Death Is a Lonely Business (16 page)

Sam was a wetback wandered up from Mexico to wash dishes, beg quarters, buy cheap wine, and lie doggo for days, then up like the night-prowling dead to wash more dishes, cadge more quarters, and sink into vino, toted in a brown-bag valise. His Spanish was bad and his English worse because it was always filtered through muscatel. Nobody knew what he said, nobody cared. He slept in the basement, out of harm's way.

So much for Sam.

Jimmy you couldn't understand either, not as a result of wine but because someone had stolen his bite. His teeth, delivered gratis by the city's health department, had vanished one night when he was careless enough to dime himself into a Main Street flophouse. The teeth had been stolen from a water glass by his pillow. When he woke his great white grin was gone forever. Jimmy, gape-mouthed but convivial on gin, came back to the tenement, pointing at his pink gums and laughing. And what with the loss of his dentures and his immigrant Czech accent, he was, like Sam, unintelligible. He slept in empty tenement bathtubs at three in the morning, and did odd jobs around the place each day, laughing a lot at nothing in particular.

So much for Jimmy.

Pietro Massinello was a circus of one, allowed, like the others, to move his feast of dogs, cats, geese, and parakeets from the roof, where they lived in summer, to a basement lumber room in December, where they survived in a medley of barks, cackles, riots, and slumbers through the years. You could see him running along Los Angeles streets with his herd of adoring beasts in his wake, the dogs frisking, a bird on each shoulder, a duck pursuing, as he toted a portable windup phonograph which he set down at street corners to play
Tales from the Vienna Woods
and dance his dogs for whatever people threw him. He was a tiny man with bells on his hat, black mascara around his wide innocent mad eyes, and chimes sewn on his cuffs and lapels. He did not speak to people, he
sang.

The sign outside his lean-to basement lumber room read MANGER, and love filled the place, the love of beautifully treated and petted and spoiled animals for their incredible master.

So much for Pietro Massinello.

Henry, the blind colored man, was even more special. Special because he not only spoke clean and clear, but walked without canes through our lives and survived when the others had gone, without trumpets, off in the night.

He was waiting for me when I came in the downstairs entrance to the tenement.

He was waiting for me in the dark, hid back against the wall, his face so black it was unseen.

It was his eyes, blind but white rimmed, which startled me.

I jumped and gasped.

"Henry. Is that you?"

"Scare you, did I?" Henry smiled, then remembered why he was there. "I been waiting on you," he said, lowering his voice, looking around as if he could actually see the shadows.

"Something wrong, Henry?"

"Yes. No. I don't know. Things is changing. The old place ain't the same. People is nervous. Even me."

I saw his right hand fumble down in the dark to touch and twitch a peppermint-striped cane. I had never seen him carry a cane before. My eye ran down to the tip, which was rounded with what looked to be a good weight of lead. It was not a blind man's guide. It was a weapon.

"Henry," I whispered.

And we stood for a moment while I looked him over and saw what had always been there.

Blind Henry.

He had everything memorized. In his pride he had counted and could recall every pace in this block and the next and the next, and how many steps across at this intersection or that. And he could name the streets he strode past, with sovereign certainty, by the butcher or shoeshine or drugstore or poolhall smokes and smells. And even when the shops were shut, he would "see" the kosher pickle scents or the boxed tobaccos, or the locked-away African ivory aromas of the billiard balls in their nests, or the aphrodisiac whiff from the gas station when some tank flooded, and Henry walking, staring straight ahead, no dark glasses, no cane, his mouth counting the beats, to turn in at Al's Beer and walk steadily and unswervingly through the crowded tables toward an empty piano stool, there to sit and reach up for the beer that was automatically popped in place by Al before his arrival, to play exactly three tunes, including the "Maple Leaf" sadly better than Cal the barber, drink the one beer, and stride out into a night he owned with his paces and counts, heading home, calling out to unseen voices, naming names, proud of his shuttered genius, only his nose steering the way and his legs firm and muscled from ten miles of strides per day.

If you tried to help him across the street, which I made the mistake of doing once, he yanked his elbow away and stared at you so angrily that your face burned.

"Don't touch," he whispered. "Don't confuse. You put me off now. Where was I?" He threw some abacus beads in his dark head. He counted cornrows on his skull. "Yeah. Now. Thirty-five across, thirty-seven over." And on he went alone, leaving you on the curb, his own parade, thirty-five steps across Temple this way, and thirty-seven the other, across Figueroa. An invisible cane tapped cadence for him. He marched, by God, he truly marched.

And it was Henry with No Last Name, Henry the Blind who heard the wind and knew the cracks in the sidewalk and snuffed the dust of the night tenement, who gave the first warnings of things waiting on the stairs or too much midnight leaning heavy on the roof, or a wrong perspiration in the halls.

And here he was now, flattened back against the cracked plaster of the tenement entryway, with full night outside and in the halls. His eyes wobbled and shut, his nostrils flared, he seemed to bend a bit at the knees as if someone had struck him on the head. His cane twitched in his dark fingers. He listened, listened so hard that I turned to stare down the long cavernous hall to the far end of the tenement where the back door stood wide and more night waited.

"What's wrong, Henry?" I said again.

"Promise you won't tell Florianna? Fannie takes on fits, you tell her too much wrong stuff. Promise?"

"I won't give her fits, Henry."

"Where you been last few days?"

"I had my own troubles, Henry, and I was broke. I could have hitchhiked in, but, well."

"Lots goes on in just forty-eight hours. Pietro, him and his dogs and birds and geese, you know his cats?"

"What about Pietro?"

"Someone turned him in, called the police. Nuisance, they said. Police come, take all his pets away, take him away. He was able to give some of them to folks. I got his cat up in my room. Mrs. Gutierrez got a new dog. When they led him out, Pietro, he was crying. I never heard a man cry so hard before. It was terrible."

