The Collected Stories (26 page)

The way Zandakis comes on smiling! says Jerry Cook, biggest archbishopric in New Jersey in the palm of his hand; shy saints, relics all kinds: painted monks blessed by the dumbest ladies, bawling madonnas.

Everywhere in America, he says, giving Kitty a morning hour, New Jersey and Long Island man is looking at God and about Him, says Jerry Cook. I dream.

Oh, he says further, turning over to stare, as far as money is concerned, I love the masters. Baby, admit it, the masters are scientists. They add and they multiply. After that they water and they weigh. They're artists. They lay low. They are smiling in a hot bath and the whole damn East Coast leather-goods industry grows up out of the crap in their teeth. They are bulldozers. Two Jew experts in any regular recession can mash twenty-five miserable Syrians. One old Greek, he's half asleep, he puts his marble shoulder on fifty Jews. Right away a hundred thousand plastic briefcases get dumped into bargain bins of Woolworth, New York. Don't mention the Japanese.

Why not? asked Kitty.

Never, said Jerry Cook, no matter to whom, I never mention the Japanese.

Who Cook worked for was Gladstein. There were billings up and down 46, 1, 22 for maybe 285,000 all in secular goods. If you see a cheap wallet in Orange County, Jerry Cook put it there.

But what is Gladstein compared to Zandakis? Zandakis, so help me, he is touched by the pinky of the Holy Spirit and the palm of Eastern Orthodox. You can see Gladstein from here, put-putting behind that greasy genius, giving out 20-by-60 Flushing building lots at swamp-bottom prices to his wife's nephews. Dumbhead Gladstein is not even afraid of Taiwan. He is on the high seas, but he thinks it's Central Park Lake. He holds a dance for the showoff of it all once a month out on deck, which is a twentieth-floor penthouse over Broadway and Seventh Avenue, the black tidewaters. In the war he turned old maid's sweater buttons into golden captain's buttons and internal security exploded in him—to his fingertips—like a dumdum, and now he includes the switchboard girls in his party, the key-punch girls, the Dictaphone girls, the groovy bookkeepers, he even includes Jerry Cook, very democratic.

Only Karl Marx, the fly in the ointment, knows how come Zandakis turned on Gladstein just when his in-laws loved him the most and ground him into drygoods. In a minute 325,000 little zippered real-leather ladies' change purses were rammed into the digestion of starving Mrs. Lonesome, the Jersey Consumer.

Envy of Zandakis and pain about Gladstein made Jerry Cook bitter.

Business! he said. You think I'm in business. You think Gladstein is business—with his Fulton Street molds and his Florentine bookmarks. You think tobacco pouches is business! He bit his nails.

No! But diamonds! Kitty, say it to me, say diamonds, he said.

O.K. Diamonds, she said.

Well, that's better. That's business. I call that business. I should go right to diamonds. Kitty, it's a fact, old bags, you slip them the salami nice, they buy anything. That's what I hear everywhere.

Don't go into diamonds, said Kitty.

Oh yes, he said, giving the pillow a rabbit punch. I know you Kitty. You're one of that crowd. You're the kind thinks the world is round. Not like my sister, he said. Not Anna Marie. She knows the real shape. She lived, Anna Marie. What did she have, when she was a kid, what'd my father give her, a little factory to begin with, embroidery, junk, but she's shrewd and crooked and she understands. My two brothers are crooked. Crooked, crooked. They have crooked wives. The only one is not crooked, the one who is straight and dumb like you Kitty—Kitty, Kitty—he said, dragging her to him for a minute's kiss—is her husband, Anna Marie's. He was always dumb and straight, but they have got him now, all knotted up, you wouldn't unravel him if you started in August.

Kitty, with your personality, you should be in some business. Only for a year, to buy and sell, it's a gimmick.

