Underworld (48 page)

“What division he's with?”

“What division.”

“Second Infantry's in Korea,” Antoine says.

“I don't know what division.”

“You don't follow the war?”

“What's that you're drinking?”

“I like to follow the war. They plot their strategies.”

“They blow horns and whistles, that's their strategy, them Chinese. They come charging down in swoops.”

“This here's brandy, my man. Drinking imported tonight.”

“It's sitting there a little potent,” Manx says.

“Only in the glass. Goes down the hatch real smooth.”

“They come in swoops. That's their strategy.”

“You say a prayer now and then. That's what you do.”

“Sure, Antoine. I kneel by the bedside.”

“You done okay with your kids.”

“Sure, Antoine. They take care of me in my old age.”

“You got some work?”

“They come visit me in the old folks. Slip me a bottle through the gate.”

“You done okay, considering.”

“Rosie's the one. That's a great girl. That's the only one that shows respect.”

“You need some work. Change your temperament around. You're walking on eggs lately.”

“They're laying off. They're not hiring. They're laying off.”

“You need to get into long-distance moving.”

“They bring me a cake on my birthday,” Manx says.

“Long-distance, that's the ticket. I got a cousin in Alabama, which he's based in Birmingham, gets plenty of work long-hauling furniture and whatnot.”

“I keep that in mind.”

“Yellow yams from Birmingham.”

“I place that on my list of things I need to think about.”

“Greenest greens you ever seen,” Antoine says a little croony.

Manx decides he can't contain it any longer. But he doesn't look at Antoine. He looks across the room at one of those wall lamps, the old-fashioned-type lamp bracketed to the wall where the sleeves that hold the bulbs have fake candle wax running down the sides.

And he says, “Shit man you got those shovels in plain sight.”

Antoine has a long slick head and narrow neck, a man of schemes and contrivances, called Snake when he was younger, and he determines it is necessary to turn his upper body to the wall behind him so he can identify the objects in question. Oh yeah, these things, for shoveling off the patio after a white Christmas.

And he turns back to Manx real low in his chair so he's peering out confidentially over his drink.

“I don't think there's an FBI bulletin circulating tristate. What do you think?”

“I think they belong in your car, like we stated.”

“The point is you got to raise your sights. Because these things don't bring no return.”

“We stated beforehand, Antoine.”

“Not worth arguing. You're right, I'm wrong. But you got to raise your sights.”

They sit drinking a while and Manx thinks about leaving but he doesn't move off the chair. He thinks about taking his shovels and leaving but he sits there because once he gets up and takes the shovels off the wall he is committed to walking the full length of the barroom with two large snow shovels in early October, and no place sensible to take them, and the thought of it, and the sight of it, keeps his ass in the chair.

Instead he takes out the baseball and sets it on the table. Then he waits for Antoine to take some time out of his busy day so he can notice.

“My kid brought it home from the game, my youngest, says it's the home run that won the game.”

“That game they played today?”

“That's right,” Manx says.

“I seen people on Seventh Avenue hollering up and down. Hands
pressed on their horns, hollering out the windows. I said to Willie Mabrey. You know Willie? I said, They must be opening the vaults. The banks opening up their vaults. First come first serve. I said, Let's go get ours.”

“My youngest. He come home with the ball. This is the ball what's-his-name hit in the stands. The game winner. Win the pennant.”

Manx feels uneasy, he feels separated from what he's saying—it comes out of his mouth like a lie, the way a lie hangs in the air independent of right and wrong, making you feel you're not responsible.

He feels an urge to take the ball off the table and put it back in his pocket.

“This is the ball what's-his-name? What you saying exactly?”

“I'm saying it could be worth something.”

“And I'm saying raise your sights. Because the circumstantial fact, you can't prove nothing. And who do you sell it to anyway?”

“I sell it to the ball club. They want it for a trophy. They make a display.”

“Let me look at this thing. This thing's all smudged up.”

