Manhattan Noir 2 (24 page)
Always in Manhattan, on the street I wonder if I’ll see her again.
Excuse me
I will cry out
do you remember? That day, that hour?
But it’s been years.
So exhausted! Daddy scolded me carrying me out of the taxi, into the lobby of the Hotel Pierre; a beautiful old hotel on Fifth Avenue and 61st Street, across from Central Park; Daddy booked a suite for us on the sixteenth floor; you could look from a window to see the apartment building on Central Park South where Momma and I lived; but none of that was very real to me now; it wasn’t real to me that I had a momma, but only real that I had a daddy. And once we were inside the suite Daddy bolted the door and slid the chain lock in place. There were two TVs and Daddy turned them both on. He turned on the ventilator fans in all the rooms. He took the telephone receivers off their hooks. With a tiny key he unlocked the minibar and broke open a little bottle of whiskey and poured it into a glass and quickly drank. He was breathing hard, his eyes moving swiftly in their sockets yet without focus. “Princess! Get up
please
. Don’t disappoint your Daddy
please
.” I was lying on the floor, rolling my head from side to side. But I wasn’t crying. Daddy found a can of sweetened apple juice in the minibar and poured it into a glass and added something from another little bottle and gave it to me saying, “Princess, this is a magic potion. Drink!” I touched my lips to the glass but there was a bitter taste. Daddy said, “Princess, you must obey your daddy.” And so I did. A hot hurting sensation spread in my mouth and throat and I started to choke and Daddy pressed the palm of his hand over my mouth to quiet me; it was then I remembered how long ago when I’d been a silly little baby Daddy had pressed the palm of his hand over my mouth to quiet me. I was sickish now, and I was frightened; but I was happy, too; I was drunk with happiness from all we’d done that day, Daddy and me; for I had never had so many presents before; I had never understood how special I was, before; and afterward when they asked if I’d been afraid of my daddy I would say no! no I hadn’t been! not for a minute! I love my daddy I would say, and my daddy loves me. Daddy was sitting on the edge of the big bed, drinking; his head lowered almost to his knees. He was muttering to himself as if he were alone—“Fuckers! Wouldn’t let me be good. Now you want to eat my heart. But not
me
.” Later I was wakened to something loud on the TV. Except it was a pounding at the door. And men’s voices calling “Police! Open up, Mr.—”—saying Daddy’s name as I’d never heard it before. And Daddy was on his feet, Daddy had his arm around me. Daddy was excited and angry and he had a gun in his hand—I knew it was a gun, I’d seen pictures of guns—this was bluish-black and shiny, with a short barrel—and he was waving the gun as if the men on the other side of the door could see him; there was a film of sweat on his face catching the light, like facets of diamonds; I had never seen my Daddy so furious calling to the policemen—“I’ve got my little girl here, my daughter—and I’ve got a gun.” But they were pounding at the door; they were breaking down the door; Daddy fired the gun into the air and pulled me into another room where the TV was loud but there were no lights; Daddy pushed me down, panting; the two of us on the carpet, panting. I was too scared to cry, and I started to wet my pants; in the other room the policemen were calling to Daddy to surrender his weapon, not to hurt anyone but to surrender his weapon and come with them now; and Daddy was sobbing shouting—“I’ll use it, I’m not afraid—I’m not going to prison—I can’t!—I can’t do it!—I’ve got my little girl here, you understand?”—and the policemen were on the other side of the doorway but wouldn’t show themselves saying to Daddy he didn’t want to hurt his daughter, of course he didn’t want to hurt his daughter; he didn’t want to hurt himself, or anyone; he should surrender his weapon now, and come along quietly with the officers; he would speak with his lawyer; he would be all right; and Daddy was cursing, and Daddy was crying, and Daddy was crawling on his hands and knees on the carpet trying to hold me, and the gun; we were crouched in the farthest darkest corner of the room by the heating unit; the ventilator fan was throbbing; Daddy was hugging me and crying, his breath was hot on my face; I tried to push out of Daddy’s arms but Daddy was too strong calling me Princess! Little Princess! saying I knew he loved me didn’t I. The magic potion had made me sleepy and sickish, it was hard for me to stay awake. By now I had wet my panties, my legs were damp and chafed. A man was talking to Daddy in a loud clear voice like a TV voice and Daddy was listening or seemed to be listening and sometimes Daddy would reply and sometimes not; how much time passed like this, how many hours—I didn’t know; not until years later would I learn it had been an hour and twelve minutes but at the time I hadn’t any idea, I wasn’t always awake. The voices kept on and on; men’s voices; one of them saying repeatedly, “Mr.—, surrender your weapon, will you? Toss it where we can see it, will you?” and Daddy wiped his face on his shirt sleeve, Daddy’s face was streaked with tears like something melting set too near a fire, and still the voice said, calmly, so loud it seemed to come from everywhere at once, “Mr.—, you’re not a man to harm a little girl, we know you, you’re a good man, you’re not a man to harm anyone,” and suddenly Daddy said, “Yes! Yes that’s right.” And Daddy kissed me on the side of the face and said, “Good-bye, Princess!” in a high, happy voice; and pushed me away from him; and Daddy placed the barrel of the gun deep inside his mouth. And Daddy pulled the trigger.
