A New York Dance Page 6

  It was strange how content he had always been. Leaving high school, contemplating the prospect of going away to college, somewhere far from Valley Stream, had made him feel nervously expectant, but when Mom had pointed out there wasn't enough money, and in any case he couldn't really want to leave her all alone, he hadn't minded a bit. The nervousness, the giddiness, all had simply evaporated, as though they'd never been. "Sure, Mom," he'd said, with his sunny smile. "I won't leave my best girl." And he'd kissed her on the cheek.

  Then there'd been the draft. The time neared, everyone in his age group felt the same tense anticipation. The nervousness started again, the feeling of bubbles breaking just beneath the skin, the sense of moving through an atmosphere of champagne. And then the draft was ended. There wasn't any draft any more. And when Mom pointed out how lucky Wally'd been, he'd smiled, and lifted his calm face to the sunlight, and said, "Boy, I sure am."

  Just last year his boss had told him the swimming pool company was expanding into the Scranton-Wilkes Barre area of Pennsylvania, and if he wanted he could go there as sales manager. That afternoon he'd had the jitters so badly he could hardly drive, and the wife he went to bed with had to tell him twice he was hurting her, but when he got home for dinner with Mom he looked across the table at her sweet face and it all drained away again, leaving him calm and sure and content. As he told the boss the next day, when turning down the offer, "I guess I'm just happy as I am."

  Was Wally hustling the boss? No, not at all, he was telling the truth as he saw it. Was he hustling his mom? No, definitely not; she was his best girl. How could he ever do anything to make her cry? That was what his father had done. It was Wally's responsibility — it was Wally's joy — to make up for what his father had done to his mother.

  (Wally hustles Wally.)

  Quiet, now. He doesn't know that. He doesn't know the college excitement didn't go away, it went into a Kilner jar in his head, tucked away on a high shelf. With the Army excitement next to it. With the sales manager excitement in the same row. With all the other openings, escapes, extravaganzas, possibilities, adventures, freedoms, flights, and potentialities of his life, all in a row on that high dark shelf, all sealed away in Kilner jars.

  THAT JUST EXPLODED!

  Exploded. Blown up, leaving Wally with a brain like a short-circuited pinball machine, containing only one coherent thought: Gotta hustle. Gotta get that million dollars.

  But the library was about to close. His expression more and more frantic, his hand at the crank more and more hysterical, Wally zipped through the reels of microfilm, repacked them, brought them back to the counter, ordered more and yet more.

  The librarian became dubious. Studying his watch he said, "I doubt you'll have time to—"

  "I have time! I have time!" Because, out of the alleged sixteen members of the group, he so far had only eight names and three addresses.

  The librarian strolled back with his still dubious expression and his hands full of fresh reels, and Wally yanked them away and fled to the viewer. Urk urk urk, went the crank, urk urk urk.

  "Closing time. Closing time."

  Urk urk urk!

  "Closing time, sir. Everyone else is leaving, sir."

  URK URK URK!

  "Sir, you'll have to stop now."

  "Just one more! Just one more!"

  URK URK URK URK URK URK URK!!!

  "Now, sir."

  Eleven names. Five addresses. No more time. Muttering, Wally staggered away, while the librarian stared huffily at his back.

  Ultimately…

  UNLIKE THE OTHERS, Jerry couldn't immediately start out on the statue hunt. First he had to return the van to the airport, change into his civilian clothes, and pick up his station wagon. So when he left Mel's house it was toward Kennedy that he turned, pushing the van as fast as traffic would allow.

  They started working on John F. Kennedy International Airport (originally Idlewild) fifteen minutes after the Wright Brothers' first flight, and they're still working on it. Every once in a while there's an official announcement that they'll finish it soon, but don't you believe it. They'll still be working on Kennedy Airport the day the last jumbo jet is dragged off to become landfill in Jamaica Bay.