Manx realizes he doesn't want Antoine to touch the ball. Antoine will look at the ball and say something that's a bringdown, something that gets Manx riley and griped, and he is already feeling tense enough, with his stomach acting up.

He takes the ball and puts it in his pocket.

Antoine leans back, hands up and palms facing out, showing his old snakehead smile, cool and mean.

“Tell you something. Maybe you sell the thing somewhere. But I don't think you be buying a sofa from Ludwig Bauman's,” he says. “Or a pretty di-
nette
.”

Manx goes to the bar to drink in peace. After a while Phil comes over and they talk a while. The place is quieter now, down to serious drinkers, they talk about the game. Phil is a straight-up guy, barn-sized, looks you in the eye. He talks about the game and Manx listens carefully, hoping for an angle, something to go on. The Dodgers are finished for the year. Dead and buried. The Giants play in the World Series starting tomorrow—starting today, Phil says, checking his watch, because it's past midnight now.

“Who they playing in the Series?”

“Yankees, who else?”

“All New York in other words.”

“All New York series. And people already lining up for tickets. Heard it on the radio. All night they'll be lining up. Sleeping bags, you know. I love to go myself.”

“All night?” Manx says.

“People do anything to see this series, the way the Giants got in.”

Manx likes the sound of that. People do anything. He tells Phil to pour one for himself, knowing the man will decline, he always declines, and Manx feels a little snakelike, caught it from Antoine.

He goes back to the table with a little shuffle in his step.

“You leave your brother standing in the cold.”

“I know it,” Antoine says.

“He wants the car one night is all.”

“I'm doing him a favor. Because that lady he's looking to make is all kinds of two-faced.”

“Let him find out for himself. He's a young guy looking for some action.”

“See, you're not a jealous man. Let me explain something. I'm a jealous man. When I say jealous I mean the full meaning of the word. Everybody jealous,” Antoine says. “The word don't mean shit unless you give it the full meaning. It needs a adjective. Like crazy jealous or can't-think-straight jealous. So if I say I'm jealous, you have to picture eyeballs filled with blood.”

“You already done with her. What do you care? He's a good boy, Franzo. Let him learn.”

“Let him find out, you mean. Because he won't learn nothing.”

But Antoine seems to soften. He eases toward the tabletop, elbows spread, his chin nearly touching the brandy glass.

“Yeah I like that boy a lot. He's a good boy, Franzo. But I got my car in an awkward position.”

“You wrap it around a pole?”

“You know Willie Mabrey?”

“Don't think so,” Manx says.

“Willie and I been talking about my car. A way to make some fast
cash. I ain't broke per se. But I can use some hurry in my income.” Sipping his brandy. “And this here's my first payment in advance. Go down smooth. The cream de la cream.”

“Payment for what?”

“Willie opened a restaurant about six weeks ago. Doing okay. But he's got a problem with his garbage. The city's talking about private companies coming in to pick up this trash. But right now the city does it and there's an ordinance about what time of day or night a restaurant can leave garbage on the street. You can't leave it there all night.”

“Smells bad.”

“Smells bad, attracts vermin. And if you keep it on the premises, you have a situation where the rats talking to the customers.”

“So you made an arrangement with the man.”

“Me and my car both.”

“Which this reminds me,” Manx says. “You mind give me a lift?”

“Take you anywhere,” Antoine says.

They drain their glasses and get up and sort of shake themselves out, shake off the complacent airs and humors of the tavern and rearouse themselves for whatever's out there, the edgy wind-spooked street.

Antoine gets into his jacket and rolls his shoulders and zips the jacket to the throat. He cuffs his nuts for good measure, aligning for comfort and symmetry, placing them squarely at the center of the world. Manx is already wearing his jacket, he never took his jacket off, he's been wearing his jacket since he left the house in the morning, drinking in it, eating dinner in it, washing the dinner dish, and he zips it to the throat and sinks into the hull, the shell, already a little lightweight for the season.

