling of what I was feeling. A knowing. An understanding. Me! Looking into a hidden part of me! I love you! I love you, Stranger! I might never know another thing in my whole life, but I know that. Indubitably. And, yet, in the madness of the moment this glorious discovery shunted aside to be left for insomniacal near-pathological battue.

Mary tugged at the drawing.

Sam tugged back.

She tugged the harder.

He held on. Not just to the paper. In desperation.

--Look! Go away, will you! Her eyes focused on the paper between them, defensively. Frightening, it was, to consider the ramifications of staring into those eyes again. Especially after all those years of searching. The drawing came apart in their hands, each holding a portion.

--Oh! Jesus!

--Must you! Get your hands off my work! Snatch! From his to hers. Why so hot? You can do thousands of those! Glad to be rid of it! Something else is getting to you.

--Let me help. Give me another chance.

--What have you got in mind? A compound fracture? More drawings rescued, filling her hands. No! No! Get out of here! Funny little hat. So he was in the theatre! At the end of my row! You can bet he's acting out of the end of his erection! Is that what's sending to me these strange sensations?

--I can take care of it! I can take care of all the wet drawings! Only four or five really wet ones out near the curb. What we do is go right down there to the laundromat and put them in the dryer. Ten minutes and they'll be as good as new! I know it's open. I work right down the street in Sol's upholstery shop. Everybody knows Sol. Funny hat she has on. Makes her look like a pushcart vendor.

--Laundromat! With my drawings? I'd call a cop if I wanted to attract attention! Look! Would you just go away! I can take care of my own things!

--I just want to help. I caused it. It's my accident. You can't take that away from me.

--Look, Sol, you want credit for the accident? You got it. Your accident. Right? Now, if that's what you're into tonight, go for it, but leave me alone!

Pea's porridge hot, pea's porridge cold. Allapodrida. Pastiche.
Pasta e faggioli.
Something's wrong! All mixed up. She's going to disappear, Poofffff! Then what do you do? Get her name! Get her name! Or she's going to walk out of your life forever and you'll die! Die! An inch at a time each time you remember you forgot to get her name. Jesus! You know she's going to turn you down! You know it! Look at her picking up those drawings, trying to hold them all.

--I'd like to pay you...Don't I recognize her? I know her from someplace! I do! Don't for Christ's sakes say it! What a lousy fucking line even if it's true!

--No! Sounds like he's been around. Like it's time to own up for services rendered. But, they take the money first, don't they? Wonder if I should pretend I'm a hooker? Would I get a response? Dumby! Aren't you frightened enough? Look, Sol, forget it. I just use these as props.

--...send you a check?

--No! Scared! He might take me up on it! Who would ever pass up a chance to get laid? Worse than that, what if he turns me down! Come on, Sol, the drawings don't matter; I've been carrying them around for thirty years at least...

--What's your name? I know you, really, I do.

--No, no you don't know me! You can't know me. You'd blackmail me, and make me do all sorts of things if you did. You know I'd do anything to make sure my father doesn't know I come to see these movies... Sol, this isn't my regular work, leave it alone.

So? Should I proposition her? Bullshit! You're a pussy, too frightened to think of it, really. Do you think if you did she'll reach over and grab my cock, and tell me she lives right around the corner, and we'll go there and have a glass of wine and we'll get undressed and lay on the bed and kiss and feel and suck and touch and fuck? And don't forget to pay her. Classy chick like this has got to take a hundred bucks, at least. Wow! You sure know how to pick them, Sam. He ran for a drawing near the building, then ran back to her to stack it on the portfolios she held in both hands. Look, can we just chat a bit, maybe take a walk. Just. Just that. Nothing more? Maybe we can get to know each other just a little bit. Who knows? This is something new for me. Is it new for you? How is it for you? It's good for me. Just a word! One word!

--Taxi! I'm late. I'm late! I know it! If it wasn't for this crazy watch and getting tackled by this bozzo sending the drawings all over the world I'll... Hell! And I laid it on Weezy not to be late and now she'll be standing there alone...

--Miss! Have you no compassion? Have you no understanding? Can't you see I'm not asking for anything you wouldn't just throw away on a stray pussycat? Just some small recognition of me as a fellow human being. You know, like when you meet someone you casually know on your block in some distant city you greet one another like long lost relatives? I don't need that, but pretend we've just come aboard an alien planet, and you say, hey! Hi! A fellow human being from Earth. Say! You'll say, isn't this a great place? I know! A coffee! A coffee! The deli right down the street! We'll have a coffee. Just. Look, I know I've seen you before. If she'd only take off that stupid hat!