  Because the airport is unfinished, here and there sections of road are blocked off, or curving ramps lead away pointlessly to incomplete buildings, or temporary asphalt roads meander out across weedy fields of sodded soil. No single person understands everything that is happening or failing to happen at JFK, so it had been easy for Jerry to find a headquarters for himself when Inter-Air Forwarding was first founded.

  Between Air Canada and TWA a bit of cement roadway makes a Z-shaped dodge amid tall wooden construction company fences, then ducks down between a terminal wall and a concrete wall supporting some sort of approach ramp up above, then turns right into almost complete darkness, since another wooden fence blocks the exit and support walls flank both sides. On the outermost fence are several signs, one saying Stop and one saying No Admittance and one saying Authorized Personnel Only Beyond This Point.

  On finding this cul-de-sac, Jerry had immediately made it his own. With the aid of a flashlight, a brush and a can of white paint, he had marked off two parking spaces on the cement road surface down at the final fence. On the fence itself, with the aid of the same flashlight, a different brush and a can of black paint, he had inscribed over one of the parking spaces Inter-Air Forwarding and over the other one Mr. Spalding (his name for himself when at work.) At all times, either the van or the station wagon was parked there. At the end of each working day, it made a totally secure and private place in which to transfer the day's loot from the van to the station wagon. Unlike most small businessmen, Jerry was perfectly content with his location.

  Today, battling his way through the rush-hour traffic, Jerry at last gratefully turned off into the dead end, zigzagged through and down, turned right, and parked next to the wagon. Changing in the back of the van, hanging up his coveralls in there as usual, he hopped out in regular clothing, locked up the van, climbed behind the wheel of the wagon, and looked at his list.

  Though he had four prospects, like the others, they were clustered at only two addresses. He had drawn the upper west side of Manhattan, and his list read:

  Professor and Mrs. Charles S. Harwood

  237 West End Avenue

  David Fayley

  154 West 87th Street

  Kenneth Spang

  154 West 87th Street

  Whether Fayley and Spang lived in the same apartment or merely in the same building Jerry did not as yet know. But the married couple were both members of the Open Sports Committee and definitely lived together, meaning that two of the sixteen statues would be found at the same place. Obviously, that was the place to start.

  Suddenly…

  CHUCK "PROFESSOR CHARLES S." Harwood ducked, and the Dancing Aztec Priest sailed past his ear to smash itself into smithereens against the marble mantel over the fireplace. Bobbi Harwood, beside herself with rage, reached for the other one, intending to modify her aim.

  "Now, Bobbi," Chuck said. He was so calm.

  "Now, Bobbi, is it?" She reared back with the second Priest.

  "You've smashed your own statue," Chuck pointed out reasonably. "Do you really intend to smash mine as well?"

  "My own?" Startled, Bobbi lowered the statue and stared at it. The Other Oscar, the Dancing Aztec Priest, the statue Oscar had given her. Her. "This one's mine," she announced. "Yours is in the fireplace, you utter revolting bastard."

  "Bobbi, dear," Chuck said, as slow and calm and unruffled as an ocean liner in a windless bay, "you know you always get first pick. In restaurants, with our friends, everywhere. You insist on being first." Gesturing easily, almost humorously, at the shards in the fireplace, he said, "That was your first choice, so it must be yours."

  "This is mine." Bobbi clutched the cold nasty ugly sharp-angled little monster to her bosom. "You've ruined my life, Harwood," she said, "but you do
n't get this. Not this. It's mine"

  "You're mistaken, sweetheart. The way you can tell which is which, my statue is still in one piece. And I hope you won't be silly enough to smash it, the way you did yours."

  "This one's mine!"

  "Mine."

  "Mine, you teeny prick!"

  "Mine."

  So now the argument was about the remaining Dancing Aztec Priest. Before this, it had been about Bobbi's insistence on shopping at Gristede's, which was more expensive, rather than Finast, which was less expensive. Before that, back half an hour or so, it had been about his refusal to learn to drive a car, and just before that it had been about whose fault it was they were living in New York. They'd travelled a long corkscrew path from the beginning of the fight, back at the Open Sports Committee lunch, during the ice cream and Oscar's speech. It was always the same; they tried to have an argument about whether or not Chuck minded Bobbi sleeping with a lot of black men, but since they couldn't even agree on the postulates — Bobbi refusing to admit, for instance, that she had been to bed with Oscar or any of the others — they could never manage to stick to the point. The fight swelled and rolled within them, unresolved, while they futilely tried to ease the pressure by yelling about other things.