But they are thieves. Baby. My brothers. Oh listen they worked for famous builders one time. They're known. Planit Brothers. Millions of dollars. You don't know reality. Kitty, you're not in contact, if you don't realize what a million dollars is. (It is one and six zeroes running after.) That was the Planit Corner Cottages, Every Cottage a Corner Plot. How they did it was short blocks. Every penny they stole from the government. So? What's the government for? The people? Kitty, you're right. And Planit Brothers is people, a very large family.

Four brothers and three sisters, they wouldn't touch birth control with a basement beam. Orthodox. Constructive fucking. Builders, baby.

Meanwhile my brother Skippy mentions $40,000. Come on! What is $40,000. Ask the bank. Go to the bank. They tear up $40,000. They jump up and down on it. They spit on it. They laugh. You want to sink in one stick of a foundation, the cost is maybe $12,000. It disappears into the ground. Into the ground and farewell.

But listen Kitty. Anna Marie is shrewd. she has a head, hollered Jerry Cook, leaping out of bed and rapping his own with his pointing forefinger. Anna Marie, she tells my brothers, while you're working for Planit, take something, for godsakes. Take a little at a time. Don't be greedy. Don't be dumb. The world is an egg, jackasses, suck it. It's pure protein, you won't get fat on your heart. You might get psychosomatic, but you won't get fat.

Jerry Cook sighed. He fell back into bed, exhausted, and talked softly against Kitty's soft breast. Take something, Anna Marie said, sinks, boilers, stoves, washing machines, lay it up, lay it up. Slowly. Where, my brothers ask, should we lay up? Where? they asked. It was my brothers. I wasn't there. I'm not in on it. Kitty, I don't know why, he said sadly. I'm crooked too.

Sure you are, said Kitty.

You guys make me puke, said Anna Marie. I took care of all that already. She had really done that. Taken care of where to stack it away. She had gone and bought a warehouse. In an auction. Where else do you get one?

Tie! Tie bid! the auctioneer hollers. A quarter of a million, screams one sharpie. At the same simultaneous minute, a quarter of a million, screams the other sharpie. Ha! The auctioneer bangs the gavel. Bang! Tie bid!

I never heard of that, said Kitty.

You sheltered yourself, said Jerry Cook. My sister says to him, Marv. You look like a pig half the time. You look like a punk, you don't look like an auctioneer. What do you look like? Name it. Schlep, he says. Laughs. Right-o. Schlep. Listen, Marv, give me this warehouse for 70,000. I'll slip you back 7 and an Olds. Beautiful car, like a horse, she says. I know your wife's a creep, she don't put out. I'll fix you up nice. You don't deserve to look such a bum. Right away he's grateful. Hahahah, breathes hard. He thinks he's getting laid. What? My sister? Anna Marie. Not her. No. She wouldn't do that. Never. Still, that's what he thinks.

My brothers say, Sure, introduce him. A nice brunette, a blonde, redhead, something from Brooklyn. You know? Not Anna Marie. Too smart. I ain't in the roast-beef business, Skippy, she says to my brother Skippy …

Because she's not! Anna Marie could be in any business she chose. She learned from my mother and father. They knew. But what did she do when her time came to do? She looked up at the sky. It was empty. Where else could she put her name and fame? Oh Anna Marie. High-risers! she said. Oh, she could choose to be in anything. She could sell tushies in Paris. She could move blondes in Sweden. Crooked, he said, his heart jumping like a fool in his throat. He sat up straight. High-risers!

On the East Side, on the North Side. Democratic. She put one up in Harlem. She named it. She digs spades. Not what you think, Kitty. Digs them. She sees it coming, Anna Marie. She sees who she's dealing with in ten years, twenty years. Life is before her. You have to watch
The New York Times.
The editorial section, who they're for.
Then
do business.

Harriet Tubman Towers
, that's what I name you, twenty-seven stories. Looks out over Central Park, Madison Avenue, the Guggenheim Museum. If you happen to live in the back, the Harlem River, bridges, the South Bronx, and a million slaves.