--No! Don't you see I've got problems? I'm sorry! Another time, another place, maybe, things could've been different. Now! What movie was that from? Where they part at the end of the movie? No, it wasn't Bogart and Bergman, but they did part at the end, didn't they? Well, one version of it. Listen, Sol, if you had to put up with my father as I do even when I don't walk in late, you'd show a little sympathetic understanding.

He could see the taxi had sniffed out an unexpected fare, saw it take a U-turn in a drift, squeal, and hone in on ground zero by the gal with her arm up trying to juggle papers, or something, and the guy doing a Romeo balcony scene. She probably wouldn't give him a hand job in the funny house. If the taxi driver only knew. Last chance! Think of something, Jerk. No, Mr. Jerk.

--Miss, wait!

The urgency in his voice. What was it? So commanding. She stopped. Turned. He ran toward her. What was he doing? Yanking off his raincoat. Running between the parked cars.

--Madam! Adroitly, and with great style, he spread his coat over the puddle between her, the curb and the cab. With the same grande gesture, he yanked open the door, and swept his hand inviting for her to take the cab.

--You dumb jerk, why'd you do that? Who do you think you are? Sir Walter Scott? She walked around his coat plastered on the street. He nodded, smiling broadly. Yeah? Well, don't forget, he had his head chopped off. In she went.

--Miss, look. Take this, if not for the ruined drawings, for the cab! He reached in through the door to shove all the bills he had in his pocket into her hand. At least, I can't condemn myself for not having tried. So, go ahead, ride on out of my life. Resigned to his fate, he slammed the door.

Funny world. Any other time, any other place, the two of us might've had a nice conversation. Perhaps some didactic dissertation on the rite of the honeybee, or the rate of glacial dissipation. But, no. It has to be on a crazy night in my life when nothing's been right, not even this. Sorry, stranger. Sorry, Sol. Whoever you are. She rolled down the window. She held the money out to him. His handsome face, almost all in shadow, seemed much too solemn for such a young man. But what the hell! He could be another Goldberg... Trying to buy me off, like some cheap hooker. Take back your money. Refusal. She told the cabbie to take off as she threw the bills out the window. --Here, you jerk! As for you, Cabbie, don't get your hopes us, this is no big fare, just to the other side of Eden Farms, diagonally across in fact, right in front of the photographer's studio. About an eighth of a mile. Goodbye, goodbye, my love, looking so dejected, so sad, but Sol? What kind of a name is that? Sol?

Disappeared. In a cab. Out of my life. Out of the world. Forever. Look, look back at me, Hope of Infinite Possibilities, and you'll see the embodiment of Conquest, War, Famine and Death, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, ride into my heart bestirring my brain into polenta, because I know you made up the other part of me that was my life! Without you, I want no part of this world, and you took me as lightly as a fart in a gale. How cruel to have let me see you so late. And so soon. But, enough to waste a good portion of a useful life to show my sacrifice is in earnest. How much can it count if an old man flings the odd change of his life into the vat of eternal unstirrings? Fraudulent waste, it is. Me? I have something to pay! I am to be reckoned with! Cut down in the prime of his life, I can be! ...Hello! What is that? Tucked aneat in greymatching dark of the tarred street one bit of a corner brightwhite signaling to betray its hiding is a lost drawing of my Heloise! My World! Oh! How colossal to own something done of your own creation! You speak to me of a piece of the True Cross! What is it on the faceless figure but an elegant tutu, a cocktail dress, yes! Up off of his knees now, supplication replied, the treasure is brought into the light. And, hello, again! What is that? Tucked aneat in greymatching dark of charcoal but a name! A signature! The artist be done! Like a checkvalve clogging his throat lest his innards bolt out in exhaltation the surging force fills his chest bordering on the real possibility of an explosion. --Oh! Lord! Oh! God! Almighty! Me! As blackfaced blackguards of the night confiscate unremembered raincoat and strewn bills. How incredibly incredible! Salvation a hairsbreadth from a malefic end! There it is! For the entire world to see! Especially me! Me! Her name, Sir! Her name! Her name! Anonymity undone.