"Who turned him in, Henry?" I was upset myself. I saw the dogs adoring Pietro, I saw the cats and the geese that lovingly followed and the canaries on his bell-chiming hat and him dancing on street corners through half of my life.

"Who turned him in?"

"Trouble is, no one knows. Cops just come and said, 'Here!' and all the pets gone forever and Pietro in jail, a nuisance, or maybe he kicked up a fuss out front there, hit somebody, striking a cop. Nobody knows. But somebody did. That ain't all...”

"What else?" I said, leaning against the wall.

"Sam."

"What about him?"

"He's in the hospital. Booze. Someone gave him two quarts of the hard stuff; damn fool drank it all. What they call it? Acute alcoholism? If he lives tomorrow, it's God's will. No one knows who gave him the booze. Then there's Jimmy, that's the worst!"

"God," I whispered. "Let me sit down." I sat on the edge of the steps leading up to the second floor. '
No
News or What Killed the Dog.
"

"Huh?"

"An old seventy-eight rpm record when I was a kid. "No News or What Killed the Dog." Dog ate burned horseflakes from the burned-down barn. How did the barn burn down? Sparks from the house blew over and burned down the barn. Sparks from the house? From inside the house, the candles around the coffin. Candles around the coffin? Someone's uncle died. On and on. It all ends with the dog in the barn eating the burned horseflakes and dying. Or, "No News or What Killed the Dog." Your stories are getting to me, Henry. Sorry."

"Sorry is right. Jimmy, now. You know how he sleeps from floor to floor nights, and once a week he just up and strips down and takes a bath in the third-floor tub? Or the first-floor washroom? Sure! Well last night he got in the full tub, drunk, turned over, and drowned."

"Drowned!"

"Drowned. Ain't that silly. Ain't that a terrible thing to put on your obit-tombstone, save he won't
have
a tombstone. Potter's field. Found in a bathtub of dirty water. Turned over, so drunk he slept himself into the grave. And him with new false teeth just this week. And the teeth gone, how you figure that, when they found him in the tub! Drowned."

"Oh my Christ," I said, stifling a laugh and a sob in one.

"Yes,
name
Christ, God help us all." Henry's voice trembled. "Now, you see what I don't want you to tell Fannie? We'll let her know, one at a time, spread it out over weeks. Pietro Massinello in jail, his dogs lost forever, his cats driven away, his geese cooked. Sam in the hospital. Jimmy drowned.

And
me?
Looky this handkerchief, all wet from my eyes, balled in my fist. I don't feel so good."

"Nobody's feeling very good, right now."

"Now." Henry put his hand out, unerringly toward my voice and took hold of my shoulder gently.

"Go on up, and be cheerful. With Fannie."

I tapped on Fannie's door. "Thank God," I heard her cry.

A steamboat came upriver, flung wide the door, and churned back downstream over the linoleum.

When Fannie had crashed into her chair she looked into my face and asked, "What's wrong?"

"Wrong? Oh." I turned to blink at the doorknob in my hand. "Do you leave your door unlocked all the time?"

"Why not? Who would want to come in and storm the Bastille?" But she did not laugh. She was watchful. Like Henry, she had a powerful nose. And I was perspiring.

I shut the door and sank into a chair.

"Who died?" said Fannie.

"What do you mean, who died?" I stammered.

"You look like you just came back from a Chinese funeral and were hungry all over again." She tried to smile and blinky-blink her eyes.

"Oh." I thought quickly. "Henry just scared me in the hall, is all. You know Henry. You come along a hall and can't see him for the night."

"You're a terrible liar," said Fannie. "Where have you been? I am exhausted, waiting for you to come visit. Are you ever tired, just worn out, with waiting? I've waited, dear young man, fearful for you. Have you been sad?"

"Very sad, Fannie."

"There. I knew it. It was that dreadful old man in the lion cage, wasn't it? How dare he make you sad?"

"He couldn't help it, Fannie." I sighed. "I imagine he would much rather have been down at the Pacific Electric ticket office counting the punch-confetti on his vest."

"Well, Fannie will cheer you up. Would you put the needle on the record there, my dear? Yes, that's it. Mozart to dance and sing to. We must invite Pietro Massinello up, mustn't we, some day soon.
The Magic Flute
is just his cup of tea, and let him bring his pets."

"Yes, Fannie," I said.

I put the needle on a record which hissed with promise.

"Poor boy," said Fannie. "You
do
look sad."

There was a faint scratching on the door.

"That's Henry," said Fannie. "He never knocks."

I went to the door but before I could open it, Henry's voice behind it said, "Only me."

I opened the door and Henry sniffed. "Spearmint gum. That's how I know you. You ever chew anything else?"

"Not even tobacco."

"Your cab's here," said Henry.

"My what?"

"Since when can you afford a taxi?" asked Fannie, her cheeks pink, her eyes bright. We had had a glorious two hours with Mozart and the very air was luminous around the big lady. "So?"

"Yeah, since when can I afford...” I said, but stopped, for Henry, outside the door, was shaking his head once: no. His finger went to his lips with caution.

"It's your friend," he said. "Taxi driver knows you, from Venice. Okay?"

"Okay," I said, frowning. "If you say so."

"Oh, and here. This is for Fannie. Pietro said give it over. He's so crammed full downstairs, no room for this."

He handed over a plump purring calico cat.

I took and carried the sweet burden back to Fannie, who began to purr herself when she held the beast.

"Oh, my dear!" she cried, happy with Mozart and calico. "What a dream cat, what a dream!"

Henry nodded to her, nodded to me, and went away down the hall.

I went to give Fannie a big hug.

"Listen, oh listen to his motor," she cried, holding the pillow cat up for a kiss.