What’s Happening? (12 page)

“Okay, if you want to,” Rita relented.

Tom payed the bill, and they walked out. Rita said good night to Moira in front of Johnson's. Moira walked toward MacDougal Street. Rita and the others started toward the Avenue of the Americas. They all fell silent as the cold began to bite them again. Tom walked with Rita; Stan and Jeannie followed behind.

“You know, I've never seen you around before tonight,” Tom said to Rita to start conversation. They crossed the avenue, walking toward West Fourth Street.

“I've been around awhile, about six months.”

“Funny, I've never seen you. Where do you keep yourself?”

“I keep busy around, doing the usual things, you know?”

“Me too, but I've never seen you anyway.”

They fell silent again, leaning into the wind. They passed under the marquee of the Waverly Cinema.

“Hey, dig what's playing,” Stan called from behind, “
To Have and Have Not
. That's one of Hemingway's, isn't it?”

“Yeah,” Tom answered, not turning.

“You see it?” Rita asked.

“Yeah,” Tom answered. He hunched deeper into his coat to counter the wind. “You see it?”

“Yeah. It was pretty good. That Bogart was really … well, he was really terrific, you know? Really believable. He put such a depth of feeling, such facial gestures, such … well, everything he did was so great that you could believe him, identify with him. He really felt his role.”

“You sound like you studied the picture.”

“I did. I study all the pictures I see. If you want to act you have to learn from people who know how.”

“You study acting?”

“Sure over on Sheridan Square—with Phil Avery.”

“Hey!” exclaimed Tom, stopping with surprise to look at her. “I know a couple of chicks that go over there.” He started to walk again. “What the hell …” He tried to remember a name. “… Sybil … Sybil Owens. You know her?”

“Sure. Sybil and I are partners in a one-act play.” Rita smiled. “We were rehearsing together last night.”

“No kidding? That's crazy. She's a great chick. Sybil and I used to hang around together, you know, like we were kind of very chummy for a while.”

“Yeah, I'm hip,” Rita smiled knowingly.

Tom smiled and shrugged his shoulders to indicate that that's the way life is.

Stan and Jeannie fell further back and began to talk about something else. Each had his head down into the wind, their hands in their pockets as they continued forward briskly.

“You from New York originally?” Tom asked.

They reached the corner of Fourth Street and turned West toward Pandora's and Sheridan Square.

“Yeah, if you want to say Brooklyn is part of New York.”

“Brooklyn? No kidding?” Tom exclaimed more surprised than before. “How great is this? You know Sybil and now you're from Brooklyn. I'm from Brooklyn too. This must be a portent of something great.”

“It could only be a harbinger of calamity. I didn't think anybody else ever found his way out of Brooklyn.”

“There are a few other people still awake in this little old world.”

“You don't still live there, do you?” she asked.

“Yeah, I still stay over a lot with my folks.”

“Man, you've got what it takes. I couldn't do that for all the money in the world.”

“Yeah, well, you know, like I work in Brooklyn, and like it's easier to get to work from my father's place. I have a pad down here I stay at on weekends though.”

“Man, I left Brooklyn and my mother and father six months ago, and all of a sudden I realize there are lots of things on the other side of the Brooklyn Bridge … things they never even dreamed of, still don't.”

“They gave you a hard time, hanh?”

“That's being charitable. I couldn't take those people any more. So I figured it would be less frustrating for me to move out on my own, … even if I can't give myself
all the things I ever wanted
,” she mimicked savagely. “You know?”

“Yeah, like I know the scene. Same bit, different players.” Tom chuckled sadly. It was a laugh brought up to overcome embarrassment or sorrow. “I've been through that scene so many times I can play it blindfolded. I guess everyone has.”

“So why are you sticking at home?”

“Like I said, it's easier for me to get to work this way. I don't stay there much. I get my food and a pallet to sleep on and I have a pad down here for my friends. You know, … and like that?”

“Yeah, I'm hip, and like that. What sort of work do you do?”

“I work in a shoe store. I sell shoes to old bitches that cram their big, fat feet into ugly little shoes.”