A colonial power I planted here, she says. She missed the boat though, naming it that way. She's putting up another one more west, she already got the name for it, black, like onyx halls, a sphinx fountain, a small Cleopatra's needle in the playground, you know, for the kids to climb on.
Egypt
, she calls it. They like that. She doesn't build. Anna Marie, till she got the name. In the Village, what do you see, for instance: Cézanne, Van Gogh, St. Germain … Jerks, transient tenancy, concessions, vacancies in the second year … She reads the papers there,
The Villager
, the
Voice.
She sniffs. Anna Marie is shrewd. Quiet, she looks the contractor in the face.
Franz Kline.
And she is oversubscribed the day after they paste the plans up.

You ought to go into business, Kitty. You're not shrewd. But you're loving and you got tolerance. There's a place for that. You wouldn't be a millionaire, but you'd get out of this neighborhood. What have your kids got here, everywhere they go, shvartzes, spics and spades. Not that I got a thing against them, but who needs the advance guard.

Kitty put her finger over his lips. Ssh, she said. I am tolerant and loving.

Come on, Kitty. Did you like the mockies right out of steerage? They stunk. Those Yids, you could smell them a precinct away. Beards like a garlic farm. What can you do … Europe in those days … Europe was backwards. Today you could go into a gym with the very same people. People forget today about the backwardness of Europe.

But listen, Kitty, once my sister decided about high-risers …

Who? said Kitty. Decided what?

My sister decided. High-risers. That's where her future was. Way up. She called up Skippy. She called up the bank. They each of them got into their own car and they head for the warehouse. Collateral for a life of investments. The warehouse is laying out there in Jersey, in the sun, beautiful, grass all around, a swamp in the back, barbed wire, electrified in case of trouble, a watchman, the windows clean. The bank takes one look, the warehouse is so stuffed, stovepipes are sticking out the window, cable is rolling off the gutters, the bank doesn't have to look twice. It signs right away on the dotted line.

Oh Anna Marie! Out of her head all that came. Jerry, she asks me, what do you use your head for, headaches? Headaches. How come I'm not one of them, Kitty? I asked Skippy for a house once. He said, Sure, I'll give a $35,000 house for maybe 22. Is that good, Kitty? Should he have given it to me straight, Kitty? Oh, if I could lay my hand on some of that jack, if you figure me out a way.

I wish I could help you be more crooked, said Kitty.

He put his hand on Kitty's high belly. Kitty, I would personally put that kid in Harvard if I could figure the right angle.

Well, what happened to Zandakis?

What'd you bring him up for? He's no businessman, he's a murderer and a creep.

Where's Gladstein?

Him too? He doesn't exist. They hung him up by his thumbs in his five-and-ten on 125th Street with mercerized cotton no. 9.

God?

Kitty, you're laughing at me. Don't laugh.

O.K., said Kitty and leaned back into the deep pillows. She thought life on Sunday was worth two weeks of waiting.

Now me, said Jerry. What I am really: I am the Sunday-breakfast chef. I will make thirty pancakes, six per person, eggs, bacon, fresh ham, and a gallon of juice. I will wake up those lazy kids of yours, and I will feed them and feed them until I see some brains wiggling in their dumb heads. I hate a dumb kid. I always think it's me.

Oh, Jerry, said Kitty, what would I do without you?

Well, you wouldn't be knocked up is one thing, he said.

Is that so? said Kitty.

It wasn't cold, but she snuggled down deep under the blanket. It was her friend Faith's grandmother's patchwork quilt that kept her so warm in the warm room. The old windowshades made the morning dusk. She listened to the song of Jerry's brother Skippy's orange radio which was:

“Come, come, ye sons of art …”

The bacon curled fearfully on the hot griddle, the waffles popped out of the toaster, and a countertenor called:

Well, it was on account of the queen's birthday, the radio commentator said, that such a lot of joy had been transacted in England the busy country, one day when Purcell lived.