They wave to Phil on the way out. They walk down to the end of the block, where the car is parked. Manx goes around to the passenger side and puts his hand on the door handle and then he stops and looks.

Antoine says, “Get in, man. Faster you get in, faster we move. Where you want to go?”

Manx is looking. He looks in the window at the rear seat and it is filled with garbage. He'd smelled it when he walked down the street but this is not an unoccurring smell and he took it for the general thing it was, garbage in an alleyway or empty lot. Now he sees it is
Antoine's car that smells, it is Antoine's car packed with mounds of ripe trash.

“Oh man. Sheesh. I misdescribed this in my mind. Because I thought.”

“Get in, man. Friggin cold tonight.”

There is garbage in paper bags and cardboard boxes. There are two metal garbage cans wedged between the front and rear seats, regulation street-size cans with dented tops sort of erupted up by the pressure. Manx sees garbage stowed on the ledge by the rear window. He sees front-seat garbage in a peach crate smack on the seat, the oozy smell so near you can drink it.

“I thought you were on your way to get the man's trash and take it somewhere.”

“Took it here. Trash right here. I filled up the trunk while they were still eating their dinner. Then I started on the inside of the car, working backseat to front seat. Move the crate and get in.”

Manx opens the door and sets the peach crate on the mat and sits down, trying to find room for his feet on either side of the crate.

“Where you want to go?” Antoine says.

“Not far. But fast. Up by One Fifty-fifth Street. Where you taking this stuff?”

“Drive it to the Bronx. There's a tower of garbage under the White-stone Bridge somewhere. I fling the trash out the door and press the gas pedal hard.”

“You do me a favor and press it now,” Manx tells him. “Because I'm about to die sitting here conferring.”

“Be calm. I take you where you going.”

Antoine puts the vehicle in motion. He drives steady and unfazed, pointing the car up Broadway like a poison dart.

Manx realizes this is why the snow shovels were not in the car, where he'd told Antoine to put them. No room for shovels in the car.

Then he realizes they left the shovels in the barroom. Good a place as any. Except they won't be there tomorrow. So cross that little caper off the slate.

The last thing he realizes is that Antoine's been telling him all night to raise his sights. And him driving a DeSoto full of garbage.

“You drop me just up ahead there.”

“I take you exactly where you're going.”

“Broadway be fine,” Manx says.

The stink is killing him, lifting him out of the insulated state of a day's slow whiskey burn.

The trash is bumping and mashing around and it has a life of its own, a kind of seething vegetable menace that pushes up out of the cans and boxes, it's noisy and restless, or maybe that's just the vermin moving around, on the verge of being carsick.

“This here's fine,” Manx says. “Right at the corner.”

“You're not gonna tell me where you're going?”

“I tell you where you're going if you want to take this trash to the Whitestone Bridge. You cross the river and get on One Sixty-first, which I think it runs two ways, and you take it to Bruckner, you be okay, Boulevard.”

Antoine looks at him. Manx is already out of the car and he's standing on the sidewalk and Antoine looks at him, sitting unfazed at the wheel. A long lazy snake-eye look.

“Or I could dump it in the street.”

“That's what I thought. That's what I said to myself.”

“While the city sleeps,” Antoine says. “And the cops be eating their chowder.”

Manx watches the car move off. The feel of empty streets after midnight and the wind off the Hudson as he walks east. The hawk at his back. The cutting wind that sends loose trash skidding in the street.

Could be Antoine unleashing early.

He'd like to see an Alka-Seltzer is what he'd like to see, sizzling down the length of a cold glass of water.

He walks down the long ramp with the ballpark on his left, the Polo Grounds, and he looks for people standing in line or huddled on the pavement with blankets and food, the all-nighters, the men and boys eager for tickets, the kids who get paid by scalpers to stand in the cold and buy tickets that desperate fans will haggle over next day, paying prices out of sight.