  If only they could go to California, where people didn't congregate in such heterogenous (not to say motley) groups. Chuck had been offered several wonderful posts in different elements of the State University dotted like Monopoly hotels through the San Fernando Valley, just north of Los Angeles, but he'd turned them all down. "I can't drive," he always said. "You can't get around Los Angeles if you can't drive."

  "Learn!" she would scream. "Learn, you narrow-minded, pig-headed bastard! Learn, you nineteenth-century louse! Learn, you smug asshole!" She was pretty good when she set her mind to it.

  But it never had any effect. Chuck, getting calmer and calmer, would do his pipe number and say, "I am learning about man. I'll leave machines to others." Which was enough to make you gnash your teeth for a week.

  Or he would turn the whole argument back on her, with some crack about the orchestra. "Would you really be willing to give up music?" She would try to point out that she wasn't giving up music, that even in Los Angeles there were orchestras, that all he had to do was tell her where they were moving and when and she would take care of her own career adjustments. And he would nod, nursing on his pipe, and say, "But I don't believe you've given your notice to the orchestra, have you? Have you?"

  Argue with a man like that, go ahead and try.

  But she did, she'd been trying for most of the six years they'd been married, and it was her private belief that the constant wear and tear was beginning to have an effect on her looks. She was only twenty-nine, tall and slender, with ash blonde hair and the kind of long-torsoed body that looks terrific in a bikini, but should she have those crows'-feet about her eyes? Should she have that tense set to her shoulders, should her nose be so thin?

  It was the constant battling that was getting to her, she was sure of it. Affecting her looks, even affecting her music; recently she was making the harp sound almost harsh.

  And now she was throwing things. This was new, a new development in their war, and Chuck was too stupid and too complacent even to notice. He merely ducked, as though Bobbi had been throwing things at him all along, and then he proceeded calmly to claim as his her Dancing Aztec Priest. Standing there with his pipe in his face and both hands in the pockets of his robe — he had showered earlier, in the middle of one of her fury-peaks, to display even further his indifference — he maundered on and didn't even notice that things had changed.

  Well, Bobbi noticed. Clutching the Dancing Aztec Priest to her bosom, glaring at his calm face, hearing them both arguing now about ownership of this statue, all at once Bobbi knew she couldn't go on with it. Like Russia and the United States, there would always be some other limited war to fight, some other Berlin Airlift or Vietnam War, some dispute about driving or statues rather than the central war that neither side would ever be quite bold enough or crazy enough to undertake.

  She looked at the statue, holding it at arm's length. His crazy devil mask and his shrivelled little genitalia attracted one's first attention, but now she looked at him, really looked at him, his bent knees, his one raised foot, his off-balance torso, and she decided he was ducking, too. Defending himself. Ducking the missiles, ducking the issues, ducking out.

  Fighting about a statue? A useless, stupid, plaster-and-paint joke of a statue? She looked from the Priest to her husband. "This is it, Chuck," she said, and all at once she too was calm. "You've heard of the straw that broke the camel's back? Well, this is it, right here." And she gestured with the statue.

  The man was incapable of noticing anything, not even her sudden calm. "Be careful with my statue," he said, and even smiled slightly.

  At which point she understood he wanted her to break it; he was goading her to break it just as he'd always goaded her to climb into bed with black men. Yes, he was, he absolutely was. Their marriage was built on this eternal argument; resolving the fight wouldn't cure their marriage, it would end it.

  And the statue had made her understand. This dumb little creature from South America had shown her, finally, the truth. "Once more," she said, with a calm so steely, so cold, so rigid that Chuck could never hope to match it. "This is the last time, Chuck," she said, "and if you were ever smart or careful in your life this is the time for it. Once more, now. This is my statue."