“Shoes? You like selling shoes?”

“I make a couple of bucks at it. It's not a hobby or pastime or anything. What the hell, a job is a job. Nobody bothers me; the boss let's me dress the way I want, as long as I look neat and all, but he doesn't insist that I wear grey flannel, or be his religion, or agree with his politics, or any of that crap. He just wants me to work for him. You know? It's a nice switch. Of course, it's not one of the up-and-coming professions.
They
don't consider it chic …”

They looked at each other, smiling simultaneously. They passed in front of Pandora's. Tom turned to Stan and Jeannie.

“Hey, you wanna see who's inside?” he called. “You want to go inside?” he asked Rita.

“No.” She shook her head, her face wincing with the cold. She huddled her face down farther into her coat collar. “I'm cold and tired. I think I'll pack myself into bed.”

“Okay, … I'll walk you home.”

“Crazy. I'm afraid of the dark.” She smiled, pleased.

“I want to go inside for a cup of coffee. I'm freezing,” said Jeannie.

“I'm going to the pad.” Rita shivered through the shoulders. Her lips were a bit blue.

“I'll be along in a minute,” said Jeannie. She and Stan started up the stoop to Pandora's.

“Okay. So long,” Tom said. He and Rita started walking hurriedly toward the Square.

“So how're you paying the rent in this place, and going to school, and all that?” he asked as they walked. “You working?”

“I'm a waitress. Besides, I have two roommates. We sublet this apartment from two guys real cheap—furnished and all and a telephone for twenty-six a month, and like that.”

“What? Twenty-six a month? You're kidding? Man, they just don't make apartments like that, do they? Where is your place, under the river?”

“Right here,” Rita nodded toward Sheridan Square. “Right around the corner on Christopher Street.”

“I gotta see this pad. It sounds too much. It's wild. Twenty-six a month. Wow! How great is that, hanh? We pay seventy a month for ours, me and Stan. How many rooms do you have?”

“Three.”

“Three? Me too, and the seventy doesn't even include the phone.”

They reached Sheridan Square and stood at the curb waiting for traffic to cease. Streams of cars swarmed from Uptown on the wide, cobblestoned street, their sealed-beam eyes glaring whitely into the black shadow of night.

The Square was a broad, flat, open space into which six streets emptied. Twelve corners surrounded the Square. Most of the corners blazed with lights and signs in front of shops and cafes. Directly across from Rita and Tom was a cigar store. Next to that was a Riker's food shop, and next to that a delicatessen. On the other corner of Christopher Street, across from the cigar store, was Jim Atkins eat shop. On another corner was the Riviera Bar. On another corner was a small park. On the corner where Rita and Tom stood, there was Mother Hubbard's Food Shoppe, Simple Simon's Eat Shop, then the Seventh Avenue South Theatre, and next to that, the Limelight, an espresso shop, then a book store, then two dark, closed shops, and a gas station.

After the cafes close and the tourists leave, the Villagers converge to this square. It is difficult to note exactly who the Villagers are. The term and reference is applied to far more people than those who live within the actual, physical boundaries of the Village and excludes many who do. Physically, the Village is small. Yet, its reputation for bearded poets and painters and writers and starving actors and uninhibited licentiousness and queers and Lesbians and all sorts of sensational, dreamy, romantic, exotic, erotic stories is far more extensive than its crooked streets could possibly harbor.

The Village that has spawned this sensational reputation is only a small part of the actual Greenwich Village. There are thousands of people living on the quiet, residential, crooked, forsaken streets in and around all of the mad excitement which, as legend has it, is continually broiling up in the Village, who rarely seem to notice it, and never partake of it. People who live away from the main stems of weirdness and life—Eighth Street between the Avenue of the Americas and Broadway, Fourth Street from Sheridan Square to Broadway, MacDougal Street from Eighth Street to Bleeker Street, West Third Street from the Avenue of the Americas to Broadway, Sheridan Square, and Washington Square Park—live quietly, peacefully in little houses, on age-old streets, go to work Uptown each morning, appear to be tourists to the tourists, but only want quiet living, and are Villagers nonetheless.