So it ended. It always ends. But don’t tell me there isn’t happiness. It exists, it’s there. You just have to find it, and you have to keep it, if you can. It won’t last, but it’s there.
(Originally published in 1999)
Paul kept it very simple. That seemed to be the secret. You kept it simple, you drew firm lines and didn’t cross them. You put one foot in front of the other, took it day by day, and let the days mount up.
The state didn’t take an interest. They put you back on the street with a cheap suit and figured you’d be back inside before the pants got shiny. But other people cared. This one outfit, about two parts ex-cons to one part holy joes, had wised him up and helped him out. They’d found him a job and a place to live, and what more did he need?
The job wasn’t much, frying eggs and flipping burgers in a diner at 23rd and Eighth. The room wasn’t much, either, seven blocks south of the diner, four flights up from the street. It was small, and all you could see from its window was the back of another building. The furnishings were minimal—an iron bedstead, a beat-up dresser, a rickety chair—and the walls needed paint and the floor needed carpet. There was a sink in the room, a bathroom down the hall. No cooking, no pets, no overnight guests, the landlady told him. No kidding, he thought.
His shift was four to midnight, Monday through Friday. The first weekend he did nothing but go to the movies, and by Sunday night he was ready to climb the wall. Too much time to kill, too few ways to kill it that wouldn’t get him in trouble. How many movies could you sit through? And a movie cost him two hours’ pay, and if you spent the whole weekend dragging yourself from one movie house to another …
Weekends were dangerous, one of the ex-cons had told him. Weekends could put you back in the joint. There ought to be a law against weekends.
But he figured out a way around it. Walking home Tuesday night, after that first weekend of movie-going, he’d stopped at three diners on Seventh Avenue, nursing a cup of coffee and chatting with the guy behind the counter. The third time was the charm; he walked out of there with a weekend job. Saturday and Sunday, same hours, same wages, same work. And they’d pay him off the books, which made his weekend work tax-free.
Between what he was saving in taxes and what he wasn’t spending on movies, he’d be a millionaire.
Well, maybe he’d never be a millionaire. Probably be dangerous to be a millionaire, a guy like him, with his ways, his habits. But he was earning an honest dollar, and he ate all he wanted on the job, seven days a week now, so it wasn’t hard to put a few bucks aside. The weeks added up and so did the dollars, and the time came when he had enough cash socked away to buy himself a little television set. The cashier at his weekend job set it up and her boyfriend brought it over, so he figured it fell off a truck or walked out of somebody’s apartment, but it got good reception and the price was right.
It was a lot easier to pass the time once he had the TV. He’d get up at ten or eleven in the morning, grab a shower in the bathroom down the hall, then pick up doughnuts and coffee at the corner deli. Then he’d watch a little TV until it was time to go to work.
After work he’d stop at the same deli for two bottles of cold beer and some cigarettes. He’d settle in with the TV, a beer bottle in one hand and a cigarette in the other and his eyes on the screen.
He didn’t get cable, but he figured that was all for the good. He was better off staying away from some of the stuff they were allowed to show on cable TV. Just because you had cable didn’t mean you had to watch it, but he knew himself, and if he had it right there in the house how could he keep himself from looking at it?
And that could get you started. Something as simple as late-night adult programming could put him on a train to the big house upstate. He’d been there. He didn’t want to go back.
He would get through most of a pack of cigarettes by the time he turned off the light and went to bed. It was funny, during the day he hardly smoked at all, but back in his room at night he had a butt going just about all the time. If the smoking was heavy, well, the drinking was ultralight. He could make a bottle of Bud last an hour. More, even. The second bottle was always warm by the time he got to it, but he didn’t mind, nor did he drink it any faster than he’d drunk the first one. What was the rush?
Two beers was enough. All it did was give him a little buzz, and when the second beer was gone he’d turn off the TV and sit at the window, smoking one cigarette after another, looking out at the city.
Then he’d go to bed. Then he’d get up and do it all over again.