  He shook his head. He had never been smart or careful in his life. "Wrong," he said.

  "Okay, Chuck." While he stood there she turned carefully and carried the statue away into the bedroom and locked the door behind her.

  It didn't take that long to pack; all she did was jam all her clothing — plus the statue — in two suitcases. What took most of the time was throwing all Chuck's clothing out the window. Shirts, slacks, underwear, socks, jacket, his raincoat and topcoat, all sailing like Daliesque gliders out into the air over West End Avenue. Shoes and hats made a captionless Thurber cartoon as they tumbled down toward the sidewalk. Sweaters, blue jeans, and two bathing suits launched themselves like all the partners in a 1929 stock brokerage, and Bobbi slammed the window behind them.

  Next, leaving the suitcases zipped shut atop the bed, she went out to the living room, where Chuck was rolling a joint, their frequent practice at the end of a fight. (End of a round.) "Hello, there," he said, looking up from his leather chair. He didn't call her "dear" or "sweetheart", another indication that he considered the fight at an end.

  "Give me your robe," she said.

  He blinked at her in mild bewilderment. "What?"

  "Give me your robe."

  "My robe?"

  "Give it to me." At last she had as much patience as he.

  "Are you going to shower?"

  "Give me your robe, Chuck."

  Still bewildered, but agreeable, he put down the paper and the plastic bag of grass, got to his feet, untied the belt, removed his robe, and handed it over. He had a bony body, with clearly visible ribs, like the Dancing Aztec Priest. Perhaps she had loved him because he reminded her of a harp.

  She took the robe, went back to the bedroom, shut the door, opened the window, and heaved the robe out. It sank with its arms spread wide in horror and despair.

  He was sitting naked on the leather chair, like O, lighting the joint, when Bobbi came through again with the suitcases. "Goodbye, Chuck," she said.

  He looked at her, speechless, holding the match upright.

  She opened the apartment door and looked back at him. "You'll burn your finger," she told him, but it was too late.

  Not to mention…

  WHILE RALPH THE chauffeur piloted the maroon Cadillac Eldorado across the urban and industrial sprawl of Connecticut, August Corella sat in back with his henchman/ bodyguard, Earl, thoughtfully puffing a cigar while considering the events of the day. Much had happened since Corella had met this noon with the financier, V
ictor Krassmeier, and not all of it had been pleasant.

  It had begun pleasantly enough. All in all, August Corella would rather deal with a top-level businessman than anybody else in the world. Patsies, pure and simple. In every corporation it was the same; the factory made the stuff, the salesmen sold it, and the executives sat around telling each other how smart they were. They were coasting, cushioned by a system they hadn't invented and didn't understand, and they were so sure they were bright and sharp and nobody's fool that they were everybody's fool.

  The result of today's negotiation with Krassmeier? Another fifty thousand sliced out of his gut, and if it actually cost Corella half that much to reclaim the statues he'd be astonished.

  His present plan was simple. Find the person in charge of the group with the statues, go to that person, and buy them all back. Offer three thousand to start, go to a top of ten thousand, and lead the seller to believe two things: first, that there was heroin in at least some of the statues; second, that the Mafia owned the heroin and would kill the seller if he tried anything cute. Neither of those things would be said straight out, but both would be gotten across. And then the seller would do the legwork, collecting the statues while Corella dealt with other things.

  From Krassmeier's office, Corella had gone directly to the Goddess of Heaven restaurant, where a five-dollar bill had brought him the information that today's luncheon had been paid for by an outfit called Bud Beemiss Enterprises, at 29 West 45th Street. Back in mid-town, Ralph and the Cadillac had waited out front while Corella and Earl went up to have a look at this Bud Beemiss Enterprises, which turned out to be a public relations firm with a very snooty receptionist. When Corella told her he wanted to see Beemiss, she said, "Did you have an appointment?"

  "No, I just want to see him."