There is also a large Italian settlement in the Village. This is another of the worlds of Greenwich Village, right within this framework of weird life. Pushcarts, Italian-provisions stores, dark kids, and old men who chomp black cigars, can't even speak English, much less hip English, and think Americans are a little
pazzo
, are part of the Village too.

At the same time, all the legendary Villagers, who populate the joints till all hours of the night, who exist according to a sensational, social code, purposely and diametrically opposed to the social code of the outside world that has rejected them, live not only here, but all around Uptown—in the Gas House District, the Murray Hill District, the Chelsea District, the Bronx, Harlem, Brooklyn—and come to the Village to meet and find a little life.

The Village is really only an idea. That which people from Uptown consider the Village is something not outlined by streets or avenues, but by minds and ideals and souls struggling within themselves, by heart and sinew needing their own personal
raison d'etre
, not some union-made, impersonal spirit. The Village is reputed to be the capital of these rebellious idealists, but more often they flourish forsakenly miles away, and only come to the Village for companionship.

The Village is a place of exile for rebels condemned to remain there by misunderstanding people too lazy-minded to think of a true answer for those things which they do not understand. It is far easier to condemn than to understand, to reject than to befriend newness or strangeness. And the excuse offered is that these strange rejected creatures do not want people, do not love people. But it is rather that these unhappy creatures do love people which sends them from society's mindless non-people.

To those who flee to the Village, it is not a sewer but a place of refuge. Those who have no place else to live, who are rejected because they do not fit into a mold, who advocate individuality, who are fast enough to bolt, come to the Village with the anticipatory hope that they will find tolerance, acceptance, relief from the outside molding pressure. To those outside, the Village is a place of repulsion—those who live here, have been repelled from the outside; it is a place of insanity—those who live here are adjudged insane by the people outside; it is a place of degradation beyond compare, beyond description, for so the people here have been accused. Yet this is a place where many people learn to grow up, for outside they have been accepted only as young and childlike. This is a place where thinking is attempted, for outside, thinking is repressed. This is a sanitorium, a place of rest, a place for thought, a place where the afflicted, seeking fellows afflicted in like, and in worse, manner, take courage and stand up to the masses outside who find it easier to discharge than to recharge the sinking lives of these hungerers for life.

Here, early in the morning, one finds only Villagers. The people from Uptown who make fun of the Village, yet feed their dull minds and lives by coming for a look at the mad, crazy Village and the things that Villagers do; the drunken sailors on leave who want to live it up; the gangs of men from Jersey or Brooklyn, wearing their windbreakers, who laugh violently at their own remarks passed to the guys they think are queer; the smart guys looking for a “quick piece of ass” from the wild Village chicks, have all gone home to their own, warm, safe apartments. Left only are the people who stumble to the Village, who stagnate here, who live here, who more than just abide here.

“The light changed. Come on, let's go across,” Rita said to Tom, tugging impatiently on his arm.

“This place is furnished too?” Tom jogged across the street, his hands in his pockets. Rita pulled him by the sleeve of his right arm.

“Contain your curiosity, sir,” she affected gravely. “You shall see in a minute.”

They turned and walked along Christopher Street and entered the dim hallway. It smelled stale, but it was warm. Tom followed her up the stairs to the apartment. She unlocked the door and entered first.

“Come on in,” she called as a light from inside flashed through the slot between the door and the frame.

Tom walked in and looked around. He was taken short by the front room with its plush furniture and the smoked mirror covering one wall.

“Oh! oh!” he cried out painfully, falling on the couch. “I'm sick. I'll never be able to leave this place.” He feigned pain. “I think I'm paralyzed. You might have to move out and leave me here.”

“I'm not moving out,” Rita laughed. “I guess you'll have to stay here with me and the girls.”

“Hey, that's a better idea.” He was suddenly without pain. “I think I'll stay paralyzed for a while. Man, this place is a palace. I thought it was just one of the ordinary beat-up pads the cats usually rent, but this place …”